Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/695

Rh With the thirty thousand girls who have already graduated from colleges, according to Alice Freeman Palmer, carrying these reasonings into innumerable towns and hamlets, the outcome must be something definite, and it is no source of surprise to find that some of them have gradually collected the present knowledge on all topics relating to the welfare of the home, under the comprehensive title of household economics or domestic science, and that great numbers of them are working hard in various lines of this subject.

Let us examine this work of some of our college graduates who have done most in this direction.

The active interest of college women in the subject of household economics was shown as long ago as 1883, when the Boston branch of the Collegiate Alumnæ organized its Sanitary Science Club, the first organization of distinctively college women for the study of any branch of household economics. The report at the end of its first year's work says: "The members of the Sanitary Science Club can not too strongly urge upon the Association of Collegiate Alumnæ the importance of giving thought and attention to the hygiene of the home. This duty falls more or less upon all women, but with none should it be more exacting than with college graduates."

The efforts of this club for science in the home have been productive of great results, as we shall see.

After five years' study, a manual for housekeepers, called Home Sanitation, was prepared by this club and edited by two of its members, Mrs. Ellen H. Richards and Miss Marion Talbot. This manual has been for some time one of the standard works upon the subject, and used as a basis for study in home science clubs.

One of these editors. Miss Marion Talbot, who has the degrees of A. B. and A. M. from Boston University, and of S. B. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, after having first realized the importance of the subject in this club, began lecturing regularly upon domestic science in 1886 at La Salle Seminary, and continued till 1800, when she took charge of this department at Wellesley College. In 1892 she was called to the University of Chicago as dean of the woman's department, where she is now carrying on courses in sanitation and the study of foods.

The first interest of the other editor of Home Sanitation, Mrs. Ellen H, Richards, in domestic science dated from a much earlier period. Having graduated at Vassar in 1870, she went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to work in the chemical laboratory preparatory to taking the degree of S. B., which she received from that institution, as well as the degree of M. A. from Vassar, in 1873. While working in the chemical laboratory in 1871, a prominent educator, now deceased, made the sneering remark to her, "What