Home Problems from a New Standpoint
Date: 2015-08-10T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Home

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Title: Home Problems from a New Standpoint

Author: Caroline Louisa Hunt

Release date: August 10, 2015 [eBook #49669]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOME PROBLEMS FROM A NEW STANDPOINT ***

HOME PROBLEMS
from
A NEW STANDPOINT

By CAROLINE L. HUNT

WHITCOMB & BARROWS
BOSTON 1908

Copyright 1908
BY
CAROLINE L. HUNT

PRESS WORK BY ALFRED MUDGE & SON INC.
COMPOSITION AND ELECTROTYPING BY
THOMAS TODD
14 BEACON STREET, BOSTON, MASS.

To H. C. H. and A. G. H.

INTRODUCTORY

“GIVEN a number of human beings, with a certain development of physical and mental faculties and of social resources, how can they best utilize these powers for the attainment of the most complete satisfaction?” Thus J. A. Hobson states what he calls The Social Problem, adding that if “complete satisfaction” seems too indefinite, owing to the various interpretations of which it is capable, we may adopt Ruskin’s words and say that the end to be sought is “the largest number of healthy and happy human beings.” It is as a factor in the Social Problem, thus broadly stated in terms of human life, that this series of papers will consider The Home.

There was a time when the home could hardly have been said to be a factor in the Social Problem. It had a problem of its own, to be sure, that of the proper management of its internal affairs, and upon the wisdom of that management the welfare of society was largely dependent. This problem, however, was not greatly affected by conditions in the world at large. The home was independent industrially and in no way involved in the general labor problem. Its women members were not tempted to prepare themselves for and to enter upon occupations unconnected with its administration and welfare; the question whether a woman could have a career and a home had not then arisen. The home was at that time independent also of public work, looking to city or village boards for assistance neither in maintaining cleanliness nor in warding off disease.

Now all has changed. The home, by consenting to use factory products and by employing outside help, has involved itself in the great labor problem; by educating its daughters to support themselves in occupations unconnected with its management it has complicated its original problem of household administration; by entrusting the education of its little children to schools, the care of its sick to hospitals, the protection of its water supply, and other important interests, to town councils or to village boards, it has entered into public affairs. It has brought to itself new problems and to women and to men new responsibilities, new opportunities, and new privileges. These new responsibilities, opportunities, and privileges will be considered in the pages that follow.

CONTENTS

I. | More Life For Woman | 3
II. | More Life For Man | 33
III. | More Life for the Household Employee | 33
IV. | More Physical Vigor For All | 51
V. | More Joy In Mere Living | 67
VI. | More Beauty For All | 83
VII. | More Pleasure For The Producer Of Household Stuff | 99
VIII. | More Conscience For The Consumer | 119
IX. | New Work For The Home | 135

HOME PROBLEMS FROM A
NEW STANDPOINT

MORE LIFE FOR WOMAN

MORE life for woman—not only in length through increase of years, but also in breadth through increase in joyful, satisfactory, well-directed activity.

A person is prompted to activity by certain instincts or desires. It is common to divide these desires into two classes—the self-regarding and the other-regarding. Among those of the first class are the desires for nutrition, for parenthood, for intellectual activity, and for creating objects of utility and beauty. Among those of the second class are love and sympathy. It is common, also, to divide the activities prompted by the desires into selfish and unselfish on the ground that some are of value to him alone who engages in them, and some are of value to others only. The latter division, however, is not rational, for it is easy to show of any act, that if it is of benefit to the doer it must be to others also, and vice versa. Eating, for example, is prompted by a desire that is entirely self-regarding, but if we did not eat we could not work for others.

Although there is no reason for a classification of activities based upon the recipient of the benefit, there is a reason for a division based upon the way in which the advantage comes to the doer or to others. The self-regarding instincts inspire one to acts which lead directly to the enrichment of his own life and only indirectly, and by way of his increased power through activity and consequent increased capacity for service, to the welfare of others. By such acts he preserves his life, promotes his health, acquires knowledge, and cultivates talents in whose expression he finds pleasure. The other-regarding instincts lead one to activities which tend directly to the welfare of others, and only by a circuitous route and by way of the benefit conferred upon others, to the enrichment of his own life. By such activities he sacrifices or endangers his life that others may live, he gives up health for the health of others, imparts knowledge at the expense of limiting his own store of information, and leads others to the satisfaction of expressing their talents by sacrificing the cultivation and exercise of his peculiar gifts.

Success in either form of activity is dependent upon activity of the other kind. The man who teaches successfully finds that he at the same time systematizes his own knowledge, makes it available for his own purposes, and prepares himself for further learning. The woman who would have strong children seeks to increase her own physical vigor, and thus by work for others she secures the joys of health for herself.

On the other hand, activity of one kind, at the expense of the other, tends not only to unbalance, but to narrow life. The mother who blindly performs unnecessary services for her child, and thus curtails her time for reading and study, runs the risk of becoming incapable of directing wisely the education of the child in later life. She not only unbalances her life by too much serving, but also narrows it by reducing her chances for continued usefulness.

Breadth of life is dependent upon an equilibrium between the activities prompted by the self-regarding and those prompted by the other-regarding desires.

The wish to find expression for peculiar talents is self-regarding. Occupations suited to talent, however, lead not only to pleasure in work, but to development and to increased power for usefulness; and while the interests of the well-balanced life may at any time demand the sacrifice of talents for the sake of work for others, those same interests demand just as imperiously that talents must not be unnecessarily sacrificed for the sake of purposeless serving.

Upon woman’s opportunities for intensive cultivation of special talents, Nature has set a limitation by specializing her for childbearing. This limitation is probably not nearly so great as education and unhealthful living make it appear, but it does exist. Considered alone, it seems an unqualified disadvantage. Considered in connection with the fact that it brings the joys of motherhood and of usefulness to society, it appears to be a means for rounding out and broadening her life.

To this limitation set by Nature to woman’s chances for individualizing herself, society has added another check by specializing her for housekeeping. Does this tend to unbalance and narrow her life, or to balance and broaden it? The answer to this question depends, first, upon whether she has talents which do not find expression in housekeeping; second, upon whether her specialization for housekeeping interferes with their use; and third, if it does interfere, upon whether the interference brings with it a compensating advantage.

First, have women talents which do not find expression in housekeeping? That is easily answered. Women are successfully practicing medicine, nursing, teaching, and working at the various crafts. Society is showing its appreciation of their work by offering them employment in these various occupations.

Second, does housekeeping impose a limitation upon the use of these special talents, independent of the limitation imposed by childbearing? In answering this it is convenient to suppose a woman’s life to be divided into three equal periods. If she be granted threescore and ten years of life, each period would be about twenty-three years long. The first period in all women is, or should be, given chiefly to education and preparation for life. The second, in the case of women who marry and have children, is given chiefly to maternal cares. The third is comparatively free.

During the first period there is no bent which can be given to education for the sake of preparing a woman for motherhood that does not prepare her for life itself. Study of food, hygiene, psychology, all are useful in any form of life. Not so, however, with the bent that is given to woman’s education because of her specialization for housekeeping. In manual training, for example, except in the most progressive of schools, her work is confined to cooking and sewing. This prevents her from finding out whether she has talents for work in wood and metal or for engineering, thus defeating one of the first purposes of education, the exploration and discovery of talents. This means a waste of time in early life and frequently a failure to find a life work suited to her natural endowment. If she does not marry, it offers an unnecessary handicap to her in business or professional life. If she does marry, it brings her to the period when childbearing imposes its necessary limitation, not so well prepared as she might be for carrying on her special work in hours of leisure. The same thing could be said of the bent given to the more theoretical parts of woman’s education, for the purpose of preparing her for housekeeping.

During the second period, housekeeping adds its check to that imposed by the care of children. Ask a woman why she does not work at her specialty and she is quite as likely to say, “Because I cannot get good help in my kitchen,” as “Because the care of my children interferes.” If it were not for housekeeping, she might give the time now spent in this employment to reading the literature of her chosen subject, and oftentimes to active work in her trade or profession—to office practice, if a doctor; to private classes, if a teacher. If she had chosen a craft, her work would be practically uninterrupted, for it could be carried on at home.

During the third period, housekeeping imposes two limitations, one directly and the other in the form of an inefficiency projected from the second period because of disuse of her talents. It is during this time that the sacrifice of woman’s talents for the sake of housekeeping is most apparent. She is free from the care of young children, and if she were not handicapped by inexperience could enrich her own life and add to her usefulness by systematic work in her own line.

Housekeeping, then, does provide a check upon the development of woman’s individuality through the use of special powers, a check which extends over all her life and is independent of that imposed by childbearing.

Finally, is this check necessary to the well-balanced life? This must be determined for individual cases. In trying to answer the question, we must keep in mind that whenever an activity is necessary to the realization of the ideal of home, it is necessary to the complete life, whether it involves the sacrifice of talents or not; when it is not so necessary and does not provide an outlet for special talents, it is an unjustifiable waste of woman’s life and of society’s resources.

That which is necessary for good home-making can be determined only by holding fast to the highest ideal of home and by having a clear understanding of changing social conditions. The ideal never changes; the best home-making must always be an intelligent, affectionate effort to help others to attain as nearly as possible to completeness of life by securing for them those essentials of good living which they cannot obtain in other ways as well or better; but while the ideal remains always the same, the means by which it must be realized undergo constant change. Once it was necessary for a woman to make candles or to leave her husband and children in darkness. That time passed, for husband and children found a better light than that of homemade candles. And yet the woman continued her candle-making for a long period. She has done this with most of the varied activities of housekeeping, continuing them long after they had become only an obstacle in the way of her own independent development.

The reason for this useless clinging to outgrown activities is to be found in our conception of the purposes of housekeeping. We have thought of its multiple activities as the ends toward which the talents of all women should be bent, no matter how difficult or how wasteful the bending process. A frank recognition of the varied character of women’s talents and of society’s need for the full and free exercise of these talents, and an appreciation also of the value of good home-making, not only to the world at large, but to women themselves as a means of rounding out and balancing their lives, will lead to a different conception. A special trade, craft, profession, business, or form of public work will seem the end toward which the peculiar talent of a given woman should be directed, while housekeeping will appear, not as an end in itself, but as a means, the means which at a given stage of industrial development all women may find it necessary to employ if they would give expression to their love by making homes.

In this spirit of double appreciation we see that when the home-maker continues one of the activities of housekeeping after it has become unnecessary to good home-making, she unbalances her life by over-serving; that when she sacrifices home for the sake of a “career,” she destroys the equilibrium of her life by failing to find expression for the other-regarding desires. In this spirit alone can we view the changes which are going on in society, and separate those which tend to narrow and impoverish woman’s life from those which tend to broaden and enrich it.

Looking in this spirit, we see an advantage in boarding-house life because it reduces the amount of work necessary for cooking and serving food. We see another advantage in the reduction of the amount of superintendence when compared with the amount of work done. Housekeepers today are being nerve-racked by an amount of superintendence out of all proportion to the labor necessary for housekeeping. On the other hand, we see disadvantages in this kind of life because it is incompatible with the retirement that is necessary for mutual helpfulness, for successful child training, and for good fellowship. The adoption of a scientific and up-to-date modification of the “lodgings” system in vogue in England, or some other plan of professional catering for private families, might be the means of preserving the good in boarding-house life without perpetuating the evil.

We see in the increase of prepared foods upon the market a saving of labor but a menace to health. Women’s clubs, made possible partly because of the saving of time through the use of these foods, are largely responsible for the pure food laws that have been passed, and we are looking to them for an educational campaign which will result in further legislation and a better enforcement of present laws.

In the movement toward economic independence for woman, we see advantages and disadvantages. When it leads her to sacrifice home and motherhood and the opportunity to do work in which her soul delights rather than to be economically dependent, it enslaves her and her talents, for economic independence is worthless unless it brings expressional freedom; when it brings her the opportunity to do the work she loves and can do best, it frees her and her powers.

We see in the revival of handicraft tremendous significance to woman, because it opens up to her a great field of industries which offer activities for both hand and brain, and which can be carried on at home without interfering with the care of children. We see why it was necessary for the handicrafts to fall into disuse while we were working out the system of division of labor, which now, upon their revival, makes it possible for women to become more than mere amateurs in them. These and many other interesting movements we see in society, if we have our eyes open, both to the value of woman as a home-maker and to her value as an individual.

More life for woman—not through sacrifice of the joys of motherhood and home-making, but by the addition of the pleasures in satisfactory cultivation of special talents to the privileges of service.

MORE LIFE FOR MAN

THE changes which are enlarging woman’s educational privileges and are giving to her an opportunity to prepare herself for work not directly connected with the home, and which by simplifying housekeeping methods are making it possible for her to carry on such work in connection with home-making, may be said to be bringing more life to man, providing we understand the word life in its broad and not in its narrow sense, and providing we mean by man no particular individual nor class of individuals, but composite man.

The individual man may be inclined to dispute this statement. If so, it is probably because of one of two facts. Either he does not see life whole, and thinks only of what he has lost by woman’s progress and not of what he has gained, or he forgets that he is only a small part of composite man, and, as such, may fall below the average with respect to his joy in living.

If he likes homemade bread and is compelled to eat baker’s bread because his wife likes to study Dante better than to cook, he may think that he is not so well off as he would have been if he had lived a half century ago, when Dante classes for women and baker’s bread were practically unknown. But if he considers the advantages of eating his supper under the eaves, as it were, of the Dante class, and of having his baker’s bread flavored with drippings of information concerning the great poet and his times, he may conclude that baker’s bread with Dante sauce is more to him than homemade bread without it.

Or it may be that his doubt of the statement is due to the fact that his quota of life is below the average. Perhaps his wife goes off to her class and does not bring back to him the information and inspiration which she has received. If so, the trouble is not with the times, but with human nature. Selfishness always has existed and always will exist. If a man has a selfish wife, the only thing he can do to assure himself that men are really better off than they used to be is to look abroad and to see if, for every one like himself, there are not two others who are profiting by woman’s broadened life and who bring up the average of life for modern man above that of his middle-of-the-nineteenth-century brother.

To live, what is it? To be healthy, to enjoy the pleasures of the senses, to taste good tastes, to hear sweet sounds, to see beautiful sights, to learn, to do (if we object to the word “work” because it is sometimes applied to drudgery), and to love. The last is most important of all. It modifies all the rest, and they at times must be sacrificed to it. It is interpreted by all the rest, for only by knowing what we consider real life for ourselves can we know what our love should seek for others.

Taking the desire to love first, woman’s expanding life is making possible for man the expression of an ever better and higher form of affection. To see how this comes about, we must read the present in the light of the past.

There was a time when man’s work as well as woman’s was almost all directly connected with the home. He raised wheat, kept cows, pigs, and chickens, hewed timber, built his own house and barn, and gathered his own fuel, while she spun, dyed, wove, sewed, cooked, and cared for the house. Neither was then a specialist. Then came division of labor, which, however, affected man’s work more than woman’s. This made it possible for him to become a farmer, a carpenter, or a coal merchant, and to provide for the needs of his home by the fruits of his specialized labor instead of by direct labor, as he had done in earlier times. To woman there has never come any such privilege. Although her duties are much lightened, she must still be a housekeeper if she would be a home-maker.

One explanation that has been given for the differences in the courses that man’s and woman’s activities have taken is that woman is less progressive than man and more opposed to change. Another is that her work is so closely connected with personal needs and has associated with it so much of sentiment that it cannot be delegated to outsiders. Whatever the cause may be, the average married man’s work today has certain distinct advantages over the average married woman’s. It is more varied and more likely to call special talents into play, and it takes him out among people and gives him a broad outlook.

If we view the situation in a bargaining spirit, it may seem fair that when man earns the money woman should care for the house. If, however, we consider the amount of life that each is securing from work, the inequalities of the situation become apparent. There is always, to be sure, an occasional man who, recognizing the disabilities under which his wife labors, seeks to equalize matters by accepting a share in home responsibilities and work. The discovery of the necessity for such action, to which neither tradition nor custom points, is a mark of intelligence. The acceptance of the responsibility after it is recognized is the result of an unselfishness of the highest form, to which society does not direct him as it does to activities for the purpose of supporting the family, nor instinct prompt him as it does woman to her self-sacrifices in caring for the family. His recognition of the unequal distribution of life and his efforts at equalization are triumphs of wisdom and love over nature, tradition, and custom.

Unselfish man has in the past been woefully handicapped. Fifty years ago he could not have said to his wife, as he can now, “Do no cooking today, but buy some baked beans or boiled ham for supper and you go to the art exhibition.” Fifty years ago there was little object in trying to relieve his wife of her household cares, for then there was little else upon which she could profitably spend her time. Now, when he wishes to be unselfish, his opportunities for accomplishing something worth while thereby are great. Of course he is always encountering his wife’s desire to be unselfish also, and to stay at home and cook the food he likes and otherwise to provide for his comfort, but the two must settle that between themselves, with due regard on the part of each for preserving the proper balance in the life of the other. In this struggle the greater possibilities in the way of development and increase of life lie with man. To woman it is given to accept a self-sacrifice which nature has mapped out for her by specializing her for childbearing and which society has mapped out for her by specializing her for housekeeping. To man it is given to map out for himself a new path into unselfishness and to secure the expansion of powers that comes from pioneering.

Nor is this higher affection merely its own reward. To the increase of life brought by love is added increase in all other directions, presupposing always ideas and ideals in woman as well as in man. With leisure created by man’s unselfishness, woman can study and secure mental development which makes her a wiser conserver of man’s health, a better comrade in his leisure, and a more intelligent helper in his labors. To use the phraseology of our definition of life, she can better assist him to secure health, to enjoy the pleasures of the senses, to learn, and to do.

He wishes health. There was a time when his work demanded life-giving, muscular exercise in the fresh air, when his house was so loosely built that it was inevitably well ventilated, when he lived so far from his neighbors that there was no danger of catching their diseases either through contamination of water supply or otherwise, when his food passed directly from garden to table, fresh and unadulterated. Then health came almost unbidden. His wife, though she could help him in many other ways, could do little for his health except to cook his food properly.

Later, things changed. He moved into the town and his neighbor’s sewage percolated into his well. His house was tightly built and admitted little air through the cracks. His work became sedentary and kept him indoors most of the time. His food was brought to him from the four corners of the earth, passing through many hands on the way, and was liable to deterioration and adulteration.

For a time he failed to see that with changed conditions his health problem had changed. If, as a result, he did not die of consumption or typhoid fever, he became anæmic and dyspeptic, his chest sank, his circulation became impaired, and his liver sluggish. Then he awoke to the fact that if he would have good air he must adopt a system of ventilation for his closed buildings; that if he would have good lung capacity, quick circulation, and an active liver, he must take regular physical exercise; that if he would have safe water, he must stir up the municipal authorities to do their duty or must himself adopt means to sterilize his drinking supply; that if he would have wholesome food, there was something necessary besides good cooking. Dairies and markets must be inspected and laws against adulteration must be made and enforced.

Scientists came to his rescue and put at his disposal an abundance of literature on hygiene, sanitation, and physical culture, but he had little time in which to read it. So it has come about that with his altered health problem there has been opened to woman the opportunity to do something more for man’s health than to cook his food. If she is intelligent and has leisure, she can study sanitation and hygiene and make practical application of their principles in her home. She can take lessons in physical culture, pass them on to her husband and exercise with him a few minutes every day, thus helping him to overcome the effects of his sedentary occupation. She can, through her clubs, stir up the town authorities to provide good water, to clean the streets and prevent disease-laden dust from blowing about, to care properly for garbage and sewage, and to inspect places where food is kept for sale. In many ways she can help in the struggle against disease which man made necessary when he became a town dweller.

Man wishes to enjoy the pleasures of the senses, among which not the least in importance is the sense of taste. This sense God gave for man’s enjoyment, and then provided for its satisfaction many delicious natural flavors. It is not, however, the man in whose house there is most cooking done who gets the greatest pleasure from taste, and it is frequently just he who gets the least enjoyment from the other senses. If a man insists upon taking his wife to see the woods when the violets are in blossom, instead of letting her stay at home to make shortcake for his supper, he loses his shortcake, but plain strawberries and cream and bread and butter often taste better after a brisk walk than shortcake does without the walk, and in this case the man gets not only the taste of the food, but also the smell of the woods, the sight of the flowers, and the sound of the birds. Nor is it the man in whose house there is most cleaning done who gets most pleasure from the sense of sight. If a man insists on or acquiesces in the reduction of the number of carpets, curtains, and draperies, because they make too much care for his wife, he loses the beauty of these furnishings, but the absence of curtains may make it possible for him to feast his eyes on the waving trees and the ever changing sky, while the reduction of care may make it possible for his wife to go with him to art gallery or concert, or to make such a study of art and music as to increase his own enjoyment and appreciation of them.

He wishes to learn. Most men do, even after their college days are over. He wishes to have a background of information in order that he may understand current events better, to know of the world and its progress, and of the relation of his special occupation to the world’s work. But alas! He has little time for general reading. Often he has not even time to go to the library. An intelligent and educated wife can often, providing she has leisure, do for him much which he would do in his own spare moments if he had them.

He wishes to do. Who is there who does not occasionally say, “If I had money, if I had time, I would do so and so?” This suggests the kind of doing that is pleasurable, that is better than leisure, and which an assured income cannot stop. It often happens that a man’s work borders on this kind of activity. He is a teacher and loves his profession, but in order to do his work satisfactorily he ought to have time for independent study and research. If there were fewer papers to correct, a little less routine, he might have time for original work which would leaven all the rest. Or perhaps he is a draftsman working all day at monotonous tasks, but amid surroundings that inspire him to do some work on his own account, and to grow in his profession. The wide-awake, educated woman has it in her power frequently to become conversant with her husband’s work, to lessen his drudgery, and, having saved him a little time for original work, to make it go further than it otherwise would because of her intelligent coöperation and assistance.

If living consists in being healthy, in enjoying the pleasures of the senses, in learning, in doing, and in loving, modern man stands a better chance of living than his predecessor did. The reasons are many, and not the least of them is the fact that his wife lives more.

Nor is the end in sight. If women’s opportunities to prepare themselves for and to enter upon careers unconnected with the home multiply in the future as they have in the past, men may be called upon to adjust themselves to much more radical changes. But the indications are that these changes will offer to them further opportunities for the expression of disinterested affection and larger lives through the expansion of the lives of those they love.

MORE LIFE FOR THE HOUSEHOLD EMPLOYEE

“I WILL accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms.” In these words of Walt Whitman’s can all of us who cherish the democratic ideal of equality of privilege and opportunity express our feelings with regard to domestic service, for when we are able to rise above the trials and tribulations that the institution brings to ourselves and to look upon it from an impersonal point of view, we find that the chief source of our dissatisfaction with it is in the fact that it gives benefits to one class by taking their counterpart from another.

The popular toleration of domestic service is due to a misapplication of the theory that the family is the unit of society. This theory has, in the past, played an important part in social evolution by calling attention to and emphasizing the family relation. It has, however, led to many undemocratic practices. This has been not so much because of anything wrong with the theory, as because it has not been supported by a clear conception of the value of the individual life. Thus unsupported, it has, by allowing itself to become entangled with the theory that man is the logical representative of the family in society, taken from woman the incentive to, and the opportunity for, independent action, and has also been responsible for the grossest infringements of her property rights. Thus unsupported, too, it has, by emphasizing the family as an institution, rather than the right of the individual to the family relation, led to the condoning of the maintenance of certain families at the expense of the freedom of individuals to enter into the family relation. Thus in slave times the family connections of the blacks were ruthlessly shattered in order to provide the service that was thought necessary to preserve the family life of the whites.

A better working theory, and one that is less likely to lead to undemocratic practices, is the one that sees in the individual the unit, and in the family relation one of the most important means for promoting his happiness and social usefulness. Such a view of the value of the individual and of the importance of the family relation leads logically to the conception of the obligation of the individual who accepts the privileges of the family relation so to adjust his life to the lives of the other members of his family group as to preserve their individual freedom, and to coöperate with them in the effort so to adjust the group to the social order as not to interfere with the freedom of other individuals to enter into and to maintain the family relation.

In the light of this view of society, domestic service looms up most undemocratic. It is so ordered as to bring a combination of benefits to a privileged class. This combination consists of the opportunity to live in retirement with those to whom they are bound by kinship or affection or by both, and thus to transform the places where they eat and sleep into homes, and the privilege of getting rid of the multiple activities which the maintenance of separate homes involves, the cooking, cleaning, etc., and of being able to engage in activities of their choice, and to secure leisure for social intercourse.

This combination of privileges is at present secured at the expense of a corresponding combination of privileges in the serving class. The result is three distinct disabilities for this class. The first, which arises from the fact that the domestic servant has not free choice of residence, and must accept the external form of home where her employer has his real home, may be called ethical, because its most serious result is that it takes from her the opportunity for moral development that comes from home-making. The second is industrial, and arises from the fact that she must offer in exchange for wages no particular services, but her entire time, to be disposed of as her employer sees fit. The third, which arises from her intimate personal relation to her employer, is social, and results in the determination of her position in society, not by her worth nor by her qualifications for social intercourse, but by her position as a member of the serving class.

These three disabilities on the part of the servants react on the employers, and bring them three forms of inconvenience. The first is a feeling of responsibility for the sex relations of the employee, a responsibility that is not felt with reference to those with whom the relation is a purely business one, such as the butcher, the grocer, the seamstress.

The second is the difficulty of making the servants “know and keep their places.” This leads at times to such serious dilemmas as the one in which the man found himself who appealed to Marion Harland, through her queries column in one of the daily papers, to know whether he ought to recognize his family servant on the street, and if so, whether he ought to lift his hat or merely to nod his head. One can imagine this poor man staying closely within his office on Thursday afternoons, if Marion Harland was not prompt with her reply, for fear that if he ventured forth upon the street he might on turning a corner come suddenly upon his household helper, and, being still unsupplied with a code of etiquette, not know how to conduct himself.

The third inconvenience to the employer is the lack in the servant of personal responsibility for good work, the inevitable result of time service.

To remove these three disabilities from the employee and the three inconveniences from the employer, certain changes in household administration must be made. First, the relation of mistress and servant must be changed to the more democratic one of employer and employee. Second, the work of the household must be so arranged as to allow a person to perform one service, such as cleaning, for many families, instead of many services for one family. Third, the work done in the home must be reduced, and then compressed within the limits of a reasonable working day, in order that it may not interfere with the home life of the employee.

For these modifications in household administration the changes that are going on outside of the home are paving the way. Public education is removing the stigma from domestic service by refusing to recognize class distinctions in the distribution of its benefits. Commerce, industry, science, and art are coöperating to reduce the amount of work necessarily done in the home.

Central plants for the distribution of hot water for heating, cleaning, and bathing purposes are now in use in many places. One city, Colorado Springs, is said to be considering the construction of a central pneumatic cleaning plant. Central refrigerating plants are practicable.

Commercial changes are continually making it possible to buy commodities which it was formerly necessary to prepare at home. This has been referred to so often that it need only be mentioned here, although it is one of the most important of the social changes that are affecting the conditions of home life. Improved methods of transportation are bringing us fresh fruit all the year around, and thus reducing the work of preserving and of making desserts. Industrial changes are making it possible to have performed outside of the home services like laundry work, mending, and carpet cleaning, which it used to be necessary to include in household labor.

Advances in medical science are putting nursing on the plane of the professions, and making the hospital seem a better place than the private house for the care of the sick. Hygienic considerations make it seem wise that maternity cases also be cared for in hospitals.

Advances in sanitary science are making it not only desirable, but possible, to transfer one whole class of duties from the housekeeper and her assistants to the individual members of the family. These are connected with the care of the bedroom and its furnishings. Now that it seems best that each person should have a separate sleeping room, and now that knowledge of hygiene is available for all, there is no reason why every able-bodied adult should not assume full charge of his own room, having it cleaned and changing bedclothes and towels as often as he thinks necessary considering the state of his health, the amount of sun that his room receives, and the amount of dust to which it is exposed.

Kindergartens are continually taking children at a younger age. Clubrooms are being made available for private entertainments.

Art is lightening household labor by teaching a better way in house decoration and furnishing. By teaching form, color, and design it is showing that a good color on the wall, which, being vertical, sheds the dust by reason of the force of gravity, may give so much esthetic satisfaction as to take away the necessity for many of our dust-entrapping decorations; that one piece of pottery of good color and form may please the eye more than a whole mantel shelf full of nondescript articles of bric-a-brac; that plain furniture of good form may be more beautiful than that which is covered with carving and brass filigree. Plain, substantial furniture and simplicity in decoration are not only lessening work, but are making it more practicable to turn houses over to professional cleaners.

Another change should be mentioned which, though at first thought it seems to have little connection with household management, may prove to be of much significance. This change has come about through the fact that the time of preparation necessary for the professions is continually lengthening. The result of this is that there is in college towns (and with the spread of university extension and of correspondence study there is coming to be in other towns) a class of young people who are still studying, but who must and should support themselves. The young men of this class now take care of furnaces, beat rugs, and perform other such services. The young women take care of children. If it were not for the popular feeling with respect to housework, they might be employed in many other ways. There is a whole class of tasks, like the cleaning of silver, the making of beds, and the serving of meals, which require less skill and experience than cooking and less strength than the heavy cleaning. These, as Lucy Maynard Salmon says in “Domestic Service,” are frequently not well performed, yet, on the other hand, they involve no principles which an intelligent person cannot master in a very short time. After the principles have been learned the tasks become only light routine work, suitable for relaxation after brain work. These tasks might be given to the students referred to above with profit both to themselves and to housekeepers.

The changes of which mention has been made, particularly the commercial and industrial ones, have been due chiefly to man’s enterprise. This is because man’s life has given him a broad and general view of society and its needs which woman’s life has not given to her, and because his position as breadwinner has given him an incentive to anticipate human demands and to meet them with business ventures, an incentive which woman’s position as housekeeper has not given to her. Woman is now, however, fast getting the far view, and has the advantage of having also the intimate view of human needs which she has secured through her care of the family. So it is happening that while man is going on ahead and initiating great changes, woman is following close behind and directing the changes into channels which lead to the satisfaction of real human needs. Thus men, by establishing great bakeries, showed the economic advantage of having bread made in large quantities. Women, like Mrs. Brainard, of Chicago, who started the Home Delicacies Company, have followed after and shown that man’s methods could be employed in making bread that meets the demands of taste and health. Men, by establishing public laundries, showed the economic advantage of having the laundry work removed from the home. It was left for women, like the Misses White, of Brookline, Massachusetts, who started the Sunshine Laundry, to show that public laundries could make clothes really clean, and at the same time preserve them for the future use of their owners (a point which all who patronize laundries will appreciate).

This control of changes woman must continue to exercise. She must also accept the task of adjusting household work to the social changes that have already taken place. For this double work she is well prepared. As an individual she can make the adjustments in her own home. As a club member she can, in coöperation with other women, look after the social work.

She can, through her clubs, establish residence clubs where household employees can live in comparative freedom, public kitchens from which food can be sent to be served in private houses, and in which the workers will be on the same footing as the workers in any other trade, bureaus from which special helpers can be sent to work by the day or hour, and public nurseries which shall combine the bacteriological cleanliness of hospitals with the educational advantages of kindergartens. Women’s clubs are particularly well prepared to do these things, first because failure would mean no serious loss to any individual, and second, because the members are intelligent enough to make their failures as well as their successes of benefit to those who come after them, an important consideration in all progressive work.

Besides this public work, woman can arrange the work in her own home so as to give her helper a limited day’s work—of ten hours, say—and thus make her free to choose her own place of residence. This she may do by preparing her own breakfast and employing her helper from ten in the morning until eight at night, or by going out for her evening meal and employing the helper from six in the morning until four in the afternoon, or in some one of the numberless ways which special conditions will suggest. Or she can make such adjustments as shall make it possible for her to employ special helpers. In this her greatest difficulty will probably arise from the fact that one helper cannot perform the same service in several places at the same time, and the housekeeper’s time schedule will have to be changed. It will require an effort for her to realize in her conduct that difference between disorder and dirt which she recognizes with her intellect, and to act upon the belief that delay in dishwashing involves disorder, but not necessarily uncleanliness, and that beds left open in the sun for many hours are really cleaner than those which are closed up early in the morning.

With cooking done in public kitchens, with washing done in public laundries, with cleaning done by specialists, with the individual members of the family taking charge of their own rooms, with hospitals to care for the sick, and with public nurseries and kindergartens to help with the care of babies and young children, there would still be left certain connecting links of work even in families employing regular helpers for a limited number of hours each day. It is these odds and ends that the various members of the family will have to accept as their tasks and perform in payment for the privilege of preserving family life without shattering democratic ideals.

With these changes the household employee will emerge from the restricted existence of “domestic service” to the broader life of ethical, industrial, and social freedom.

MORE PHYSICAL VIGOR FOR ALL

“ ...the words health, whole, holy, are from the same stock.” “The doctor does not give health, but the winds of heaven; ...”—Edward Carpenter.

THERE are conditions in life which favor physical vigor. There are also conditions which stimulate mental activity, and tend to provide for it the necessary time and energy. Unfortunately these two sets of conditions, far from being identical, are often directly at war with each other.

Suppose, as an example of the former conditions, a man living apart from his fellows and obliged to secure his own food. The trees hang their fruit at such a height that in order to reach it he must exert himself moderately, not enough to exhaust himself, but enough to insure a good digestion. In pursuit of game he must keep out of doors and be much afoot. Unpolluted mountain streams invite him to drink and to bathe. To keep within easy reach of his food supply summer and winter, he must frequently change his abode. For this reason he depends upon clothing rather than upon closely built walls for shelter, and moves away from the débris which collects around him before it has endangered his bodily well-being. Thus the conditions of his life combine to give him the exercise and fresh air and sunlight and good food and good water and cleanliness that are necessary for his physical vigor.

Now, suppose a man living under the other conditions—those that stimulate mental activity. A library tempts him to read, a university to study. The sight of great works of art or of other material products of human genius awakens any talents he may have. Association with thinking men and women induces currents of thought within him. Finally, contact with people who are willing and glad to climb his tree for him and pursue his game makes it possible for him to find time for brain work.

But the opportunity to read and study instead of the necessity for climbing trees and chasing game means the loss of the condition that made for muscular activity, for good circulation, and good digestion. The decline in muscular activity makes his body produce heat less rapidly, and creates a demand for closely built walls and roof in addition to clothing. This means a loss of the condition that insured a plentiful supply of sunlight and fresh air. The permanent shelter makes it impossible for him to move away from the débris of his food and the excretions of his body, and thus destroys the condition that in itself favored and practically compelled cleanliness.

All this would make no difference, providing physical vigor were not necessary to mental activity. This, however, is a theory with which in the past we toyed to our sorrow. We conceived of a physical life and of an intellectual life, of a healthy body as necessary for the physical but not for the intellectual, and of development as coming through the putting off of the physical and the putting on of the intellectual. But we found that we were mistaken. The man from whom we were expecting beautiful poetry breathed bad air, weakened his lungs, fell a victim to tuberculosis, and we lost him and his song. The man to whom we were looking to plan for us beautiful buildings, to compensate in part for the natural beauties we had lost, weakened his body by insufficient exercise, then drank polluted water, died of typhoid fever, and we lost him and the beauties he might have created.

Then we began to think, and we realized that there is only one life; that that life is a bundle of desires, of loves, of sympathies, and of hopes; that development is not a putting off, but an expansion, coming when the desires increase, when the loves widen, when the sympathies broaden, and when the hopes get a farther view into the future; that for the outward expression of this inner and invisible life the body is the only tool, and that for the expression of the whole life, whether it be a life of few desires or many, a “whole” or healthy body is necessary. Acting upon this conviction, we began to establish kindergartens, and schools for manual training, for handicraft, and engineering, in order to train the hand to execute in material form what the mind conceived as an abstraction. We added departments of physical culture to the departments of Latin and Greek in our colleges, in order to train the “whole” man and the “whole” woman.

To fit a body to be the tool for the satisfaction of a few desires, and those mainly the desires for food and drink and shelter, is not a difficult task. It is only when we try to make it satisfy the many desires, including that for intellectual activity, that trouble begins. Then the poor body, put upon the stretch, is likely to develop a weak spot. To provide a suitable shelter for a body of few desires would puzzle no one. To build a fit habitation for a body of many desires is a problem that calls for all our experience and ingenuity.

At this point comes along the man who pooh-poohs at all things hygienic, and tells us that if we will only cease to think of our bodies we shall be all right; and this man has much on his side of the argument. He forgets, however, that what we have broken we must also mend, if we would have a whole. In the future there may be born a “whole” child under such favorable conditions that he will develop harmoniously without thought on his part or upon that of others. At present, however, amid the conditions that we brought upon ourselves by conceiving of an intellectual life apart from the physical, harmonious expansion is impossible without a conscious effort to regain bodily “wholeness.”

The harmful effects of dwelling upon “unwholeness” are not to be overlooked. To avoid them we must keep our attention upon the good as far as possible. There have been in the past, if we can believe the testimony of ancient statuary, fine, well-developed, full-chested, and straight-limbed bodies. These we must study, and think of our own underdeveloped bodies only long enough to learn how we can restore them to the proportions of the body beautiful. There are conditions that favor the development of the body beautiful. These we must analyze, thinking of bad conditions only long enough to learn how to make them good. Our model for our drinking water must be the water of an unpolluted mountain stream; for our air, the air of the open country; for our exercise, the varied movements of “the natural man” in his efforts to secure food; for our food, that which the man eats whose surroundings favor physical vigor.

To be sure, we cannot hope to regain the body beautiful, nor to have houses that shall favor its development, until we have secured the city beautiful, which shall unite fresh air and good water and abundance of sunlight and the opportunity for enjoyable exercise and the chance to get good food with the stimulus to and the time for intellectual activity. There are some things, however, that we can do and some things that we can leave undone which will help to restore good conditions.

Why, in the matter of fresh air, do we act upon the principle, Windows closed except when it is absolutely necessary to open them? Why do we not adopt the motto, Windows open except when it is absolutely necessary to close them? Why do we not have soft woolen jackets, such as the golfers use, to put on as the first expedient to avoid cold, leaving the closing of the windows till the last? Why, in the winter time, do we not put strips of wood in the lower parts of our windows, so as to leave an open space between the sashes, where the air can enter without striking us directly? Why, in the summer weather, do we ever close our windows? Is it because of the dust? If the dust is unreasonably great, why do we not stir up the town authorities to keep the streets in such condition that we can have fresh air? If it is not unreasonably great, but we have draperies that we value more than fresh air, perhaps we need to make a little reëvaluation. Why, in the beautiful autumn and spring days, when it is just too cool to have the windows open without a fire, do we not, instead of closing our houses, have a little fire and open the windows? Is it because that would be too expensive? Then could we not have one less course at dinner or one less dress a year and keep the air? Why do we wait until we have time for a promenade before we “air” the baby? Why do we not put the baby in its carriage on a sunny porch? Is it because we think that the baby, in some mysterious way, derives benefit from the exercise of our legs? Why do we always eat and sleep within doors? Why, when we plan new houses, do we not arrange them so that the kitchen and serving pantry will communicate as easily with a porch as with the indoor dining room? Why do we not have roof gardens, where we can sleep under the beautiful stars in warm weather? A shower bath open at the top, so that we could take water and air and sun baths all at the same time, would add to the attractiveness of the roof, and it might also be possible to have arrangements there for our European breakfast or our afternoon tea. Why do we ever shut the sun out of unoccupied rooms? Why do we not let it blaze in its life-giving, sterilizing rays? Draperies again? Carpets? Curtains? Well, there is one consolation. The old-fashioned, fast dyes are being revived, and we may in time have furnishings that will stand the sun.

In the matter of muscular exercise, why do we have our working clothes (humorously so called) made so that they weigh down our legs and bind down our arms; while our play clothes, our golf, tennis, and bathing suits, are made so as to permit free muscular activity? Why do not women, when they do their housework, which would give play to every muscle if it had a chance, wear suits akin to gymnasium suits, less abbreviated in the skirt, perhaps, but not long enough to be stepped upon when the body is bent over? Why do we put skirts on the baby that is just learning to draw himself to his feet, when we know that he cannot avoid stepping upon them and wrenching his head forward? Why, in short, do we put skirts on any living creature until that living creature demands them? If we did not put skirts on our girls until they discovered that they were differently dressed from the rest of their sex, what a long period of free, healthful, muscular activity they would have! One of the prettiest sights I ever saw was the little girls of a New England town dressed for coasting in woolen tights and sweaters and tasseled caps.

On this subject of clothes the hygienist and the teacher of physical culture have done their best to reform us. The former has shown us grewsome cross-sections of people who have had their ribs displaced by tight lacing. The latter has stood up before us at exhibitions and assumed graceful poses. But somehow neither has related the subject sufficiently to life itself. It is only when we think of life as made up of desires that find expression only through the body, when we think that by a motion, by a posture, we can express love, hatred, sympathy, cordiality, that we begin to cherish the smallest muscle and to think of clothes, not with reference to whether they are tight or loose, but with reference to whether they help or hinder the body in its effort to express the inner life.

As to baths, why do we locate our bathrooms on the north side of the house, and then make junk shops of them by filling them with blacking boxes and medicine bottles and hot water bags and any other thing that is not wanted elsewhere? Given a nice, clean, white tub in an airy room, with the morning sun falling directly upon it, and who can resist a bath?

Last of all comes food, and here is where the man who fears the physical effect of self-consciousness sees most danger. “Eat what you wish and don’t think about it, and you will be all right.” Alas, that is what the world has been doing, and instead of being all right, it has fallen a prey to numberless diseases that can be traced either directly or indirectly to dietetic errors. In food, as in other matters, we have a standard to guide us. That is the amount and kind of food that a person eats who lives under conditions that favor physical vigor. Perhaps the best we can do for ourselves is to think of the food that we ate with a relish when we were camping. Then when we find that this plain, simple diet, without “made dishes” and pastry, is no longer palatable, we will probably decide that we need a long walk, and will take it if we can possibly find the time.

Fresh air, sunlight, cleanliness, exercise, good food, good water—these, the conditions of physical vigor, come to that part of the world that is living under the intellectual stimulus only as the result of a conscious effort; but to what better use can we put our intellects after they are aroused than to the endeavor to regain bodily “wholeness”?

MORE JOY IN MERE LIVING

THE machinery of life and life itself are continually getting mixed up, both in our theories and also in our practices, and it is frequently difficult to say of a given act whether it is a part of life itself or whether it is just a means of preparation for life. It was this fact, I suppose, that Henry Drummond had in mind when he said that, even at the worst, the struggle for life was really life itself. He applied this, to be sure, to the fierce struggles for food and other necessaries of life in which, during early stages of development, human beings engaged for the purpose of self-preservation. It is just as applicable, however, to our present struggle for life, for the care and the foresight that we must exercise in order to secure the food and the shelter and the fresh air and the sunlight which are necessary simply as preparation for what we consider our life work really involve just the thought and the exercise of reason that make life for us as distinguished from mere existence. Thus the fact that the harder we must struggle for life the greater is that mental activity which is an essential part of life itself is the first source of consolation for the fact that we have to struggle.

But there is another and a greater source of consolation. It was Drummond, I think, who originated the expression, the struggle for the life of others, making it cover all the activities to which we are prompted by love. Of these activities the most important is home-making, and it is the opportunity that home affords for merging the struggle for life into the struggle for the life of others that takes the sting from the work necessary for self-preservation. Thus, in providing a shelter to protect himself from the elements and to keep him in condition for work, man, if he be a home-maker, performs the same service for those he loves; and in providing for herself food that shall fit her to be an efficient working member of society, woman, if she be a home-maker, performs the same service for those who are bound to her by affection. Herein lies the second source of consolation for the fact that the greater part of our time and energy must be given to securing and caring for the machinery of life.

In getting ready to live, and in helping others to get ready to live—in these two ways we spend the greater part of our lives. But there are some activities in life which are simply a part of living. Of these, or of part of them, Browning makes David sing in “Saul”:

Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up to rock,
The strong rending of boughs from the fir tree, the cool, silver shock
Of the plunge in a pool’s living water, the hunt of the bear,
And the sultriness showing the lion is couched in his lair,
And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with gold dust divine,
And the locust-flesh steeped in the pitcher, the full draught of wine,
And the sleep in the dried river-channel where bulrushes tell
That the water was wont to go warbling so softly and well.
How good is man’s life, the mere living! how fit to employ
All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy!

To the pleasures which are here suggested, and which are chiefly those of the senses, should be added, if we are to have anything like a complete list, those pleasures which come from going to the theater, from listening to music, and from looking at works of art, providing, of course, we do not take any of them too seriously; those pleasures which come from social intercourse with friends, and which are not dependent upon “improving conversation,” but which spring from the opportunity to be near and to talk with those we love; and those pleasures which come from meditation on life and its meaning, but which do not involve any effort to straighten out its tangles. “Improving” conversation and efforts to achieve artistic appreciation and to make the world better are parts of life, but they are also parts of its struggle, and therefore must be excluded from “the joys of mere living.”

If these pleasures that are ends and in no sense means are a legitimate part of life, they must be taken into consideration not only in adjusting the machinery of our own lives so as to have time for them, but also in adjusting the machinery of home-making so as to secure them for others. I know a woman who has four of the healthiest and happiest children in the country. She is also the fortunate possessor of horses and a carriage. If the day dawns bright and the woods seem to call for her, she has the horses harnessed, bundles the children into the carriage, puts a basket under the seat, and starts off down the street. On the way she picks up a congenial spirit or two, and stopping at the market fills her basket with bread and fruit and cooked meat or other kinds of food that can be bought ready for eating. Then, with no more ado than this, she is off for a whole day of “the joys of mere living” in the woods. This she is able to do because she has simplified the machinery of her home-making by excluding useless decorations from furnishings and clothing. Nor is it to be understood that she has thereby traded off the pleasures of beautiful home surroundings for the joys of frequent glimpses of nature. Her windows command broad views of lake and lawn, in the presence of which elaborate draperies would seem like impertinences, and her children have bright eyes and clear skins and well-developed figures, which plain clothing sets off better than ruffles and flounces.

In passing, we must not fail to note that this woman has done something more than to simplify housekeeping. She has also simplified the machinery of picnics—a great art. We have not, all of us, horses and carriages, but we can get some kind of conveyance—an electric car, if nothing better—and we can pick up on the way to the picnic food which will taste just as good in the open air as that over which we frequently wear ourselves out before starting.

It is interesting to see how things work themselves out in this world. We used to clean house in the spring. Although spring is violet time, and a season of enormous possibilities in the way of real living, yet this custom for many years worked little hardship, because most people lived reasonably near to nature all the time. Later, however, life became so artificial that we really needed occasional excursions into the country. Then, too, the kindergartens began to teach the children to see and to enjoy nature. Then, just in the nick of time, just as we had encountered the need of and the incentive to trips into the country, the necessity for “spring cleaning” was taken away. We began to have hardwood or painted floors, which made it possible to do housecleaning a little at a time all the year around. Thus there is now no great piece of work left to be done in the spring, when we really ought to be in the woods.

Perhaps the most interesting of the recent movements in the direction of simplifying housework is that in favor of sun-dried underwear, towels, bed linen, etc. This stands for another “working together for good.” When life became complex we began to begrudge the time necessary for ironing, and sometimes, if we thought we could use our time more profitably than in ironing, we used our clothes “rough-dried.” But now we no longer speak of “rough-dried” clothes, because that suggests only their negative advantage in saving work; but we say “sun-dried,” because hygienists have told us that articles that contain in their meshes fresh, sunned air are more healthful than those that contain the impure air of kitchen or laundry. They have told us, also, that because air is a poor conductor of heat, and because clothes that have not been pressed contain more air than those that have, we can get more protection from a given weight of underwear that has been sun-dried than from the same weight of that which has been ironed.

But no one is going to make effort to get time for “the joys of mere living” until he sees a prospect of getting them. For a long time we have recognized the possibility of getting these pleasures in large quantities in the summer time, during our vacations, but we have not recognized half the chances that lie about us all the year. Of all seasons the winter seems most unpromising, and yet I have experienced more joy from simply being alive in the winter than at any other time. On the greater part of the west shore of Lake Michigan there is a bluff. This serves to protect the shore from the west winds which prevail in that part of the world, and it also receives and reflects the morning sun. In cold weather the sand is hard and as easy to walk upon as a cement walk. On winter mornings, even when the thermometer is below zero, one can walk along the shore in perfect comfort in clothing that is light enough to make walking pleasurable. It is possible, also, with perfect comfort, to stop and build a fire, make coffee, and eat a lunch. And the lake and the sky present constant but ever changing beauties, and the sun sparkles on the ice that is heaped up near the shore. It is indeed good to be alive on the west shore of Lake Michigan of a bright winter’s morning, and yet, although I have spent hours walking on the shore on Saturday mornings, I have never seen a person besides those who were with me. Where are the mothers? Why don’t they bring their children down there? Don’t they know the fun of tramping up the shore and building fires and having little camp lunches, and of watching the winter landscape? This is but one instance of joys that are within the reach of all, and yet are undiscovered. Doubtless each one of us knows of some others such as these, and wonders why others do not avail themselves of them. If so, let’s tell each other about them.

But we lose joys in life not only by failing to find them and by complicating the machinery of life, but also by making machinery of those things which are really ends in themselves. There is bathing, for example. We take baths so many times a day or week in order to keep clean and healthy. We might, if we arranged things properly, forget about the necessity for health and cleanliness, and jump into the bath just for the sake of “the cool, silver shock of the plunge.” We perfunctorily “change the air” in our homes so many times each day, but it is possible to get so enamored of living out of doors as to find even the stillness of the air in the house unbearable. When one has reached that point an open window is no longer a means to health, but a part of the joy of living, because it brings the sensation of moving air.

What a difference, too, between a walk and a “constitutional”! I shall never forget a woman whom I saw one summer at a resort in one of the most beautiful parts of the Adirondacks. She used to come forth of a morning after breakfast and, with a set, determined look upon her face, walk so many times around the veranda, and then retire to the parlor for the rest of the day. Poor lady! I suppose she never saw that woodsy path that led up the hill behind the house, nor knew the joys of “leaping from rock up to rock” in order to get to the top of the hill, nor dreamed of the beauties of the moss-covered rock at the top, with the red-berried bush hanging over it. She never knew the pleasures of getting lost in the cranberry bog and having to wade the stream to get out. Poor, poor lady!

As for the joys of social intercourse with those we love, we lose them partly by letting them get mixed up with the machinery of education. Study clubs are all very well in their way and in their place, but there is such a thing as having too many of them. It is possible to get more profit as well as more pleasure from reading a masterpiece of literature for half an hour, and then talking with a friend for an hour and a half, than from listening to a rehash of the masterpiece for an hour and then talking with a lot of people we only half like for another hour. It is possible, also, to lose the pleasures of the expression of friendship by sacrificing them to formalities. If we give dinners and receptions simply for the sake of discharging social obligations, we are bound to throw away time which for the sake of the joy of living ought to be given to those we love.

But it is possible, also, to lose the pleasures of friendship by allowing them to interfere with the machinery of daily life, and to come to a time when we have to sacrifice either social intercourse or business. Perhaps there is no means of entertaining which yields so much satisfaction with so little interference with that regularity in the daily program that is necessary for health and work as the afternoon tea. By this I mean, not the large reception which sometimes goes by the name of “tea,” but the little, informal tea drinking. The food that is served at such a time is not a means of life, but simply an addition to the dietary made for the sake of refreshment and pleasure. It is not, therefore, necessary to serve enough to sustain life from one meal to another. Moreover, it is possible to buy ready prepared all the materials—the biscuits, the wafers, and the candies—and to have them always on hand. If busy people have it understood that they drink tea at a certain hour when at home, and that their friends are always welcome to drink with them, they are likely to get visits with real friends which they could never get in any other way.

But there is another occupation which may be an end in life without at the same time being a means. That is meditation on life and its meaning. To stand off from life and to view its follies, its foibles, and its inconsistencies, its pathos, its humor, to see all sides of it—this is one of the joys of mere living. Perhaps the best time for this is during a walk in town, and it is the chance to see life that can change a constitutional upon city pavements from a means to life to a part of life itself. He who is too busy with the machinery of life to get a chance to look upon life itself, as upon a drama, loses half the joy of living.

To stretch the muscles, to breathe deeply, to feel the blood circulate rapidly, to feel the wind blowing in one’s face, to love and to express love, to stand off and see life from afar—these are joys for which it is worth while to simplify the machinery of life.

MORE BEAUTY FOR ALL

WE all seek beauty. We want the beauty of form and of color which appeals to the eye, but we want also the greater beauties which, because they belong, not to material, but to immaterial things, make their appeal to the conscience and to the intellect, rather than to the senses. We want the beauties of lives in harmony with their physical and their social environment.

Esthetics is the philosophy of beauty. A narrow conception of its province makes it concern itself exclusively with the beauties of material things. A broader and better conception brings into its province all beauties, including those of life and of character and of harmonious human relations.

Home Economics, like Esthetics, finds a large part of its interest in material things. The objects of its concern, the common articles of every-day use, such as chairs, tables, beds, and bureaus, present the beauty problem in many, if not all, of its phases. Being material, they are capable of beauty of outline and color. Being tools for the expression of the tastes of their owner or user, and for the satisfaction of his desires, they are capable of giving to his life the beauty of harmony with its material surroundings. Being made and sold and oftentimes cared for by others than the user, they are capable of giving beauty by bringing his life into accord and into sympathetic relations with other lives. There are, then, places where Home Economics and Esthetics overlap.

As there is a narrow and also a wide view of Esthetics, so there is a narrow and also a wide view of Home Economics. The former makes it deal exclusively with the details of household management; the latter makes its chief concern the problem of the adjustment, through home life, of the individual to society.

Where Home Economics and Esthetics, considered in their restricted senses, meet, we have a field of inquiry legitimate in itself, but fearfully liable to suffer by losing connection with life and with vital interests. This common ground we call the art of House Decoration. It concerns itself with the form, color, and ornamentation of articles of house furnishing and with the problem of so arranging them as to please the eye.

But House Decoration is not the only common ground between Home Economics and Esthetics. Considered broadly, the two subjects present an overlapping territory coextensive almost with life itself. On this field, which no one has ever named, there present themselves for investigation not only the finer articles of household utility—the furniture, the curtains, and the draperies—but also the meaner and commoner articles—the pots, even, and the pans. Each one of these demands to be studied, not only with reference to its power to give esthetic satisfaction through the sight, but also with reference to its fitness to serve the purpose for which it was created, with reference to its usefulness in the particular life with which it is associated, and with reference to the possibility of there being anything in the circumstances of its manufacture or sale or in the conditions of its care—anything of injustice or oppression—which has the power to destroy the beauty of the life of the user by throwing it out of harmony with that of the maker, or of the seller, or of the caretaker.

The desire to make home beautiful we have always with us. At times it gets planted where it can draw nourishment only from that part of the field of Household Decoration which is not only narrow, but, because it is cut off from connection with life, is shallow also. Planted there where there is no deepness of earth it sprouts with fearful rapidity. Many housekeepers seem to have planted it in such spots about the middle of the last century. The result was a prodigious growth—three sets of curtains in every window, sofa pillows upon which no one was ever allowed, and no one ever wished to lay his head, grill work for archways, plaques, and sometimes even embroidered banners and painted tambourines to hang upon the wall. At intervals, fortunately, new fashions arose and turned their blazing rays full on these marvelous growths, and because they were not rooted in utility they withered away and were sent to the junk shop or were given to the poor. The soil was then ready for another crop.

But better times came. Great thinkers and teachers and artists, including the founders of the Arts and Crafts movement, began to concern themselves with the beauty of the common things of life—with the lesser arts. They taught people to consider in the selection of house furnishings, not only color and form and design, but also the welfare of the maker and the possibilities of his development through his work. They suggested that even the seller, the cleaner, and the caretaker should be considered. Those who listened to their teachings and followed their example learned to plant deep the desire for beauty in material surroundings; and because they knew that they had much to learn and many lives to consider, they adopted a form of house furnishing whose chief characteristic was simplicity. It was a tiny growth which was put forth by those who had caught the spirit of the Arts and Crafts movement, but it was sturdy, and in time it grew large enough to attract the attention even of the thoughtless. They, being ever ready for something new, looked upon the material output of the Arts and Crafts Societies, and, failing entirely to appreciate the spirit lying back of the work, seized upon simplicity as an end in itself.

The result was another prodigious growth of house furnishings, this time very simple ones. Thus simplicity, which in the mind of William Morris stood for sincerity and for beauty of life, became a mockery, being manifested only in the outward form and finish of articles that had been made under conditions that had crushed out life and hope and had damaged character. There probably never was a greater travesty on a righteous movement than much of the stuff now sold as “Arts and Crafts” furniture.

And so simplification has become the motto of the unthinking as well as of the thinking, and is at present the butt of the ridicule of the funny man, and threatens to become as much of a stumbling-block to the mind, if not to the feet, as the passion for decoration was a few years ago. For this reason it seems fitting, in a series of articles which deal with the home problem in relation to the problem of more life for all, to inquire whether simplification can be the means of expanding life by increasing beauty.

The greatest stumbling-block, perhaps, which simplification has laid in our way is the temptation to think of it as an end in itself. This it never is and never can be. The flowers, with their bewildering complexity of structure; the birds, with their brilliant plumage; the cathedrals of the Old World, with their elaborate ornamentation, laugh at the very suggestion. I may take down curtains, because by so doing I can sit in the house and watch the clouds float by, or lie in bed and look at the stars, or get time to make excursions to see the sun set over the lake or the moon rise; but that does not necessarily mean that life would not be richer with both the curtains and the natural beauties. I may, feeling that I am not educated in form and in the principles of ornamentation, buy a table with straight and absolutely plain legs, because I know that such a table fulfills the first law of beauty for articles of utility, that of fitness to purpose, and because I prefer not to trust my judgment further; but that does not mean that a table of some other form and more ornate might not serve its purpose as well and be more pleasing to the eye. I may select one kind of pottery in preference to another infinitely more beautiful in form and finish and decoration, because I know that by buying the first I give some one a chance to express himself and to gain happiness and development through work, while by buying the second I am simply putting money into the pocket of some one who is exploiting for gain the talents of others. In each one of these cases the simplification was not an end in itself, but the result of recognizing and accepting a limitation, arising in one case from lack of time and energy, in another from lack of knowledge, in another from unjust social conditions.

Since real, true, purposeful simplification involves self-sacrifice, no person may force it upon another. Each person must decide for himself, in the light of the conditions of his own life, how much of the beauty which appeals to the eye he ought to sacrifice for the greater beauties of harmony and social justice. One may, however, remind another that simplification may bring with it beauties of form, of color, and of design, as well as those of lives in harmony with their social environment.

Simplification in manner of life, in dress, and in house furnishings may bring the greatest of all material beauties—that of the human form. One of the most melancholy sights in the world is that of a sallow, wizened lady, befrizzled and befurbelowed. When that same woman is set down amid the bric-a-brac which has helped to wear her out, the sight becomes pathetic as well as melancholy. One cannot help wondering what the effect would be if such a woman should wear plain gowns and dispose of the bric-a-brac, and spend the time saved in lying out in the fresh air, and the saved money on eggnogs and cream and cocoa and other easily digested, fattening foods. It is probable that if the modern tuberculosis cure in all of its details respecting rest and fresh air and sunlight and food should be taken for six months by all the women who could take it without sacrificing more than the purchase of a spring suit or a pair of curtains, the world’s supply of beauty in the form of bright eyes and pink cheeks and rounded figures would be increased ten and possibly a hundredfold.

The increase of enjoyment of the beauties of nature which comes with reduction of care has been spoken of so often that in spite of its importance it need not be again mentioned here. The reduction of care is not the only way in which simplification brings natural beauty, however. Plain, uncarved woodwork and furniture reveal the natural beauties of the wood. Unpolished surfaces make it possible to have plants here, there, everywhere, on window sills or tables, wherever they can be most often seen and most easily cared for.

Next, simplification may lead to increase in the beauty of house furnishings themselves. If we go through the house and challenge every article to prove that it is worthy of its care—worthy to be taken down and dusted three hundred and sixty-five times every year or fifty-two times, as the case may be—and dispose of all those which do not pass muster, thus getting down to rock bottom in our possessions, there are likely to be two results. The first will be the revelation of the uglinesses of the rock bottom; the second will be time to learn how to beautify it. And beauty in the rock bottom—in floors and walls and in necessary furniture—is very little trouble to care for, and frequently destroys the craving for superficial decorations. By the use of all sorts of ornaments we have blinded ourselves to the possible structural beauty of a room, a beauty due to proportion, and to the proper placing of openings, and of the necessary fixtures. Most of us need time to study good architectural forms, and some of us can get that time only by relieving ourselves of the care of knickknacks.

Sometimes the removal of one article of questionable beauty will bring to light others that may be the source of esthetic enjoyment. A table crowded in among other pieces of furniture and covered with a cloth may be ugly without any one’s being the wiser. If we uncover it and make it stand out in bold relief its ugliness will come to light. Under these circumstances, however, we may discover that its outlines are really beautiful, but are spoiled by machine-turned trimmings. A little judicious use of a saw or a plane, a little attention to the finish, and we may have a thing of real beauty.

Finally, simplification gives us time to study the conditions under which the articles in use in our home are made, sold, cared for, and cleaned; and the willingness to have few things may make it possible to know that those we have were made under conditions that favored the health and happiness of the maker, and that those who care for them are neither overworked nor under-paid. In the light of this knowledge the barest and plainest of houses appears beautiful, because it becomes the expression of harmony between the life within and the life without.

Simplification, then, though not an end to be sought for itself alone, may be the means of elaborating life by increasing the beauty of the human body, by bringing in the beauties of nature, by inspiring us to, and giving us time for, the study of the principles of true art, and by bringing our lives into sympathetic relations with other lives.

MORE PLEASURE FOR THE PRODUCER OF HOUSEHOLD STUFF

MORE pleasure for the producer of household stuff! And who is he or she? He used to be the village cabinet maker at work in a little shop, with a few friends, making furniture for his neighbor’s use. She used to be the housewife working at home, with her daughters, at spindle or at loom, making tablecloths and napkins, bed furnishings, and carpets for use in her own family. Now the cabinet maker, having deserted his little shop, has moved up to town and become an employee in a great manufacturing establishment; and the housewife, having ceased entirely from producing, is trying to content herself with buying and with using. The producer of household stuff today is neither housewife nor village cabinet maker, but a factory “hand.”

The producer of old had pleasures of which the producer of the present knows not. He had the quiet and safety and healthfulness of a small shop. He had common interest with fellow-workers and apprentices in village politics or in church affairs. Best of all, perhaps, there was a personal quality in his work, because it was done for friends or for acquaintances, and an ever present sense of its importance, because it met needs which he had seen and recognized and which his own manner of life, similar to that of the consumer and on the same social plane, prepared him to understand. He had, for example, possibly known for months that his neighbor was saving money with which to hire him to make the chest of drawers upon which he was working, and there was a zest and a delight in his labor because he knew just how much she needed the piece of furniture, just where it was to stand, and just what purpose it was to serve. The favorable conditions of the work, the pleasant surroundings, the personal quality of labor, the feeling of its direct usefulness, were intensified in case of the housewife who worked in her own house with and for those she loved.

Now conditions are different. The factory hand spends his working day in a great, dingy shop, with the maddening din of machinery in his ears. His associates are strangers, with whom he has little or nothing in common besides his work. He labors for an indefinite, far-away consumer whose manner of life is unknown to him. He has with this consumer neither the fellow-feeling which comes from sharing life in the same community, nor its only substitute, the ability which comes from broad education and from travel to project one’s self in imagination across space and to put one’s self in the place of a stranger and to realize his needs.

The industrial changes which have taken from the producer a large part of his pleasure in work have not, of course, been without their compensating advantages. Of these the chief, perhaps, has come to the housewife, and consists in the opportunity to buy, ready made and at low cost, most of the articles which it used to be necessary for her to make at home. This advantage, with its corollary, increased leisure, comes to her, however, in her capacity as consumer and not in that of producer. When we consider the amount of pleasure which it is possible to derive from one’s own useful, well-directed labor, compared with that which comes from buying and using the results of other people’s work, we know that the permanent substitution of the consumer’s advantage for the producer’s joy in labor cannot be a part of progress. If the world is to move forward, the consumer’s leisure, which is the chief advantage of the present system of production, must be made the means of restoring the maker’s pleasure in his work.

Without attempting to analyze all the changes which resulted in the worker’s present hapless condition, it may be said that the loss of his joy in labor was directly due to loss of sympathy between him and the consumer of his wares. This loss of sympathy was in turn due to a separation which was partly physical and partly spiritual. The physical separation took place when the producer went to live in a factory town or in a city district devoted to manufacturing interests, and when the consumer sought refuge in a suburb or in a city district boasting of its freedom from factories. Ignorance on the part of each of the daily life and needs of the other was the inevitable consequence of this form of separation. The separation in spirit took place when the world divided itself sharply into two groups—brain workers, on the one hand, who joined themselves with the leisure classes to form a consuming public; and manual laborers, on the other, who assumed all the handwork of production. With the difference in the character of work and the loss of common interests and aims which followed this division, there came an estrangement more profound than that which mere distance has power to effect.

If the producer is again to have delight in his work, sympathy between him and the consumer must be restored. This will never take place so long as the latter contents himself with good-natured, patronizing expression of interest. The two must again know the fellow-feeling which can come only from sharing a common life, common associations, and common aspirations.

At present, when the workers are huddling themselves together around the factories, and the buyers and users are withdrawing themselves to country homes, while part of the consuming public is actively hostile to the welfare of the producer, while another part is indifferent, and while still another part, though neither hostile nor indifferent, is handicapped by poverty and the pressure of daily needs, and almost compelled to buy commodities in the cheapest market, without reference to the conditions of their production, it seems idle to talk about restoring sympathy. And yet, in spite of the apparent hopelessness of the present situation, there is an occasional promising sign which points to a better state of things in the future.

Encouragement lies not so much in what has already been accomplished as in certain conditions and circumstances which provide that ever happy and hopeful combination, the will and the way. The will is shown in the growing disposition of the home-maker, who of all consumers exercises greatest control over the producer, to assume responsibility not only for the one who labors in her kitchen or sewing room, but also for the one who works for her in the far-off factory. The way has already appeared in the rough in the form of leisure, and it is interesting to note that certain changes which are taking place in society are smoothing out the path and giving the home-maker a fair chance of accomplishing something when she chooses to devote her leisure to the effort to restore sympathetic relations between the makers and the users of household stuff.

The first condition of sympathy is knowledge. The housekeeper used to get acquainted with the one who made the articles in use in her home naturally and in the course of her ordinary daily occupations. Now she can get acquainted only by an effort independent of her regular work. This effort must usually take the form of reading and study. Here, of course, is where the advantage of her new-found leisure appears, but even the desire to learn and the time in which to learn would avail little if it were not for the fact that the means of securing information are continually improving. The student of social conditions has come out of his library and is living among men as well as among books. He is going down where the industrial war is being waged most fiercely, and is gaining at first hand knowledge concerning the toiling masses. The information thus secured he is giving to the public partly through his college class work. There was a time, even after colleges were opened to girls, when knowledge so given would have been unavailable for the housekeeper. Now no one is ever too old to go to school, and no one feels out of place in school. But the woman who cannot take systematic courses in economics and sociology still has a chance to learn. She can get information by residence in settlements, from books and periodicals, and through summer assemblies and university extension lectures. Thus the will which is manifested in a quickened social conscience is finding the way in improved methods of spreading information.

It is not, however, enough for the consumer to know the producer. The latter also must have opportunity to get acquainted with the world for which he labors. If he is to feel the usefulness of his work he must have a good general education and a broad outlook. These no boy or girl has at the age of ten or even fourteen, and few are able to obtain if taken from school at that early age. The years of childhood must, as Mrs. Kelley says, “be held sacred to the work of education and free from the burden of wage-earning.” A second hopeful sign of the times lies in the fact that women are uniting in the effort to extend and to enforce laws against child labor and in favor of compulsory education, and are striving to improve the public school system and to adapt it to the needs of the children of those whom we call “the working classes.”

But if children are to become intelligent and joyful workers they must have good physical and mental and moral inheritance and good home care. They must have healthy and wise mothers. Among the means of producing such mothers we may not include night work in factories for women and girls, nor long hours of day work, nor even short hours at certain harmful and dangerous occupations. The investigations which are being made in the United States at present into the conditions of women’s work are most significant. To encourage such investigations and the legislation for the protection of future mothers, which will inevitably follow, is as much the duty of the home-maker as to provide a comfortable room for her household helper. Her home profits by the work of women in factories quite as much as it does by that of domestic servants.

But second-hand information concerning the toilers can lead to nothing further than measures for the alleviation of their woes. If real fellow-feeling is to be restored, producer and consumer must get acquainted through actual contact. They must share the same life. This immediately suggests, of course, life for the consumer under the pall of factory smoke. But the conditions under which commodities are made ought not to be so hideous as they are. There is no place too beautiful to be the workshop of a human being. Our ideal for the future must be for every man to have a little plot of ground, and to live and to work where he can say:

“I’m glad the sky is painted blue,
And the earth is painted green,
With such a lot of nice, fresh air
All sandwiched in between.”

When the producer finds a place like that, the consumer will be glad to live next door to him.

And is this an idle dream of a Utopia beyond all possibility of realization? Well, there is earth enough surely, and every day the electric cars and telephones are making it possible for us to spread out over the land without getting out of communication with the world. It may be possible for the producer of the future to live next door to the consumer without being very close to him.

Then half, at least, of the machinery which makes the worker an undesirable neighbor is unnecessary, whether we consider his needs or the consumer’s. From the point of view of the latter, this unnecessary machinery is being used in manufacturing abominable trash, or in making articles to take the place of others which were badly made and faded or fell to pieces, or wore out before their time. From the point of view of the worker, much of our modern machinery saves labor which it would be life and health and happiness for him to perform by hand. All the assistance he needs from machinery is a little power to take the place of his muscular energy and to save his strength and vitality for brain work. He wants a machine which shall be his slave as he works out his designs into useful and beautiful articles, not a tyrant which he must “tend” all day long. A small machine is a much better slave than a big one. If the workers should spread themselves out over the country with their small machines, this would not mean the sacrifice of any real good in the present system. Improved methods of transmitting power are making it possible for each community to have a central power plant from which energy may be sent to run the seamstress’s sewing machine, the carpenter’s lathe, the potter’s wheel, and the rug-maker’s loom. Thus the present desire to simplify life and the present dissatisfaction with the flimsiness of the average factory-made article, which create a demand for a smaller and better product, combine with improved means for transportation, for communication, and for transmission of power to make it practicable for small workshops to take the place, to a certain extent, of large factories, and to make it possible for the producer of household stuff to become a desirable neighbor.

The shops that are springing up all over the country in connection with technical schools show the advantages of labor under good conditions. In addition to the students’ workrooms there is usually, in connection with these schools, a shop where men are employed to make furniture and other articles for the institution. The demands of instruction make it possible to equip these shops with apparatus which would otherwise be too costly. Such places offer a man pleasant conditions for work, a stimulus to mental activity, and an opportunity to see the direct results of his labor. I have in mind such a school and shop. There, one day, the girls of the cooking class served orange ice and rolled wafers to the engineer and the carpenter. I felt sure that, good as the ice and wafers were, they tasted better to the carpenter because they were passed on a tray he had made, and to the engineer because he had made the tins on which the wafers were baked. There is a satisfaction in seeing the products of one’s labor in actual use.

Another hopeful sign lies in the fact that illustrated magazines which are published in the interests of the Arts and Crafts movement and of household decoration are spreading knowledge of design and are making it desirable to hire work done by local cabinet makers. In the Northwestern University Settlement, in Chicago, there is good furniture, including a beautiful round table for the reading room, which was made in a small shop after designs furnished by one of the residents.

It is not even enough, however, for the producer and consumer to come into contact. They must have the same interests. These common interests the manual training schools are supplying. Such schools are training the children of the rich to work with their hands. At the same time they are offering an education of more immediate practical value than was the purely cultural education of old, and are for this reason attracting the children of the poor, who used to be put early to work. The young people who are to be the manual laborers of the future are getting their apprenticeship under conditions which give culture and general information. Thus the technical school tends to destroy the class distinction between brain workers and hand workers.

There is, however, a suspicion that some manufacturers, under the cloak of interest in technical education, are advocating the extension of manual training courses for their own selfish purposes, rather than for the general good; that they are seeking to increase the number of skilled workers among whom they may choose, and to make themselves independent of labor organizations. It is fair to the labor organizations to hear both sides in this, as in other matters where there seems to be a conflict of interests between employer and employed. Through the Woman’s Trade Union League, which has branches in most of our large cities, housekeepers may learn the women workers’ side as it is presented by themselves.

There is encouragement also in the revival of the handicrafts. A few people are making articles of household utility because they like the work. These people are living examples of joy in labor. The movement is important, also, because it tends to the establishment of democratic relations. Experience has shown that when a woman whose connections have been entirely with those who shared her ability to buy and to spend becomes seriously interested in some form of handiwork her whole manner of life changes. She is no longer free to participate in purposeless social functions. To her studio teas she is likely to welcome those who are working at her own or at similar crafts without reference to their social position. Thus gradually and naturally and without any sudden severing of relationships she passes from the aristocracy of those who have to the aristocracy of those who do. It may be that in this way real sympathy between classes is to be restored.

In spite of hopeful signs, the great mass of those who produce our household stuff still work under conditions which arrest bodily and mental development, shorten life, and crush out happiness. There is not enough encouragement in the present situation to lull to inactivity any one who is interested in the improvement of the producer’s conditions, but just enough to prevent complete discouragement and to suggest promising fields for future work in the interest of those who make what others use.

MORE CONSCIENCE FOR THE CONSUMER

THE consumer is he who uses wealth. Each of us, therefore, is a consumer. The wealth which we use is of two classes. The first includes natural products; the second, those commodities which have been made from natural products through human agency. To the first class belongs the wild berry which one picks for his own use, and for which he is beholden to no one. To the second belongs the cultivated berry, which is served to one at his own table without labor or forethought on his part. The second berry may be considered to be the first one plus the thought and ingenuity and manual labor that were expended in cultivating, transporting, and serving it. Of the first kind of wealth, the average consumer uses ever less, of the second ever more, and thus his dependence upon his fellows increases.

A person uses wealth for the purpose of satisfying his desires. But other people as well as he have desires, which must be satisfied, if at all, by natural wealth or by natural wealth adapted to human use by human agency. Of unsatisfied desires the world is full. Some, to be sure, are unworthy, but after we have stricken these out, the number is still appalling. We want food, and good food. Some of us go hungry, and some get sick because we are forced to eat bad food. We want safe water, and thousands of us die every year because we cannot get it. We want parks or large open spaces, with good roads and paths and plenty of comfortable seats, with green grass, flowers, trees, playgrounds, gymnasiums, and lunch rooms. We want beautiful factories and public buildings, good schools, and libraries. We want beautiful houses, furniture, clothes. Of these good things some of us have all, more of us have only part, and many of us have none.

When we try to explain the fact that so many legitimate desires are unfulfilled, the first reason that occurs to us is the fact that wealth is not fairly distributed. This no one can gainsay. No one pretends that incomes are proportioned to desert, to need, or even to men’s capacity for using them for the public good. This, however, is a fact over which the average person has little control. The most he can do is to give moral support to the specialist who is trying to think out a fairer means of distribution.

There is, however, another reason for want, the responsibility for which comes nearer home. This is the tremendous waste involved in our present method of making and distributing commodities. As a people we seem to have little idea of measuring our resources, our natural wealth, and the productive power that lies in our hands and brains up against our needs, and of using them wisely and economically for the general good. Although we understand the relation between good food and physical efficiency, we spend time and energy in coloring, adulterating, and otherwise sophisticating wholesome, natural food materials. We make numberless articles of the same general character and of approximately the same merit or demerit, and then we spend enough energy exploiting them to feed all the hungry in the land. We know the relation of clothing to health and to the development of taste, and yet we multiply many fold the amount of labor necessary to clothe ourselves by making textile fabrics which fade, shrink, and wear out prematurely. We need strong, skillful, intelligent workers in every line of activity, and we know that these can be produced only by careful training and education; and yet, in some states, West Virginia, for example, we send little boys as young as twelve into the mines to work all day underground, and we allow girls of the same age to work in ill-ventilated shops, leaving them oftentimes to find their way home after nightfall through the worst districts of our great cities.

But some one says: “I am not responsible. I am the buyer and user, not the maker nor the seller. I determine neither what shall be made nor the conditions under which it shall be made.” To which the answer comes in no uncertain accents from two sources: from the shopkeeper, on the one hand, who says in the words so familiar to us all, “There is no demand for it, so I do not keep it in stock”; and from the social economist, on the other, who says, “The producing man is essentially the servant of the consuming man, and the final direction of industry lies with the consumers.”

If the consumers of wealth, by their demands, determine what shall be made and under what conditions it shall be made and sold, what shall we say of the housewife and her responsibility? She holds a unique position among consumers. She buys not only that which she herself uses, but much of that which the adult members of her family, and all of that which her young children consume. Thus she assumes vicariously their responsibility and holds their consciences. This is one of the great social burdens which a woman takes upon herself when she makes a home.

To understand the problem of the home-maker, in her capacity as consumer and buyer, we must remember that there are “two distinct responsibilities. One is the responsibility for the conditions under which things are made, the other is the responsibility for their being made at all.” The first is for waste of life and productive power through child labor, underpay, and unsanitary places for work. This can be met only by organized methods. The second, the responsibility for the fact that one article is made instead of another which would have satisfied a larger number of real wants, each home-maker must meet individually by careful and conscientious regulation of her own expenditures.

That some women have accepted the first form of responsibility, the existence and growth of the National Consumers’ League, with its various state and local branches, testify. The object of this league is to investigate, as the individual can not, the conditions under which articles are made. Wishing to do thoroughly what it undertakes, it is at present confining its attention to one branch of industry, and that a branch in which the waste of human life is conspicuous—“the manufacture of women’s and children’s stitched white cotton underwear.” This industry lends itself readily to sweatshop methods, with all the attendant danger to the consumer from contagious diseases, to the worker from the lowering of wages and of the standard of living.

The way in which the league works may be briefly described. Upon request of a manufacturer it investigates his shop. If it finds that the state factory law is obeyed, that all goods are made on the premises, that overtime is not worked, that no children under sixteen are employed, and that the surroundings of the workers are clean and healthful, it grants the use of its label. This label can, if the manufacturer so desires, be stamped on all goods that leave his factory.

The investigations of the league naturally lead to activities of other kinds. It is often found that the only objection to granting the use of the label is the fact that children under sixteen are employed. If this is in accordance with the state factory law, the next thing to do is to get the law changed. This is usually the task which the state leagues take upon themselves. The work of these state leagues has recently been summarized by the national league and published in the form of a handbook, which may be obtained from the headquarters in New York City.

After the label has been granted, there must be a market for the goods. The creation of a demand for label goods is one of the duties of the local branches that are springing up in many cities and towns. Besides this, these branches prepare, in some cities, for the convenience of purchasers, “white lists” of shops which reach certain standards with reference to wages and to treatment of their employees. They urge the granting of half holidays during the summer months, and seek to save clerks and delivery men from the horrors of the Christmas trade by inducing people to do their shopping early in the season and to refuse to receive any goods delivered late at night.

The members of the league recognize the fact that their power to protect themselves and to clear their consciences with reference to that which they use lies in their ability to organize. They recognize also that below them is a class of buyers too weak and too ignorant to band together for the protection either of themselves or of those who make and sell the grade of goods which they use. A large part of its work, therefore, is educational, and aims to bring the public up to a point where it will demand protection for all consumers and all workers. To this end it distributes annually large quantities of valuable literature.

The league has been obliged lately to turn much of its attention to the establishment of the constitutionality of many of the laws passed for the protection of women and children. That great victory by which the Oregon law limiting the hours of women’s labor was declared constitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States was won chiefly through its efforts. Encouraged by this decision, it is renewing its efforts in other states.

But in connection with the distribution of household commodities, as well as in connection with their production, there are shameful wastes. In order to advertise their wares, some manufacturers disfigure towns and routes of travel with hideous billboards, and injure or destroy natural beauties. I stood on the platform of the station at Harper’s Ferry, one beautiful September day, and looked across the river to a magnificent bluff crowned with autumn foliage. There on the rocky face of the bluff had been painted an enormous round advertisement, with white letters nine feet high on a background of black. It read, “Use Blank’s Talcum Powder.” Blank’s talcum had up to that time been a household commodity with me. Since then, of course, I have used other brands. But of what use in combating an evil of this sort is my individual protest except as a source of satisfaction to myself, a revenge for the disfigurement of a favorite view? I am much more effective as a member of the American Civic Association, which is making organized warfare against the advertising evil, than I am as a private protester and complainer, even if I take no further part in its work than to contribute my yearly dues. In some such organized movement against the evils connected with distribution housekeepers must join, if they are to meet their full responsibility.

The home-maker, in her capacity as buyer for a family, is largely responsible for that which is made as well as for the conditions under which it is made and the methods employed in its distribution. Here she must act single-handed, and decide for herself what it is worth while to buy. In one section of his “Studies in Economics,” William Smart draws a lesson from the record of his personal expenses. The items of the account he has grouped under various heads—food, dress, shelter, etc. With reference to the various heads, he says that if he spends more for food than he needs for health he gives himself a form of pleasure which he cannot share with others, and which is of the most fleeting character. If, on the other hand, he spends more for dress than he actually needs for comfort, he stands a chance of pleasing the eyes of others as well as his own, and besides, an article of dress discarded before it is worn out may keep some one else warm for a long time. Thus extravagance in dress is likely to give pleasure to more people and for a longer time than extravagance in food. The third head is “shelter.” If he puts more into a house than he needs, he may be building not only for the present, but for future generations. Here he stops, leaving us to go on in imagination through the other heads, “books,” “travel,” etc. By this simple illustration he shows to us poor laymen what he means by the rather appalling title of his article, “The Socializing of Consumption.” For what is society but other people, and what is it to socialize consumption but to spend one’s income for the greatest good of the greatest number? The choice between various forms of expenditure comes when we spend more than is absolutely necessary. Then we have a chance to choose between that, which we, by consuming, will destroy (ice cream, let us say) and that which we can consume and yet pass on to others (a book or periodical, which we can read and lend to the neighbors). And what we demand and use will determine the form which wealth will take in the future.

But no one is going to be able to compare what he needs to spend for a given item and what he really does spend unless he keeps a strict account. For this reason we find specialists in home economics urging women to keep accounts, and to keep them in such form that they can easily be tabulated so as to show what per cent of the income goes for food, what for rent, etc. At a home economics exhibit which was held in connection with a meeting of the Association of Collegiate Alumnæ there was a household cabinet arranged for keeping records according to the card system. This was filled with cards in actual use by a woman interested in home economics.

No consideration of the duties of woman as a consumer would be in any degree complete without mention of her obligation to train her children to the proper use of that wealth which they have in common with others. The wealth which we hold in common—public school buildings, parks, playgrounds, museums, art galleries, streets, and highways—is rapidly increasing. Children must be trained to think of this wealth as theirs, and of the obligation to protect it and to use it well as theirs. They are too likely to think of all the obligations connected with it as belonging to a far-off, impersonal government. They must be made to see that the man who follows them about in the park and picks up their peanut shells and crackerjack boxes might be making or tending a swing for the delight of scores of children, or a flower bed for the delight of hundreds. They must be made to see that when they pick out beautiful, sweet-smelling places for picnics, and leave them strewn with papers, tin cans, and watermelon rinds, they are not only misusing their own property, but are interfering with the rights of others who have title to it also.

There is a way of using wealth which impoverishes the world. There is another way which enriches it. It is this second way which the conscientious home-maker is ever seeking to find and to show to her child.

NEW WORK FOR THE HOME

WE have considered the effect of social, industrial, and political changes upon woman, upon man, upon the household employee, upon the health and beauty of the home, and upon the relations between the producer and consumer of wealth. It remains to ask how they are affecting the home itself, considered as an institution. Are they tending to cripple and destroy it, or are they merely tending to modify its external form and the “minutia of its daily usages”? Or is there perhaps a third and a better possibility that for the very reason that they are changing its form they are increasing its possibilities for social usefulness and for the enrichment of individual lives?

These questions can be answered only in the light of a clear distinction between the spirit of home and the form of home, between the purpose that lies back of its various activities and the material means which it employs for the accomplishment of that purpose. To spirit, the one essential is love. The love that leads to the founding of most homes has its origin in and springs from sex attraction, but crowns that purely self-regarding instinct with an unselfish desire for the welfare and happiness of its object. The impulse may, however, come from the love of parents who seek satisfactory means of preparing the child for independent life, or from the love of comrades who seek mutual helpfulness in close association, or from a love of broader application which seeks to provide a meeting place for those of like interests and aspirations. Something there must be of other-regarding affection, or the spirit is wanting.

Of this unselfish affection home is the expression, and all those material things which we are in the habit of associating with the home are the tools of the expression. Roofs and walls, furniture and dishes, may or may not be part of home. They are such only when they represent some one’s affectionate desire to secure for another the good things of life. Since home is an expression of affection, and not a means of making one’s self comfortable and happy, it follows that it approaches the ideal in proportion as love is strong and is successfully expressed. When one loves another very much, he desires that that other person may attain to completeness of life, and seeks to assist him to make full use of all the means at hand and to overcome, as far as possible, all those obstacles which are due to his natural endowment, or to his environment, and which lie between him and success. Men especially seem to forget that by means of their homes they can do more than protect their wives and shield them from hardship; that they can give them positive assistance in making the most of themselves and of their powers. This is what the intimate association that the home offers is for. If the home does not offer the opportunity for mutual understanding, it is a failure; but if it does not add mutual helpfulness, in the broadest sense, to mutual understanding, it is a worse failure; and it is frequently upon the external form of the home that its possibilities for such helpfulness depend.

Since the chief factor in determining the form of home is the need of the opportunity for close and intimate and helpful association, we may disregard the popular fear that the home will finally take upon itself the characteristics of a public institution, and will cease to offer facilities for private family life. Human intelligence, which suits means to ends, and which is ever coming to the aid of human affection, will prevent that. So long as affection lasts it will seek satisfactory expression in home life, and so long as intelligence endures it will stand in the way of the extension of the borders of the home beyond the possibilities of the mutual helpfulness to its members.

If home is to be a perfect expression of affection, it must not only provide the opportunity for close association, but it must also from time to time adjust itself and its activities to the opportunities which society offers to men and to women in fields unconnected with the household. If the home-making of either man or woman is to be satisfactory, it must not interfere unnecessarily or arbitrarily with the outside work that is offered to the other partner in home-making enterprise. This rule affects man’s home-making at present more than it does woman’s, for her opportunities are multiplying more rapidly than his, and they must be taken into account by him. At present, woman’s life differs from man’s not so much in the variety of occupations that are open to her as in the extent to which the home interferes with these occupations. Part of this interference is, of course, inevitable, being connected with the bearing and rearing of children; but part is avoidable, being connected with details of housekeeping which might be entrusted to specialists. If all women except professional housekeepers were relieved of the tasks of cooking and cleaning, or of the superintendence of such work, the external form of the average home would be somewhat radically changed. Much less of its space would be given to kitchen and laundry, and it would be planned to accommodate fewer industries. In this form, however, it might offer even more facilities for family life than it does now, and even larger opportunities for close association and mutual helpfulness. It might, too, offer to man a better chance than he has at present to express his love for his wife by helping her to take advantage of the opportunities offered to her outside of the home, and to add the pleasures of the cultivation and use of special talents to the joys of home and of family life.

But we have said that the home must at any given time provide those material and creature comforts which the individual cannot secure through other channels. Because of their recognition and acceptance of this fact, women are doing and will probably continue for a long time to do work of which they might be relieved. It is common to think of this work as necessary because of the mechanical difficulties lying in the way of public housekeeping for the benefit of private home-making. As a matter of fact, most of the difficulties of this kind have been removed. Food can be prepared satisfactorily in much larger quantities than it is in private houses. This is proved by the quality of the food that is served in first-class hotels, restaurants, and clubs. There is a greater cleanliness than that of private homes. This is proved by the fact that surgeons insist upon performing operations in hospitals, where the cleaning is done by specialists under expert direction. A few problems, those involved in the satisfactory transportation of cooked food, for example, remain to be solved, but these seem small when considered in connection with the inventive skill shown in other industrial enterprises. The real difficulty in the way is, of course, social rather than mechanical. There seems no doubt that by general agreement among the housekeepers of a given community to avail themselves more largely than at present of the results of modern industrial development, radical changes could be made in the form of the home and in its activities without decreasing the comfort and enjoyment of home life.

Perhaps the only real danger to the home lies in the fact that women, who are its natural protectors, are not free to control the industrial changes which affect it, and that these changes are being determined too largely by commercial interests. Experience has shown that women have had only a passive part in the removal of industries from the home, and that business enterprises have had a very active part. It has shown, also, that these changes have not been followed as speedily as they should have been by legislation necessary for the control of the industries under their new conditions. How slowly, for example, the Pure Food Law followed the factory method of preparing foods! Women must be freer to work in the interest of the home and of the children. They must be free from unnecessary labor and care within the home, and able to work for it in public; they must be free economically, and able to control their own incomes and to make experiments for themselves in new methods of housekeeping; they must be free politically, and able to control, by means of the ballot, public methods of preparing and transporting food, of caring for streets, of educating children, and of doing other work which affects the welfare of the home.

Present conditions in the home seem to demand that women must have greater and not less freedom in its service, greater and not less power for use in its protection; and so long as love and intelligence last, they may be expected to use added freedom and added power for the benefit of family life. They may be expected to do more and not less work for the home by adding to their work for it in private a public work demanded by its changed position.

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
to make a little revaluation=> to make a little reëvaluation {pg 60}
if the maufacturer so desires=> if the manufacturer so desires {pg 127}

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Table of Contents

- HOME PROBLEMS from A NEW STANDPOINT

- INTRODUCTORY

- CONTENTS

- HOME PROBLEMS FROM A NEW STANDPOINT

- MORE LIFE FOR WOMAN
- MORE LIFE FOR MAN
- MORE LIFE FOR THE HOUSEHOLD EMPLOYEE
- MORE PHYSICAL VIGOR FOR ALL
- MORE JOY IN MERE LIVING
- MORE BEAUTY FOR ALL

- MORE PLEASURE FOR THE PRODUCER OF HOUSEHOLD STUFF

- MORE CONSCIENCE FOR THE CONSUMER
- NEW WORK FOR THE HOME
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE