investigate the household, although every other field of human
knowledge and activity has apparently been taken into its libraries,
its laboratories, and its workshops; but undoubtedly one of the
weightiest is the survival of the tradition that affairs of the
household concern only women, that women work always through instinct
and intuition, and therefore that the household is not a suitable
field for scientific investigation. But with the breaking down of
the artificial barriers between the interests of men and of women,
it is found that the affairs of the household do concern every
member of it. Modern investigations in psychology are showing that
the mental processes of women are precisely the same as those of
men. It therefore remains for the university to recognize that the
household is worthy of investigation. That there is scope for such
an inquiry would seem evident from the curriculum of an excellent
school of domestic science, selected from among hundreds of other
illustrations that might be given. Course I in Domestic Science
places in conjunction lectures on food adulteration, bacteriology,
furniture, decorations, textiles, and housekeeping in other lands--an
enumeration not saved even by alphabetical arrangement.
But not only is there difficulty in deciding what should be included
under the head of domestic science and how instruction in it should
be given, but a third difficulty lies in deciding who should be
instructed in the subject. If it is said that all young women should
receive such instruction, we are confronted by the fact that the
young woman trained for domesticity takes up stenography and occupies
a hall bedroom, or becomes a commercial traveler and spends her life
in hotels and on railway trains; the girl taught sewing and cooking
in the public school goes into the shop or the factory; the young
woman who frankly acknowledges her engagement spends the time prior
to her marriage in preparing her trousseau and in embroidering her
initials on her household linen. The young woman who has prepared
herself for the profession of law or of medicine decides to marry and
goes into business partnership with her husband. It would seem as
if all plans for teaching household economics in the college or in
the public school with reference to preparing young women for their
future careers as housekeepers must be futile until the orbit of the
matrimonial comet can be predicted.
Yet it must be recognized that college education has already done
much for the household, and presumably for that somewhat vague field
denominated “domestic science.”
The housekeeper finds herself in the same position as does the
lawyer, the physician, and the clergyman. All are educated side
by side throughout a college course. In a subsequent professional
career, the lawyer forgets his Greek, the physician his history, and
the clergyman his mathematics; but there remains with each one a
precipitate of far more value than the original compound. The lawyer
is no longer able to conjugate a verb in μι, but his Greek has given
him an accuracy and precision of thought that, other things being
equal, has placed him professionally far in advance of his untrained
associates. The physician has forgotten the various steps in the
development of cabinet government in England, but his history has
left him a ready sympathy in dealing with men and a vision into
their future that will long outlive his knowledge of the facts of
history. The clergyman can no longer demonstrate Sturm’s theorem or
Horner’s method, but his mathematics has given him a clearness of
reasoning that renders him an invincible opponent in all battles for
the right. In all these cases the residuum of facts remaining from
a college education is comparatively small. Knowledge that is not
constantly used passes out of mind, yet, like the food assimilated
by the physical body, it serves its purpose in the mental strength
and energy gained through it. Indeed, it may be said that information
becomes more and more the dross, and education the pure metal
remaining from a general school or college training.
The embryo lawyer, the physician, the clergyman, have throughout
a college course been pursuing parallel courses of training; it
has given them little that they can make of immediate use in the
office or the study, but it has laid the foundation for that special
research necessary in every profession. The professional school
builds on the training of the college, and it not only gives the
information necessary in a professional career, but it opens the door
to the vast field of investigation which it is one of the aims of
every professional man to explore.
Thus the housekeeper, forgetting her Latin, Greek, and mathematics,
her French, German, and history, her biology, astronomy and
economics, retains as the most valuable heritage of her education
a training in habits of accuracy, observation, good judgment, and
self-control that enables her to be the master of any unexpected
situation that may arise. From the beginning of school life until
the close of the college course the conditions surrounding the young
man and the young woman are similar. Each has the benefit of all the
information and the general educational training the college can
give. To each alike the three great professions of law, medicine, and
theology open their doors and invite special study and investigation.
But if the young woman, turning her back on these attractive fields
of work, desires to study the household in a similar professional
way, she finds it a _terra incognita_. She realizes that absolutely
nothing has been done in any educational institution toward
investigating its past history, its present conditions, or its future
needs. It is said in another field that every lawyer owes a debt of
gratitude to his profession which can be paid only by some personal
contribution to the sum of knowledge in his profession. One of his
aims, therefore, as is that of every professional man, is to leave
the world richer in his own field through the investigation of its
unexplored parts. Thus law, medicine, and theology grow by virtue of
the accumulated wisdom of those engaged in their pursuit. But the
housekeeper finds that housekeeping as a profession has made no
advances. It has not grown through the accumulated wisdom of past
generations as have the so-called learned professions. Whatever
advances it has made have come from impetus given it by other
occupations through their own progress. Housekeeping affairs have
been passive recipients of general progress, not active participants
in it.
If, then, domestic science is to be made a subject of serious study
and is to be accorded a permanent place in the school curriculum, if
the household is to profit by the educational progress of the day,
it can only be after the university has taken the initiative and
has made all matters pertaining to the house and home a subject of
scientific research.
THE RELATION OF COLLEGE WOMEN TO DOMESTIC SCIENCE
In a Western city, somewhat addicted to the formation of literary
clubs and reading-circles, is a company of women who meet for the
study of history, closing the afternoon’s work with a discussion of
current events. In alluding to these discussions, a member once said,
“No matter what subject is introduced, we always drift off to the
woman question.” The half-jesting remark has in it more of wisdom
than of criticism. The so-called “woman question” is not, as was once
popularly supposed, synonymous either with woman suffrage or with the
higher education of woman--it is as broad and as deep as the thoughts
and activities of woman. It was inevitable that for many years
efforts should be made to open new occupations to women, to give them
better preparation for their work, and to secure fair remuneration
for service well done. It was inevitable, because, however much some
sociologists may wish it otherwise, the fact remains that woman is
and must be to a certain extent a wage-earner. These efforts have
been reasonably successful; almost every avenue of work is open to
women, and almost every coveted opportunity for preparation is hers.
The reaction, however, has come, and the pertinent question is being
asked, “Why has so little been done to improve the work of woman
in those fields which have always without question been considered
legitimately hers?”
A glance at our periodical literature does indeed show unusual
interest in all questions affecting domestic life. Economists are
asking why the wages paid for domestic service are higher than
those paid the average woman in other occupations, and why, in
spite of this, the demand for household workers is greater than the
supply. Philanthropists are puzzled to know why girls prefer to
live in crowded tenement-houses on the merest pittance rather than
enjoy many of the comforts of home life as a household employee.
Experienced housekeepers find life a burden when it becomes necessary
to change the divinity who rules the kitchen or the nursery, and
wonder why it is so difficult to secure efficient help. Educated
women without homes who desire to learn the principles of domestic
science can find no explanation for the fact that the United
States with its hundreds of thousands of schools affords scarcely
one where this subject can be studied as a serious profession as
is law, medicine, or theology. None of these questions has been
satisfactorily answered. The editor who discourses of “half-baked
writers on political economy” settles one of them by saying that
there is no reason whatever why women should dislike domestic
service. But the autocratic assertion has not visibly increased the
number of women desiring employment as house-servants. The benevolent
individual who has not yet learned that thousands of girls have
neither mothers nor homes, blandly answers another of these questions
by saying, “Let girls learn housekeeping at home.” The world at large
cuts the gordian knot and says, “It is an unfortunate condition of
affairs, but we cannot reform all evils at once.”
Before considering the relation that college women sustain to the
general subject of domestic science, it must be noted that the
subject is one of general interest.
It is of interest to all women, because so large a proportion of them
marry and become actively engaged in housekeeping; the number of
married women who do not keep house is possibly equaled by the number
of unmarried women who do. Moreover, the majority of women whose
primary occupation is not housekeeping are at various times called
upon to spend a portion of their time in household duties. It is of
interest to all men, whether they have a full appreciation of it or
not, because all questions affecting the house and the home are so
inextricably bound up with all questions of life.
It must be assumed at the outset that there is a necessity for
improvement in the conduct of household affairs. As the household is
at present organized, the duties of the housekeeper are multifarious.
The ideal housekeeper must have a knowledge of culinary affairs.
Not only must she know how to make food palatable, but she must
understand its nutritive and its economic value. She must be able to
superintend the cutting and making of ordinary garments. She must
understand the over-sight of her household employees; the details of
marketing; the principles of laundry work; the keeping of household
accounts; the care of the sick. She must know how to care for the
house and all of its furniture, from attic to cellar. She must be
master of all these special lines of work, and know a thousand and
one things about the household not enumerated. She must not only be
the housekeeper, but the homekeeper. She must furnish her house with
taste, and often at the same time with economy. She should understand
the principles of the kindergarten, and not shrink from applying
the fundamental ideas of ethics and psychology to the training of
children. She must at all times be ready to perform her social
obligations in the circle in which she moves.
It is generally assumed that the only preparation necessary to become
proficient in these multiform tasks is found in the instinctive
love of domestic life common to all women. But this of itself does
not make a woman a successful housekeeper any more than a taste for
medicine renders a young man a skillful surgeon, or a talent for law
constitutes a learned jurist. There has been a growing recognition of
this fact, but at the same time it is said that the home training of
every girl ought to be sufficient. There are many reasons why this is
not so. If we apply the principles to the case of girls who become
household employees, it is seen to be at fault. It is from the ranks
below the so-called middle class, to use an invidious phrase, that
the great army of household employees is recruited. It is impossible
for a girl belonging to this class to go into a family whose social
advantages have been greater than her own, and become at once an
adept in the conventional forms of table service, an expert cook, or
a good general houseworker. She has had neither the means, nor the
opportunity, to gain even a knowledge of what duties will be required
of her, to say nothing of knowing how to perform them. An incompetent
mistress is unable to give the necessary instructions; a competent
one has often neither the time nor the patience to undertake such
training, and indeed it ought not to be expected of her any more than
it is supposed that a banker who desires an expert accountant will
teach the applicant the process of addition and subtraction.
If, on the other hand, it is assumed that the home training in
domestic affairs is sufficient for girls of the middle and upper
classes, there is also danger of error. It is often quite as
difficult to give regular instruction in the home in these matters
as it is in the ordinary school branches. The Law School of the
University of Michigan, after thirty years’ experience, said a few
years since in regard to the previous reading of law: “It is not
often that the student receives the needed assistance except in
law schools. The active practitioner, engrossed with the care of
business, cannot, or at least, as proved by experience, does not,
furnish the students who place themselves in his charge the attention
and assistance essential to give a correct direction to their
reading, and to teach them to apply it usefully and aptly in their
subsequent professional life.” This same principle too often applies
in regard to housework, even when the teacher is the mother. The most
competent mothers often have the most incompetent daughters--it is
far more easy to do the work than to teach another how to do it.
Sometimes it is assumed that the daughter can learn, as the mother
has learned, by the hard road of experience. It is, also, too often a
question of how the blind shall lead the blind. Again, many girls are
early left without homes, and thus deprived of the opportunity.
There are evidences of some appreciation of these facts.
Cooking-schools spring up spasmodically, where in “ten easy lessons”
the mysteries of theoretical and practical cooking are disclosed.
Some of our fashionable boarding-schools, ever on the alert to
foresee a public demand, announce courses in domestic science.
Charity schools in our larger cities attempt to teach girls cooking
and sewing in connection with arithmetic and grammar. The great
interest in industrial education has had its influence. In some
cities cooking and sewing have been made a part of the required work
in all the public schools, not so much, however, from a desire to
teach these branches as from a belief that the hand as well as the
brain needs training. New York is the home of the kitchen-garden,
where the thought of the originator has been to teach the children of
the poorer classes how to make their own homes brighter, rather than
to train them to do housework for remuneration. In many of our large
cities schools have been established to give domestic training, but
this training, unfortunately, is often given more in name than in
reality. All these forms of activity are indications of a desire to
help lessen, wholly or in part, the widespread ignorance of domestic
work and aversion to it.
Several reasons for this ignorance have already been suggested.
Housework has always been classed in the category, not of skilled but
of unskilled labor. Nor has it in every-day business life received
that practical consideration which the ponderous volumes on the
influence of woman would lead one to expect. Popular sentiment has
not yet demanded that when a woman marries she shall possess at least
a theoretical if not a practical knowledge of household science; it
is deemed sufficient if she acquire it after marriage at an enormous
cost of time, patience, energy, sometimes even of domestic happiness.
Nor has public opinion demanded that every woman who does not marry
should have a general knowledge of domestic affairs; it is assumed
that she has no use for such knowledge, either practically or as an
accomplishment.
When popular opinion insists that every woman who marries shall have
a practical familiarity with these subjects as strongly as it insists
that every man who marries shall be able to provide a comfortable
home for a wife; when public opinion insists that every woman,
whether she marries or not, shall have an education so symmetrical
that she can fulfill any duty which as an individual she may be
called upon to perform, then will more serious efforts be made toward
lessening this ignorance.
This lack of knowledge explains to a certain extent why so many are
unwilling to perform household work. It is natural to dislike work
that brings failure, to enjoy what brings success. The average girl
who “hates to sew” and “hates to do housework” would often find
pleasure in both did she but have systematic knowledge concerning the
work. The city boarding-house, crowded with women who “can’t endure
housekeeping,” is one product of this combination of ignorance and
aversion. In New York City there are said to be but thirteen thousand
families in individual houses. The rest of the population are crowded
into tenements, rookeries, boarding-houses, flats, and hotels.
But there are other reasons besides ignorance that explain this
aversion to household work. There is a well-founded belief that the
majority of women dislike both manual labor and self-supporting
labor, and this fact applies both to housekeeper and to housemaid. We
have passed the stage when it is permitted a man to say, “The world
owes me a living.” We not only allow a woman to say this in effect,
but we sometimes praise her for her womanliness in saying it. How
often one hears the remark, “Her father has abundant means, it is
unnecessary for her to support herself.” The average woman without
family cares is self-supporting because dire necessity compels, not
because honorable work is the birthright inheritance of every human
being. Again, the mistress of the household constantly speaks of the
routine work of the house as drudgery, and the houseworker, whose
chief interest in it is one of dollars and cents, coins a still
harsher term, and calls work a curse.
This ignorance and aversion are too widespread, and have existed
too many centuries to be removed in a single generation, nor can we
expect any one remedy to prove a panacea. But we may ask how far the
efforts made have proved successful. The cooking-school is now in
vogue, and doubtless has done much to teach new ways of preparing
food, but the cooking-school has the same relation to the general
subject of household science that an evening class in arithmetic has
to a college education. The mistress learns a few things in a general
way, and the maid does not care to learn at all. It is ephemeral in
its nature, and while it attracts public attention to the need of
more thorough instruction on the subject, it is far from going to
the root of the question, even of how to teach cooking. The same may
be said in general of domestic economy in our fashionable schools.
Sewing and cooking as taught in charity schools do apparently give
practical help in teaching the children of the poor to assist in
the care of their own homes; but this work, like that done in the
public schools on the same lines, distinctly disclaims any desire
to give technical information. In the public schools the object of
instruction in sewing and cooking is purely an educational one, and
it is an incidental result scarcely to be expected when it leads
girls to look upon housework as a means of support.
It has long been a belief with many, and one that it has been most
difficult to give up, that schools for the training of domestic
servants would do more than anything else to solve the domestic
service problem, and thus indirectly provide for the overflow in
shops and factories. In all of our large cities the experiment
has apparently been faithfully tried. The theory has seemed
unexceptionable, labor and expense have not been spared to carry it
out, but the result has been, if not an utter failure, at least far
from commensurate with the effort expended. In one school personally
visited accommodations for twenty were found. When asked what was
done in case there were more than twenty applicants for membership in
the class, the superintendent replied that no such difficulty ever
arose, as their numbers were never full. The answer was at least
significant.
In one city the Women’s Guild organized cooking-classes with the
thought of domestic service in mind. In a demonstration course
where only ten cents a lesson was charged, the average attendance
was never more than fifteen or sixteen, the greatest number ever
attending being thirty-two. In a course of practical lessons in
cooking, given at equally reasonable rates, the class numbered only
four or five. One of the most efficient managers of such schools
says after twenty-five years of experience that she is forced to
believe that nothing in this line can be done. Similar testimony
comes from a gentleman of wide practical knowledge of philanthropic
work in New York City, and on the theoretical side from a lady widely
known for her writings on economic subjects. Miss Mary Rankin Hollar
has recently investigated one hundred schools and classes where
domestic training is supposed to be given. She finds that less than
ten per cent give systematic work, and only two have any maids in
their classes.[10] In the light of these and of similar facts the
conclusion must be accepted that the question cannot, certainly at
present, be settled by establishing training-schools for employees,
no matter how thoroughly equipped or how reasonable in charges these
schools may be. The conclusion seems to be that all these efforts,
from fashionable cooking-school to charity kitchen-garden, have
not been able to remove, scarcely to lessen, either ignorance or
prejudice.
The average housekeeper does not yet know the best, the easiest,
the most practical, or the most scientific way to manage her
household affairs. Her work is often monotonous and wearisome, and
must be so until its true place as a profession is acknowledged.
The inexperienced housekeeper recognizes her own likeness only too
faithfully drawn by Dickens in Bella and her struggles with “The
Complete British Housewife.” If she desires instruction, she finds
it impossible to secure it in a systematic way. Kind friends offer
suggestions, the cook-book gives hints, and the “Housekeepers’
Guide” bridges over a temporary difficulty. But this combination of
instruction in regard to isolated facts in housekeeping is much like
the attempt to learn a new language by memorizing words from the
dictionary.
It is not strange that the novice still believes that housekeeping
can be learned only by experience, nor, on the other hand, is it
any more strange that in the effort to gain this experience she too
often breaks down in health, or gives up the attempt and resorts to
boarding. The cooking-school and the class in domestic economy, when
taught in connection with a dozen other subjects, will not solve the
question for her.