coöperation for that of “giving orders;” see that the daily paper is
on the kitchen-table before it is a week old and that the magazines
are promptly supplied; encourage the singing-class, the flower-bed,
basket-making, bead-work, in-door evening games, and out-of-doors
recreation; at least make the effort to give in some form a new and
wholesome interest to lives that may have been repressed and mentally
starved. Friends may smile and call the plan quixotic. _What if it
encourages self-respect in the employee and therefore respect for his
work?_
Consider the kitchen with its accompanying rooms in the light of an
economic plant. Give the same careful attention to its arrangement
and equipment that the owner of a manufacturing establishment gives
to the fitting-up of a new factory with all the latest labor-saving
contrivances and facilities for work; study the plumbing and
the water-supply with the zest of a scientific investigator and
select the cooking- and baking-utensils with the interest of an
artist. This course may curtail expenditures for the “den” and the
relinquishment of the “cosy corner.” _What if thereby your house and
home gain in unity for employer as well as for employee?_
Abandon the attempt to maintain a Waldorf-Astoria style of living on
a fifteen-hundred-dollar salary; abandon it, if you have the income
to maintain it, if in maintaining it you are putting temptation
in the path of a weaker friend and neighbor. This may reduce your
calling-list by two hundred names. _What if you gain thereby peace of
mind and a contented household?_
Establish household settlements among the cottagers at Newport,
in the vicinity of Central Park, on Riverside Drive, Commonwealth
Avenue, Euclid Avenue, and the North Shore Drive. _What if successful
settlement work in these localities should enable the families of
millionaires to bridge the impassable chasm that now separates the
dining-room from the butler’s pantry and the reception-room from the
linen-closet?_
* * * * *
_Will these temporary devices remove all friction in the running of
my household machinery?_
No, they will probably not even lessen it. But these and similar
expedients may be of benefit to you, inasmuch as they may help you
to carry out the commendable advice of Charles Reade, “Put yourself
in his place.” They may also be of benefit to your granddaughter in
enabling her to be a member of that ideal trades-union--that between
employer and employee.
OUR KITCHEN
Our kitchen is not that of a millionaire; it has not a tiled floor,
enameled brick walls or glass shelves; it is not fitted with
appliances for cooking by electricity or with automatic arrangements
for bringing up coal and sending down ashes. It is a plain, ordinary
kitchen, built new six years ago, and attached to an old house to
take the place of the former basement kitchen. It was planned by
the landlord and the carpenter for unknown tenants, and the general
arrangement had to conform to the plan of a house built many years
before. If, then, it has been possible, with these usual, every-day
conditions to develop a kitchen that possesses convenience of
arrangement and unity of purpose, it would seem that similar ends
might be obtained in any kitchen, anywhere, by any person, through
use of the same means,--careful thought.
We are busy women who have learned, in other lines of work outside
the household, the value of order and system, and when we began
housekeeping we saw no reason why the application to the kitchen
of the same principles that were used in arranging a study or a
library should not produce the same ease and joy in the work of the
household. If a library, to be of service to those who work in it,
must have its books classified according to some clearly recognized
principle, would not a kitchen gain in usefulness if some principles
of classifying its utensils were employed? If a study-table demands
every convenience for work, ought not a kitchen-table to be equally
well equipped? If the student can work more effectively in a cool
room than in one that is stifling hot, will not a cook produce better
results if working in a well-ventilated room? If the librarian needs
special equipment, does not the butler need appliances adapted for
his work? If the instructor needs the materials for investigation
if his work is not to perish of dry rot, should not the houseworker
have at hand all the materials needed if her work is to represent
progress? If the parlor gains in attractiveness if its colors
are harmonious, will not the kitchen gain if thought is given to
appropriate decoration?
It was the affirmative answer to these and similar questions that led
to the evolution of our kitchen from a state of unadorned newness to
its present condition. An indulgent landlord provided a model range,
a copper boiler, a porcelain-lined sink, and a double shelf; we have
added the gas-stove, the instantaneous water-heater, the electric
fan, two double shelves and all the utensils. Thus equipped, what
does our kitchen represent?
To answer this question it is necessary to consider its general
arrangement. The north side is filled by a window, the range, and
the outside door. This with the adjacent east side, we call “the
cooking side.” Here are arranged boilers, sauce-pans, broilers, and
all implements large or small needed for cooking.
The south side is filled by the door leading into the
refrigerator-closet, the baking-table, and the door leading into
the butler’s pantry. This we call the “baking side,” for here is
the baking-table with its bins for flour and meal, its drawers for
baking-spoons, knives and forks, and sliding shelves for baking and
for bread-cutting. Above it are various small utensils needed in
baking, together with spices, essences, and various condiments. A
“kitchen indicator” showing articles needed from the grocer’s hangs
at the left of the shelf, a peg at the end holds the household bills,
and pegs at the right are for shears, scissors, a pin-cushion, and a
cushion for needles used in preparing roasts.
The west side is the “cleaning side.” This side is our special
pride and delight, for here on a corner shelf is our electric fan,
the drop-leaf table for drying dishes, the porcelain sink with
its shining brass faucets, the nickel instantaneous water-heater,
and our fine forty-gallon copper boiler. Here above the sink are
collected the cleaning-brushes of various kinds, ammonia, borax,
scouring-sand, and all cleaning preparations. The sink is set about
three inches too low for comfortable use, a fault in sinks almost
universal, and to remedy this defect a rack was evolved from four
nickel towel-bars joined by connecting metal plates. Lack of wall
space required that the shelf on this side of the room should be
shared equally between the preparations for cleaning and the kitchen
library, while the basket for newspapers and magazines occupies the
end of the cleaning-table. But does not cleanliness of mind accompany
cleanliness of material equipment?
The outside entry to the kitchen serves, in default of other place, as
a cleaning-closet. Here are kept brooms, dusters, scrubbing-brushes,
polishing-brushes, dusting-mops and cleaning-mops. Here also, easy of
access, is kept the garbage-pail,--three times each week emptied by
the city garbage collector and three times each week scrubbed with hot
soap-suds.
This is our kitchen as regards its ground plan and its exterior
aspect. But the student of history always looks behind the external
surface and studies the record; hence our kitchen records a belief in
a few principles that seem fundamental in a household.
The first principle is that a kitchen should be absolutely sanitary
in all its appointments. This means not only filtered cistern
water, a still for distilling water, a porcelain-lined sink, and
an abundance of hot water, but it means an absence of cubby-holes
and cupboards where articles may be tucked away and accumulate
dirt. Everything is in the open, every part of the kitchen is kept
spotlessly clean, and we have never seen a rat or a water-bug about
the house.
A second belief recorded by our kitchen is that of unity of plan.
If the artist places before all else in importance the composition
of his picture, if the author believes that his book should be the
elaboration of a single idea, if the engineer knows that every part
of his engine fits by design into every other part, it would seem
clear that the application of the same principle is essential in the
household. If the kitchen is to sustain an organic relationship to
the other parts of the house it must represent in the arrangement
of all its details the same idea of unity of composition that is
expressed in a painting, of unity of development that gives life to a
book, of unity of design that makes the perfect engine.
A third idea represented in our kitchen is that it must be equipped
with every labor-saving device and with every convenience for work,
if satisfactory results are to be secured. The first thought of the
manufacturer is for the equipment of his manufacturing plant with
every modern appliance. Can a perfect product come from imperfect,
inadequate means of work in the household? The application of this
principle has of necessity involved many experiments,--inventions
will not work, or good ones are superseded by better ones, or a
new need arises and must be met. Every week sees some article
discarded because an improvement on it has been found. In the city
of twenty-two thousand inhabitants in which we live automobiles
have been used six years and approximately three hundred are now
owned there and in the vicinity, but not one can be found of a
pattern prior to that of three years ago. If an automobile must be
disposed of because it is not of the most recent model, does it seem
unreasonable to cast aside a twenty-five cent eggbeater that chafes
the hands, a pineapple-snipper that wastes the fruit, an unsightly
broken sauce-pan, and a patent water-cooler that will not cool the
water?
But man does not live by bread alone, and a kitchen may be sanitary
in all its arrangements, it may represent unity of plan, it may
have every modern convenience, and yet it may lack the essential of
attractiveness. The arts and crafts movement has not yet reached the
kitchen, and it is thus almost impossible to secure cooking-utensils
of good artistic design and color. But the second-hand store will
often furnish a piece of good pottery, brass, or copper that may be
utilized in the kitchen and serve the added purpose of increasing its
attractiveness.
Yet a kitchen may illustrate all of these principles and still lack
those subtle features that establish, unconsciously, some connection
between it and its predecessors in other times and in other places.
If the theory of evolution has taught us not only in science but in
art and in politics and in everything connected with our daily life
to look behind the surface and to seek the origins of things, if it
has taught us ever to look for the relationship between the present
and the past, surely the kitchen must not be excluded from this
process of thought. Apparently the work performed there each day has
neither connection with the past nor outlook into the future, yet
this is but a superficial aspect of the situation. The kitchen of
to-day with gas-range and instantaneous water-heater is the direct
heir of the kitchen of yesterday with coal-range and copper boiler,
and of that of the day-before-yesterday, with open fire and cauldron.
An attempt to maintain this connection with the past is sought
through the photographs on the walls. Two views of early colonial
kitchens give historic continuity with the past, a photograph of the
interior of a Dutch kitchen gives a touch of that cosmopolitanism
that makes the whole world akin, while that of a famous hotel in New
York City places us by prophetic fiction in the class of millionaires.
Such is our kitchen. “Does it pay?” It has paid us.
AN ILLUSTRATED EDITION
It is the day of the illustrated edition, and even more the day of
the illustrator. Happy is the author to whom is accorded the honor of
an illustrated edition of his latest book. Still happier is he whose
facile, practiced pen is called into requisition to illustrate the
works of the great artists found in our monthly magazines. Unhappy is
the one whose book _no_ artist, even if gifted with imagination, can
illustrate, and whose name no publishing house has ever entered on
its card catalogue of pen illustrators of artistic sketches. But more
fortunate times may await the unillustratable and non-illustrating
author. A changing phraseology reflects a new _rapprochement_ between
author and artist and a breaking-down of the barriers that once
confined each within definite limits. There are even indications
that the present positions of author and artist may be reversed and
that the non-illustrating author may become quite independent of
the previously necessary artist. “Pen pictures,” “sketches in black
and white,” “pastels in prose,” all indicate the possibilities open
to the author of combining with his own vocation that of the artist
whose existence thus becomes unnecessary to his own. Nay more, the
unillustratable author may take heart, for as the skillful acrobat
learns the feat of walking on his hands, so the literary trickster
may achieve the paradox of illustrating works that cannot be
illustrated.
This theory has been the result of contemplating on the one hand the
impossibility of illustrating a modest book dealing with statistics
and equally prosaic facts and of noting on the other hand the popular
demand that every book shall be illustrated. How shall man attain
unto the unattainable?
A reminiscent mood led the author to blow the dust from the top of
her last book, written ten years ago and not yet, unhappily, out of
its second edition, and to turn over its half-forgotten pages. She
found a passing interest in recalling her conclusions as they were
laid bare on the pages of the book, but undreamed-of pleasures took
form and shape as she remembered the circumstances under which each
page had been written. Nay more, there opened out the vision of the
unattainable illustrated edition. A series of pictures passed before
her, far more interesting than the book they illustrated, and thus a
prosaic work attained a place in that desirable class in which are
found all books whose text seems only as a pretext for the artist’s
brush.
The first picture was that of the receipt of a letter written in
reply to a humble request for information in regard to the number of
maids employed in the household, the length of time they had been
employed, and similar facts obvious to one’s friends and neighbors.
The letter was written on Tiffany’s finest stationery, it bore a
crest and a coat of arms so undecipherable as to be a guarantee of
its high aristocratic lineage, and its perfume was that of Araby
the Blest. But the letter was written in the third person and the
information it conveyed was not that which had been sought but the
unexpected statement that the inquiry was impertinent and under no
consideration whatever could be answered. Alas, the questioner had
known that her questions would demand time and thought, but what
artist, save the author, could depict the abyss into which the
questioner was hurled by the epithet “impertinent?”
The second picture also had a letter in the foreground. The quest for
information had led to an appeal to the only authority known to the
questioner, but it was to an authority of world-wide reputation, and
the unknown questioner hesitated long. Would the great man heed the
appeal, even if the questioner could justify herself in making it?
But the die was cast and the result was a long, kindly, painstaking
letter not only giving in detail all the information sought but also
suggesting similar by-paths to be explored. “Of such is the Kingdom
of Heaven.”
The third picture was that of a woman’s club. The writer had never
belonged to a woman’s club, save for a brief period of nominal
connection with one, and it had been with much trepidation that
she had accepted an invitation to read a paper before one of these
organizations. But she wrote an article in which she attempted to
show by means of all the facts and arguments at her command that the
establishment of training-schools for domestic employees would not
and could not remedy household ills. She valiantly read the paper and
at the close of the hour one of the company thanked her heartily “for
advocating the establishment of training-schools for servants.” Was
it the woman, or the club?
The fourth picture is of a large corner room, with low ceiling,
facing south and west. Its long table is covered with papers,
reports, schedules, and census publications, and here, from early
morning until late at night, during the hottest weeks of the early
summer, the occupant of the room attempted to work out some of the
economic laws governing domestic service. Her fellow occupants of the
large building were the numerous maids engaged in cleaning it. Their
work also was difficult, but morning tea tided over the time between
breakfast and dinner, and work for the day closed at four o’clock.
How would an artist portray the question that came each night--what
would be the effect of an eight-hour day on economic investigation?
The fifth picture is one of a small room opening on an air-shaft,
in a New York hotel. The occupant had arrived late, the hotel
was crowded, and no other room was available. But it was not
the smallness of the room, or the single window opening on the
air-shaft that gave the occupant a chill on a July night,--it was
the folding-bed. Her traveling-bag contained a new work on economic
history, having a chapter on domestic service, and turning on all
the electric lights, she read until daylight, never since quite sure
whether it was devotion to history or craven fear of the deadly
folding-bed.
The sixth picture is one of a railway carriage in provincial France.
The American traveler, in search of information, had attempted to
learn from her chance companion in the carriage somewhat of domestic
service in France. Much valuable information was politely given, and
then the tables were turned. But the interest of the French lady was
centred, not in the status of domestic service in America, but in
the personal status of her new acquaintance. That she was traveling
alone might be accepted, though certainly to be deprecated. But what
artist shall show forth the amazement on the face of the French lady
when she heard the affirmative answer to her question, “But surely it
is not possible that Madame will find no one at the station to meet
her?”
The seventh picture is a series of dissolving views that suggest
the portrait of a lady standing with her back to the onlooker and
gazing at her own face reflected in a mirror opposite. A few months
after the book was published, its author, attracted by the title of
an article, purchased a new review to while away a railway journey.
She read the article--and pondered. It seemed strangely familiar and
soon she realized that it was in effect one of the chapters in her
own book. It had not even suffered “a sea-change into something rich
and strange,” for the illustrations used were the same that the first
author had collected from the experiences of her personal friends,
and to every one she could have attached a name, as presumably the
second author could not do. The second in the series of dissolving
views is of a correspondence with a gentleman who had given a course
of lectures on domestic service in a remote city. The author of the
book had expressed a desire to sit at the feet of Gamaliel and at
length secured the loan of the manuscript from which the lectures
were given. Probably a sea-change was not to be looked for in an
interior city, and the author of the book rejoiced to find so much
community of interest with the author of the lectures. The third in
the series of dissolving views was of a certain bibliography. It had
appeared in the first number of a new report on household affairs
and the author was interested in it as a probable illustration of
thought transference. Here was the title of a book she had consulted
in the Bibliothèque Nationale and that presumably was not to be found
in American libraries. Here was the title of a curious book she had
picked up when “bouquinering” on the Quai Voltaire and had added
to her private library. This was the title of another curious book
found in a great university library,--interesting, but of little
value. This was the line-long title of a collection of technical
German laws found in Saxony. Here was the title of an old book that
had been valued as a family heritage, but of no special importance
to any one else. The compiler of the so-called “books of reference”
had overlooked the sub-title in the book--“full titles of works
referred to in the text”--and had not realized that the use of the
word “bibliography” had been demanded by the exigencies of type. To
recommend for use as a working bibliography a list of “full titles of
works referred to in the text,”--was it perhaps donning an evening
dress when starting for the golf-links?
The dissolving views have given the author the greatest pleasure
of all the illustrations of the book. There is a favorite jest
concerning books that have been read only by the author and the
proof-reader. It is indeed true that for the most part an author
writes a book to please himself, not to gain readers. But there is
a secret joy if two birds can be brought down with the same stone
and a reader, other than the proof-reader, be found. The purchase
of a book does not necessarily imply that the book is read,--public
libraries add the latest new books, private libraries are interested
in first editions, and authors buy presentation copies for their
friends. But none of these purchasers guarantee that the book
purchased will be read. Was it not a cause for open rejoicing that
not only one but three readers had been found, and more than that,
that these three readers had not only been non-combatants, but had
agreed so entirely with the views of the author?
The pleasures of a visit to Europe are often as is the square of
the distance from the time of the visit. With the passage of the
years, oblivion overtakes the moments when we agonized over the
question whether the fee expected by the guide was a shilling or
a pound, and the hours when we gazed at the fireless grate; but
with each recurring year the realities stand out with greater and
growing vividness. Does not the flight of time bring to us all the
realization that the real work of our hand is not the one that can be
bought at the counter, but the unpurchasable illustrated edition?
THE WOMAN’S EXCHANGE[14]
Few persons whose attention is attracted by the modest sign of the
Woman’s Exchange, now found in nearly all our large cities, realize
that a new competitor has appeared in the industrial market. Few
even of those who have assisted in organizing and carrying on such
exchanges know that they have been instrumental in introducing a new
factor into economic problems. Yet in spite of unpretentious rooms
and unconcern as to economic questions, the Woman’s Exchange has
already had an appreciable effect on economic conditions, and must in
future play a still more important part.