Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/678

660. I would suggest, first, schools of domestic science and hygiene in which girls shall be taught the subject on the same educational basis and along the same liberal lines that they are taught other things.

A beginning in this line of work (though not in kind) has been in progress for several years in some cities, notable among them the city of Boston. The subject, however, has been taken up in an elementary way and in one of its branches only—that is, cooking. Cooking was introduced to that city by a woman of wealth and benevolence, through whose influence several school-kitchens were opened and maintained at private expense (borne chiefly by her) for a year, to demonstrate to the school authorities and the public what could be done in that line of education. At the end of the time, in the autumn of 1885, the school board decided to adopt the cooking schools as a part of the public educational system, and now there are eleven such schools in that city. Cooking is also taught at public expense in New York, Milwaukee, Des Moines, Washington, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and in many smaller cities throughout the land. These are for the most part schools in which the making only of dishes is taught. They should be extended to include the study of the sources, composition, and nutritive value of food materials, heat, ventilation, cleaning, serving, and the laws which govern health and disease.

The second method which I would suggest for the extension of our subject is by means of private schools, lectures, and demonstration lessons, by which any person may gain the information which has been suggested should be taught in the public schools. Third, by study and experiment at home, where there is always opportunity for such work. There, by the aid of books and investigation, an educated woman may work out and perfect plans and methods for the management of her home.

Educational and industrial unions, where the products of the culinary skill of women are offered for sale; diet-kitchens, in which wholesome dishes are sold at small price; cooking schools like those in the city of Boston, in which the girls in the public schools are taught methods of cooking; private schools, such as the Boston Cooking School and the New York Cooking School, to which one may go and take one or many lessons in invalid, family, or fancy cooking, and where demonstration lessons are given throughout the year; experimental stations, such as the New England Kitchen in Boston, in which chemical and bacteriological investigations are made upon both cooked and uncooked food, under the supervision of an expert chemist; the Storrs experimental station, in Middletown, Conn., which is a purely scientific school for the investigation of food products and the study of dietaries; Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn, in which an