Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/703

Rh Economics, given at the University of Wisconsin, have been published and most warmly received.

Other agricultural colleges are working along these lines. Iowa has a fine equipment in the food laboratory or kitchen in charge of Miss Gertrude Coburn, a graduate of the Kansas Agricultural College. North and South Dakota have valuable courses in domestic science; also Fort Collins, Colorado; the Storrs Agricultural College, Connecticut; and the Michigan Agricultural College, where the course is in charge of Miss Edith F. McDermott, a graduate of Drexel Institute.

Quite possibly they have done so much in the direction of this science, realizing the criticism of Mrs. Ellen H. Richards. She says there are some fifty agricultural colleges and experiment stations in the United States, costing many millions of money, for the study of the food of pigs, cows, and horses. A cow is worth, perhaps, on an average, fifty dollars. It is important that she should be well fed, so that the most may be made of her capabilities. A man is worth three thousand dollars to three hundred thousand dollars, measured by his capabilities, salary, etc. (Five per cent of three thousand dollars equals one hundred and fifty dollars, the salary of a very ignorant man; five per cent of thirty thousand dollars equals fifteen hundred dollars, a common salary of teachers; while fifteen thousand dollars is the common salary of a skilled engineer.) We send our young men to college to be fitted for thirty-thousand-dollar teachers and three-hundred-thousand-dollar engineers, and we take less care of their food than does the farmer of his fifty-dollar cow.

That there is a strong demand for courses in which the study of chemistry shall be applied to food, economics of the household, and its kindred subjects, is evinced by the number of colleges where these subjects are now taught. This age is awakening to the fact that women need special opportunities as women; and after the first blind rush for equal opportunities with men for higher education, it is demanding courses of instruction which shall include full credit-earning courses in that combination of sciences which is woman's own.

Important coeducational institutions besides Chicago University give instruction now in domestic science, while others are considering the matter. Wisconsin State University has already been mentioned. The Leland Stanford, Jr., University has lately done admirable work under the able direction of Mrs. Mary Roberts Smith, a graduate of Cornell, and for some years professor of history at Wellesley College. These, with the Boston Institute of Technology and Ohio State University, are a few which have already been teaching the subject, while inquiries are continually coming from many more, as well as from large seminaries.