Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/541

Rh vicious, or filthy habits, and nearly as many because their children were ashamed of them; five have quarreled with daughters or grandchildren. These facts show that the home life was defective in those characteristics which tend to bind the family together. In the Elmira Reformatory seven per cent had had a good home, thirty-nine per cent fair, fifty-four per cent poor, showing the preponderance of bad home conditions. In conducting a student employment bureau it was found that there was an undue supply of those who wished to do bookkeeping, typewriting, and clerical work, while there was great difficulty in securing any one who could do mending, plain sewing, or ordinary housework satisfactorily. There was a large amount of this domestic work to be performed in the community, but the young women who were obliged to earn a part of their living in college were quite incapable of doing what was needed. Charity and settlement workers continually testify that the women of the laboring classes lack proper training and skill in making home comfortable and wholesome. Without additional illustration, it appears that women are being prepared for everything else than domestic life—the life which, as statistics show, nearly one half of them are living.

What, then, does the average woman need? In the first place, a thorough manual training. She needs to know how to cook a wholesome meal properly, to put it on the table appetizingly, and to do this with the minimum expenditure of energy. It is one of the most hopeful signs in elementary education that kitchen gardening and household training are being introduced into those schools which the children of the general population attend. The need of this practical domestic training for girls has probably been sufficiently emphasized, but in the general readjustment of occupations and duties going on between men and women, it is more and more apparent that boys as well as girls need a certain amount of elementary domestic training. It is a mere fetich, for instance, that women should do all the mending or even have all the care of children. There are many families in which family happiness, comfort, and prosperity would be greatly promoted if the husband and father could, at least in an emergency, take a competent share in the routine work of the household. There are many generous and kindly husbands who would be glad to help, but who are incapable through lack of elementary training. Since the bearing and rearing of children is the most important function of women, the mother must be relieved, at least at times, from many of her ordinary household cares. If there be not money enough to hire extra service, it is inevitable that the father should take, at least temporarily, some of these duties, if the family is to be maintained in comfort.