As far back as 1835 household economics was taught in young women's
seminaries of the United States, as we are informed by Benjamin R.
Andrews of the School of Industrial and Household Arts at Columbia
University. In 1912 there were over 130 schools which gave collegiate
degrees for proficiency in the courses in home-making, and it was clear
from the way things were going that ere long every woman's college and
high school in the country would have a domestic science department, if
only to meet the competition of the Domestic Science schools which are
springing up everywhere.
These special schools for home-making turn out the really up-to-date
girls--the girls whom young men want to marry.
In recognition of the growing importance of this branch of education
Representative Wilson of Illinois introduced, in 1911, a bill providing
that a Bureau of Domestic Science be established in the Department of
Agriculture, with the object of investigating methods and appliances
for the preparation of food and of gathering information to be used in
training the boys as well as the girls of the schools and colleges in
household and institutional management.
In 1910 there were in the elementary schools of Chicago only 75
kitchens available for use in giving the girls practical instruction
in the art of cooking. In view of the fact that at least eight out of
every ten girls in these schools are fated to spend a part of their
lives in the kitchen, the superintendent of schools, Mrs. Ella Flagg
Young started an agitation to have this number increased to 250.
In commenting on this subject the Chicago "Tribune" remarked: "A girl
who has to hold in after life solemn communion with stew-pans and
gridirons had better learn in advance how to use them. It will save her
mortification, bitter tears, and scoldings."
Not every husband takes the matter as calmly as the brute who, when his
young wife met him with tears in her eyes and the information that the
cat had eaten the first pie she had made for him, replied: "Don't cry,
dear; we can easily get another cat!"
Bad cooking drives a man to drink sooner than anything else. Many
honeymoons are shortened by home-made dyspeptic pangs. "Poor food
ruins dispositions as well as digestions."
"Fashionable private schools are adding cookery to their subjects," I
am informed; and the girls "have lots of fun with it." A wise thing;
for even if these girls marry men who are wealthy enough to hire a
cook they ought to know something about culinary art--the more the
better--so they can tell the cook how they want things. Cooks in
general are not so bad as they are painted. Many of them are simply
inexperienced and glad to learn the better way. I know this from
abundant experience in my own household, and I bless the stars that I
have a wife who can tell what's wrong and how to mend it.
Most of the public schools in New York and many other cities now have
courses in household science, including cooking. In the high schools
attention is given, among other things, to the adulteration of foods
and its detection; to the effects of certain bacteria, useful or
harmful, on foods; to nutritive values; to the physiology of digestion;
to money and labor-saving appliances; nursing and diet for the sick;
cost of living; home sanitation; home-made fireless cookers; food
adulteration; cooking as a moral agent; etc. The courses vary somewhat
in different schools, but that all of them tend to domestic happiness
and lowering of the death rate is certain.
There are indications that working girls are beginning to realize
the gross injustice of marrying without having learned how to cook a
palatable and digestible meal. The New York "Sun" of January 15, 1911,
had an interesting article telling how Miss Mary E. Brockman started
evening classes in cooking, largely for girls about to be married. Some
of them have worked in factories and shops for years, yet "hardly know
an eggbeater from a potato-ricer." "They are eager to learn and make
good pupils." "It might seem hard to work all day in a factory and
spend two or three hours in the evening mixing flour or braising meat,
but evidently several hundred young women find it almost a relaxation.
Once started, the subject becomes increasingly fascinating."
"Increasingly fascinating." Bear that in mind. In cooking, as in
piano-playing, and everything else, the drudgery comes first, but
increasing skill brings satisfaction and joy to the artist cook--not to
speak of the husband, the children, and the guests. And this joy lasts
as long as life itself.
There is in New York an Association for the Improvement of the
Condition of the Poor which, in 1911, was teaching 50,000 "little
mothers" how to cook while their parents are away working. One of its
main objects is to show the families how to economize _intelligently_.
The fact that so many children as well as adults in our cities are so
undernourished and so liable to disease is largely due to the spending
of money on foolish, unnutritious, or harmful things. By simply
substituting cereals and soups for their poisonous tea and soggy cake,
thousands of suffering families can be rescued. The Little Mothers
even get some simple notions as to the chemistry of food and the
advisability of not having too much of one kind, as the following, from
the New York "Evening Post," shows:
"Girls," said Mrs. Burns to a group of small cooks one day, "I
am going to give a luncheon, and this is what I am going to
have: bean soup, pot roast, canned corn, white potatoes, and
rice pudding. Do you think that will make a nice luncheon?" Up
came a small hand. "Well, what is it?" asked Mrs. Burns. "Too
much starch," said the solemn cook.
A book will doubtless be written some day showing by vivid
illustrations how many of the problems of charity,--crime, poverty, and
the prevention of disease and intemperance--can be solved by attention
to rational cooking.
Ignorant feeding kills thousands of infants every month the country
over. It is therefore a crime not to include food and feeding in
the subjects of study in schools--all the more as most girls get no
instruction whatever after they leave school at fourteen.
There will be fewer complaints about high prices when all girls are
taught not only how to prepare a meal but how to buy food knowingly. As
the New York "World" has forcibly remarked: "If women would pay half
as much attention to the fluctuating prices of food as they pay to the
prices of dress goods,--or as the men pay to the stock-ticker--and shop
half as assiduously for the one as they do for the other, one of the
worst phases of the high-cost-of-living problem would be met at the
start."
It is almost startling to find that the schooling of boys and girls in
domestic science works the miracle of solving the important problem of
how to keep boys and girls on the farm.
Professor Benson of the Department of Agriculture relates how, in
1907, he asked the teachers of thirty-four schools in Iowa how many
of the boys and girls expected to remain on the farm when grown up.
The answers were most discouraging. Provision was then made for giving
up-to-date instruction in scientific farming to the boys and in
rational household management to the girls. Three years later account
was again taken, and it was found that whereas in 1907 all but 11 out
of 174 girls wanted to leave the farm, in 1910, after being educated,
only 17 out of 178 girls persisted in going to the city.
Progress in America is being greatly accelerated by the various women's
clubs which are working in the interest of the food question. Also,
by "Good Housekeeping," "The Ladies' Home Journal," "The Woman's Home
Companion," "The Housekeeper," and a host of other magazines, which
monthly publish not only columns of recipes but helpful articles of all
sorts bearing on household science and management.
All things considered the outlook seems bright.
Characteristically American are the free lectures on cooking, with
demonstrations, given in some of our large department stores. Good is
also done by the booklets enclosed in many packages of food telling
the purchaser of various ways of cooking it, alone or in diverse
combinations. Surely, we are on the way to becoming a gastronomic
nation!