The importance of the spending function of the housewife must be
brought home more clearly to great numbers of women. Too few
native-born housewives realize that they have any problem to work out,
or that there may be an "art of spending." None of the ninety
foreign-born women interviewed had received any instruction in buying
except advice from friends or from their own children. What little
instruction they had received had been concerned only with cooking.
Not one of these women recognized any difficulty in buying except the
difficulty of speaking the language well enough to ask for things or
to understand how much they cost, or of getting the wherewithal to
pay.
It is by the slow process of continual suggestion that both women
consumers and distributing agencies will be awakened to the problem.
Evidence of this awakening is already apparent. Schools and colleges,
with their domestic-science and household-budgeting courses, are
raising the question among an ever-widening circle of people. Banks
and brokers with their special woman's department are advising and
suggesting ways of spending that save. Newspapers, magazines, and
clubs are discussing household problems. Organizations, public and
private, have worked out ways and means of helping women budget their
expenditures. So far these varied efforts have reached chiefly the
American women. But no one group is isolated to-day, and as some
awaken they set in motion the waves of thought and action that reach
their foreign-born neighbor. Her institutions of press and bank
respond with information and assistance. Inevitably better
housekeepers will result.
In the meantime, all possible assistance must be given. It is
therefore especially important to establish contacts between agencies
already responsible for developing an art in household management and
the leaders among the various foreign-born groups. Provision should be
made for young women from among those groups to obtain a higher
education than has been commonly thought necessary by them or than has
in many cases been possible from a pecuniary standpoint.
Much could undoubtedly be accomplished by the establishment in
connection with departments of home economics and household arts in
the various colleges of funds making possible the compilation of
material bearing on these particular points. Scholarships and
fellowships can be made especially available to young women from among
these groups who desire to pursue their education in these lines.
The household arts departments of the various universities are
attempting to plan a "standardized dress," the social workers are
developing a list of garments,[40] and an estimate of expenditures for
the use of case-work agencies in the care of dependent families,[41]
the Young Women's Christian Association is carrying on a health
campaign[42] directed particularly at the problem of proper shoes. In
the meantime the Sunday papers carry full-page advertisements
describing in specious and misleading terms the bargains in clothing
to be had the following day, and the merry round continues. The
tragedy works itself out both in the dissipation of the income and in
the friction created between parents and children, to which reference
will be made in another place.
But perhaps more important is the possibility of modifying the
practices of the retail trade itself. Restrictions have been placed
about the trade in such legislation as has been passed against
fraudulent advertising and other fraudulent practices, as well as by
the so-called pure food laws of the United States and of the various
states. And some influence has been exercised on the conditions under
which goods are made, or under which they are sold, by the Trade Union
Label League and by the Consumers' League. Neither of these
organizations would, however, directly touch the life of the
foreign-born housewife.