The Project Gutenberg eBook, Vocational Guidance for Girls, by Marguerite
Stockman Dickson
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Title: Vocational Guidance for Girls
Author: Marguerite Stockman Dickson
Release Date: April 9, 2005 [eBook #15595]
Language: English
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| |
| OTHER VOCATIONAL |
| GUIDANCE BOOKS |
| |
| J. ADAMS PUFFER, Editor |
| |
| _VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE--THE TEACHER AS A COUNSELOR_ |
| By J. Adams Puffer |
| |
| _A VOCATIONAL READER_ |
| By C. Park Pressey |
| |
| _VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE FOR THE PROFESSIONS_ |
| By Edwin Tenney Brewster |
| |
+-------------------------------------------------------+
"Vocational guidance seeks the largest realization of the
possibilities of every child and youth, measured in terms of
worthy service."
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
CAMP FIRE GIRLS
The lessons of patriotism, kindness, and industry taught by the Camp
Fire Girls' organization make it a power for good]
VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE FOR GIRLS
by
MARGUERITE STOCKMAN DICKSON
Author of _From the Old World to the New_, _A Hundred Years of
Warfare. 1689-1789_, _Stories of Camp and Trail_, _Pioneers and
Patriots in American History_
Rand Mcnally & Company
Chicago New York
1919
THE CONTENTS
PAGE
A Foreword ix
PART I. PRESENT-DAY IDEALS OF WOMANHOOD
CHAPTER
I. WOMAN'S PLACE IN SOCIETY 3
II. THE IDEAL HOME 18
III. ESTABLISHING A HOME 27
IV. RUNNING THE DOMESTIC MACHINERY 49
PART II. GUIDING GIRLS TOWARD THE IDEAL
V. THE EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES INVOLVED 75
VI. TRAINING THE LITTLE CHILD 86
VII. TEACHING THE MECHANICS OF HOUSEKEEPING 102
VIII. THE GIRL'S INNER LIFE 122
IX. THE ADOLESCENT GIRL 130
X. THE GIRL'S WORK 151
XI. THE GIRL'S WORK (Continued)--CLASSIFICATION
OF OCCUPATIONS 163
XII. THE GIRL'S WORK (Continued)--VOCATIONS AS
AFFECTING HOMEMAKING 194
XIII. THE GIRL'S WORK (Continued)--VOCATIONS
DETERMINED BY TRAINING 203
XIV. MARRIAGE 218
Suggested Readings 241
The Index 243
A LIST OF THE PORTRAITS
PAGE
LOUISA M. ALCOTT 221
RUTH MCENERY STUART 223
LOUISE HOMER AND HER FAMILY 225
MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 227
COLONEL AND MRS. ROOSEVELT WITH MEMBERS OF THEIR FAMILY 229
JULIA WARD HOWE AND HER GRANDDAUGHTER 231
CAROLINE BARTLETT CRANE 233
ALICE FREEMAN PALMER 235
AMELIA E. BARR 237
A FOREWORD
Fortunate are we to have from the pen of Mrs. Dickson a book on the
vocational guidance of girls. Mrs. Dickson has the all-round life
experiences which give her the kind of training needed for a broad and
sympathetic approach to the delicate, intricate, and complex problems
of woman's life in the swiftly changing social and industrial world.
Mrs. Dickson was a teacher for seven years in the grades in the city
of New York. She then became the partner of a superintendent of
schools in the business of making a home. In these early homemaking
years there came from the pen of Mrs. Dickson a series of historical
books for the grades which have placed her among the leading
educational writers of the country. During the long sickness of her
husband she filled for a while two administrative positions--homemaker
and superintendent of schools.
Her three children are now in high school and are beginning to plan
for their own life work. With the broad training of homemaker, wife,
mother, teacher, writer, and administrator, Mrs. Dickson has the
combination of experiences to enable her to introduce teachers and
mothers to the very difficult problems of planning wisely big life
careers for our girls.
The book is so plainly and guardedly written that it can also be used
as a textbook for the girls themselves in connection with civic and
vocational courses. The only difficulty with the book for a text is
that it is so attractively written on such vital problems that the
student will not stop reading at the end of the lesson.
J. ADAMS PUFFER
"Vocational guidance has for its ideal the granting to
every individual of the chance to attain his highest
efficiency under the best conditions it is humanly possible
to provide."
PART I
PRESENT-DAY IDEALS OF WOMANHOOD
"How to preserve to the individual his right to aspire, to
make of himself what he will, and at the same time find
himself early, accurately, and with certainty, is the
problem of vocational guidance."
VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE FOR GIRLS
CHAPTER I
WOMAN'S PLACE IN SOCIETY
Any scheme of education must be built upon answers to two basic
questions: first, What do we desire those being educated to become?
second, How shall we proceed to make them into that which we desire
them to be?
In our answers to these questions, plans for education fall naturally
into two great divisions. One concerns itself with ideals; the other,
with methods. No matter how complex plans and theories may become, we
may always reach back to these fundamental ideas: What do we want to
make? How shall we make it?
Applying this principle to the education of girls, we ask, first: What
ought girls to be? And with this simple question we are plunged
immediately into a vortex of differing opinions.
Girls ought to be--or ought to be in the way of becoming--whatever the
women of the next generation should be. So far all are doubtless
agreed. We therefore find ourselves under the necessity of restating
the question, making it: What ought women to be?
Probably never in the world's history has this question occupied so
large a place in thought as it does to-day. In familiar discussion, in
the press, in the library, on the platform, the "woman question" is an
all-absorbing topic. Even the most cursory review of the literature
of the subject leads to a realization of its importance. It leads also
into the very heart of controversy.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
Suffrage parade in Washington. Women will parade or even fight for
their rights]
It is safe to say that no woman, in our own country at least, escapes
entirely the unrest which this controversy has brought. Even the most
conservative and "old-fashioned" of women know that their daughters
are living in a world already changed from the days of their own young
womanhood; and few indeed fail to see that these changes are but
forerunners of others yet to come. They know little, perhaps, of the
right or wrong of woman's industrial position, but "woman in industry"
is all about them. They perhaps have never heard of Ellen Key's
arraignment of existing marriage and sex relations, but they cannot
fail to see unhappy marriages in their own circle. They may care
little about the suffrage question, but they can hardly avoid hearing
echoes of strife over the subject of "votes for women." And however
much or little women are personally conscious of the significance of
these questions, the questions are nevertheless of vital import to
them all.
The "uneasy woman" is undeniably with us. We may account for her
presence in various ways. We may prophesy the outcome of her
uneasiness as the signs seem to us to point. But in the meantime--she
is here!
Naturally both radical and conservative have panaceas to suggest. The
radicals would have us believe that the question of woman's status in
the world requires an upheaval of society for its settlement. Says
one, the "man's world" must be transformed into a human world, with no
baleful insistence on the femininity of women. It is the human
qualities, shared by both man and woman, which must be emphasized. The
work of the world--with the single exception of childbearing--is not
man's work nor woman's work, but the work of the race. Woman must be
liberated from the overemphasized feminine. Let women live and work as
men live and work, with as little attention as may be to the accident
of sex.
Says another, it is the ancient and dishonored institution of marriage
which must feel the blow of the iconoclast. Reform marriage, and the
whole woman question will adjust itself.
Says still another, do away with marriage. "Celibacy is the
aristocracy of the future." Let the woman be free forever from the
drudgery of family life, free from the slavery of the marriage
relation, free to "live," to "work," to have a "career." Men and women
were intended to be in all things the same, except for the slight
difference of sex. Let us throw away the cramping folly of the ages
and let woman take her place beside man.
Not so, replies the conservative. In just so far as masculine and
feminine types approach each other, we shall see degeneracy. Men and
women were never intended to be alike.
Thus we might go on. Without the radicals there would of course be no
progress. Without the conservatives our social fabric would scarcely
hold. Between the two extremes, however, in this as in all things,
stands the great middle class, believing and urging that not social
upheaval, but better understanding of existing conditions, is the
world remedy for unrest; that not new careers, but better adjustment
of old ones, will bring peace; that not formal political power, even
though that be their just due, but the better use of powers that women
have long possessed, is most needed for the betterment of mankind.
It is not the province of this book to enter into controversy with
either radical or reactionary, but rather to search for truth which
may be used for adjusting to fuller advantage the relation of woman to
society. First of all must be recognized the fact that the "woman
movement" deserves the thoughtful attention of every teacher or other
social worker, and indeed of every thoughtful man or woman. The
movement can no longer be considered in the light of isolated surface
outbreaks. It is rather the result of deep industrial and social
undercurrents which are stirring the whole world.
In our study of the modern woman movement, which as teachers in any
department of educational work we are bound to make, the fact is
immediately impressed upon us that home life has undergone marked
changes. Conditions once favorable to the existence of the home as a
sustaining economic unit are no longer to be found. New conditions
have arisen, compelling the home, like other permanent institutions,
to alter its mode of existence in order to meet them.
Briefly reviewing the causes which have brought about these changes in
home life, we find, first, the industrial revolution. A large number
of the activities once carried on in the home have removed to other
quarters. In earlier times the mother of a family served as cook,
housemaid, laundress, spinner, weaver, seamstress, dairymaid, nurse,
and general caretaker. The father was about the house, at work in the
field, or in his workshop close at hand. The children grew up
naturally in the midst of the industries which provided for the
maintenance of the home, and for which, in part, the home existed. The
home, in those days, was the place where work was done.
With the invention of labor-saving machinery came an entire revolution
in the place and manner of work. The father of the family has been
forced by this industrial change to follow his trade from the home
workshop to the mechanically equipped factory. One by one, many of the
housewife's tasks also have been taken from the home. To-day the
processes of cloth making are practically unknown outside the factory.
Knitting has become largely a machine industry. Ready-made clothing
has largely reduced the sewing done in the home. In the matter of
food, the housekeeper may, if she chooses, have a large part of her
work performed by the baker, the canner, and the delicatessen
shopkeeper. Even the care of her children, after the years of infancy,
has been partly assumed by the state.
The home, as a place where work is done, has lost a large part of its
excuse for being. Among the poorer classes, women, like their
husbands, being obliged to earn, and no longer able to do so in their
homes, have followed the work to the factory. As a result we have
many thousands of them away from their homes through long days of
toil. Among persons of larger income, removal of the home industries
to the factory has resulted in increased leisure for the woman--with
what results we shall later consider. Practically the only
constructive work left which the woman may not shift if she will to
other shoulders, or shirk entirely, is the bearing of children and, to
at least some degree, their care in early years. The interests once
centered in the home are now scattered--the father goes to shop or
office, the children to school, the mother either to work outside the
home or in quest of other occupation and amusement to which leisure
drives her.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
Glove making. Women, like their husbands, have followed work to the
factories]
A second change in the conditions affecting home life is found in the
increased educational aspirations of women. Once the accepted and
frankly anticipated career for a woman was marriage and the making of
a home. Her education was centered upon this end. To-day all this is
changed. A girl claims, and is quite free to obtain, an education in
all points like her brother's, and the career she plans and prepares
for may be almost anything he contemplates. She may, or may not, enter
upon the career for which she prepares. Marriage may--often
does--interfere with the career, although nearly as often the career
seems to interfere with marriage. Under the new alignment of ideals,
there is less interest shown in homemaking and more in "the world's
work," with a decided feeling that the two are entirely incompatible.
[Illustration: Keystone View Co.
Employees leaving the Elgin Watch Company factory. Thousands of women
are away from their homes through long days of toil]
The girl, educated to earn her living in the market of the world, no
longer marries simply because no other career is open to her; when
she does marry, she is less likely than formerly, statistics tell us,
to have children--the only remaining work which, in these days,
definitely requires a home. Marriage and homemaking, therefore, are no
longer inseparably connected in the woman's mind. Girls are willing to
undertake matrimony, but often with the distinct understanding that
their "careers" are not to be interfered with. To them, then, marriage
becomes more and more an incident in life rather than a life work.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
A typical tenement house. Congestion means discomfort within the home
and decreasing possibility for satisfying there either material or
social needs]
A third disintegrating influence as affecting home life is the great
increase of city homes. Urban conditions are almost without exception
detrimental to home life. Congestion means discomfort within the home
and decreasing possibility for satisfying there either material or
social needs; while on every hand are increasing possibilities for
satisfying these needs outside the home. Family life under such
conditions often lacks, to an alarming degree, the quality of
solidarity which makes the dwelling place a home. No longer the place
where work is done, no longer the place where common interests are
shared, the home becomes only "the place where I eat and sleep," or
perhaps merely "where I sleep." The great increase of urban life
during the last half century is thus a very real menace, and, since
the agricultural communities constantly feed the towns, the menace
concerns the country-as well as the city-dweller.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
In the cities there are increasing opportunities for satisfying
material and social needs outside the home]
Believing that for the good of coming generations the true home spirit
must be saved, we shall do well to admit at once that the old-time
home was an institution suited to its own day, but that we cannot now
call it back to being. Nor would we wish to do so. There is no
possible reason for wishing our women to spin, weave, knit, bake,
brew, preserve, clean, _if_ the products she formerly made can be
produced more cheaply and more efficiently outside the home.
There is danger, however, of generalizing too soon in regard to these
industries. There is little doubt that in some directions, at least,
the factory method has not yet brought really satisfactory results.
How many women can give you reasons _why_ they believe that it no
longer "pays" to do this or that at home as they once did? Do the
factories always turn out as good a product as the housekeeper? If
they do, does the housekeeper obtain that product with as little
expenditure as when she made it? If she spends more, can she show that
the leisure she has thus bought has been a wise purchase? Is she
justified in accepting vague generalizations to the effect that it is
better economy to buy than to make, or should she test for herself,
checking up her individual conditions and results?
The fact is that the pendulum has swung away from the "homemade"
article, and most of us have not taken the trouble to investigate
whether we are benefited or harmed. It may be that investigation will
show us that the pendulum has swung too far, and that, in spite of
factories mechanically equipped to serve us, some work may be done
much more advantageously at home. It is even possible, and in some
lines of work we know that it is a fact, that homes may be
mechanically equipped at very little cost to rival and even to
outclass the factory in producing certain kinds of products for home
consumption.
Spinning, weaving, and knitting are doubtless best left in the hands
of the factory worker. But, under present conditions, buying ready
made all the garments needed for a family may be an expensive and
unsatisfactory method if the elements of worth, wear, finish, and
individuality are worthy of consideration, just as buying practically
all foodstuffs "ready made" presents a complex and disturbing problem
to the fastidious and conscientious housewife. There is at least a
possibility that it would be as well for the home of to-day to retain
or resume, systematize, and perfect some of the industries that are
slipping or have already slipped from its grasp. It is possible to
reduce some processes to a too purely mechanical basis.
[Illustration: Keystone View Co.
Linen-mill workers. Spinning and weaving, whether of cotton, linen,
silk, or wool, are more satisfactorily done by factory workers than in
the home]
A woman lived in our town who wasn't very wise.
She had a reputation for making homemade pies.
And when she found her pies would sell, with all her might and main
She opened up a factory, and spoiled it all again.
Nonsense? Yes--but with a strong element of sense, nevertheless.
Entirely aside, however, from the industrial status of the home,
unless we are to see a practical cessation of childbearing and
rearing, homes must apparently continue to exist. No one has yet found
a substitute place for this particular industry. It is a commonly
accepted fact that young children do better, both mentally and
physically, in even rather poor homes than in a perfectly planned and
conducted institution. And we need go no farther than this in seeking
a sufficient reason for saving the home. This one is enough to enlist
our best service in aid of homemaking and home support.
From earliest ages woman has been the homemaker. No plan for the
preservation of the home or for its evolution into a satisfactory
social factor can fail to recognize her vital and necessary connection
with the problem. Therefore in answer to the question "What ought
woman to be?" we say boldly, "A homemaker." Reduced to simplest terms,
the conditions are these: if homes are to be made more serviceable
tools for social betterment, women must make them what they ought to
be. Consequently homemaking must continue to be woman's
business--_the_ business of woman, if you like--a considerable,
recognized, and respected part of her "business of being a woman." Nor
may we overlook the fact that it is only in this work of making homes
and rearing offspring that either men or women reach their highest
development. Motherhood and fatherhood are educative processes,
greater and more vital than the artificial training that we call
education. In teaching their children, even in merely living with
their children, parents are themselves trained to lead fuller lives.
"The central fact of the woman's life--Nature's reason for her--is the
child, his bearing and rearing. There is no escape from the divine
order that her life must be built around this constraint, duty, or
privilege, as she may please to consider it."[1] It is the fashion
among some women to assume that it is time all this were changed, and
that therefore it will be changed. They look forward to seeing
womankind released from this "constraint, duty, or privilege," and yet
see in their prophetic vision the race moving on to a future of
achievement. The fact, however, ignore it as we may, cannot be
gainsaid: no man-made or woman-made "emancipation" will change
nature's law.
It was well that after centuries of repression and subjection woman
sought emancipation. She needed it. But the wildest flight of fancy
cannot long conceal the ultimate fact. Woman is the mother of the
race. "The female not only typifies the race, but, metaphor aside, she
_is_ the race."[2] Emancipation can never free her from this destiny.
In the United States, where woman has the largest freedom to enter the
industrial world and maintain herself in entire independence, the
percentage of those who marry is higher than in the countries where
woman is a slave. Ninety per cent of the mature women in our country
become homemakers for a certain period, and probably over 90 per cent
are assistant homemakers for another period of years before or after
marriage.
Any vocational counselor who fails to reckon first with the homemaking
career of girls is therefore blind to the facts of life. All
education, all training, must be considered in its bearing on the one
vocation, homemaking. The time will come when the occupations of boys
and men must likewise be considered in relation to homemaking, but
that problem is not the province of this book.
Women will bear and rear the children of the future, just as they have
borne and reared the children of the past. But _under what
conditions_--the best or those less worthy? And _what women_--again,
the best or those less worthy? Has woman been freed from subjection,
from an inferior place in the scheme of life, only to become so
intoxicated with a personal freedom, with her own personal ambition,
that she fails to see what emancipation really means? Will she be
contented merely to imitate man rather than to work out a destiny of
her own? We think not. When the first flush of freedom has passed, the
pendulum will turn again and woman will find a truer place than she
knows now or has known.
Two obstacles to the successful pursuit of her ultimate vocation stand
prominently before the young woman of to-day: first, the instruction
of the times has imbued her with too little respect for her calling;
second, her education teaches her how to do almost everything except
how to follow this calling in the scientific spirit of the day. She
may scorn housework as drudgery, but no voice is raised to show her
that it may be made something else. With the advent of vocational
guidance, vocational training of necessity follows close behind. And
with vocational training must come a proper appreciation, among the
other businesses of life, of this "business of being a woman."
Must we then educate the girl to be a homemaker, and keep her out of
the industrial life which has claimed her so swiftly and in which she
has found so much of her emancipation? No, we could not, if we would,
keep her from the outside life. We must rather recognize her double
vocation and, difficult though it seem, must educate her for both
phases of her "business." She will be not only the better woman, but
the better worker, because of the very breadth of her vocational
horizon.
Training for homemaking, then, must go hand in hand with training for
some phase of industrial life. Vocational guides must consider not
only inclination and temperament, but physical condition and the
supply and demand of the industrial world. They will consider the girl
not merely as an industrial worker, but as a potential homemaker. They
will, therefore, also study the effect of various vocations upon
homemaking capabilities.
How then shall the teaching of this double vocation be approached? How
shall we, as teachers of girls, make them capable of becoming
homemakers? How shall we make them see that homemaking and the world's
work may go hand in hand, so that they will desire in time to turn
from their industrial service to the later and better destiny of
making a home? This book offers its contribution toward answering
these questions.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Ida M. Tarbell, _The Business of Being a Woman_.]
[Footnote 2: Lester F. Ward, _Pure Sociology_.]
CHAPTER II
THE IDEAL HOME
That we may understand, and to some extent formulate, the problem
which we would have girls trained to solve, we must of necessity study
homes. What must girls know in order to be successful homemakers?
A historical survey of the home leads us to the conclusion that
although times have changed, and homes have changed, and indeed all
outward conditions have changed, the spiritual ideal of home is no
different from what it has always been. The home is the seat of family
life. Its one object is the making of healthy, wise, happy, satisfied,
useful, and efficient people. The home is essentially a spiritual
factory, whether or not it is to remain to any degree whatever a
material one. "Home will become an atmosphere, a 'condition in which,'
rather than 'a place where,'" says Nearing in his _Woman and Social
Progress_. "The home is a factory to make citizenship in," writes Mrs.
Bruère.
But although this spiritual significance of home has always existed,
we are sometimes inclined to overlook the fact. Because conditions
have changed, and because our external ideals of home have changed and
are still changing, we fail to see that the foundation of home life is
still unchanged.
"I sometimes think that many women don't consciously know _why_ they
are running their homes," says Mrs. Frederick, author of _The New
Housekeeping_. We might add that many of those who do know, or think
they know, are struggling to attain to purely trivial or
fundamentally wrong ideals. It seems wise, then, for us to face at the
outset the question "What is the ideal home?"
[Illustration: Copyright by Keystone View Co.
An attractive living room in which there is that atmosphere of peace
so conducive to a happy family life]
Laying aside all preconceived notions, and remembering that changes
are coming fast in these days, let us look for the ideals which may be
common to all homes, in city or country, among rich or poor.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
A well-arranged kitchen forms an important part of the smoothly
running mechanism of the ideal home]
First of all, the home must be comfortable, and its whole atmosphere
must be that of peace. In no other way can the tension of modern life
be overcome. This implies order and cleanliness, beauty, warmth,
light, and air; but it implies far more. It means a home planned for
the people who will occupy it, and so planned that father's needs, and
mother's, and the children's, will all be met. What does each member
of the family require of the house? A place to _live in_. And that
means far more than eating and sleeping and having a place for one's
clothes. There must be not only a place for everything, but a place
for everybody in the ideal house. The boys who wish to dabble in
electricity, the girls who wish to entertain their friends in their
own way, the tired father who wishes to read his newspaper "in peace,"
the younger children who want to pop corn or blow bubbles or play
games, all must be planned for. There will be no room too good for
use, and no furnishings so delicate that mother worries over family
contact with them. There will be a minimum of "keeping up appearances"
and a maximum of comfort and cheer. There will be little formal
entertaining, but many spontaneous good times. In addition to being
comfortable, the ideal home must be convenient. There will be places
for things, and every appliance for making work easy.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
Contrast this old-fashioned kitchen with the modern one shown on the
opposite page]
The ideal mother, who is the mainspring of the smoothly running
mechanism of the ideal home, will be scientifically trained for her
position. Her "domestic science" will no longer be open to the
criticism that it is not science at all, nor will she feel that her
business is unworthy of scientific treatment. Always she will keep
before her the object of her work--to make of her family, _including
herself_, good, happy, efficient people. She will not be overburdened
with housework, for overworked mothers have neither time nor strength
for the higher aspects of their work. She will know how to feed
bodies, but also how to develop souls. She will clothe her children
hygienically, but she will teach them to value more the more
important vestments of modesty and gentleness and courtesy. She will
require obedience, but, as their years increase, the requirement will
be less and less obedience to authority and more and more obedience to
a right spirit within.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
The wise mother will teach her children the true value of work by
making them wish to work with her]
She will work for her children and will make them wish to work with
her, teaching them the true value of work and sacrifice. She will play
with them, for their pleasure and development, and she will also play,
in her own way, for her own rejuvenation and her soul's good. She will
study each member of her family as an individual problem, and,
abandoning forever the idea of pressing any child's soul into the mold
that she might choose, will rather strive to aid its growth toward its
natural ideal. She will strive to hold and to be worthy of her
children's confidence, that they may turn to her in those times that
try their souls. But she will always respect the personal liberty of
either child or husband to live his own life.
She will interest herself in the interests of husband and children,
that she may remain a vital factor in their lives; and she will make
the home so delightful as to reduce to a minimum the scattering
influences that tend to destroy home life. She will weave intangible
but indestructible ties of affection, holding all together and to
herself. She will keep her interest in the outside world, so that she
may better prepare her children to live in it and may resist the
narrowing influence of her enforced temporary withdrawal. She will
take some part in civic work and social uplift, and, when her years of
child rearing are ended, in the leisure of middle age she will return
to the less circumscribed life of her youth, bending her matured
energies to the world's work.
The father of this ideal family will be first of all a man happy in
his work. The plodding, weary slave to distasteful labor can be ideal
neither as husband nor as father. Overworked fathers are quite as
impossible in our scheme as overburdened mothers. In ideal conditions
the father will have time, strength, and willingness to be more of a
factor in the home life than he sometimes is at the present time. More
than that, his early education will have included definite preparation
for homemaking, so that his coöperation will be intelligent and
therefore helpful. He will know more than he does now about the cost
of living and he will assist in making a preliminary division of the
year's income upon an intelligent basis. He will recognize the
necessity for equipment for the homemaking business and will
contribute his share of thought and labor to improving the home plant.
He will be a companion as well as adviser to his boys and girls and
will retain their respect and love by his sympathetic understanding
and his remembrance of the boy's point of view. In all his dealings
with his children he will be careful that interference with his
comfort and convenience or the wounding of his pride by their
shortcomings does not obscure his sense of justice. He will be a
student of child nature and will keep in view the ultimate good and
usefulness of his child. He will regard his fatherhood as his greatest
service to the state.
[Illustration: Pals. The wise father will be companion as well as
adviser to his children]
The children reared by this ideal father and mother in their ideal
home will grow as naturally as plants in a well-cared-for garden. With
examples of courtesy and kindness, of cheerful work and
health-producing play, ever before them in the lives of their parents,
they may be led along the same paths to similar usefulness. Their
educational problems will be met by the combined effort of teachers
and parents, and natural aptitude as well as community needs will
dictate the choice of their life work.
That this ideal family is far removed from many families of our
acquaintance merely proves the necessity of training for more
efficient homemaking, and indeed for a better conception of homemaking
ideals and problems. If we are to teach our girls and our boys to be
homemakers, we must consider carefully what they need to know. If we
are to counteract the tendencies of the past two or three decades away
from homemaking as a vocation, we must show the true value of the
homemaker to the community, and the opportunities which domestic life
presents to the scientifically trained mind.
Education for homemaking necessarily implies teachers who are trained
for homemaking instruction; and we may pause here to notice that no
homemaking course in normal school or college can be sufficient to
give the teacher true knowledge of ideal homes. She must have seen
such homes, or those which approximate the ideal. Perhaps she has
grown up in such a home. More probably she has not. If not, it must
then necessarily follow that the lower have been the ideals in the
home where the teacher had her training, the more she should see of
other homes, and especially of good homes. Her whole outlook may be
changed by such contact; and with her outlook, her teaching; and with
her teaching, her influence.
If all girls grew up in ideal homes, it seems probable that homemaking
would appeal to them quite naturally as the ultimate vocation. Indeed,
we know that many girls feel this natural drawing, in spite of most
unlovely conditions in their childhood homes. The task of mother,
teacher, and vocational counselor (who may be either) in this matter
is a complicated one. Some girls are not fitted by nature to be
homemakers. Some may with careful training overcome inherent defects
which stand in the way of their success. Some have the natural
endowment, but have their eyes fixed on other careers. Some have
unhappy ideals to overcome. The fact, however, confronts us that at
some time in their lives a very large majority of these girls will be
homemakers. It is the part of those who have charge of them in their
formative years to do two things for them: first, to train them so
that they may understand the tasks of the homemaker and perform them
creditably if they are called upon; second, to teach all those girls
who seem fitted for this high vocation to desire it, and to choose it
for at least part of their mature lives.
CHAPTER III
ESTABLISHING A HOME
Certain very definite attempts are being made in these days to meet
the evident lack of homemaking knowledge in the rising generation. And
since definiteness of plan lends power to accomplishment, we cannot do
better than to analyze as carefully as possible the various lines of
knowledge required by the prospective homemaker in entering upon her
life work.
What are the problems of homemaking? And how far can we provide the
girl with the necessary equipment to make her an efficient worker in
her chosen vocation?
Country life and city life are apparently so far removed from each
other as to present totally different problems to the homemaker and to
the vocational educator of girls. And yet underlying the successful
management of both urban and rural homes are the same principles of
domestic economy and of social efficiency. The principles are there,
however widely their application may differ. While we may wisely train
country girls for country living, and city girls to face the problems
of urban life, we must not lose sight of the fact that country girls
often become homemakers in the city and that city girls are often
found establishing homes in the country. Nor should we overlook the
truth that some study of home conditions in other than familiar
surroundings will broaden the girl's knowledge and fit her in later
life to make conditions subservient to that knowledge.
Both rural and urban homemakers must be taught to appreciate their
advantages and to make the most of them. They must also learn to face
their disadvantages and to work intelligently toward overcoming them.
The country homemaker has no immediate need of studying the problems
of congestion in population which menace the millions of
city-dwellers. The country home has plenty of room and an abundance of
pure air. Yet it is often true that country homes are poorly
ventilated and that much avoidable sickness results from this fact.
The country home is often set in the midst of great natural beauty,
yet misses its opportunity to satisfy the eye in an artistic sense.
Its very isolation is sometimes a cause of the lack of attention to
its appearance to the passerby.
The farmer's wife has an advantage in the matter of fresh vegetables,
eggs, and poultry, but the city housekeeper has the near-by market and
finds the question of sanitation, the preservation of food, and the
disposal of waste far easier of solution.
The city housewife is often troubled in regard to the source of her
milk supply; the country-dweller has plenty of fresh milk, but
frequently finds it difficult to be sure of pure water.
The country homemaker often lacks the conveniences which make
housekeeping easier; the city woman is often misled, by the ease of
obtaining the ready-made article, into buying inferior products in
order to avoid the labor of producing.
The family in the farming community often has meager social life and
lack of proper recreations; the city-dweller is made restless and
improvident by an excess of opportunities for certain sorts of
amusement.
Thus each type of community has its own problems. But practically all
of these problems fall under certain general heads which both city and
country homemakers should consider as part of their education. The
present turning of thought toward training in these directions is most
promising for the homes of the future.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
A country home which, though set in the midst of natural beauty, yet
fails to satisfy the eye in an artistic sense]
[Illustration: Courtesy of Mrs. Joseph E. Wing
In contrast to the illustration above, this home shows what a few
artistic touches may do to enhance the natural beauty of the
surroundings]
It is one of the misfortunes of existing conditions that the city and
the country are not better acquainted with each other. Scorn
frequently takes the place of understanding. The town or village girl
goes out to teach in the country school, knowing little of country
living and less of country homes. It is difficult, if not impossible,
for such a teacher to be an influence for good. Especially as she
approaches the homemaking problem is she without the knowledge which
must underlie successful work. It is important that the city girl
under such conditions should make a special effort to study country
life and country homes in a sympathetic, helpful spirit.
Perhaps our analysis of homemaking problems can take no more practical
form than to follow from its hypothetical beginning the making of an
actual home.
No more inspiring moment comes in the lives of most men and women than
that in which the first step is taken toward making their first home.
There is an instinctive recognition of the greatness of the occasion.
But ignorance will dull the glow of inspiration and wrong standards
will lead to wreck of highest hopes. Let us, therefore, be practical
and definite and face the facts.
A home is to be established. The first question is: Where? To a
certain extent circumstances must answer this question. The character
and place of employment of the breadwinner, the income, social
relations already established, school, church, library, market, water
and sanitary conditions, must all be considered. Yet even these
regulating conditions must receive intelligent treatment. How many
young homemakers have any definite idea as to what proportion of the
income may safely be expended for shelter? How many can tell the
relative advantages of renting and owning?
[Illustration: Copyright by Keystone View Co.
A tenement district. One of the greatest disadvantages in urban life
is the overcrowding in tenement houses]
Probably the first consideration in selection is likely to be whether
the home is to be permanent or merely temporary. When the occupation
is likely to be permanent, the greatest comfort and well-being will
usually result from establishing early a permanent home; and this
involves a long look ahead to justify the selection of a site. Not
only must health and convenience be considered, but future questions
relative to the expanding requirements of the homemakers and to the
education and proper upbringing of a family as well. Then, too, young
people must usually begin modestly from a financial standpoint, and
they are therefore cut off from certain locations which they may
perhaps desire and which they might hope to attain in later years. In
the country, where the livelihood is often gained directly from the
land, a new element enters into selection and must to some extent take
precedence over others. Soil considerations aside, however, we have
health, beauty, social environment, educational advantages, and
expense to consider; and we should establish certain standards in
these directions for our young people to measure by.
Considerations of health must include not only climatic conditions,
but questions of drainage, water supply, time and comfort of
transportation to work, and the sanitary condition of the
neighborhood.
Prospective homemakers must learn, too, the value of reposeful
surroundings and of some degree of natural beauty. They must recognize
the value also of desirable social environment--that is, of such moral
and intellectual surroundings as will be uplifting for the homemakers
and safe for the future family. They will, it is hoped, learn that a
merely fashionable neighborhood is not necessarily a desirable
environment. The church, the school, the library, and proper
recreation centers are also to be considered in one's social outlook.
They are all distinctly worth paying for, as also is a good road.
With the site selected, the great problem of building next confronts
the homemaker. Here again the principles of selection should be
sufficiently known to young people, boys and girls alike, to save them
from the mistakes so commonly made and frequently so regretted.
The people who can afford to employ an architect to design their homes
are in a decided minority, and the only way to insure good houses for
the less well-to-do majority is to see that the less well-to-do do not
grow up without instruction as to what good houses are. The great
tendency of the day in building is fortunately toward increased
simplicity and toward a quality which we may call "livableness." This
tendency we shall do well to fix in our teaching.
In general, the good house is plain, substantial, convenient, and
suited to its surroundings. Efficient housekeeping is largely
conditioned by such very practical details as closets and pantries,
the relative positions of sink and stove, the height of work tables
and shelves, the distance from range to dining table, the ease or
difficulty of cleaning woodwork, laundry facilities, and the like.
Housekeeping is made up of accumulated details of work, and adequate
preparation for comfort in working can be made only when the house is
in process of construction.
Not less are the higher and more abstract duties of the homemaker
served by the kind of house she lives and works in. In a hundred
details the homemaker should be able to increase the efficiency of the
"place to make citizens in." A common mistake in building produces a
house which adds to, rather than lessens, the burdens of its inmates.
More often than not this is the result of a misapprehension of what
houses are for.
There are many large mansions in our villages and cities built for
show and display of wealth in which no one will live today. These
houses are being torn down and sold for junk. The modern home is built
for one purpose only, a home.
We must therefore teach our boys and girls that houses are for
shelter, work, comfort, and rest, and to satisfy our sense of beauty,
not to serve as show places nor to establish for us a standing in the
community proportionate to the size of our buildings. We must teach
them to measure their house needs and to avoid the uselessly ornate as
well as the hopelessly ugly. We must teach them to consider ease of
upkeep a distinctly valuable factor in building. But most of all must
the homemaker be taught that the comfort and well-being of the family
come first in the making of plans.
Few persons possess sufficient originality to think out new and
valuable arrangements for houses; therefore we must see that their
minds are rendered alert to discover successful arrangements in the
houses they are constantly seeing and to adapt these arrangements to
their own needs. Unless their minds are awakened in this direction,
the majority will merely see the house problem in large units,
overlooking the finer points of detail which mean comfort or the
opposite.
I recall spending a considerable number of drawing periods in my
grammar-school days upon copying drawings of houses. I recall that we
became sufficiently conversant with such terms as front elevation,
side elevation, and floor plan to feel that we were deep in technical
knowledge. But I do not recall that anyone suggested any question as
to the suitability of these houses for homes, or opened our minds to
consideration of the fact that house building was a proper concern for
our minds. It was merely a case in which educative processes failed to
function. They do things better now in many schools. But we should not
rest until all of our prospective homemakers have opportunity to
obtain practical instruction in home planning and building.
Matters pertaining to heating, ventilating, and plumbing are easily
taught as resting upon certain definite, well-understood principles.
Here the personal element is less to be considered, and scientific
knowledge may be passed on with some degree of authority. Our courses
in physics, chemistry, and hygiene can be made thoroughly practical
without losing any of their scientific value. Especially in our rural
schools should matters of this sort receive careful and adequate
treatment. In times past it was considered inevitable that the
country-dweller should lack the advantages, found in most city houses,
of a plentiful supply of water, radiated heat for the whole house,
proper disposal of waste, and arrangements for cold storage. We know
now that these things are obtainable at less cost than we had
supposed; and we know also that it is not lack of means, but lack of
knowledge, which forces many to do without them. In many a farm home
the doctor's bills for one or two winters would pay for installing
proper systems of heat and ventilation. Everything that tends to
increase the comfort and safety of home life must be taught, as well
as everything that tends to lessen the labor of keeping a family
clean, warm, and properly fed.
Accurate figures should be obtained to set before the boys and girls
who will be homemakers, showing the cost, in time, labor, and money,
of running a heating plant for the house as compared with several
stoves scattered about in the dwelling. To accompany these we must
have more figures, showing the comparative time spent in doing the
necessary work incidental to the operation of each type of apparatus.
We must consider the comparative cleanliness of both types of heating
plants, with their effect, first, upon the health of the family, and
secondly, upon the amount of cleaning necessary to keep the house in
proper condition. We must compare types of stoves with one other,
hot-air, steam, and hot-water plants with one another, and various
kinds of fuels, both as to cost and as to efficacy.
The water question is one of real interest to both city-and
country-dweller, although the chances are that the country-dweller
knows less about his source of supply than the city-dweller can know
if he chooses to investigate. The city-dweller should know whence and
by what means the water flows from his faucet, if for no other reason
than that he may do his part in seeing that the money spent by his
city or town brings adequate return to the taxpayer. For the rural
homemaker, of course, the problem usually becomes an individual one.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
A dangerous well. The rural homemaker must make sure that his water
supply is at a safe distance from contaminating impurities]
Is the water supply adequate? Is the water free from harmful bacteria?
Is the source a safe distance from contaminating impurities? Are we
obtaining the water for household and farm purposes without more labor
than is compatible with good management? Is not running water as
important for the house as for the barn? How much water does an
ordinary family need for all purposes in a day? How much time does it
take to pump and carry this quantity by hand or to draw it from a
well? How much strength and nerve force are thus expended that might
be saved for more important work? Does lack of time or strength cause
the homekeeper to "get along" with less water in the house than is
really needed? Is there any natural means at hand for pumping the
water--any "brook that may be put to work," any gravity system that
may be installed? If not, are there mechanical means available that
would really pay for themselves in increased water, time, and comfort
for all the family?
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
Where water must be pumped and carried by hand much strength and
nerve force are expended which might be kept for more important work]
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
A "brook put to work" may be utilized in supplying water to a
farmhouse]
From a consideration of water supply we pass naturally to questions of
the disposal of waste, and here again is found a subject too often
neglected both in town and in rural communities. In the city the
problems are not individual ones in the main, but rather questions of
the best management and use of the public utilities concerned. Does
the average city householder know what becomes of the waste removed
from his door by the convenient arrival of the ash man, the garbage
man, the rubbish man? Does he know whether this waste is disposed of
in the most sanitary way? Does he consider whether it is removed in
such a way as to be inoffensive and without danger to the people
through whose streets it is carried? Does he know anything of the cost
to the city of waste disposal? Is it merely an expense, and a heavy
one, for him in common with other taxpayers to bear? Or is the
business made to pay for itself? If not, is it possible to make it
pay? Does any community make the waste account balance itself at the
end of the year?
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
An objectionable garbage wagon. Disposal of waste is a subject too
often neglected both in urban and in rural communities]
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
This new covered garbage wagon subjects the public to no danger]
In the country, once more we face the individual problem rather than
that of the community. Here proper provision for the disposal of waste
often necessitates more knowledge of the subject than is possessed by
the homemaker, or sometimes it requires the installation of apparatus
whose cost seems prohibitive. A careful consideration of these matters
will possibly disclose the fact that a smaller expenditure may
accomplish the desired purpose. Or, if this is not true, it may be
found that the end accomplished is worth the expenditure of what
seemed a prohibitive sum. A water closet, for instance, has not only a
sanitary but a moral value. We must somehow educate people to
understand and to believe that the basis of family health and
usefulness is proper living conditions, and that some system of sewage
and garbage disposal is a necessary step toward proper living
conditions. With the urban population these matters are removed from
personal and immediate consideration, but every rural homemaker must
face his own problems, with the knowledge that since his conditions
are individual his solution must be equally his own.
In the matters pertaining to decoration within the house as well as
beautifying its surroundings, the country-and the city-dweller meet on
equal terms. Their problems may differ in detail, but the principles
to be studied are the same. Here our art courses must be made to
contribute their share to the homemaker's training. We must strike the
keynote of simplicity, both within and without, and must teach girls
especially the value of carefully thought-out color schemes and
decorating plans, to be carried out by different people in the
materials and workmanship suited to their purses. They must learn that
expense is not necessarily a synonym for beauty; they must know the
characteristics of fabrics and other decorative materials; and they
must be trained to recognize the qualities for which expenditure of
money and effort are worth while.
In the designing of school buildings nowadays close attention is paid
to beauty of architecture, symmetry of form, convenience of
arrangement, and durable but artistic furnishings. All unwittingly the
child receives an aesthetic training through his daily life in the
midst of attractive surroundings.
Many of our rural schools are doing excellent work in teaching
children to beautify the school grounds. Some, of them go farther and
interest their pupils in attacking the problem of improving outside
conditions at home. Every child whose mind is thus turned in the
direction of attractive home grounds has unconsciously taken a step
toward one branch of efficient homemaking. If it were possible to give
pupils the foundation principles of landscape gardening, they might
learn to see with a trained eye the problems they will otherwise
attack blindly.
[Illustration: An example of the newer architecture. An artistic
approach to a school has a daily effect on the mind of the child]
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
Rural school with flower bed. Many of the rural schools are doing
excellent work in teaching children to beautify the school grounds]
With the house built and ready for its furniture, the selection of the
latter becomes both part of the scheme of decoration and part also of
the domestic plans for securing comfort and inspiring surroundings.
The same principles of beauty and utility, restfulness, comfort, and
suitability, are called into requisition. The trained housewife will
have an eye toward future dusting and will choose the less ornate
articles. The same person, in her capacity as the mother of citizens,
will see that chairs are comfortable to sit in, that tables and desks
are the right height for work, that book cases and cabinets are
sufficient in number and size to take care of the family treasures.
She will use pictures sparingly and choose them to inspire. Perhaps,
most of all, the woman with the trained mind will know how to avoid a
superfluity of furniture in her rooms. She will be educated to the
beauty of well-planned spaces and will not feel obliged to fill every
nook and corner with chairs or tables or sofas or other pieces of
furniture which merely "fill the space."
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
An artistic living room. The principles of beauty and utility,
restfulness, comfort, and suitability, must all be considered in the
furnishing of a home]
Before furnishing is considered complete, the housekeeper must take
into account the matter of operating apparatus. Perhaps a large part
of this important department of house equipment has been built into
the house. The water system, the sewer connection or its substitute,
and the lighting apparatus are already installed, so that the turn of
a switch or a faucet, the pull of a chain, sets one or all to work for
us. We are now to consider whether we shall buy a vacuum cleaner or a
broom and dustpan; a washing machine and electric flatiron or the
services of a washerwoman, or shall telephone the laundry to call for
the wash. Shall we invest in a "home steam-canning outfit" at ten
dollars, or make up a list for the retailer of the products of the
canning factory? Shall we have a sewing machine, or plan to buy our
clothing from "the store"?
Once upon a time practically the only labor-saving device possible to
the housekeeping woman was another woman. To-day many devices are
offered to take her place. Our homemaker must know about them, and
must compare their value with the older piece of operating machinery,
the domestic servant. She must know what it costs to keep a servant,
in money, in responsibility, and in all the various ways which cannot
be reduced to figures.
Already the pros and cons of the "servant question" have caused much
and long-continued agitation. The woman of the future should be taught
to approach the matter with a scientific summing up of the facts and
with a readiness to lift domestic service to a standardized vocation
or to abandon it altogether in favor of the "labor-saving devices" and
the "public utilities." Certain of our home-efficiency experts assure
us that all "industries in the home are doomed." If this is true, the
domestic servant must of necessity cease to exist. Most persons,
however, cannot yet see how "public utilities" will be able to do all
of our work. We may send the washing out, but we cannot send out the
beds to be made, the eggs to be boiled, or the pictures, chairs, and
window sills to be dusted. The table must be set at home, and the
dishes washed there, until we approach the day of communal eating
places, which, as we all know, will be difficult to utilize for
infants and the aged, for invalids, and for the vast army of those who
are averse to faring forth three times daily in search of food. For a
long time yet the domestic servant, _or her substitute_, will be with
us, doing the work that even so great a power as "public utilities"
cannot remove from the home.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
Contrast the bad taste displayed in the furnishing of this hopelessly
inartistic room with the simplicity shown in that on page 43]
At present there is much to indicate that the servant's substitute, in
the form of various labor-saving devices, will eventually fill the
place of the already vanishing domestic worker. Whether this proves to
be the case will rest largely with these girls whom we are educating
to-day. The pendulum is swinging rather wildly now, but by their day
of deciding things it may have settled down to a steady motion so that
their push will send it definitely in one direction or the other.
There is no inherent reason why making cake should be a less honorable
occupation than making underwear or shoes; why a well-kept kitchen
should be a less desirable workroom than a crowded, noisy factory. But
under existing conditions the comparison from the point of view of the
worker is largely in favor of the factory. Among the facts to be faced
by the homemaker who wishes to intercept the flight of the housemaid
and the cook are these:
1. Hours for the domestic worker must be definite, as they are in
shop or factory work.
2. The working day must be shortened.
3. Time outside of working hours must be absolutely the worker's
own.
4. The worker must either live outside the home in which she
works, or must have privacy, convenience, comfort, and the
opportunity to receive her friends, as she would at home.
In short, the houseworker must have definite work, definite hours, and
outside these must be free to live her own life, in her own way, and
among her own friends, as the factory girl lives hers when her day's
work is done.
That women are already awaking to these responsibilities is shown by
the increasing number who choose the labor-saving devices in place of
the flesh-and-blood machine. Many of these women will tell you that
they make this choice to avoid the personal responsibility involved
in having a resident worker in the house. There _is_ comfort in not
having to consider "whether or not the vacuum cleaner likes to live in
the country," or the bread mixer "has a backache," or the electric
flatiron desires "an afternoon off to visit its aunt." It is the same
satisfaction we feel in urging the automobile to greater speed
regardless of the melting heat, the pouring rain, or the number of
miles it has already traveled to-day. Perhaps the future will see
machines for household work so improved and multiplied that we can
escape altogether this perplexing personal problem of "the woman who
works for us."
Whether or not we escape this problem when we patronize the laundry,
the bakeshop, the underwear factory, is a matter for further thought.
To many it seems a simpler matter to face the problem of one cook, one
laundress, than to investigate conditions in factory, bakery, and
laundry, to agitate, to "use our influence," to urge legislation, to
follow up inspectors and their reports, to boycott the bakery, to be
driven into the establishment of a coöperative laundry whether we will
or no, in order to fulfill our obligations to the "women who work for
us" in these various places. True, our duty to womankind requires that
we do all these things to a certain extent so long as the public
utilities exist, but with the multiplication of utilities to a number
sufficient to do a large portion of our work, it would seem that women
would be left little time for anything else than their supervision and
regulation.
Problems relating to the establishing of a home would once have been
considered far from the province of the teacher in the public school.
Formerly we taught our children a little of everything except how to
live. Now we are realizing that the teacher should be a constructive
social force. Living is a more complicated thing than it once was, and
the school must do its share in fitting the children for their task.
All these matters we have been considering--the selection of a home
site, building, decorating, furnishing, sanitation, and all the
rest--represent constructive social work the teacher may do, which, if
she passes it by, may not be done at all. College courses should
prepare the teacher for such work, but even the girl who is not
college-trained will find, if she seeks it, help sufficient for her
training. And the work awaits her on every hand.
CHAPTER IV
RUNNING THE DOMESTIC MACHINERY
With a home established, the problems confronting the homemaker become
those of administration. The "place for making citizens" is built and
ready. The making of citizens must begin.
One of the fundamental requisites for the efficient operation of the
home plant is that the homemaker shall have a firm grasp upon the
financial part of the business. To estimate the number of homes
wrecked every year by lack of this economic knowledge is of course
impossible; but you can call up without effort many cases in which
this lack was at least a contributing element to the wreck.
Keeping expenditures within the income is only the _ABC_ of the
financial knowledge required, although, like other _ABC_'s, it is
essential to the acquirement of deeper knowledge. It is not enough
that the housekeeper merely succeeds in keeping out of debt. She must
know what to expect in return for the money that she spends, and she
must know whether or not she gets it. She must have definitely in mind
the results she expects, and she must know why she spends for certain
objects rather than for others.
In the days of famine and fear, the individual was fortunate who had
food, shelter, and a skin to wrap about his shivering shoulders. In
these days it is not enough to have merely these things. Certain
standards of civilized life must be met, and we shall find that it
requires judgment and skill to apportion our funds properly.
The common needs of civilized mankind are usually roughly classified
as follows: food; shelter; clothing; operating expenses, including
service, heat, light, water, repairs, refurnishing, and the general
upkeep of the plant; advancement, including education, recreation,
travel, charity, church, doctor, dentist, savings.
The exact proportion of any income devoted to each of these is of
course a matter conditioned by the needs of the particular family as
well as by its tastes and desires. Figures are obtainable which throw
light upon proportions found advisable in what are considered typical
cases. We may learn the minimum amount of money which will feed a man
in New York or in various other cities and towns. We may find
estimates as to the prices of a "decent living" in various parts of
the country. Home-economics experts will furnish us with figures which
may be used as a basis for apportioning this amount among departments
of household expenses. That the figures offered by these experts
differ more or less widely need not disturb us. It is perhaps too
early in such work for final authoritative estimates.
The following apportionment is taken from Chapin's _The Standard of
Living among Workingmen's Families in New York City_ and has to do
with the minimum income required for normal living for a family of
father, mother, and three children on Manhattan Island:
Food $359.00
Housing 168.00
Fuel and light 41.00
Clothing 113.00
Carfare 16.00
Health 22.00
Insurance 18.00
Sundry items 74.00
-------
$811.00
"Families having from $900 to $1,000 a year," concludes Dr. Chapin,
"are able, in general, to get food enough to keep body and soul
together, and clothing and shelter enough to meet the most urgent
demands of decency." Regarding incomes below $900, he says, "Whether
an income between $800 and $900 can be made to suffice is a question
to which our data do not warrant a dogmatic answer."
The two apportionments given below have been made by the federal
government and concern the maintenance of a normal standard in two
industrial sections of the country. In each case the family is assumed
to be, as in Dr. Chapin's estimate,[1] made up of father, mother, and
three children.
Fall River, Georgia and
Mass. North Carolina
Food $312.00 $286.67
Housing 132.00 44.81
Clothing 136.80 113.00
Fuel and light 42.75 49.16
Health 11.65 16.40
Insurance 18.40 18.20
Sundry items 78.00 72.60
------- -------
$731.90 $600.74
These estimates do no more than suggest the minimum upon which the
various items of living expense can be met and the proportion to each
account. People who can do more upon their incomes than merely live
must look farther for help.
Mrs. Bruère in her _Increasing Home Efficiency_ offers the following
as a minimum schedule[3] for efficient living:
Food $ 344.93
Shelter 144.00
Clothing 100.00
Operation 150.00
Advancement 312.00
Incidentals 46.85
-------
$1,097.78
"When the income is over $1,200," Mrs. Bruère adds, "the family has
passed the line of mere decency in living and entered the realm of
choice. Their budget need not show how the entire income _must_ be
spent, but how it may be spent to gain whatever special end the family
has in view."
That any estimated schedule for any income will fit exactly the needs
of any family of father, mother, and three children in any given town
in the United States no one supposes, but it is at least a basis upon
which to work. And perhaps the main point from an educational
standpoint is that it is a schedule at all.
The happy-go-lucky, spend-as-you-go style of housekeeping does not
constitute efficiency. The homemaking expert we are training will have
a better plan. She will have been long familiar with the idea of
apportioning incomes. She will have applied the tests of efficient
decision to her personal income before she has to attack the problem
of spending for a family. The ideal homemaker of the future will be a
woman who has had a personal income, and preferably one that she has
earned herself and learned how to spend before she enters upon
matrimony and motherhood.
By the less scientific plan of merely recording what one has spent,
when the spending is over, it is more than likely that some
departments of home expenditure will gain at the expense of others. If
we can afford only $150 for rent, and we pay $200, it is evident that
we must go without some portion of the food or clothing or advancement
that we need. If we dress extravagantly, we must pay for our
extravagance by sacrificing efficient living in some other direction.
The budget is not entirely or even in large measure for the sake of
saving, but rather for the sake of spending wisely. When women become
as businesslike in the administration of home finances as they must be
to succeed in business life, or as men usually are in their business
relations, home administration will be placed upon a secure financial
footing and will gain immeasurably in dignity thereby.
Feeding and clothing a family are perhaps the fundamentals of the
homemaker's daily tasks. And upon neither of them will the application
of scientific principles be wasted. It is not enough that we merely
set food before our families in sufficient quantity to appease the
clamoring appetite. Children and adults may suffer from malnutrition
even though their consumption of food is normal in quantity three
times a day. No housewife is properly fitted for her task unless she
has some knowledge of dietetics.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
Teaching housewives food values. No housewife in these days need lack
the knowledge of dietetics which will fit her for her task]
Many a notable housewife who has perhaps never even heard of dietetics
has nevertheless a practical working knowledge of some or many of its
principles. There are traditions among housewives that we should serve
certain foods at the same meal or should cook certain foods together.
Often these time-honored combinations rest upon the soundest of
dietetic principles. On the other hand, many cooks feed their families
by a hit-or-miss method which as often as not violates all the laws of
scientific feeding, and which farmers long ago discarded in the
feeding of their cows.
[Illustration: Blackburn College students preparing dinner.
Fortunately girls may study dietetics in the school that teaches them
the law of gravity and the rules for forming French plurals]
Fortunately the girl who so desires may now learn something of these
feeding laws in the same school that teaches her the law of
gravitation or the rules for forming French plurals. Fortunately,
also, the girls of to-day seem inclined to undertake such study. It is
not too much to expect that the girl of the future will be able to set
before her family meals scientifically planned or food wisely and
economically purchased, well cooked, and attractively served. Nor is
it too much to expect that teachers will be able to do these things
and to instruct others how to do them. That this ideal requires
considerable and varied knowledge is clear at the outset. The serving
of a single meal involves: (1) knowledge of food values, (2) skill in
making a "balanced ration," (3) knowledge of market conditions, (4)
skill in buying, with special reference to personal tastes and
financial conditions, (5) knowledge of the chemistry of cooking, (6)
skill in applying chemical knowledge, (7) skill in adapting knowledge
of cooking to existing conditions, (8) knowledge of serving a meal and
practice in service.
The fact that a large proportion of deaths is directly due to
digestive troubles is certainly food for thought. Such a statement
alone would warrant action of some sort looking toward increased
knowledge of food values and food preparation. It is not necessarily
because people live upon homemade food that their digestions are
impaired, as we so often hear stated nowadays, but because we have
taken it for granted that, given a stove, a saucepan, and a spoon, any
woman could instinctively combine flour, water, and yeast into food.
There is little dependence upon instinct in producing the bread of
commerce. Bakers' bread is scientifically made, no doubt; but there is
no reason why the homemade article may not also be a product of
science. And there will always be this difference between the baker
and the housewife: the baker's profit must be expressed in dollars and
cents, while that of the housewife will be represented in increased
force and efficiency in the family that she feeds. With such differing
ends in view, the processes and results of each must continue to
differ as widely as we know they do at present.
It is now some years since Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote of woman's
work:
Six hours a day the woman spends on food,
Six mortal hours!
* * * * *
Till the slow finger of heredity
Writes on the forehead of each living man,
Strive as he may: "His mother was a cook!"
[Illustration: A Blackburn College student mixing bread. There is no
reason why homemade bread may not be the product of science]
Many women now doubtless spend less time on cooking than when Mrs.
Gilman wrote; perhaps her scorn has borne fruit. But the implication
that being a cook is unworthy loses all its force unless it can be
shown that "his mother was _nothing but_ a cook." Even so, there are
worse things one might be. It is true that women should not spend six
hours out of the working day on merely one department of their
household work. Yet the ill-fed family is out of the race for a place
among the efficient. Let us then teach the coming woman to use less
time, more science, and all the labor-savers there are available, and
still accomplish the same, or perhaps better, results.
That the question of clothing is equally fundamental, perhaps few of
us will acknowledge. Yet we must not underrate its importance. Food
furnishes the fuel with which to support the fires of life. Clothes,
however, contribute not only to comfort and health, but to mental
well-being and self-respect. So long as we mingle with our fellow men
in civilized communities, raiment will continue to require "taking
thought." That much of the feminine part of the population devotes an
undue amount of thought to certain aspects of the clothing question we
cannot deny. It is equally certain that many women, if not most women,
devote too little thought to other phases of the problem.
Present conditions seem to indicate that the average woman, of any
class of society, places the "prevailing mode" first in her personal
clothing problems. How to be "in style" absorbs much attention and
time. Surely it is overshadowing other very important considerations
relating to dress. When American women have awakened to the real
importance of these considerations, we shall observe a better
proportion in studying the clothes question.
As a scientific foundation upon which to build her practical knowledge
of how to clothe herself and her family, the girl of the future must
be trained to an understanding of (1) the hygiene of clothes, (2) art
expressed in clothes, (3) the psychology of clothes, (4) ethics as
affected by clothes, (5) personality as expressed by clothes.
There is no stage of life in which hygiene, art, psychology, and
ethics do not apply to clothes. The practical knowledge built upon
these as a foundation will guide the girl in choosing clothes which
are suitable to the occasion for which they are designed, are not
extravagant in either price or style, give good value for the money
expended, express the individuality of the wearer, and exert an
influence uplifting rather than the reverse upon the community at
large.
[Illustration: Class in dressmaking at Blackburn College. With women
scientifically trained in the matter of clothing, we shall do away
with much of the absurdity of dress]
With such a girl, the fact that "they" are wearing this or that will
be always a minor consideration. With women trained in matters of
clothing, we shall no longer be confronted by the absurdity of
identical styles for thick and thin, short and tall, middle-aged and
young, rich and poor. We shall no longer see dress dominating, as it
does to-day, the entire lives of thousands of women. From the woman of
wealth who spends a fortune every season upon her wardrobe, all the
way down the money scale to the young girl who strains every nerve and
spends every cent she can earn to buy and wear "the latest style,"
slavery to fashion is an evil gigantic in its proportions and
far-reaching in its results.
We have no right to interfere with the woman's instinct to make
herself beautiful. Rather we should encourage it, and should carefully
instruct her in her impressionable years as to what real beauty is. It
is almost safe to say that at present the principle by which the
modern woman is guided in deciding the great questions of feminine
attire is imitation. Incidentally, we may remark that nobody profits
by such a mistaken foundation except the manufacturer, who moves the
women of the world about like pawns on a chessboard merely to benefit
his business. The society woman brings the latest thing "from Paris."
The large New York establishments sell to their patrons copies of
"Paris models." The middle-class shops and the middle-class women copy
the copies. The cheap shops and the poor women copy the copy of the
copy. Every copy is made of less worthy material than its model, of
gaudier colors, with cheaper trimmings, until we have the pitiful
spectacle of girls who earn barely enough to keep body and soul
together spending their money for garments neither suitable nor
durable--sleazy, shabby after a single wearing, short-lived--yet for a
few ephemeral minutes "up to date."
How far this heartbreaking habit of imitation extends in the poor
girl's life we can hardly say. She marries, and buys furniture,
crockery, and lace curtains cheap and unsuitable, like her clothes,
always imitations and soon gone, to be superseded by more of the same
sort. What thoughtful woman desires to feel herself part of an
influence which leads to so much that is insincere, uneconomical,
wasteful both of raw material and of the infinitely more important
material which makes women's souls? What teacher of young girls has a
right to hold back from setting her hand against the formation of
habits so undesirable?
And what of the vast output of the factories which turn out cheap
cloth, cheaper trimmings, imitations of silk, imitations of velvet,
ribbons which will scarcely survive one tying, shoes with pasteboard
soles, and all the other intrinsically worthless products which now
find ready sale? When women have been educated to a standard of taste,
of suitability, of quality, which will forbid the use of cheap
imitations of elegant and costly articles, will not the world gain in
bringing such factories to the making of products of real worth
instead of their present output?
The mother of the future will bring to bear upon the clothing question
not only more knowledge, but more serious thought, than she does
to-day. For the children she must provide comfortable, serviceable
play clothes in generous quantity, that they may pursue their
development unhampered in either body or mind. She must know the
hygiene of childhood and the psychology of children's clothes. For the
growing girls there must be a proper recognition of the growing
interest in adornment, avoiding the Scylla of vanity on one hand and
the Charybdis of unhappy consciousness of being "different from the
other girls" on the other. For the sons there must be careful
provision for the athletic life so dear to the boy, together with due
recognition of the approaching dignities of manhood, with special care
for the small details which mark the well-groomed man.
As in the matter of the food supply, there must be knowledge of
markets and skill in buying. And, as in that case, there should be
knowledge of the process of transforming materials into the finished
product. Processes involving a great degree of technical skill, such
as the tailor's art, the average woman will not attempt; but the
simpler forms of garment making present no special difficulty to
those who wish to try them or who find it expedient to do so.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
Buying clothing ready made. The question of buying clothing ready
made or of making it will find individual solution according to means,
inclination, and ability]
A wholesale assumption that it is only a question of a short time
before all garment making will be done in the factory is probably
without warrant. We read again and again of late, "The day of buying
instead of making _is here_! We may like it or not like it, but the
fact remains, _it is here_!" And then we look all about us, and find
that the day is apparently not here for at least several thousands of
people of whom we have personal knowledge. That discovery gives us
courage to look farther. We find paper-pattern companies flourishing;
dress goods selling in the retail departments as they have always
sold; seamstresses fully occupied; and we conclude that for some time
yet the question of buying or making will find individual solution,
according to means, inclination, and ability. What we wish to guard
against in the upbringing of our future mothers is the necessity of
buying because of a lack of the ability to make. The woman trained to
a knowledge of the making of garments is the only woman who can
intelligently decide the question for her own household. The others
are forced to a decision by their own limitations.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
In a community preserving kitchen questions of food supply may
sometimes be solved and community interests unified]
Passing from the elemental needs, shelter, warmth, food, and clothing,
we enter upon the most complex of woman's duties--adjustment of her
home to community conditions and provision for her family's share in
community life. That these more abstract problems frequently overlap
the concrete ones already enumerated need not be said. It is
impossible, even if we so desire, to live "to ourselves alone." We
shall undoubtedly stand for something in the community, whether
consciously or otherwise. If it were given us to know the extent of
our influence, we should probably be appalled at the crossing and
recrossing of the lines emanating from our daily lives.
In some households there are definite aims in the direction of
community life. These differ widely. In many the question seems to be
entirely, "What can I get from the community?" in some, "What can I
give?" in a few, "What can I share?" Of the three, the last is without
doubt the one which contributes most to community well-being.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
A community Christmas tree. Even the younger children may be given
the opportunity to take part in community work]
The ordinary family of necessity touches community life at one time or
another at certain well-defined points. The efficient homemaker must
therefore make intelligent provision for these points of contact with
the community.
Church and charity organizations have always been recognized in
American life as community matters and have provided community meeting
places and community work. Through them, especially in earlier days,
women often found their only common activities. The school furnished
the same common ground for the children. In the present time of
multiplied activity these organizations still stand in the foreground.
In them, both young and old find perhaps their best opportunity for
"team work."
A parish in which all pull together is perhaps as rare as a school in
which every child truly desires to learn. Yet neither is beyond the
possibilities. To keep each family in a proper attitude toward these
community institutions is part of the homemaker's work--and a delicate
task it often is. It is not enough for a mother to adopt a cast-iron
policy of indiscriminate approval of pastor or teacher, although that
is often recommended. Do you remember your resentment as a child of
the inflexible judgment "The teacher _must_ be right"? Really there is
no "must" about it, and the child knows that as well as we. The
mother, therefore, who is able to review the matter in dispute calmly,
justly, and withal sympathetically, and who indorses the teacher's
action after such review, is a better conserver of the public peace
than the prejudging mother.
Or suppose she fails to indorse the teacher's course. We have always
been led to expect that this failure ruins forever the teacher's
influence with the child. There are some of us, however, who doubt the
immediate destruction of a wise influence, even if we should say, "No,
I do not think I should have punished you in just that way. But
perhaps you have not told me all that occurred. Or perhaps you
overlook the fact that you had annoyed Miss ---- until, being human
like the rest of us, she lost her temper. Is it fair for you to treat
your teacher in such a way that you cause her to lose her
self-control?" It is usually possible for the wise mother to turn her
fire upon the child's own error without outraging the childish sense
of justice by indorsing something which does not really deserve
indorsement.
There is, perhaps, no way in which the mother of a family can do so
much for the community institutions as by keeping up her own interest
in them and thus stimulating the other members of the family to a
willingness to do their part in the work of uplift. Where everybody is
really interested and working, the first great stumbling block in the
way of public enterprises has already been surmounted.
In the case of the school, however, the well-trained mother will find
additional work to do. We who have been teachers know how vainly we
have sought for intimate acquaintance on the part of parents with the
school. And we who have been mothers know something of the
difficulties in the way of gaining such intimate acquaintance. In
spite of, or perhaps because of, my long years of schoolroom
experience, I am quite unable to conquer my reluctance to knock at a
classroom door. There is an aloofness about being a school visitor
which most mothers feel and few enjoy. However, it is possible to gain
so much of sympathetic understanding by persistent visiting that I
have found it worth while to disregard my reluctance.
So often we hear mothers say, "I try to visit school at least once
each year." I wonder if they ever think of that one visit as an
injustice to the teacher? Suppose that, as is quite probable, the
visitor arrives at an inopportune moment, finding the children in the
midst of work which won't "show off," or the air heavy with the
echoes of a disciplinary encounter, or the children restless as the
session draws to a close, or dull and listless from the heat of an
unusually hot day. What the visitor needs to do is not to visit once a
year, but to get acquainted with the school as she does with her
next-door neighbor or her mother-in-law. Having done this, she may
attend the meetings of the parent-teacher association with a
consciousness of knowing something of the problems to be met and
solved. Until she has formed such acquaintance she deals with unknown
quantities and is therefore in danger of erroneous conclusions.
[Illustration: Mothers visiting a school garden. Mothers need to
visit the schools often in order to know something of the problems to
be met and solved by the teachers]
It is interesting to see how completely both teacher and pupils take
to their hearts the mother who really does get acquainted them. How
easy it is to appeal to her for advice and help; and what a sense of
familiar ownership she comes to have in the school. It is no longer
merely "what my child is learning" or whether "my children are getting
what they ought to get in school," but rather "what _we_ are doing in
our school."
The activities of women in the church usually follow along well-worn
paths. The women help as they have always helped by their attendance
at service, by their ladies' aid society or guild, by their missionary
society, and by their aid to the poor of the town. Many struggling
churches depend almost solely upon their women's work for support.
That the woman whose problems we are studying should enter upon her
church duties armed with wisdom is quite as necessary as that she
should be earnest and enthusiastic. The church is not primarily a
neighborhood social center. It is first of all a means for spiritual
uplift. It must not, in a multiplicity of humanitarian activities,
lose its character of spiritual guide. Its women will therefore be
animated by a spiritual conception of the church and will base their
activities in church work upon such a conception. The church built
upon such a foundation will be foremost among local forces devoted to
community service and will be a true force in the individual lives of
its people. The women of the church need to use the church as an
effective instrument for community betterment--not merely material
welfare, but actual increase in spiritual worth. Perfunctory church
attendance has little part in such a program. It calls rather for
intelligent understanding of church problems and an application of
spiritual ideals to everyday life.
Outside the organizations common to all communities the homekeeper
finds that she must keep in touch with her particular neighborhood
through its social life. It is here that her children are growing up,
here that they find their friends, here that they give and take
knowledge of themselves, of people, of ways to enjoy life and to meet
its problems. Here perhaps they will find their life mates and will
start out to be homemakers themselves. The mother of a family must
know her community thoroughly. She must do her share toward making it
a safe place and a pleasant place in which her children and other
children may grow up, and in which she and her husband, other women
and their husbands, may spend their lives. The mother who knows her
children's friends, who makes them welcome at her house, who "gets
acquainted" with their qualities good and bad, who is a "big sister"
to them all, will not find herself shut out from her children's social
life. If all the mothers were "big sisters" and all the fathers were
"big brothers," neighborhood society would be a safer thing than it
sometimes is.
Nor should all the social life center about the young people. The
woman's club, the village improvement society, the men's civic league,
all have their places. Club life will menace neither the man nor the
woman whose first interest is the home; and every man and woman needs
the stimulus of contact with other minds.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
A road in DeKalb, Illinois, before improvements were made. Through
the agency of improvement societies, homemakers may often bring about
community reforms]
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
The same road after repairs were made through the efforts of members
of the community]
Sometimes it will happen that the homemaker finds work to be done in
the line of community reform. Perhaps the roads are out of repair, or
the cemetery is neglected, or the school building insanitary. Perhaps
the water supply is not properly guarded, or milk inspection not
thoroughly looked after. Perhaps industrial conditions in the town are
not what they should be. Perhaps laws are not being enforced. New
conditions require new laws. There may be loafing places on streets
and in stores which are dangerous. The billiard halls may need a
thorough moral cleaning and a moral man placed in charge. The public
dance halls may need proper chaperonage. The moving pictures need
state and national censorship to eliminate the careless suggestions
leading toward both vice and crime. The homemaker must know under such
circumstances how to stir public opinion, how to make use of her
existing organizations, how to set on foot the various movements
necessary for reform.
In connection with the subject of the homemaker's place in the
community we must return to the thought of woman as the buyer for the
home and of her consequent influence upon the economic standards of
the community. It is not unusual in these days to read or hear such
statements as the following: "The woman was no longer producer and
consumer.... She became the consumer and her entire economic function
changed.... The housewife is the buying agent for the home." Like many
statements in regard to woman and her function, this seems overdrawn,
since woman in her capacity as homemaker is still a producer as well
as a consumer in thousands of cases. That she will become,
economically, _merely_ a buying agent, some of us not only doubt, but
should consider a certain misfortune, should it occur. The fact
remains, however, that as buyer of both raw materials and finished
products the woman spends a very large percentage (some say
nine-tenths) of the money taken in by the retail merchants of the
country. This gives, or should give her, a commanding position in the
producing world. If the women of America should definitely decide
to-day that they would buy no more corn flakes, or mercerized crochet
cotton, or silk elastic, the factories now so busy turning out these
products would be shut down to-morrow until they could be converted to
other uses. Women often fail to realize their power in this
direction. When they do realize it, they are able to accomplish
quietly all sorts of reforms in the mercantile and industrial worlds.
There need be no crusade against adulterated foods other than real
education and the refusal of homemakers to buy from merchants who
carry them in stock. The same remedy will apply to overworked and
underpaid workers, to insanitary shops and factories. That it is the
woman's duty to control these matters is a necessary conclusion when
we consider her power as the "spender of the family income." Who else
has this power as she has it?
We have already noted how this power might be used to regulate not
only the quality but the character of products in the factories. If
women merely passed by the outlandish hats, the high heels, the hobble
skirts, of fashion, their stay would necessarily be short. The woman,
therefore, _if she choose_, is absolutely the controller of production
along most lines of food and raiment. That she shall use this
controlling power wisely is one of her obligations. And to meet the
obligation she must be wisely trained.
It would seem that the homemaker, as we have conceived her, has a part
in most of the concerns of the community. We speak of "woman and
citizenship." To many this means, perhaps, "woman and suffrage." Woman
in politics is already an accomplished fact in fourteen western
states. Suffrage has been granted her in the state of New York. That
her political influence will widen seems a foregone conclusion. She
must therefore be prepared for real service in civic concerns. Women
have already applied their housecleaning knowledge and skill to the
smaller near-by problems of civic life. As time goes on they must
render the same service to state and nation.
We shall soon see nation-wide "votes for women," in our own country,
at least. But whether we do or not, or until we do, woman and
citizenship are, as they have always been, closely linked together. In
every community relation the homemaker is the good, or indifferent, or
bad citizen; and in every home relation she is the citizen still, and,
more than that, the mother of future citizens.
In spite of the "uneasy women" who feel that the home offers
insufficient scope for their intellectual powers, the executive
ability required to run a home smoothly and well is of no mean order.
"This being a mother is a complicated business," as one mother of my
acquaintance expresses it. Can we afford to have homemaking underrated
as a vocation, to be avoided or entered into lightly, often with
neither natural aptitude nor training to serve as guide to the
"complications"? It would seem not. We must then consider "guidance
toward homemaking" as a necessary part of a girl's education and as a
possible solution of the home problems on every hand.
We have thus far in this book concerned ourselves with making plain
our ideal of girlhood and womanhood and with considering the problems
which our girl and woman, when we have done our best to prepare her,
will have to meet. We have thus far not concerned ourselves with the
questions of how, when, and where the work of preparation is to be
done. A clear vision of the end to be attained, not obscured by
thought of the means used in reaching it, seems a necessity. From this
we may pass on to careful, detailed consideration of agencies and
methods. Knowing what we desire our girls to be, we may enlist all the
forces which react upon girls to make them into what we desire.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 3: No studies of present-day conditions are available. The
proportion spent for food, clothing, etc., will remain nearly the
same. It is safe to multiply the above estimates by two to obtain the
actual cost of living in the year 1919.]
PART II
GUIDING GIRLS TOWARD THE IDEAL
"A vocational guide is one who helps other people to find
themselves. Vocational guidance is the science of this
self-discovery."
CHAPTER V
THE EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES INVOLVED
The three agencies most vitally concerned in this problem of "woman
making" are necessarily the home, the church, and the school--the home
and the church, because of their vital interest in the personal
result; the school, because, whatever public opinion has demanded,
schools have never been able to turn out merely educated human beings,
but always boys and girls, prospective men and women. And so they must
continue to do. Nature reasserts itself with every coming generation.
This being so, we must continue to "make women." If we desire to make
homemaking women, the most economical way to accomplish this is to use
the already existing machinery for making women of some sort. We
cannot begin too soon, nor continue our efforts too faithfully. The
school cannot leave the whole matter to the home, nor can the home
safely assume that the "domestic science" course or courses will do
all that is needed for the girl. Being a woman is a complex,
many-sided business for which training must be broad and
long-continued.
The teacher has perhaps scarcely realized her responsibilities or her
opportunities in this matter. For years, and in fact until very
recently, the whole tendency in education for girls has been toward a
training which ignores sex and ultimate destiny. The teachers
themselves were so trained and are therefore the less prepared to see
the necessity for any special teaching along these lines. They may
even resent any demand for specialized instruction for girls.
Yet we are confronted by the fact that the majority of girls do marry,
and that many of this majority are woefully lacking in the knowledge
and training they should have. Nor are these girls exclusively from
the poor and ignorant classes. There is no question about the
responsibility of the school in the matter. The state which "trains
for citizenship" cannot logically ignore the necessity for training
the mothers of future citizens.
"While I sympathize profoundly with the claim of woman for every
opportunity which she can fill," says G. Stanley Hall in
_Adolescence_, "and yield to none in appreciation of her ability, I
insist that the cardinal defect in the woman's college is that it is
based upon the assumption, implied and often expressed, if not almost
universally acknowledged, that girls should primarily be trained to
independence and self-support; and matrimony and motherhood, if it
come, will take care of itself, or, as some even urge, is thus best
provided for." This criticism, of existing educational conditions is
quite as applicable to schools for younger girls as to those which Dr.
Hall has in mind. There is no reason why both school and college may
not fit girls for a broad and general usefulness, for "independence
and self-support," and at the same time give them the training for
that which, with the majority already mentioned, comes to be the great
work of their lives.
Through all the lower grades of school life, and to a certain extent
through the whole course, the methods of instruction used will be
largely indirect. The child will-seldom be told, "This is to teach you
how to keep house." I can think of no field in which this indirect
method will produce greater results than the one we are considering.
[Illustration: Montavilla School garden, Portland, Oregon, where boys
and girls raise vegetables for serving in the lunchroom. Here the
science of growing things is taught as part of the "training for
citizenship"]
[Illustration: Lunchroom where vegetables grown in the Montavilla
School garden are prepared and eaten]
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
A model school home. One way of teaching children how to "keep house"
is by means of the model home where they are given instruction in all
the duties of the homemaker]
The teacher, in most cases, must begin her homemaking training by
realizing that her own example is by the very nature of things opposed
to the homemaking principle, the unmarried teacher being the rule in
most of our schools. Her first care, then, must be to counteract her
own example. Her references to home life must be always of the most
appreciative and even reverent sort. If, as is quite possible, she
comes from unsatisfactory conditions in her own home, she must be
doubly careful lest her prejudices be passed on to her pupils. She
will find ways in which to let it be understood that her ideals of
home life are not wanting, although she has not as yet--perhaps for
some reason never will--become a homemaker. I have sometimes thought
that teachers, in their effort to impress children in more direct
ways, lose sight of the great effect of their unconscious influence.
After all, it is what the teacher does, rather than what she says,
that impresses; and what she _is_, regulates what she does. The
teacher must, therefore, have the right attitude toward homemaking and
domestic life. It may be of the greatest value in determining the
force of her influence in this direction for the children to catch
intimate little glimpses of her domestic accomplishments, of her
sewing, or of her cooking, or of her quick knowledge and deft handling
of emergency cases. The teacher whose influence is felt most and lasts
longest is the one whose "motherliness" supplements her academic
acquirements and supplies a sympathetic understanding of the child.
[Illustration: Canning tomatoes at the Montavilla School. In such a
class the mothers of future citizens are given training in one of the
fundamental needs of the home--scientific cooking]
[Illustration: Lunchroom where children benefit by the scientific
cooking of the vegetables they grow]
With innate motherliness as a basis, the teacher must build up a
careful understanding not only of child nature, but of man and woman
nature as the developed product of child growth. She must be a student
of the "woman question" as a vital problem, always recognizing that
the whole social structure inevitably depends upon the status of woman
in the world. She must face without flinching her responsibilities in
sex matters. She may, or may not, be called upon to furnish sex
instruction to the girls under her care, but no rules can free her
from her moral responsibility in striving to keep the sex atmosphere
clean and invigorating. The "conspiracy of silence" on these subjects
is broken, and we must accept the fact that modesty does not require
an assumed or a real ignorance of the most wonderful of nature's laws.
"The idea that celibacy is the 'aristocracy of the future' is soundly
based if the Business of Being a Woman rests on a mystery so
questionable that it cannot be frankly and truthfully explained by a
girl's mother the moment her interest and curiosity seek
satisfaction."[4] And what the mother should tell, the teacher must
know.
Practical use of the teacher's carefully worked-out theories will be
made all along the line of the girl's, and to a certain degree the
boy's, education. The indirect teaching of the primary grades will
give place in the higher grades to more direct dealing with the
science, or, better, sciences, upon which homemaking rests. The
classroom becomes a "school of theory." The home stands in the equally
vital position of a laboratory in which the girl sees the theory
worked out and in time performs her own experiments. The finest
teaching presupposes perfect coöperation between school and home.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
Mothers' and daughters' meeting on sewing day. Coöperation between
the home and the school makes for the best teaching of domestic
science]
The first duty of the mother, like that of the teacher, is to preserve
always a right attitude toward home life. The girl who grows up in an
ideal home will be likely to look forward to making such a home some
day. Or, if the home is not in all respects ideal, the father or
mother who nevertheless recognizes ideal homes as possible may show
the girl directly or otherwise how to avoid the mischance of a less
than perfect home.
The prevalence of divorce places before young men and women sad
examples of mismating, of incompetent homemakers, of wrecked homes. We
can scarcely estimate the blow struck at ideals of marriage in the
minds of girls and boys by these flaunted failures. Nor can we even
guess how many boys and girls are led to a cynical attitude toward all
marriage by their daily suffering in families where parents have
missed the real meaning of "home." However practical we may become,
therefore--and we must be practical in this matter--we must never
overlook the need for parents to give home life an atmosphere of
charm. No one else can take their place in doing this. Hence it is
their first duty to make homemaking seem worth while.
The home must take the lead also in giving the idea of homemaking as a
definite and scientific profession. The school may teach the science,
but unless the home shows practical application of the scientific
principles, it would be much like teaching agriculture without showing
results upon real soil. Skillful teachers recognize the home as a
valuable adjunct to their school equipment and are able by wise
coöperation to use it to its full value.
The home, in its character of laboratory for the school of domestic
theory, must possess certain qualifications. Like all laboratories, it
should be well equipped. This does not mean necessarily with expensive
outfit, but with at least the best that means will allow. It implies
that the home shall be recognized as a teaching institution quite as
much as the school. Like other laboratories, it must be a place of
experiment, not merely a preserver of tradition. The efficient
laboratory presupposes an informed and open-minded presiding genius.
[Illustration: Courtesy of L.A. Alderman
First crop of radishes and lettuce at the Alameda Park School,
Portland, Oregon, June, 1916. Even in the primary grades children may
learn much about the science of growing things]
[Illustration: Bringing exhibits to a school fair in Tacoma,
Washington. Skillful teachers who recognize the home as a valuable
adjunct to the school equipment encourage the children to make gardens
at home]
The greatest service that the home can render in the cause of training
girls for homemaking is probably close, painstaking study of its own
individual girl--her likes, dislikes, aptitudes, and limitations.
Home-mindedness shows itself nowhere so much as in the home; lack of
home-mindedness shows there quite as much. The results of such study
should throw great light upon the problem of the girl's future.
Combined with the observations recorded by her teacher during year
after year of the girl's school life, this study offers the strongest
arguments for or against this or that career. Frequent and sympathetic
conferences between parent and teacher become a necessity. There is
then less likelihood of opposing counsel when the girl seeks guidance
toward her life work.
It is quite probable that, while the school undertakes to lay a
general foundation for homemaking efficiency, the home, when it
reaches the full measure of its power and responsibility, will be best
fitted to help the girl to specialize in the direction most suited to
her individual power. It can, if it will, _give_ the girl individual
opportunities such as the mere fact of numbers forbids the school to
give.
The special work of the church in training the girl is necessarily
that which has to do with her spiritual concept of life, the
strengthening of her moral fiber. Here school, home, and church must
each contribute its share. None of them can undertake alone so
important and delicate a task. Any attempt to make arbitrary divisions
in the work of these three agencies is bound to be at least a partial
failure. Conditions differ so widely that we can only say of much of
the work, "at school or church or in the home," or, better, "at
school and church and home in coöperation." Each must supplement the
efforts of the other, and where one fails, the other must take up the
task. It really matters little where the work is done, provided that
it _is_ done. The ensuing chapters of this book are written in the
hope that they may bring the vital problems of girl training and girl
guidance home to both teacher and parent; and especially that they may
convince both of the value of coöperation in the inspiring work of
helping our daughters to make the most of their lives.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 4: Ida M. Tarbell, _The Business of Being a Woman_.]
CHAPTER VI
TRAINING THE LITTLE CHILD
"Children are the home's highest product." That means at the outset
that we have children because we believe in them, and that we train
them, as the skilled workman shapes his wood and clay, to achieve the
greatest result of which the human material is capable.
A factory's output can be standardized. An engine's power can be
measured. But he who trains a child can never fully know the mind he
works with nor the result he attains. We do know, however, that if it
is subject to certain influences, trained by certain laws, _the
chances are_ that this mind which we cannot fully know will react in a
certain way.
To attempt in a chapter to outline a system of training for children
would be an attempt doomed to certain failure. Books are written on
this subject, and the shelves of the child-study and child-training
department in the libraries are rapidly filling. What I have in mind
here is rather a single line of the child's development--that which
leads toward making him a useful factor in the home life of which he
forms a part. The boy or girl who fills successfully a place in the
home of his childhood will be in a fair way to undertake successfully
the greater task of founding a home of his own.
In the days of infancy and early childhood, training for boys and
girls may be more nearly identical than in later life. A large part of
the differentiation in the work and play of little boys and girls
would seem to be quite artificial. We give dolls to girls and drums
to boys, but only because of some preconceived notion of our own. The
girls will drum as loudly and the boys care for the baby quite as
tenderly, until some one ridicules them and they learn to simulate a
scorn for "boys' things" and "girls' things" which they do not really
feel.
Throughout this chapter, therefore, it is to be assumed that the
training suggested is quite as applicable and quite as necessary for
one sex as for the other.
Young mothers sometimes ask the family doctor, "When shall I begin to
train the baby to eat at regular intervals, to go to sleep without
rocking, in general to accept the plan of life we outline for him?"
The answer seldom varies: "Before he is twenty-four hours old." It is
therefore evident that all the basic principles of living, whether
physical or mental, must have their foundations far back in the
child's young life.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
Helping with the housework. The boy or girl who successfully fills a
place in the home of his childhood will be in a fair way to undertake
successfully the greater task of founding a home of his or her own]
As a basis for all the rest, we must work for health. A truly
successful life, rounded and full, presupposes health. Regular habits,
nourishing food, plenty of sleep, are axiomatic in writings treating
of the care of young children, yet it is surprising how often these
rules are violated. "It is easier" to give the child what he wants or
what the others are having; easier to let him sit up than to put him
to bed; easier to regard the moment than the years ahead.
[Illustration: Already well started on his education]
Aside from the physical foundation, the training that we are to give
our little children will probably be based upon our conception of what
they need to make them good sons and daughters, good brothers and
sisters, good friends, good husbands and wives, and good fathers and
mothers. In other words, it is the social aspect of life that we have
in mind, and our social ideals. Whatever the boy "wants to be when he
grows up," he is sure to have social relations with his kind. Whether
the girl marries or remains single, she cannot entirely escape these
relations. Indeed they are thrust upon both boy and girl already. What
then do they need to enable them to be successful in the human
relations of living?
We might enumerate here a long list of virtues that will help, but,
since long lists shatter concentration, let us narrow them to four:
(1) sympathy, (2) self-control, (3) unselfishness, (4) industry.
I do not mean to say that, with these four qualities only, a man will
make a successful merchant or farmer, or that a woman will become a
good housekeeper or a skillful teacher. But I do mean that in family
relations these four qualities are worth more than intellectual
attainments or any sort of manual skill. It is really astonishing to
see how much these four will cover. We desire thrift--what is thrift
but self-control? Tolerance--what but sympathy--the "put yourself in
his place" feeling? Courtesy--what but unselfishness?
Let us, then, in the child's early years concentrate upon sympathy,
self-control, unselfishness, and industry. You will doubtless remember
Cabot's summary of the four requirements of man[5]--work, play, love,
and worship. Suppose we could write on the wall of every nursery in
the land:
Sympathy } { Work
Self-control } in { Play
Unselfishness } { Love
Industry } { Worship
Would not this writing on the wall be a fruitful reminder to the
mothers?
The period of early childhood is the one in which the home may act
with least interference as the child's teacher. Later, whether she
will or no, the mother must share the work of training with the
school, the church, and that indefinite influence we class vaguely as
society. During these few early years, then, the mother must use her
opportunity well. It will soon be gone.
How shall she teach such abstract virtues as sympathy, unselfishness,
self-control? Recognizing the fact that the little child acts merely
as his instinct and feelings prompt, she must make all training at
this stage of his life take the form of developing the instincts.
Probably the strongest of these at this time is imitation.
Consequently most of the teaching must take advantage of the imitative
instinct. The first care should be to surround the child with the
qualities we desire him to possess. The mother who scolds, gives way
to temper, or is unwilling or unable to control her own emotions and
acts can hope for little self-control in her child. In the same way
the father who kicks the dog or lashes his horse or is hard and cold
in his dealings with his family may expect only that his child will
begin life by imitating his undesirable qualities. This necessary
supervision of the child's environment is a strong argument for direct
oversight of little children by the mother. It is often difficult even
for her to keep an ideal example before the child; and if she leaves
it to hired caretakers, they seldom realize its necessity or are
willing to take the pains she would herself. Especially is this true
of the young and ignorant girls who are often seen in sole charge of
little children.
This first step being merely passive education, it is not enough. We
must not only set an example; we must go farther and strive to get
from the child acts or attitudes of mind based upon these examples.
Let us take first the quality of sympathy, which is closely allied to
reflex imitation. It is difficult to say just when the child merely
reflects the emotions of those about him and when he consciously
thinks of others as having feelings like his own. This conscious
thought is, of course, the foundation of real sympathy, and it comes
early in the child's life--probably before the fourth year.
[Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood
Stories that broaden the child's conception of the lives and feelings
of others are of value in training for sympathy]
A little girl of three was greatly interested and pleased at the
appearance of a roast chicken upon the family dinner table. She
chattered about the "birdie" as she had done before on similar
occasions. But when the carving knife was lifted over it, she
astonished everyone by her terrified cry of "Don't cut the birdie.
Hurt the birdie." No explanation or excuse satisfied her, and it was
finally necessary to remove the platter and have the carving done out
of her sight. Most children are naturally sympathetic _when they have
experienced or can imagine_ the feelings of others. The cruelty of
children, is usually due to their absorption in their own feelings
without a _realization_ of the pain they inflict.
Training for sympathy then must consist of enlargement of experience
and cultivation of imagination. Some mothers do not talk enough with
their children. They talk _to_ them--that is, they reprimand or direct
them, but do not carry on conversations, as they might do greatly to
the child's advantage. Telling stories is one of the most fruitful
methods of training at this age. Even "this little pig went to market"
has possibilities in the hands of a skillful mother. The bedtime story
is a definite institution in many families. It deserves to be so in
all. Beginning with the nursery rimes, the stories will gradually
broaden in theme, and if their dramatic possibilities are at all
realized by the story-teller, the children will broaden in their
conception of the lives and feelings of others. Sympathy will thus in
most cases be a plant of natural and easy growth.
Intercourse with other children and with the older members of the
child's family will also furnish constant material for the thoughtful
mother. The baby bumps its head, and the mother soothes it with
gentle, loving words. It is more than likely that the three-or
four-year-old will express his sympathy also. Surely he will if the
mother says, "Poor baby. See the great bump. How it must hurt!" Or
perhaps "big sister" is happy on her birthday. Again, the
three-year-old is likely to show happiness also, and the wise mother
will help the child by a timely word to take the step from reflex
imitation of happiness to true sympathy. Nor must we overlook the
occasions when some one in the nursery has been "naughty" and must be
punished. "Poor Bobby! He is sad because he cannot play with us this
morning. He feels the way you did when you were naughty and had to sit
so still in your little chair. I am sorry for Bobby--aren't you? We
hope he will be good next time, don't we?"
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
Kindergarten games afford the intercourse with other children
necessary to the child's development]
Teaching self-control is quite a different matter from the foregoing,
and one which requires infinitely more work and patience. The first
step is, however, the same. If you would have sympathy, show sympathy.
If you would have self-control in a child, control yourself. Remember
the strength of the imitative instinct. Next, strive to obtain control
in the young child in some small matter where control is easy. Any
normal child will learn that control _pays_--_if you make it pay_.
Encourage the hungry child to stop crying while you prepare his food,
but prepare it quickly, or he will begin to cry again to make you
hurry. Mothers usually work hard to teach control of bodily functions,
but often far less to obtain control of mental and moral conditions.
Obedience, considered from time immemorial the chief virtue of
childhood, is really only of value as it conduces to self-control in
later life. The wise parent, therefore, while requiring obedience for
the convenience of the family and the safety of the child, will lay
far more stress upon teaching the child to control himself. The work
must be done almost entirely by indirect methods during the early
years. Offering artificial rewards and dealing out artificial
punishments are the crudest forms of encouraging effort. The natural
reward and the inevitable natural punishment are far better when they
can be employed.
[Illustration: Courtesy of the United Charities of Chicago
A group of children at the Mary Crane Nursery, Chicago. Children
acquire self-control by learning to help themselves]
The child who overcomes his tendency to play before or during his
dressing may be rewarded by some special morning privilege which will
automatically regulate itself. In our family it is the joyful task of
bringing in and distributing the morning mail. The child not dressed
"on time" necessarily loses the privilege. We are not punishing, but
"we can't wait." Lack of control of temper presupposes solitude.
"People can't have cross children about." Quarrels inevitably bring
cessation of group play or work--solitude again. The child's love of
approbation may also be made of great assistance. Always we must
remember that doing _what we tell him to do_ is not after all the main
thing. It is doing the right thing, being willing to do the right
thing, and being able to hold back the impulse to do the wrong thing,
that count. We are working "to train self-directed agents, not to make
soldiers."
Unselfishness is a plant of slow growth. Indeed it is properly not a
childish trait at all, and the most we can probably get is its outward
seeming. But it is important that we at least acquaint the child with
ideals of unselfishness. We must find much in the child to appeal to,
even though altruistic motives do not appear until much later than
this. The love of approbation will prove a strong help again, also the
sense of justice with which children seem endowed from the beginning.
"Help him because he helped you," or "Give her some because she always
gives you part of hers," is often effective. Just as in the case of
self-control, the child will learn to overcome his innate selfishness
"if it pays" to do so. It may seem wrong to encourage any but the
highest motive, but a habit of unselfish acts, resting upon a desire
to win the approbation of others, is a better foundation upon which to
build than no foundation at all. Purely disinterested or altruistic
motives do not appear in the normal child much before the age of
adolescence, and by that time selfishness, which accords so well with
the individualistic instincts of the child, will have hardened into a
fixed habit if not vigorously checked.
Care must be taken to _lead_ the child toward unselfish acts, but not
to _force_ them upon him. The common courtesies of life we may
require, but, beyond that, example, tactful suggestion, wisely chosen
stories, and judicious praise will do far more than force.
The idea of kindness may be grasped by young children and, together
with the great ideal of service, should be emphasized in their home
life and in their intercourse with other children. The "only child"
suffers most from lack of opportunity to learn these two great needs
of his best self--kindness and service. Occasions should be
systematically made for such a child (indeed for all children) to meet
other children on some common ground. Playthings should be shared,
help given and received, and the idea of interdependence brought out.
"We must help each other" should be emphasized from early childhood.
Much must be made of the little helps the child is able to give in the
home--bringing slippers for father, going on little errands about the
house for mother, picking up his own playthings, hanging up his coat
and hat, caring for the welfare of the family pets. Careful provision
should be made for the child's convenience in performing these little
services. There must be places for the toys, low hooks for the wraps,
and constant encouragement and recognition of the small helper. Some
day he may help you because he loves to help. Now he loves to be
praised for helping.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
Helping the little sister. Children will learn unselfishness and
kindness if they are early taught to help one another]
Activity is a natural and absorbing part of a child's life. He is
always doing something. It remains for the parent to direct this
restless movement and to transform some of it into useful labor. Work,
in the sense of accomplishing results for the satisfaction and benefit
of the parent, is quite foreign to our plan for training the young
child. But work for the child's own satisfaction and for the formation
of the habit of industry must occupy our attention in large measure.
The child's playthings should from his earliest days be chosen in
recognition of his desire to do things and make things. The shops are
filled with showy toys, mechanical and otherwise, and children find
the toyshop a veritable fairyland. But once satiated with the sight of
any particular toy, however cunningly devised--and satiety comes
soon--the child forsakes the gorgeous plaything for his blocks, or
paper and a pair of scissors, or even his mother's clothespins. He can
do something with these.
The Montessori materials are perhaps the most thoughtfully planned in
this direction of anything now obtainable; and no one having the care
of young children should be without some knowledge of this now famous
method. All the materials have this advantage: they offer definite
problems and consequently afford the child the joy of accomplishment.
A few of the occupations of life afford us unending enjoyment at every
stage of the doing, but not many. It is rather the achievement of our
end, the "lust of finishing," which carries us through the tiresome
details of our work. The child must therefore be early introduced to
the joy of accomplishment. Instead of unending toys, give him
something to work with. He will appreciate your thoughtfulness, and he
will find not only joy but real development in their use.
At first the child's work will consist of fragmentary efforts, but at
a remarkably early age he will show evidence of a power of
concentration and persistence which will make possible the
accomplishment of finished undertakings. He begins to know what he
wants to do and to exhibit considerable ingenuity in finding and
combining materials. Most of all, he wants to imitate the activities
he sees around him.
In the strain of modern life a widespread restlessness seems to have
seized mankind. Whatever people do, they want to be doing something
else, and the pathway of the average individual is strewn with crude
beginnings, half-finished jobs, abandoned work. The child very easily
falls into line with this tendency of his elders. Hence he needs
definite encouragement to see clearly what he has in hand and to bring
his industrial attempts to a worth-while conclusion. Avoid, even with
a little child, that inconsiderate habit of "grown-ups" of calling the
little worker away whenever you desire his attention or help, quite
regardless of the damage you may do to his work by your untimely
interruption. Keep the child, as far as possible, too, from
undertaking tasks too difficult or requiring too much time for
completion. Discourage aimless handling of tools. A cheerful "What are
you making?" sometimes crystallizes hitherto rambling desires. A
timely suggestion often meets with enthusiastic response.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
Helping in the home tasks. Wisely directed activity will teach the
child both unselfishness and industry]
The working outfit of a child under school age may or may not include
kindergarten or Montessori material. Balls, blocks, pencils and paper,
paste, colored crayons, scissors, a blackboard, a cart, a wheelbarrow,
stout little garden tools, a sand tray or, better, in summer an
outdoor sandpile, will furnish endless work and endless delight to a
child or group of children. It is not so much what sort of material we
use as the way in which we use it. Even at this age the child longs to
be a producer, to "make things"; and his best development requires
that we train this inclination. There is a prevalent notion that women
especially are no longer required to be producers and that all our
energies should be bent toward the sole task of making them
intelligent consumers. There is, however, a joy in producing without
which no life is really complete. And no scheme of education can be a
true success which ignores or neglects the necessity of producing. The
joy of work, the delight in achievement, should be the keynote of all
industrial training. This should be kept constantly in view.
To most people there is something wonderfully appealing about the
innocence of the little child. We watch with delight the marvelous
development of the little mind keeping pace with the growth of bodily
strength and dexterity. We are reluctant to see the day drawing near
when the child must begin his long course of training in school.
Sometimes we fail to recognize the fact that before school days come
the child has already received a considerable part of his education;
that the habits which will make or mar his future are often firmly
implanted and in a fair way to become masters of the young life. An
elaborate plan for the little child's training would probably be
abandoned even if undertaken, since elaborate plans involve endless
work. If, however, we attempt no more than I have outlined in this
chapter, we have some reasonable chance of success. Given good health,
with regular bodily habits, as a physical foundation, the child will
have had much done for him if we have begun to build the habits of
sympathy, self-control, industry, and service which will purify and
sweeten the family relations of later years and make the one-time
child worthy himself to undertake the important task of home building.
It is naturally a matter for regret that the teacher into whose hands
the child comes first at school usually knows so little of the home
training he has had or failed to have. Children whose parents have
made little or no attempt to teach these fundamental qualities which
we have had under discussion are sometimes forever handicapped unless
the teacher can supply the deficiency. Children who have made a good
beginning may lose much of what they have been taught unless the
teacher recognizes and holds them to the ideal. The kindergarten or
primary teacher needs to know the homes of her pupils; and the time is
not far distant when the school will recognize the home as after all
the first grade in school life. Then mothers will receive the
inspiration of contact with the teachers and their ideals, not alone
when their children reach school age, but from the time the first
child arrives in the home. The Sunday school has its "cradle roll."
The day school may emulate its example.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 5: Cabot, _What Men Live By_.]
CHAPTER VII
TEACHING THE MECHANICS OF HOUSEKEEPING
Going to school marks an epoch in every child's life. Hitherto,
however wide or narrow the child's contact with the world has been,
the mother has been, at least nominally and in most cases actually,
the controlling power. Now she gives her child over for an
increasingly large part of every day to outside influence.
More and more we are coming to see that the evolution of a successful
homemaker requires that the school as well as the home keep the
homemaking ideal before it. And so the best schools of the country are
doing. The greatest needs of the little girl's early school days would
seem to be a definite understanding between teacher and mother of the
share each should assume in the homemaking training. This necessitates
personal conferences or mothers' meetings, or both.
The little girl of primary-school age points the way for both teacher
and mother by her adaptation and imitation of home activities in her
play. In primary grades girls are approaching the height of the doll
interest, which Hall and others place at eight or nine years. A doll's
house, therefore, may be made the source of almost infinite enjoyment
and profit in these grades. Indeed it is hardly too much to say that
no primary room is complete without one. Nor is there any reason why
any school should remain without one, since its making is the simplest
of processes. Four wooden boxes, of the same size, obtained probably
from the grocer, the dry-goods merchant, or the local shoe dealer,
will make a most satisfactory house if placed in two tiers of two
each, with the open sides toward the front. This gives four rooms,
which may be furnished as kitchen, dining room, living room, and
bedroom. Windows may be cut in the ends or back, if the boys of the
school are sufficiently expert with tools or if outside assistance can
be secured for an hour or so.
The best results with the doll's house are obtained if the children
are allowed to furnish it themselves, with the teacher's advice and
help, rather than to find it completely equipped and therefore merely
a "plaything" of the sort that children have less use for because they
can do little with it. An empty house presents exciting possibilities,
and perhaps for the first time these little girls look with seeing
eyes at the home furnishings, for they have wall paper to select,
curtains and rugs to make, and indeed no end of things to do.
[Illustration: The little girl adapts and imitates home activities in
play]
It is perhaps scarcely necessary to call to mind the educational
advantages possible in the planning and making of bedding, draperies,
table linen, towels, couches and pillows, window seats, and other
furnishings, as well as in the ingenuity brought into play in evolving
kitchen utensils and in stocking the cupboards with the necessities
for housekeeping. The free interchange of ideas should be encouraged,
and the spirit of seeking the best fostered.
The conspicuous results in this work are two: we secure the child's
attention to details of housekeeping, and we build up a foundation
ideal of what housekeeping equipment should be. Children in poorly
equipped homes may find the most practical of training in this way. My
experience has been that teachers have only to begin this work in
order to arouse enthusiasm in any class of little girls. Once begun,
it carries itself along. There should be no compulsion in this work.
Choice and not necessity must be the rule in all our training for
homemaking. To compel a child's attention to that which she will later
do voluntarily, if at all, will at the very outset defeat our purpose.
[Illustration: Making furniture for a doll's house affords
educational advantages in emphasizing the details of housekeeping]
The finest sort of coöperation arises in this work when parents are
led to provide the little girl at home with a doll's house fashioned
like the one at school. Perhaps they may go a step farther and find
space for a larger scheme of housekeeping, in the attic or elsewhere.
Coöperation among the children means interchange of ideas, materials,
and labor, most helpful to social ideals.
From the furnishing of the doll's house it is easy to pass to plays
involving the activities of home life. Children delight in sweeping,
dusting, washing dishes, arranging cupboards and pantries, and making
beds in their miniature houses, and if their efforts are wisely
directed, orderly habits easily begin to form. In all these varieties
of work the children must be led to feel that there is a right way,
and that only that way is good enough, even for play.
The great result of all play housekeeping is the formation of ideals.
It is just as easy to learn at seven or eight the most efficient way
of washing dishes as it is to defer that knowledge until years of
inefficient work harden into inefficient habits. The teacher will find
abundant and interesting studies in household efficiency in recently
published books to inspire her guidance of the children's activity.
The step from washing play dishes at school to washing real dishes at
home is easily taken, and children are delighted to take it. Here
again the school and home may--indeed must, for best results--work
together. Some schools are giving school credit for home work along
domestic lines. That there are complex elements entering into the
successful working out of such a plan one must admit. A school giving
credit for work it does not see may put a premium upon quantity rather
than quality. The teacher who asks her little pupils to wash the home
dishes according to school methods may encounter adverse comment from
certain parents who are quick to resent outside "management."
Nevertheless, home practice in accordance with school theory is the
ideal of any coöperative education in the mechanics of housekeeping;
therefore some scheme must be worked out whereby the girls will
practice at home, and, having learned to do by doing, will continue to
do in the families where their doing will be a help.
Let us consider for a moment the present condition of the
school-credit-for-home-work idea. Schemes are being worked out in
various places, under one or the other of the following plans.
_Plan I_ (often known as the Massachusetts plan). Each pupil, with the
advice of his teacher and the consent of his parents, selects some one
definite piece of work to do at home regularly, under direction of the
school and with some study at school of the practical problems
involved. School credit depends upon approval by the teacher on the
occasion of a visit of inspection to the home.
_Plan II_ (sometimes called the Oregon plan). This is more directly
concerned with the cultivation of a helpful spirit than with perfect
technique or broad knowledge. No attempt is made to correlate home and
school work. Credit is given merely for the fact that the dishes were
washed, the table set, or the baby bathed, the fact being properly
certified by the parent. Whether the work was acceptably done or not
rests entirely with the parent. In the carrying out of the latter plan
blanks are usually issued to be filled out and handed in once a week
or once a month. Each task carries a certain value in school credit.
That either of these plans possesses certain weaknesses doubtless even
their makers would admit. But they are at least opening wedges. A plan
might be worked out whereby little girls are taught one household task
at a time, through their play housekeeping, after which credit may be
given for satisfactory performance of the task at home. Later another
household duty may be taught, and put into practice, with credit, at
home, thus building up a body of known duties for which the little
house-helper has been duly trained. For its highest efficiency such a
plan would require more than consent on the part of mothers. Its
success would depend upon coöperative leadership and its value upon
the acceptance, for school credit, of only that work done in
conformity with school ideals.
But at all events, whether school credit be given or not, the stimulus
of interest in home tasks may be given strength by the teacher's wise
suggestion, and thoughtful consideration of the matter in teachers'
and mothers' meetings will insure coöperation of the most helpful
sort. The tactful teacher will find ways to suggest to mothers that
children be held up at home to the ideals of efficiency she has been
at pains to put before them at school.
The suggestion has been recently made by several thoughtful educators
that the noon hour, in schools where children do not go home for
dinner, be made use of for the simplest of cooking lessons. The
children who at seven are quite content to play house soon pass into
the stage where they wish to see results from their work. They want to
"make things," real things, that they or some one can use. Children of
nine or ten can learn to cook cereals and eggs in various ways, to
make cocoa, and to prepare other simple dishes. Their pride and
delight in these accomplishments are intense. These activities are
equally suited to the small rural school and to the consolidated
schools which are happily taking the place of the one-room buildings.
In both, the teacher may find the lunch hour a real educational force
if it is used aright. If the teacher allows and guides these efforts
in the schoolroom, she must keep in mind her "ideal of efficiency."
Accurate measurements, logical processes, elimination of awkward and
unnecessary movements, care in following directions, neatness, and
precision are the real lessons to be learned.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
A school garden. The possibilities for good through school-garden
work are numberless]
School gardens are perhaps already too familiar to require more than a
word. Their possibilities for good are numberless. In them many
children get their first insight into the joys of making things grow
and are led by this joy to undertake the care of a home garden and to
beautify the home surroundings as they had never thought of doing
before. School-garden work leads to beautifying the school grounds,
with resulting pride and interest in the school.
Accompanying the activities we have suggested, teachers will find a
wide field in attractive stories of helpful coöperative home life.
Extracts from many of Miss Alcott's stories, the Cratchits' Christmas
dinner from Dickens' _Christmas Carol_, and many other delightful
glimpses of home life can be read, or, better, dramatized, with little
effort and with good results.
It may seem that the homemaking training here suggested for younger
children is too desultory, too slight, in fact, to affect the
situation much. But let us consider. Homemaking is an art, coming more
and more to be based on a foundation of science. For it is undoubtedly
true that, while the pessimists are telling us that the home is
doomed, we who are optimists see coming toward us a great wave of
homemaking knowledge which if seized upon will put the homemaker's art
upon a surer foundation than it has ever been.
The elements of housekeeping are the _ABC_ of homemaking. We shall do
well to teach them early, incidentally, and with no undue exaggeration
of their place in the scheme of living. We simply familiarize the
girl, by long and quiet contact, with the tools of the homemaker, for
future scientific use, just as we teach the multiplication facts for
later use in the science of mathematics.
A definite list of the simple homemaking tasks suitable for little
girls to undertake may not be out of place here:
1. Setting the table. (A card list of table necessities is
useful. Such a list may be given each little girl when she
undertakes home practice work.)
2. Clearing the table.
3. Washing the dishes.
4. Sweeping the kitchen. Sweeping the piazza.
5. Dusting.
6. Making beds and caring for bedrooms.
7. Arranging her own bureau drawers and closets.
8. Simple cooking.
9. Hemming towels and table linen.
10. Ironing handkerchiefs and napkins.
As the child grows older, methods of teaching grow increasingly
direct. Even here we shall perhaps not talk a great deal about
"preparing for homemaking." But we shall see that the tools grow
increasingly familiar, and that ideals once taught are retained and
added to. We shall see that our science, our mathematics, our art, all
contribute to the acquirement of homemaking knowledge. We shall give a
practical turn to these more or less abstract subjects.
Sewing and cooking classes are by this time a recognized part of
grammar-school courses in many city schools. That they are not so
firmly intrenched in the country schools is due usually to
difficulties in the way of securing equipment and to the already
crowded condition of the school program. The ideal remedy is the
substitution of the consolidated school with its domestic science room
and its specially trained teacher for the scattered one-room
buildings. Wherever the consolidated school has come, it has been
enthusiastically received and supported. No one wishes to go back to
the old way. But in many localities the consolidated school has not
come and cannot be immediately looked for; and in these places the
need of the homemaking work is just as great. The teacher must find
the way to give these girls what they need. If no other way presents
itself, the teacher will do well to ask the help of the mothers of the
neighborhood. Perhaps one who is an expert needlewoman will give an
hour or two a week in the school or at her own home to carrying out
the sewing course which the teacher cannot crowd into her own already
overcrowded program. Perhaps another will do the same for the cooking,
making her own kitchen for one afternoon a week an annex of the
school. It is important, however, when such arrangements are made that
they be recognized as school work, and if possible the courses
followed should be planned and supervised by the regular teacher of
the school. Thus only can they be held to standardized accomplishment.
The inadequacy of the "one-portion" method of teaching girls to cook
has aroused serious thought, and remedies of various sorts have been
applied. You know, perhaps, the story of the Chicago cooking-school
student who "had to make seven omelets in succession at home last
night" because one egg would not make enough omelet for the family.
The first remedy tried was cooking for the school lunch room. This
was, however, usually going from one extreme to the other, since the
lunch room is as a rule maintained only in large schools.
"Institutional cooking," some one calls it. Instead of one
egg-cooking, it became one-hundred-egg cooking, and the difficulty of
the average student in adapting school methods to family use was not
by any means at an end.
The Central High School of Newark, New Jersey, has solved its problem
by putting its girls to work, not at the task of providing the
sandwiches, soups, and other luncheon dishes for its large lunch room,
but at providing "family dinners" at twenty-five cents a plate for the
faculty of the school. Other schools follow similar plans.
The grammar-school girls of Leominster, Massachusetts, serve luncheon
to a limited number every day at their domestic science house. Here
the girls do the marketing, cook and serve the meal, and keep the
various rooms of the house in order. In Montclair, New Jersey, work of
this same sort is done. In each of these cases the cooking is done as
it would have to be in the home, not for one person, nor for hundreds,
but for approximately a family-sized group.
Sewing courses also grow more and more practical. In some schools the
girls make their own graduating dresses as a final test of their
ability. Courses are definite, and girls completing them will have
definite knowledge of everyday processes of hand sewing. The schools
which add to their hand-sewing courses well-planned practice in the
use of the sewing machine are further adding to the accomplishment of
their girls. Those which go farther still and teach garment planning
and making may consider their sewing courses fairly complete.
[Illustration: Teachers' luncheon cooked and served by pupils at the
Clinton Kelly School, Portland, Oregon. Other schools have adopted
similar plans for teaching girls how to cook]
The formation of ideals must go hand in hand with practice in manual
processes. The girl must learn to know good work when she sees it, to
know a properly constructed garment from one carelessly put together,
and to value good work and construction.
Time was when domestic science meant sewing and cooking, and these
alone. That time, however, is past. The care of a house is
practically taught in many schools throughout the country by the
maintenance of a model apartment in or near the school building. In
Public School No. 7, New York City, grammar-school girls, many of whom
are of foreign parentage and tradition, are thus introduced to the
American ideal of living. The school is thus establishing standards of
equipment, of food, of service, of comfortable living, that tend to
Americanize quite as much as the establishment of standards of speech,
of business methods, or of civic duties. The work done in this school
is typical of that prevailing in hundreds of towns and cities.
[Illustration: A girls' sewing class. Work in sewing offers unlimited
possibilities]
The question arises: How much of her housekeeping training should a
girl receive before entering upon her high-school course? After
careful consideration it seems wise to urge that the greater part of
the practical household work be taught during the period from eleven
to fourteen. This does not imply that homemaking training should
cease at fourteen, but rather that after that age attention shall be
centered upon the more difficult aspects of the subject--upon
"household economics" rather than the skillful doing of household
tasks.
In view, however, of the fact that the majority of girls never reach
the high school, every bit of household science which they can grasp
should be given them in the elementary school. Knowing how to do is
only part of the housekeeper's work. Knowing what and when to do is
quite as important. Elementary study of food values is quite as
comprehensible as elementary algebra. Home sanitation and decoration
are no harder to understand than commercial geography. The principles
of infant feeding and care may be grasped by any girl who can
successfully study civil government or grammar.
Shall we then crowd out commercial geography or government or grammar
to make room for these homemaking studies? Not necessarily, although,
if it came to a choice, much might be said for the practical studies
in learning to live. Fortunately it need not come to a choice. There
is room for both. We must, however, learn to adapt existing courses to
the requirements of girls.
[Illustration: Courtesy of L.A. Alderman
A model school home where all the practical details of housekeeping
are taught]
[Illustration: A domestic science class at work in the model school
home shown above]
There is arithmetic, for instance. Most of us have already learned to
skip judiciously the pages in the textbook which deal with compound
proportion, averaging payments, partial payments, and cube root. Now
we must learn to insert the keeping of household accounts; the study
of apportioning incomes; the scientific spending of a dollar in food
or clothing value; the relative advantage of cash or credit systems of
paying the running expenses of a home; the dangers of the
"easy-payment plan"; the cost of running an automobile; comparison
with the upkeep of a horse and wagon; comparison of the two from the
point of view of their usefulness to a family; mortgaging homes, what
it means, and what it costs to borrow; when borrowing is justified;
the accumulation of interest in a savings account; the comparative
financial advantage of renting and owning a home; the cost of building
houses of various sorts; the cost of securing, under varying
conditions, a water supply in the country home; and other locally
important problems. We already have "applied science" in our courses,
and we are making a strenuous effort to apply arithmetic; but we have
not usually tried to apply it to the education of the prospective
homemaker.
Take the one question of the "installment plan." Where, if not in the
public school, can we fight the menace offered to the inexperienced
young people of the land by this method of doing business? And where
in the public school if not in the arithmetic class? Consider the
possibility of lives spent in paying for shoes and hats already worn
out, of furniture double-priced because payment is to be on the "easy
plan," of families always in debt, with wages mortgaged for months in
advance. The pure science of mathematics will be of little avail in
fighting this possibility, but "applied arithmetic" can be a most
effective weapon.
In our geography classes we may find time for the study of food and
clothing products, of their sources, their comparative usefulness, and
their cost. We may learn whether it is best to buy American-made
macaroni or the imported variety; whether French silks and gloves are
superior to those made in America; what "shoddy" is, what we may
expect from it if we buy it, how much it is worth in comparison with
long-wool fabrics, how to know whether shoddy is being offered us when
we buy. Countless other matters concerning the markets and products of
the world will repay the same sort of treatment.
[Illustration: One of the class exercises in the model school home
shown on page 115]
[Illustration: The correct serving of meals forms part of the class
work in this same home]
Food questions are opened up by study of our meat, vegetable, and
fruit supply. Every town may make this a personal and immediate
problem. From whom did Mr. Blank, the local grocer, obtain his canned
tomatoes? It is sometimes possible to follow up those canned tomatoes
to their source. In one investigation of this sort they were found to
have passed through six hands. The arithmetic class may pass upon the
question of profits and comparative cost between this and the
"producer-to-consumer" method.
The art work of the schools may also contribute generously to the body
of homemaking knowledge. For the average girl the designing and making
of Christmas cards and book covers, or even the prolonged study of
great paintings, is a less productive use of time than the designing
of cushion covers, curtains, bureau scarfs, or candle shades. In a
certain town in New England considerable effort was expended in
bringing about the introduction of art work in the schools a few years
ago. A normal-school art graduate took charge of the work. It has now
been abandoned because "the children took so little interest." And
really, if you knew the conditions, you could not blame them They
studied art and copied art and tried to cultivate an artistic sense in
ways as remote from their daily lives as could apparently be
contrived. And the pity of it all is that here were girls whose homes,
whose personal dress, were crying out for the application of art;
whose artistic sense was growing of failing to grow according as their
individual conditions would allow; and the public school has passed
its opportunity by.
Art, as applied to school work, is divided usually into appreciative
and creative work. We place before children the best in picture and
sculpture and music. Why do we not teach them also the foundation
principles of good taste in matters less remote from the lives of many
of them? Why not teach the girl something of artistic color
combination? Why not apply the test of art to the lines of woman's
attire? Why not study the contour of heads and styles of hairdressing?
Happily, in these days, these things also are being done. We have
"manual arts" rooms and teachers by whose aid girls are taught to use
the principles of design they study in their everyday planning of
everyday things. A visitor to the Central School of Auburn,
Washington, reports interesting work going on in such a room. On the
blackboard was written:
The general aim of design work--order and beauty.
The three principles governing design are:
Balance--Harmony--Rhythm.
Balance: opposition of equal forms.
Rhythm: movement in direction--joint action--motion.
Harmony: similarity.
In the room were girls doing various sorts of work--coloring designs
on fabrics for curtains and pillow covers; making original designs for
crocheted lace; hemstitching draperies; preparing color material for a
primary room; while on a table in the center of the room were many
finished articles, made by the girls and carrying out their principles
of design--"not one of which," says the visitor, "but would serve a
useful purpose in home or office."
House building, interior decorating, and furnishing are all worthy of
serious attention in the art course. Simplicity, harmony, and
suitability may well be taught as the principles of good taste. Girls
must learn these principles somewhere to make the most of their homes
by and by. And again the public school, and probably the elementary
school, must do the work.
Physiology and hygiene are already contributing to the knowledge which
makes for human betterment, but they also can be made to contribute
much more than they have sometimes done. The physiology of infancy
must be widely and insistently taught.
With proper education she [the young mother] would know the
meaning of the words food and sleep; she would know
something of their overwhelming importance upon the future
being and career of her child, who in his turn is to be one
of the world's citizens with full capacity for good or evil.
Knowing what were normal functions, she would be able to
recognize and guard against deviations from them. No day
would pass in which she would not find opportunity to
exercise self-restraint, keen observation and sensible
knowledge in furthering the normal and healthful evolution
of her child.[6]
The "little mother" classes in settlement houses, in community social
centers, and in some public schools are doing excellent work in
beginning this knowledge of infancy. No elementary school can really
afford to miss the opportunity such work holds out. Have we any right
to let a girl approach the care of her child with less than the best
that modern science can offer in this most important and exacting work
of her life? If not, it is again the public school which alone can be
depended upon to do the work, and we must get at least the beginning
of it done before the girl escapes us at the close of her
elementary-school course.
If you are impatient with a program which presupposes that practically
all women will be homemakers and mothers, either trained or otherwise,
let me remind you that the majority of women do marry, that most of
these and many of the unmarried do become homemakers, and that it will
be far safer for society to train the few--less than 10 per cent--who
never enter the career than to pursue the economically wasteful plan
of assuming educationally that no women will be homemakers, or that if
they are they can successfully undertake the most complicated,
difficult, and most important profession open to women with no
preparation at all, or with only what they have unconsciously absorbed
at home in the brief pauses of the education which did not educate
them for life.
The education for homemaking will never lose sight of the fact that
girls must really be prepared for a double vocation, since it is a
question whether or not they will become homemakers, and they must at
all events be prepared for the years intervening between school and
home. On the contrary, the education which prepares the homemaker will
exercise special care in training for those intervening years, or for
life work if it should prove to be such. Of all distinctly vocational
training, it is only fair, however, that the homemaking training
should come first, as a foundation for all later work. Whether the
girl thus trained ever presides over a home of her own or not, the
training will have made her a broader woman and a better worker, with
a finer understanding of the universal business of her sex.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 6: Oppenheim.]
CHAPTER VIII
THE GIRL'S INNER LIFE
While we are occupied in teaching the girl the "ways and means" by
which she is later to carry on the business of homemaking, we must not
overlook the fact that, although ways and means are vitally necessary,
it is after all the spirit of the girl which will supply the motive
power to make the home machinery run. With this in view we must so
plan the girl's training as to secure not only the concrete knowledge
of doing things, but also the more abstract qualities which will equip
her for her work.
False ideals and ignorance of housekeeping processes are responsible
for thousands of homekeeping failures; but lack of fairness, of good
temper, patience, humor, courage, courtesy, stability, perseverance,
and initiative must be held accountable for thousands more. For these
qualities, then, the girl must be definitely and painstakingly
trained. In other words, we must work for the highest type of woman,
spiritually as well as industrially.
It may seem that definite instruction in such abstract qualities as
good temper or stability or fairness is difficult or perhaps
impossible to Secure. Since, however, all the girl's intercourse with
her kind affords daily opportunity for practice of these qualities,
instruction may easily accompany and become a part of her daily life.
The lack of these qualities handicaps the girl even in her school life
and shows there plainly the handicap that, unless help is given her,
she will suffer for life.
Her school work offers ample opportunity for the cultivation of
patience and perseverance. Teachers must combat vigorously the
"give-up" spirit, and the troublesome "changing her mind" which leads
the girl along a straight path from "trying another" essay subject or
embroidery stitch as soon as difficulties present themselves to trying
another husband when the first domestic cloud arises. Play hours as
well as work hours are invaluable in teaching the girl the difficult
art of getting along with the world. The educational value of games is
largely found in their social training. Experience teaches that
children require long and patient instruction to enable them to play
games. They have to learn fairness, courtesy, good temper; honesty,
kindness, sympathy. They have to learn to be good losers and to
consider the fun of playing a better end than winning the game.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
Play hours as well as work hours are invaluable in teaching the girl
the difficult art of getting on with the world]
Games must be carefully distinguished from the more general term play.
All play not solitary has recognized social value; games, because the
idea of contest is involved, have a special value of their own. Close
observation of young children in their games, especially when
unsupervised, shows us self supreme. According to temperament, the
child either pushes his way savagely to the goal or furtively seeks to
win by cunning and craft. He must win, regardless of the process. How
many of these unsupervised games end in "I sha'n't play," in angry
bursts of tears, or even in blows! How many fail upon close scrutiny
to show some less assertive child, who never wins, who is never
"chosen," who might better not be playing at all than never to "have
his turn"!
[Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood
Hunter High School girls playing hockey in Central Park, New York.
The educational value of games lies in the fact that they teach fair
play, self-control, and proper consideration of others]
During the individualistic period games must be for the satisfaction
of individualistic desires. Team work must await a later development
of child nature. But while each child may play to win, his future
welfare demands that his efforts be in harmony with certain
principles.
1. He must respect the rules of the game.
2. He must "play fair."
3. He must control anger, jealousy, boastfulness, and other of the
more elemental emotions.
4. He must consider the handicaps suffered by some players, and
see that they get a "square deal."
Girls' games and boys' games at this period happily show little
differentiation. Almost any game not prejudicial to health serves to
call into action the moral forces we strive to cultivate. The game to
a certain extent typifies the larger life--the life of effort,
contest, striving to win. Self-control and proper consideration of
others in the one must serve as a help in fitting for the other.
[Illustration: Courtesy of L.A. Alderman
Drill work as well as games is beneficial to health and also teaches
self-control]
Teachers are often inclined to overlook or undervalue the training of
girls in games. The fact is that girls especially need this training
as the woman's sphere in present-day life is widening. Men have always
had contact with the world. Women have in times past had to content
themselves with a single interest involving contest--the social game.
How far we may safely go in utilizing the game element--that is, the
contest or competition element--in school work is a question for
thought. The "rules of the game" are less easy to enforce here;
jealousies are harder to control; handicaps are more in evidence and
less easy to make allowance for in contests; the discouragement of
failure may have more serious results. The mere fact of class grouping
involves a natural competition, healthful and beneficial and wisely
preparatory for future living. More emphasis than this upon rivalry
may produce feverish and unhealthful conditions, far removed from the
mental poise we desire for our girls. The school can give the girl few
things finer than the ability to attack work quietly and yet with
determination and a sense of power to meet and overcome obstacles.
The school and the playground form the growing girl's community life.
In them she must learn to practice community virtues, to shun
community evils, and to accept community responsibilities. For her the
school and the playground are society. Here she will take her first
lessons in the pride of possessions, in the prestige accompanying
them, in the struggle for social supremacy, in doubtful ideals brought
from all sorts of doubtful sources. Here she will find exaggerated
notions of "style" and its value, impure English, whispered
uncleanness in regard to sex matters, and surreptitious reading of
forbidden books. Here also she will find worthier examples--clean,
pure thought, honesty and fair dealing, pride of achievement rather
than of externals, fine ideals exemplified in the best homes. And no
finer or more delicate task lies before teacher and mother than the
guidance of the girl in her choice.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
A school playground. The school and the playground form the growing
girl's community life]
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
A model playground. The model playgrounds in the parks are doing much
to aid the playground movement]
Going to school is rightly considered an epoch in the child's life. No
longer confined to the narrow circle of home and family friends, the
child may lose all the tiny beginnings of desired virtues in this
larger life. Or, on the contrary, when the school recognizes and
continues home training, or supplies what has not been given, these
foundation virtues may be so applied to the old problems in new places
as to form a foundation for the life conduct of the girl and the woman
that is to be.
Take the question of sex knowledge, so widely agitated of late. We
cannot guard our girls against contact with some who will exert a
harmful influence. We can only forearm them by natural, gradual
information on this subject as their young minds reach out for
knowledge, so that sex knowledge comes, as other knowledge comes,
without solemnity or sentimentality on the one hand or undue mystery
and a hint of shame on the other. No course in sex hygiene can take
the place of this early gradual teaching, answering each question as
it comes, in a perfectly natural way, and with due regard for the
child's wonder at all of nature's marvelous processes. The little girl
_who knows_ presents no possibilities to the perverted mind which
seeks to astonish and excite her. And if she knows because "my mother
told me," the guard is as nearly perfect as can be devised.
Upon this foundation the formal course in sex hygiene may be built.
Such a course will then be a scientific summing up, with application
to personal ideals and requirements. It can easily, safely, and wisely
be deferred until the adolescent period.
Teachers and mothers can find scarcely any field more worthy of their
thoughtful concentration than the cultivation of good temper in the
girls under their care. The number of marriages rendered failures, the
number of homes totally wrecked, by sulking or nagging or outbursts
of ill-temper, can probably not be estimated. Neither can we count the
number of innocent people in homes not apparently wrecked whose lives
are rendered more or less unhappy by association with the woman of
uncertain temper. Think of the families in which some undesirable
trait of this sort seems to pass from generation to generation,
accepted by each member calmly as an inheritance not to be thrown off.
"It's my disposition," one will tell you with a sigh. "Mother was just
the same." Surely the time to combat these undesirable traits is in
childhood, and probably the first step is for the mother, who looks
back to her mother as "being just the same," to stop talking or
thinking about inherited traits and at least to present an outward
show of good temper for the child to see.
Then there is the teacher, who is under a strain and who finds
annoyances in every hour which tend to destroy her equanimity. Her
serenity, if she can accomplish it, will prove an excellent example.
And little by little the mother and the teacher who have accomplished
self-control for themselves may teach self-control and the beauties of
good temper to the little girls who live in the atmosphere they
create.
CHAPTER IX
THE ADOLESCENT GIRL
Adolescence, the critical period of the training of the boy and girl,
presents a complexity of problems before which parents and teachers
alike are often at a loss.
The adolescent period, the growing-up stage of the girl's life, is
physically the time of rapid and important bodily changes. New cells,
new tissue, new glands, are forming. New functions are being
established. The whole nervous system is keyed to higher pitch than at
any previous time. Excessive drain upon body or nerve force at this
time must mean depletion either now or in the years of maturity.
But, on the other hand, the keynote of the girl's adolescent mental
life is _awakening_. Her whole nature calls out for a larger, fuller,
more intense life. Home, school, society, dress, all take on new
aspects under the transforming power of the new sex life stirring and
perfecting itself within. The world is beckoning to the emerging
woman, and her every instinct leads her to follow the beckoning hand.
Now, if ever, the girl needs the influence and guidance of some wise
and sympathetic woman friend. It may be--let us hope it is--her
mother; or, failing that, her teacher; or, better than either alone,
both mother and teacher working in sympathetic harmony.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
Camp Fire Girls. Outdoor life is one of the best means of
safeguarding the girl's health]
The first care demanded for the maturing girl is the safeguarding of
her health. School demands at this age are likely to be excessive
under existing systems of instruction. In many ways the secondary
school, in which we may assume our adolescent girl to be, merits the
criticism constantly made, that it works its pupils too hard or,
perhaps more accurately, that it works them too long. Nothing but the
closest coöperation between parents and teachers can afford either of
them the necessary data for working out this problem. It can never be
anything but an individual problem, since girls will always differ
whether school courses do so or not, and adjustment of one to the
other must be made every time the combination is effected. Some
schools content themselves with asking for a record of time spent on
school work at home. Many parents merely acquiesce in the girl's
statement that she does or doesn't have to study to-night, and the
matter rests. Other schools and other parents go into the question
with more or less detail, but usually quite independently of each
other in the investigation. It is only very recently that anything
like adequate knowledge of pupils has begun to be gathered and
recorded to throw light upon the home-study question.
School girls naturally divide into fairly well-defined classes: the
girl who is overanxious or overconscientious about her work, the girl
who intends to comply with rules but has no special anxiety about
results, and the girl who habitually takes chances in evading the
preparation of lessons. How many parents know at all definitely to
which class their girl belongs?
The same girls may be classified again with regard to activities
outside the school. They may help at home much or little or not at
all. They may have absorbing social interests or practically none.
They may be in normal health or may already be nervous wrecks from
causes over which the school has no control.
There is no question about the value of definite information on all of
these points gathered by home and school acting together for the best
understanding of the child. The modern physician keeps a carefully
tabulated record of his patient's history and condition. The school
should do the same thing and should prescribe with due reference to
such record.
It frequently happens, however, that the schoolgirl's health is
menaced less by her hours of school work than by misuse of the
remaining portion of the twenty-four hours. No mother has a right to
accuse the school of breaking down her daughter's health unless she is
duly careful that the girl has a proper amount of sleep, exercise in
the open air, and hygienic clothing, and that her life outside the
school is not of the sort that we describe in these days as
"strenuous."
It is this strenuous life which our girls must be taught to avoid. Any
daily or weekly program which is crowded with activities is a
dangerous program for developing girlhood. The very atmosphere of many
modern homes is charged with the spirit of haste, and parents scarcely
realize that the daughter's time is too full, because their own is too
full also. They have no time to stop and realize anything. A quiet
home is an essential help in preserving a girl's health and
well-being.
[Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood
A mountain camp. Good health is conserved by outdoor games and
exercise]
It need scarcely be said that the children of a family should be
troubled as little as possible with the worries of their elders.
Parents are often unaware how much of the family burden their sons and
daughters are secretly bearing, or how long sometimes they continue to
struggle under the burden after it has mercifully slipped from
father's or mother's shoulders.
Good health means buoyancy, a springing to meet the future with a
tingle of joy in facing the unknown. The adolescent period is
essentially an unfolding time, in which probably for the first time
choice seems to present itself in a large way in ordering the girl's
life. In school she is confronted with a choice of studies or of
courses. To make these choices she must look farther ahead and ask
herself many questions as to the future. What is she to be? Nor is she
loath to face this question. Some of the very happiest of the girl's
dreams at this time are concerned with that problematical future.
There was a day when girls dreamed only of husbands, children, and
homes. Then, as the pendulum swung, they dreamed of careers, a hand in
the "world's work." Now they dream of either or both, or they halt
confused by the wide outlook. But of one thing we may be sure--our
girl is dreaming, and she seldom tells her dreams.
It is during this period in a girl's life that she is most likely to
chafe at restraint, to picture a wonderful life outside her home
environment, and to demand the opportunity to make her own choice. As
she goes on through high school, she longs more and more for
"freedom," quite unconscious of the fact that what seems freedom in
her elders is, in reality, often farthest removed from that elusive
condition. Her imagination is taking wild flights in these days.
Sometimes we catch fleeting glimpses of its often disordered fancies,
although oftener we see only the most docile of exteriors standing
guard over an inner self of which we do not dream.
The wise mother and the wise teacher are they whose adolescent
memories, longings, misapprehensions, and mistakes are not forgotten,
but are being sympathetically and understandingly searched for light
in guiding the girls whose guardians they are. They recognize once
and for all that normal girls are filled with what seem abnormal
notions, desires, and ideals. They recall how little they used to know
of life, and the pitfalls they barely escaped, if they did escape.
Thus only can they keep close to the girl in spirit and help her as
they once needed help. They respect her longing for freedom of choice
and they teach her how to choose. It is of little use to attempt to
clip the wings of the girl's imagination, however riotous. The wings
are safely hidden from our profaning touch. Instead we must teach her
to dream true dreams and to choose real things rather than shams.
[Illustration: A study room. The life of the adolescent girl is by no
means bounded by the schoolroom walls]
At this time the girl's life often seems to the casual observer to be
bounded by her schoolroom walls. As a matter of fact, however, school
work appeals to her much less than it has probably done earlier or
than it will do in her college days. Dress is becoming an absorbing
subject. "The boys," however little you may think it, are seldom far
from her thoughts. Intimate friendship with another adolescent girl
perhaps affords an outlet, beneficial or otherwise, for the crowding
life which is too precious to bear the unsympathetic touch of the
world of her elders. Or perhaps the girl becomes solitary in her
habits, living in a world of romance found in books or in her own
dreams, impatient with the world about her, feeling sure she is
"misunderstood."
What can home, school, and society in general do for the adolescent
girl, that her awakening may be sweet and sane, that her future
usefulness may not be impaired or her life embittered by wrong choice
at the brink of womanhood?
Any wise plan for the training of girls "in their teens" must include
provision for:
1. Outdoor play and exercise. In the country this is much more
easily accomplished. City problems bearing on this question
are among the most acute of all concerning boys and girls.
2. Systematic attention to the work of the schoolroom. Thus the
girl acquires habits of concentration and industry that she
will need all her life.
3. Some manual work in kitchen, garden, sewing room, or workshop.
Here the girl's natural tastes and inclination may be
discovered and trained.
4. Food for the imagination. Books, music, pictures, inspiring
plays. The Campfire Girls' movement is valuable in its
imaginative aspect.
5. Attention to dress. Laying the foundation for wise lifelong
habits.
6. Healthful social intercourse under the best conditions with
boys and with other girls, both at home and at school. Croquet,
tennis, skating, offer fine opportunities for such
intercourse. "Parties," dancing, present more difficulties, but
have their value under right conditions. Not all "fun" should
include the boys. Athletic contests between girls do much to
develop a neglected side of girl nature.
7. Companionship with her mother, or some other woman of
experience. Nothing can quite take the place of this. The girl
is sailing out upon an uncharted sea. She needs the help of
someone who has sailed that way before.
[Illustration: A botanical laboratory in Portland, Oregon. Through
systematic attention to the work of the schoolroom the girl acquires
habits of concentration and industry]
8. Preparation for marriage and motherhood. Much that the girl
should know can come to her through no other medium than that
indicated in the preceding paragraph--confidential intercourse
with the woman of mature years. For the sake of the girls who
fail to find this woman elsewhere every school for adolescent
girls should have on its faculty a woman who will "mother" its
girls.
9. Acquaintance with the lives of some of the great women of
history, as well as of some who have lived inspiring lives in
the girl's own country and time. A long list of such women
might be made.
10. Some unoccupied time. Our girl must not be permitted to
acquire the bad habit of rushing through life.
11. Study of vocations and avocations for women. Avocations--the
work which serves as play--should be wisely studied, and some
avocation adopted by every girl.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
A quiet retreat. Every girl needs some unoccupied time in order that
she may not acquire the habit of rushing]
Part of this training girls everywhere in this country may get if the
opportunities open to them are seized. The proportion of purely mental
work and of handwork will vary according to the locality in which the
girl finds herself. In general, however, such matters receive more
consideration than the more complex ones of direct social bearing.
How a girl shall dress, with whom and under what conditions she shall
find her social life, what she shall know of herself, of woman in
general, of the opposite sex, what her relations with her mother shall
be--these things are more often than not left to chance or to the
girl's untrained inclination.
The dress question rests fundamentally upon the personal question,
What do clothes mean to the girl? Behind that we usually find what
clothes mean to her mother, to her teachers, to the women who have a
part in her social life. Instinct teaches the girl to adorn her
person. Environment is largely responsible for the sort of adornment
she will choose. To bring the matter at once to a practical basis,
what standards shall we set up for our girls to see, to admire, and to
adopt as their own?
"Well dressed" may be interpreted to mean simply, or serviceably, or
conspicuously, or becomingly, or fashionably, or cheaply, or
appropriately, according to the standard of the person who uses the
term. It would necessarily be impossible to establish a common
standard for any considerable group of women, since individual
conditions must govern individual choice. A wise standard for girls
and their mothers, however, will conform to certain principles, even
though the application of the principles be widely different.
These principles may be expressed somewhat as follows:
1. Beauty in dress is expressed in line, color, and adaptation to
personal appearance, not in expense.
2. Fitness depends upon the occasion and upon the relation of cost
to the wearer's income.
3. Simplicity conduces to beauty, fitness, and to ease of upkeep.
4. Upkeep, including durability and cleansing possibilities, is as
important a consideration in selecting clothes as in selecting
buildings and automobiles. Freshness outranks elegance.
5. Individuality should be the keynote of expression in dress.
Conformity to the foregoing principles in establishing a personal
standard will of necessity prevent slavish imitation and the striving
to reach some other woman's standard which bears again and again such
bitter fruit. The erroneous notion fostered by thousands of American
women, that if you can only look like the women of some social set to
which you aspire you are like them for all social purposes, is a
fallacy, in spite of its general acceptance. We might as well expect
blue eyes, straight noses, or number three shoes to form the basis of
a social group.
The mother or the teacher who bases her instruction in this matter on
the assumption that pretty clothes of necessity breed vanity and all
its attendant evils is merely sowing the seed of her influence upon
stony ground when once the girl discovers her belief. Nature is
telling the girl to make herself beautiful. It is not only useless but
wrong to set ourselves against this instinct. Instead we must show her
what beauty in clothes means, and how to attain it without paying for
it more than she can afford, in money, in time, or in sacrifice of her
spiritual self. The school does its share when it teaches the general
theory of beauty, with practical illustration in study of line and
color schemes. The individual teacher and the mother have to impart
the far more delicate lessons concerning influence and cost--mental,
moral, and spiritual--in other words, the psychology of clothes.
Our girl must grow up fully cognizant of what her clothes cost. When
she desires, as she doubtless will desire, silk petticoats, and an
"up-to-date" hat, and high-heeled shoes, and an absurdly beruffled
dress, and a wonderful array of ribbons, she must discover what each
and every one of these things costs and whether it is worth the price.
The high heels sometimes cost health; the conspicuous dress may cost
the good opinion or the admiration of those who value modesty above
style; the silk petticoat may be bought at the cost of mother's or
father's sacrifice of something needed far more; the trimming on the
hat may have cost the life of a beautiful mother bird and the slow
starvation of her nestlings. Nothing the girl wears costs money only.
She must also learn that fine clothes are out of place on a girl whose
body is not finely cared for; that money is better expended for
quality than for show; and, most of all, that clothes are secondary
matters, when all is said.
Wisdom and sympathy and tact are never more needed than in this sort
of teaching. The principles of good dressing cannot be laid down
baldly and coldly, like mathematical rules, for the guidance of a girl
palpitating with youthful and beauty-loving instincts. The mother who
says, merely, "Certainly not. You don't need them. I never had silk
stockings when I was a girl," is failing to meet her obligations quite
as much as the mother who allows her daughter to appear at school in a
costume suited only to some formal evening function. There are mothers
of each of these sorts.
The wise mother whose daughter has developed a sudden scorn for the
stockings she has worn contentedly enough hitherto does not dismiss
the subject in the "certainly not" way, however kindly spoken. She
treats her daughter's request seriously, asks a few questions, in the
answers to which "the other girls" will probably figure largely, and
talks it over.
"Of course, there is the first cost to consider. The price of three or
four pairs of silk stockings would give you a dozen pairs of fine
cotton. Yes, I know there are cheaper silk ones to be had, but their
quality is poor. We should scarcely want you to wear coarse, poorly
made ones. And of course you know silk ones do not last so long. They
are pretty, and pleasant to wear, and cool, I know. How would it do to
have silk ones to wear with your new party dress, and keep on with the
cotton ones for school? We don't want to be overdressed in business
hours, you know. Then, it seems to me, it is a little hard on the
really poor girls at school if the rest of you are inclined to
overdress. They are so likely to get into the habit of spending their
money for cheap imitations of what you other girls wear--or if they
are too sensible for that they are probably unhappy because they have
to look different. Wouldn't it be kinder not to wear expensive things
to school at all?"
The object is not so much to keep the girl from having unsuitable
garments as to teach her to see all sides of the clothes question, to
realize her responsibilities, and to learn to choose wisely for
herself.
It is highly desirable that mothers keep up their own standards of
dress as they approach middle life and their daughters enter the
adolescent period. Some women even make the mistake of dressing
shabbily that they may gown their daughters resplendently. They are
educating their daughters to a false standard and to a selfish life.
Teachers also probably seldom realize how wide an influence they may
exercise upon their adolescent girl pupils in the matter of dress.
Many a girl forms her standard and her ideal from what her teacher
wears. Teachers must accept their responsibility and make good use of
the opportunities it gives them.
It is approximately at the time of her awakening to the beautifying
instinct that the girl begins to take a special interest in social
matters. Here again she needs wise guidance, and usually more
_guidance_ and less _direction_ than most girls get. The American
mother is prone in social questions to trust her daughter too much, or
not enough, and to train her very little.
[Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood
Skating offers fine opportunity for healthful social intercourse]
In many cases adolescent society centers about the school. There are
the everyday walks and talks of the boys and girls, the games and
meets and contests, with their attendant social features, the literary
societies and debating clubs, the school parties and dances. The
school thus comes to assume a considerable part in the boy's and
girl's social training, much more than was the case twenty or even ten
years ago; and the whole trend of educational movement in this matter
is toward doing more even than it now does.
In some cases schools have merely drifted into this social work,
without definite aims and without conspicuously good results, just as
some parents have drifted into acceptance of the situation, with
little oversight and a comfortable shifting of responsibility.
[Illustration: Games form an important part of the adolescent girl's
life]
When this sort of school and this sort of parent happen to be the
joint guardians of a girl's social training, it usually happens that
the girl discovers some things by a painful if not heartbreaking
trial-and-error method, and other things she quite fails to discover
at all. Most of all, she needs her mother at this time--a wise,
interested, companionable mother, who knows much about what goes on at
school parties and at school generally, but who never forces
confidences and, indeed, who never needs to; an elder sister sort of
mother, who helps. And she needs also teachers who supervise and
chaperon social affairs with a full realization that social training
is in progress and that lives are being made or marred.
There are schools and there are mothers who look upon every phase of
school life as contributing to the educative process, and these find
in the social affairs of the school their opportunities to teach some
vital lessons. Some schools are lengthening the free time between
periods, merely for the purpose of adding to the informal social
intercourse between pupils.
Wise teachers as well as wise mothers will see that the social phase
of school life, especially in the evening, is not overdone. Not only
health but future usefulness and happiness suffer if the girl "goes
out" so much that going out becomes the rule and staying at home the
exception. It is not usually, however, the social affairs of the
school alone which cause the girl to develop the habit of too many
evenings away from home. It is the school party plus the church
social, plus the moving pictures, plus the girls' club, plus the
theater, plus choir practice, plus the informal evening at her chum's,
plus a dozen other dissipations, that in the course of a few years
change a quiet, home-loving little schoolgirl into a gadding,
overwrought, uneasy woman.
Unless one has tried it, it is perhaps hard to realize how difficult
it is for an individual mother to regulate social custom in her
community even for her own daughter without causing the girl
unhappiness and possibly destroying her delight in her home. No girl
enjoys leaving the party at ten when "the other girls" stay until
twelve. Nor does she enjoy declining invitations when the other girls
all go. But what the individual mother finds difficult, community
sentiment can easily accomplish. The woman's club or the mothers' club
or the parent-teacher association, or better yet all three, may
profitably discuss the question, and may set about the creation of the
sentiment required.
Quite as important as "How often shall she go?" is the question "With
whom is she going?" There are two ways of approaching the problem here
involved. One requires more knowledge for the girl herself, that she
may better judge what constitutes a worthy companion. The other is
reached by the better training of boys, that more of them may develop
into the sort of young men with whom we may trust our daughters.
Parents who take the time and trouble to acquaint themselves with the
boys in their daughter's social circle will find themselves better
able to aid the girl in her choice of friends. The very best place for
this getting acquainted is the girl's own home, to which, therefore,
young people should often be informally invited. Nor should parents
neglect occasional opportunities to observe their daughter's friends
in other environment--at the church social or supper, at
entertainments, at school, or on the street. Fortunately the revolt
against a dual standard of purity for men and women holds promise of a
larger proportion of clean, controlled, trustworthy boys.
It will never be quite safe, however, to trust either our boys or our
girls to resist instincts implanted by nature and restrained only by
the artificial barriers of society, unless we keep their imaginations
busy, and unless we implant ideals of conduct high enough to make them
desire self-control for ends which seem beautiful and good to
themselves. The adolescent period is especially favorable for the
formation of ideals, and a high conception of love and marriage will
probably prove the truest safeguard our boys and girls can have.
The reading of the period is of special importance. At no other time
of life will altruism, self-sacrifice, high ideals of honor and of
love, make so strong an appeal as now. Adolescent reading must make
the most of this fact. Some of the great love stories of literature
and biography should be read, especially one or two which involve the
putting aside of desire at the call of a higher motive. At least one
story involving the world-old theme of the betrayed woman--_The
Scarlet Letter_, perhaps, or _Adam Bede_--should be "required reading"
for every adolescent girl, and should after reading be the subject of
thoughtful and loving discussion by the girl and her mother in one of
the confidential chats which should be frequent between them.
Girls must learn from their mothers and teachers to distrust the boy
who shows any inclination to take liberties, and they must also learn
that girls, consciously or more often otherwise, daily put temptation
in the way of boys who desire to do right, and invite liberties from
the other sort. Restraint, in dress, in carriage, in manners, and in
conversation, _must be made to seem right and desirable to the girl_,
for her own sake and no less for the good of the other sex. This of
course means that teachers must set fine examples before the girl in
their own dress and deportment.
To counteract the dangerous tendencies which have become intensified
by the wholesale breaking of social customs during the war, it is
necessary that parents and teachers give very careful attention to the
dress of girls and to the demeanor of boys and girls of the adolescent
period. Many teachers are improperly dressed and setting the wrong
example. Many parents are dressing carelessly and sending their girls
to high school improperly dressed. The boys are tempted--yes, are
forced--to observe the bodies of their girl classmates, in
study-rooms, halls, laboratories, and on playgrounds. These girls who
are immodestly dressed are not only exposing themselves to danger and
inviting familiarities, but are tempting the boys to go wrong. Many
of the tragedies in our schools can be traced to this source.
To handle this very serious and very difficult problem it is necessary
that all mothers of high-school boys and girls organize and cooperate
with principals and teachers. The task is gigantic, for the customs
and suggestions which are responsible for present-day conditions are
many and permeate our magazines, books, moving pictures, dances, and
nearly all social gatherings.
Many superintendents, teachers, and parents have been very seriously
studying these social and moral problems and making plans to start
reforms at once in the public schools. The most practical method thus
far presented appears to be the requirement of uniform dress for all
girls in the upper grades and in high school. This custom is already
established in some of our best private schools. Uniform dress has a
very democratic training which commends it. It is less expensive than
the present varied styles. It is practical, for it avoids
discrimination which would lead to many private difficulties.
The girl has now reached the time when her bits of knowledge of sex
matters, gained gradually since the first stirrings of curiosity in
her little girlhood, should be gathered, summarized, and given
practical application to the mature life she will soon enter upon.
Thoughtful investigation does not lead to the conclusion that girls
need especially a detailed physiological presentation of the subject
so much as a study of the psychological aspects of the sex life.
Personal purity is primarily a matter of mind.
Girls who all their lives have been familiar with the mystery of
birth, who at puberty have been instructed in the delicacy of the
sexual organs and processes and in the care they must exercise to
bring them to normal development, are now ready to be taught the
vital necessity of subordinating the animal to the spiritual in the
sex life.
It may seem unwise and unnecessary to put before young girls so dark
and distressing a subject as the social evil. Yet I know of no way to
combat this evil without teaching all girls what must be avoided. When
girls realize that the social evil
1. Rests upon a foundation of purely unrestrained animal
instinct;
2. That a single sexual misstep has ruined thousands upon
thousands of girls' lives;
3. That ignorance or the one misstep has led thousands to a
permanent life of shame;
4. That such a life means, sooner or later, sorrow, impaired or
destroyed health, disgrace, and early death to its woman
victims;
5. That the social evil destroys the efficiency and the moral
worth of men;
6. That it sets free deadly disease germs to permeate society,
causing untold misery among the innocent,
then, and not until then, can they be taught
1. To recognize and fear animal instinct unrestrained by higher
motive;
2. To guard their own instincts;
3. To hold men to a high standard of social purity and to help
them attain it.
Nor does this teaching necessitate morbid consideration of the
subject. It will, in fact, in many cases clear away the morbid
curiosity and surreptitious seeking after information in which
untaught girls indulge. Skillfully and delicately taught this
knowledge as an important and serious part of woman's work, girls will
be sweeter and more womanly for the knowledge of their responsibility
to society and to their unborn offspring.
Schools that attempt such a course for girls are finding their chief
difficulty in discovering people properly endowed by nature and
properly trained to teach it. To give such work into any but the
wisest hands invites disaster. To make it a study of the physical
basis of sexual life is disaster in itself. Service, through making
one's self a pure member of society, and through helping others to
keep the same standard--this must be the keynote of the teaching, an
education toward social efficiency and social uplift.
CHAPTER X
THE GIRL'S WORK
The adolescent girl, already the product of a general training which
has aimed at all-round development of body, mind, and spirit, is now
ready for the specializing which shall place her in tune with the
world of industry and help her to make for herself a permanent and
useful place in society. Henceforward the girl's training must face
her double possibilities. She must not be allowed to have an eye
single to making an industrial place for herself; nor can those who
educate her fail to see the double work she must do.
Any consideration of the subject of girls' work outside the home or
work in the home for financial return must begin with a general survey
of the field of industry, discovering what women have done and are
doing, together with the effects of gainful occupation upon the
character and efficiency of women.
The United States Census reports for 1910 give the following figures:
Number of Females Ten Years and Over
Year Engaged in Gainful Occupations
1880 2,647,157
1890 4,005,532
1900 5,319,397
1910 8,075,772
It is thus seen that gainful occupations for women have increased
greatly in the thirty years covered by the report. At present 21.2 per
cent of all females, or 23.4 of all over ten years of age, are engaged
in work for wages. Further tabulation brings out the fact that,
whereas the age period from twenty-one to forty-four shows the largest
percentage of men employed in gainful work, women show the largest
proportion of their numbers so employed during the age period from
sixteen to twenty. Evidently the girls are at work. The figures
follow:
MALES TEN YEARS AND OVER FEMALES TEN YEARS AND OVER
Age Period Per Cent Age Period Per Cent
10-13 16.6 10-13 8.0
14-15 41.4 14-15 19.8
16-20 79.2 16-20 39.9
21-44 96.7 21-44 26.3
45 and over 85.9 45 and over 15.7
Compare with these figures the following table:
AGES AT WHICH WOMEN MARRY[7]
11.2 per cent, or 1/9, of all women marry before 20
47.3 " " " 1/2 " " " " " 25
72.4 " " " 3/4 " " " " " 30
83.3 " " " 5/6 " " " " " 35
88.8 " " " 8/9 " " " " " 45
92.1 " " " 11/12 " " " " " 55
93.3 " " " 14/15 " " " " " 65
93.8 " " " 15/16 " " " " " 100
It will be observed that since the percentage of women at work
decreases after twenty, the number of women who marry and presumably
become homemakers is very largely increased.
These figures would seem to indicate that girls go to work early, that
as yet industry does not largely prevent marriage, and that marriage
does in many or most cases stop women's industrial careers.
Inquiry as to what women are doing in the industrial world elicits
important facts. It would seem that Olive Schreiner's "For the present
we take all labor for our province" is very nearly a bare statement
of attested fact. The Census report includes 509 closely classified
occupations. Women are found in all but 43. Even allowing for the
inaccuracy of such figures, and passing over the occupations which
take in only an occasional woman, it is seen that "woman's sphere" can
no longer be arbitrarily defined. The following facts and figures for
women give us food for thought:
Farm laborers (working out) 337,522
Iron and steel industries 29,182
Chemical industries 15,577
Clay, glass, and stone industries 11,849
Electrical supply factories 11,041
Lumber and furniture industries 17,214
Steam railroad laborers 3,248
[Illustration: Photograph by C. Park Pressey
The 1910 Census showed over three hundred and thirty thousand women
employed as farm laborers. This number did not include wives or
daughters of farm-owners]
The foregoing facts concern occupations which were once associated
entirely with men. If we enter the ranks of more womanly work we shall
find:
Dressmakers 447,760
Milliners 122,070
Sewers and sewing-machine operators 231,106
Telephone operators 88,262
Nurses 187,420
Clerks and saleswomen in stores 362,081
Stenographers and typists 263,315
Bookkeepers, cashiers, and accountants 187,155
Cooks 333,436
Laundresses (not in laundries) 520,004
Teachers 478,027
These are of course merely a few among the four hundred and fifty
kinds of work in which women are found. Any survey of women's work
comes close to a general survey of industry. We shall find that in
some occupations the proportion of men is much larger than that of
women. In others women have made rapid strides. The accompanying
diagram shows that in professional service, in domestic and personal
service, and in clerical occupations women are found in largest
numbers. In domestic and personal service the women outnumber the men
more than two to one. In professional service there are four women to
five men, a large proportion of the women being teachers. In the
clerical occupations we have one woman to each two men, in
manufacturing one woman to six men, in agriculture one woman to seven
men, and in trade one to eight. The occupations for women have been
changed somewhat by the new industrial conditions forced upon us by
the war, but it is very probable that in a few years the industrial
world will return to its normal status before the war for both men and
women.
[Illustration: Proportions of men and women in the United States
engaged in special occupations]
[Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood
Farmerettes. During the World War women at home and abroad rendered
especially valuable services in agricultural work]
If it is true that women are claiming and will continue to claim "all
labor" for their province, the claim must rest upon one of two
assumptions: Either women are physically, mentally, and morally
identical in their capabilities with men, or differences in physical,
mental, and moral make-up must be considered as not affecting work.
Most of us are not yet ready to agree to either of these premises. We
must therefore believe that some occupations are more suitable for one
sex than for the other. The fact is, however, that only a small group
of radical thinkers have made the opposite claim. Women are found, it
is true, in a large number of the occupations in which men are found.
But they are there for some other reason than that they claim all
labor as their sphere. Some are driven by the stern necessity of doing
whatever work is at hand; some by ignorance of their unfitness, or of
the unfitness of the work for them; some by the spirit of the age
which says, "Come, be free. Try these things that men do. See if they
suit you. Find your sphere."
Probably, however, this last reason for entering unsuitable
occupations is the one least often underlying the choice. Girls select
vocations in the main as boys do. Until very lately chance has been
the ruling element far oftener than anything else.
Studies in industry are now for the first time giving us adequate
information as to requirements for efficiency, working conditions,
wages, living possibilities, and the effects, moral and physical, of
various occupations upon both men and women. The problems arising out
of the crossing and recrossing of these various elements are as yet
but vaguely understood. The great gain lies in the fact that their
solution is being sought.
The community is of necessity interested in workingwomen as it is in
workingmen. Without these workers the community does not exist. When
they are ill-paid, overworked, underfed, discontented, or inefficient,
the community necessarily suffers. When they work under proper
conditions, the community shares their prosperity. It is thus coming
to be seen that the condition of workers is the concern of all the
members of the community.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
Factory workers. Sewers and sewing-machine operators to the number of
over 230,000, according to the 1919 Census, are employed in the United
States]
In the case of the woman worker, however, and especially of the young
woman worker, the community has a further interest because of the
service that women render as the mothers of the next and indeed of all
future generations. If, then, it is shown that women are physically
unfit for certain occupations that men may follow with safety, it
becomes the business of the community to protect women, even against
themselves if necessary, and to deter them from entering such lines of
work.
The community must make use of various agencies in bringing about the
proper relations between women and their work. It may use legislation,
thereby securing, for example, factory inspectors to improve the
sanitary and moral conditions in the places where women and girls are
employed. It may use the school, the library, and various civic
improvement forces to inform both girls and their parents as to
conditions under which girls should work. It may employ vocational
guides to make proper connections between women and their work.
For all these agencies to do satisfactory work, the first requisite is
knowledge of conditions. This means skillful work upon a vast and
rapidly increasing body of facts, and wide dissemination of the
results of such work.
[Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood
Unemployed utilizing their spare time to make themselves more
efficient. The community may make use of the schools for such
purposes]
We may not stop here to consider what legislatures have done and are
doing to improve conditions, other than to mention that the number of
hours that women may work is restricted in some states, as is night
work, and that a minimum wage is required in some.
Our question, however, is not so much what is forbidden women in the
way of work, as what women and girls will choose to do of the work
which is not forbidden. Facts as to what women are doing concern us
mainly as material from which to deduce information of value to the
girls who have not yet chosen.
A serious obstacle to wise choice on the part of young girls who are
pushing into industrial occupations is the uncertainty of their
continuing as workers outside the home. The average length of the
girl's industrial life is computed to be only about five years. She
enters upon work at an age when it is often impossible to tell whether
she will marry or remain single. She is usually unable to know whether
or not she will desire to marry. The great majority of girls have
therefore no stable conditions upon which to build a choice. The work
girls choose and their instability in the work they enter upon are
direct results of these unstable conditions. Many girls feel the need
of little or no training, and apply for any work obtainable, merely
because they anticipate that their industrial career will soon be
over.
A government report on the condition of woman and girl wage-earners in
the United States gives the following facts concerning 1,391 women
working in stores:
Average length of service 5.17 years
Average wage:
First year $4.69 per week
Second year 5.28 " "
Tenth year 9.81 " "
Among 3,421 factory women investigated:
Average length of service 4.46 years
Average wage:
First year $4.62 per week
Second year 5.34 " "
Tenth year 8.48 " "
These stores and factories were presumably filled by girls who seized
the most available source of a weekly wage regardless of all but the
pay envelope. Few of them remained more than five years, and those who
did remain did not receive adequate increase in their pay by the tenth
year for workers of ten years' experience.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
A cotton-mill worker. Unfortunately in the factories girls are too
often influenced by the pay envelope rather than by any special
fitness for the work they are to do]
The whole industrial situation as it concerns women would indicate
that women even more than men show lack of discrimination in seeking
to place themselves, and that the sources of information for them have
been few if not entirely lacking. Happily these conditions are
changing. We have now to teach girls to avail themselves of the
information and the guidance at hand and to learn to discriminate in
their choice of work.
Girls must realize that unskillful, mechanical work, done always with
a mental reservation that it is merely a temporary expedient, keeps
women's wages low, destroys confidence in female capacity, and has
definite bearing not only on the individual woman's earning capacity,
but on her character as well. Girls must learn to choose in such a way
that their work may be an opening into a life career or may be an
enlightening prelude to marriage and the making of a home.
Some of the women who uphold the doctrine of equality between the
sexes make the mistake of thinking and of teaching that there can be
no equality without identical work. They take the attitude that unless
women do all the sorts of work that men do, they are unjustly deprived
of their rights. Our contention is rather that women have higher
rights than that of identical work with men. They, above all other
workers, should have the right of intelligent choice of work which
they can do to the advantage of themselves, their offspring, and the
community. Such a choice will ignore the question of sex as a
drawback, accepting it, on the other hand, merely as a condition
which, like other conditions, complicates but does not necessarily
hamper choice. No girl need feel hampered by her sex because she
chooses not to do work which fails either to utilize her peculiar
gifts or to lead in what seems to her a profitable direction. No girl
should feel that her industrial experience, however short, has nothing
to contribute to the home life of which she dreams. No girl need waste
the knowledge and skill gained in industrial life when she abandons
gainful occupation for the home. Homemaking education, with industrial
experience, ought to make the ideal preparation for life work.
This, however, can be true only when the girl's industrial experience
is of the right sort. Girls must therefore be led to choose the
developing occupation. It is a part of the world's economy to lead
them to this choice.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 7: From Puffer, _Vocational Guidance_, based on Census
figures.]
CHAPTER XI
THE GIRL'S WORK (Continued)--CLASSIFICATION OF OCCUPATIONS
It is well at the outset to recognize that vocation choosing is at
best a complicated matter which, to be successfully carried out,
demands not only much information, but information from different
viewpoints. It is not enough to insure a living, even a good living,
in the work a girl chooses. We must take into consideration the girl's
effect upon society as a teacher, nurse, saleswoman, or office worker;
and no less, in view of her evident destiny as mother of the race,
must we consider society's effect upon her, as it finds her in the
place she has chosen. In other words, will she serve society to the
best of her ability, and will her service fit her to be a better
homemaker than she would have been had no vocation outside the home
intervened between her school training and her final settling in a
home of her own making?
This double question must find answer in consideration of vocations
from each of several viewpoints. We may classify occupations open to
girls (1) from the standpoint of the girl's fitness, physical and
psychological; (2) from the standpoint of industrial conditions, the
sanitary, mental, and moral atmosphere, and the rewards obtainable;
(3) as factors increasing, decreasing, or not affecting the girl's
possible home efficiency or the likelihood of taking up home life; (4)
from the standpoint of the girl's education; (5) from the standpoint
of service to society.
Our first classification concerns the girl's fitness for this or that
work. The everyday work of the world in which our girls are to find a
part may be separated into three fairly well-marked classes: making
things, distributing things, and service. The first question we must
ask concerning a girl desirous of finding work is, then: Toward which
of these classes does her natural ability and therefore probably her
inclination tend? Natural handworkers make poor saleswomen; natural
traders or saleswomen are likely to be uninterested and ineffective
handworkers. The girl whose interests are all centered in people must
not be condemned to spend her life in the production of things; nor,
as is far more common, must the girl who can make things, and enjoys
making them, spend her life in merely handling the things other people
have made, as she strives to make connection between these things and
the people who want them. Then there is the girl who is efficient and
who finds her pleasure in "doing things for people." Service--and we
must remember that service is a wide term, and that no stigma should
attach to the class of workers which includes the teacher, the
physician, and the minister--is clearly the direction in which such a
girl's vocational ambition should be turned.
It would be idle to assert that all women are suited to marriage,
motherhood, and domestic life, although there is little doubt that
early training may develop in some a suitability which would otherwise
remain unsuspected. When, however, early training fails to bring out
any inclination toward these things, we may well consider seriously
before we exert the weight of our influence toward them.
Home-mindedness shows itself in many ways, and it should have been a
matter of observation years before the girl faces the choice of a
vocation. It is usually of little avail to attempt to turn the
attention of the girl who is definitely not thus minded toward the
domestic life. On the other hand, the girl who is naturally so minded
will respond readily to suggestions leading toward the occupations
which require and appeal to her domestic nature. The great majority of
girls, however, are not definitely conscious of either home-mindedness
or the opposite. They are in fact not yet definitely cognizant of any
natural bent. It is these girls who are especially open to the
influence of environment, of what may prove temporary inclination, or
of false notions of the advantage of certain occupations in choosing a
life work. These are the girls, too, who are likely to drift into
marriage as they are likely to drift into any other occupation, and
whose previous vocation may have added to or perfected their
homemaking training or, on the other hand, may have developed in them
habits and traits which will effectually kill their usefulness in the
home life. These, then, are the girls who are most of all in need of
wise assistance in choosing that which may prove to be a temporary
vocation or may become a life work. The temporary idea must be
combated vigorously in the girl's mind. Many an unwise choice would
have been avoided had the girl really faced the possibility of making
the work she undertook a life work. The temporary idea makes
inefficient workers and discontented women.
There is in most cases, especially among the fairly well-to-do, no
dearth of assistance offered to the young girl in making her choice.
Much of the advice, unfortunately, is not based on real knowledge
either of vocations or of the girl. Knowledge is absolutely necessary
to successful judgment in this delicate matter.
From a large number of letters written by high-school girls let me
quote the following typical answers to the question: Why have you
chosen the vocation for which you are preparing?
"Ever since I could walk my uncle has been making plans for
me in music."
"My first ambition was to be a stenographer, but my father
objected. My father's choice was for me to be a teacher, and
before long it was mine too."
"My ambition until my Junior year in High School was to be a
teacher. From that time until now my ambition is to be a
good stenographer. My reason for changing is due partly to
my friends and parents. My parents do not want me to be a
teacher, as they consider it too hard a life."
"I have been greatly influenced by my teacher, who thinks I
have a chance [as a dramatic art teacher]. I am willing to
take her word for it.".
"Mother says it is a very ladylike occupation"
[stenography].
"My music instructor wishes for me to become a concert
player, or at least a good music teacher, and I now think I
wish the same."
These answers all show the customary ease of throwing out advice, and
also the undue significance attached by girls to these probably
inexpert opinions.
Parents often fail in their attempts to launch their children
successfully. Sometimes they attempt unwisely to thrust a child into
an occupation merely because "it is ladylike," or the "vacation is
long," or "the pay is good," regardless of the child's aptitude or
limitations. Quite often they await inspiration in the form of some
revelation of the child's desires, regardless of the demand of society
for such service as the child may elect to supply or the effect of the
vocation upon the child's health or character. Undue sacrifice on the
part of parents has without question swelled the ranks of mediocre
physicians and lawyers and clergymen. It has doubtless produced
thousands of teachers who cannot teach, nurses who are quite unsuited
to the sick-room, and office workers who have not the rudiments of
business ability.
It would seem that truly successful guidance in a girl's search for a
vocation can come, like much of her training, only from wise
coöperation of school and home. Teacher and parent see the girl from
different angles. Their combined judgment will consequently have
double value.
As the time of vocational choice approaches, school records should
cover larger ground than before, and should be made with great care,
with constant appeal to parents for confirmation and additional facts.
The record should cover:
1. _Physical characteristics_: Height; weight; lung capacity; sight;
hearing; condition of nasal passages; condition of teeth; bodily
strength and endurance; nerve strength or weakness.
2. _Health history_: Time lost from school by illness; school work as
affected by physical condition when the girl is in school; probable
ability or inability to bear the confinement of an indoor occupation;
any early illness, accident, or surgical operation which may affect
health and therefore vocational possibilities.
3. _Mental characteristics_: The quality of school work; studious or
active in temperament; best suited for head work, handwork, or a
combination; ability to work independently of teacher or other guide;
studies most enjoyed; studies in which best work is done; evidences,
if any, of special talent, and whether or not sufficient to form basis
of life work.
4. _Moral characteristics_: Honesty; moral courage; stability; tact;
combativeness; leader or follower.
5. _Heredity_: Physical statistics in regard to parents, brothers,
sisters, grandparents, uncles, aunts; occupations followed by these,
with success or otherwise; family traditions as to work; special
abilities in family noted.
6. _Vocational ambitions_.
7. _Family resources for special training_.
Without some such record as this--and it need scarcely be said that
the one given here is capable of wide adaptation to special
needs--teachers, parents, or other friends of the girl are poorly
equipped for giving advice as to the girl's future. And yet it is
common enough for such advice to be thrown out in the most casual
manner, with scarcely a thought of the ambitions awakened or of the
future to which they may lead.
"You certainly ought to go on the stage," chorus the admiring friends
of the girl who excels in the work of the elocution class. And
sometimes with no other counsel than this, from people who really know
nothing about the matter, the girl struggles to enter the theatrical
world, only to find that her talent, sufficient to excite admiring
comment among her friends, has proved inadequate to make her a
worth-while actress.
"Why don't you study art?" say the friends of another girl; or, "You
like to take care of sick people. Why don't you train for nursing?"
or, "You're so fond of books. I should think you would be a
librarian"--quite regardless of the fact that the girl advised to
study art has neither the perseverance nor the health to study
successfully; that the one advised to be a nurse lacks patience and
repose to a considerable degree; or that the one advised to be a
librarian is already suffering from strained eyes and should choose
her vocation from the great outdoors.
Knowledge of the girl must, however, be supplemented by a wide
knowledge of vocations to be of real value to the teacher or parent
who is preparing to give vocational counsel. Final choice may be
reached only after the girl and the vocation are brought into
comparative scrutiny, and their mutual fitness determined. In rare
cases the choice may be made by the swift process of observing a great
talent which, in the absence of serious objections, must govern the
life work. Oftener the process is one of elimination, or of building
up from a general foundation of the girl's abilities and limitations,
and her possibilities for training sufficient to make her an efficient
worker in the line chosen.
A knowledge of vocations presupposes, first of all, a grasp of the
essentials of the work, and hence the characteristics required in the
worker to perform it. What sort of girl is needed to make an efficient
teacher, nurse, saleswoman, or office worker? How may we recognize
this potential teacher without resorting to a clumsy, time-wasting,
trial-and-error method? These are matters with which schools and
vocational guides all over the country are occupying themselves.
Perhaps we cannot do better than to examine somewhat these
requirements for some occupations toward which girls most often
incline.
THE PRODUCING GROUP
The girl who is by nature a maker of things may be a factory worker, a
needlewoman, a baker, a poultry farmer, a milliner, a photographer, or
an artist with brush or with voice, or in dramatic work. She is still
one who makes things. We see at once how wide a range of industry may
open to her.
How shall we know this type of girl? First of all, by her interest in
things rather than in people. With the exception of, the singer and
the dramatic artist, whose production is of an intangible sort, the
girl who makes things is a handworker by choice. The extent to which
her handwork is touched by the imaginative instinct of course measures
the distance that she may make her way up the ladder of productive
work. The girl's school record will usually show her best work with
concrete materials. She draws or sews well, has excellent results in
the cooking class, works well in the laboratory. At home she finds
enjoyment in "making things" of one sort or another. She displays
ingenuity, perhaps, in meeting constructive problems. If so, that must
be considered in finding her place.
Handwork for women includes a wide range of occupations. Let us now
examine some of these kinds of work.
[Illustration: _In the packing room of a wholesale house. The
untrained girl finds it easy to obtain factory work_]
_Factory work._ This term covers many departments of manufacturing
industries. In the main, however, they may be classed together, since
in practically all of them the worker contributes only one small
portion of the work incidental to the making of candy, or artificial
flowers, or coats, or pickles, or shoes, or corsets, or underwear, or
anyone of a hundred different products, some one or several of which
may be found in nearly every American town.
The great advantage of factory work, as the untrained girl sees it, is
that it is usually easy to obtain and that it promises some return
even from the start. Hence a large proportion of untrained girls who
leave school as soon as the law allows enter the factories near their
homes.
The great disadvantages of factory work, laying aside for a moment
many minor disadvantages, are that it not only requires no skill in
the beginner, but that it produces little if any skill even with years
of work and offers practically no advancement for a large proportion
of the workers. It should therefore, be reserved for girls of less
keen intelligence, and other girls should if possible be guided toward
other occupations.
Teachers must make themselves thoroughly familiar with working
conditions in local factories, since there will always be girls who,
because of their own limitations or the limitations of their
environment, will find themselves obliged to take up factory work.
Under the teacher's guidance girls should make definite studies and
prepare detailed reports of local conditions with respect to working
hours, character of work, wages, possible advancement, dangers to
health, moral conditions, advantages over other occupations open to
girls with no more training, and disadvantages. Girls should at least
go into factory work with their eyes open, that they may pass their
days in the best surroundings available.
_Dressmaking_. The possibilities for the girl entering upon work
connected with dressmaking with the ultimate object of becoming a
dressmaker herself are far wider than in the case of the machine
worker in shop or factory. The immediate return for the untrained
girl is far less, but the farsighted girl must learn to look beyond
the immediate present. Not all girls, however, will make good
dressmakers. Not all, even of the producing type of girl, will do so.
Certain definite qualities are required. The girl who would succeed as
a dressmaker must possess ingenuity, imagination, and the visualizing
type of mind. She must see the end from the beginning, and must be
able to find the way to produce that which she visualizes. She must be
a keen observer. She must have confidence in her own power to create.
She must possess manual dexterity, artistic ideas, and, if she aims at
a business of her own, a pleasing personality and keen business sense.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
A millinery class. Millinery requires of the girl a certain degree of
creative ability]
_Millinery_. Millinery requires in its workers the same general type
of mind required for dressmaking, and in addition a certain millinery
faculty or creative ability. The girl who can make and trim hats
usually discovers her own talent fairly early in life.
_Arts and crafts._ This somewhat elastic term we use to include a wide
range of occupations which have to do with articles of use or ornament
which are handmade and which require skill in designing or in carrying
out designs. Embroidery, lace making, rug and tapestry weaving,
basketry, china painting, wood and leather work, handwork in metals,
bookbinding, and the designing and painting of cards for various
occasions are familiar examples of this kind of work. Photography, map
making, designing of wall paper and fabrics, costume designing and
illustrating, making of signs, placards, diagrams, working drawings,
advertising illustrations, book and magazine illustrating, landscape
gardening and architecture, interior decorating, are other lines
offering work to men and women alike.
The range of work here is no greater than the range of qualities which
may be happily and usefully employed in arts and crafts. All branches
of the work, however, are alike in demanding a certain degree of
artistic sense and deftness of manual touch. An accurate, observant
eye is an absolute essential, and, for all but the lowest and most
mechanical lines of work, imagination, originality, and an inventive
habit of mind make the foundation of success. In some lines a fine
sense of color values must underlie good work, in others the ability
to draw easily. All work of this sort requires the ability to do
careful, painstaking, and persevering work. Given this ability and the
artistic sense before mentioned, the girl's work may be determined by
some special talent, by the special training possible for her, or by
the openings possible in her chosen line of work within comparatively
easy access.
[Illustration: Photograph by C. Park Pressey
A youthful farmer. The Census figures for the year 1910 report
one-fifth of all women employed in gainful occupations as engaged in
the pursuit of agriculture and animal husbandry]
_Agriculture._ The Census figures which report one-fifth of all women
gainfully employed as engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry are
somewhat startling until we observe that southern negro women make up
a very large number of the farm workers reported. Even aside from
these, however, there are many women who are finding work in
gardening, poultry raising, bee culture, dairying, and the like. The
girl who is fitted to take up work of this sort is usually the girl
who has grown up on the farm or at least in the country and who has a
sympathy with growing things. She is essentially the "outdoor girl."
She must be willing to study the science of making things grow. She
must be able to keep accounts, that she may know what she is doing and
what her profits are. Above all, she must have no false pride about
"dirty work." Properly such a girl should have entered upon her career
even before she has finished her formal education, so that "going to
work" means merely enlarging her work to occupy her time more fully
and to bring in as soon as possible a living income.
In this sort of work the girl possessing initiative and an independent
spirit will naturally do best, since there are comparatively few
opportunities for such work under supervision. Care must, however, be
exercised by vocational guides in suggesting, and by girls in
choosing, the independent career. Usually it is the girl who has shown
promise in independent work at school or at home that will make a
success of such work later in life. The girl who relaxes when the
pressure of compulsion is removed will not be a success as "her own
boss." It goes without saying that the girl who does well as her own
superior officer will be happier to do work upon her own initiative
than merely to carry out the plans made by others. Agricultural work
will sometimes offer her exactly the conditions she desires. Many
successful farm-owners are women, and their work compares favorably
with that of men.
_Food production_. It is common, in these days, to meet the assertion
that the preparation of food, once woman's undisputed work, has been
almost if not quite removed from her hands; and that, even where she
may still contribute to this work, she must do so in the factory, the
bakery, the packing house, or the delicatessen shop. There are,
nevertheless, still many women who are fitted for cooking and kindred
pursuits who will not find an outlet for their abilities in any of the
places mentioned. In the main, factory production of food is like
factory production of other things--a highly differentiated process,
in which the individual worker finds little satisfaction for her
desire to "make things" and little, if any, opportunity to contribute
from her ability to the final result.
In the canning factory she may sit all day before an ever-moving
procession of beans or peas, from which she removes any unsuitable for
cooking. Or it may be an endless procession of cans, upon which she
rapidly lays covers as they pass. In the pickle factory she may pack
tiny cucumbers into bottles. In the packing house she may perform the
task of painting cans. None of these occupations is more than mere
unskilled labor. None is suitable for the girl who likes to cook, and
who can cook. The number of such girls is already fairly large and
will undoubtedly increase as the domestic science classes of our
schools do more and better work.
[Illustration: An up-to-date factory. In the factory the work is
necessarily routine, and the individual worker finds very little
satisfaction for her desire to make things]
Opposed to the theoretical statement that food is or at least
to-morrow will be prepared entirely in the public-utility plants
outside the home is the practical fact that home-cooked food,
home-preserved fruits and jellies, and home-canned vegetables and
meats find ready sale and that women who can produce these things do
find it profitable to do so. There is, consequently, a field for some
girls in such work.
[Illustration: Cooking class at Benson Polytechnic School for Girls,
Portland, Oregon. In spite of the statement that foods will be
prepared in the public utility plants, the trained, accurate worker
may find a ready sale for home-cooked foods]
Not all girls, on the other hand, who have taken the domestic science
course are fitted to take up this work, even if a market could be
found for their work. Only the expert, that is, the precise, accurate,
painstaking cook, can secure uniform results day after day. Only the
rapid worker can do enough to insure pay for her time. Only the girl
with a keen sense of taste can properly judge results and devise
successful combinations. Only a business woman can buy to advantage
and compute ratios of expense and return. This combination, of course,
is not to be found every day.
THE DISTRIBUTING GROUP
_Salesmanship_. Passing from the class of work which has to do with
making things to that group of occupations which has to do with the
distribution of various products to the consumer, we shall naturally
consider, first of all, the saleswoman. In any given group of young
and untrained girls drawn as in our schools from varying environment
and heredity, the _natural_ saleswomen will probably be in the
minority. I do not mean that girls may not often express a desire to
"work in a store" as apparently the easiest and most immediate
employment for the untrained girl. This may or may not indicate that
the girl has a commercial mind. The girl who is really interested in
commercial undertakings is easily distinguished from her fellow
workers in any salesroom. She is not the girl who lingers in
conversation with the girl next to her while a customer waits, or who
gazes indifferently over the customer's head while the latter makes
her choice from the goods laid before her. To the real saleswoman
every customer is a possibility, every sale a victory, and every
failure to sell distinctly a defeat. The fact that we see so few girls
and women of this type behind the counters in our shopping centers is
sufficient indication that many girls would have been better placed in
other occupations.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
Hardware section of a department store. Salesmanship offers large
opportunities to the real saleswoman, who considers every customer a
possibility]
We find, however, in 1910, the number of saleswomen reported as
257,720, together with 111,594 "clerks" in stores, many of whom the
report states are "evidently saleswomen" under another name. There are
also about 4,000 female proprietors, officials, managers, and
floorwalkers in stores, and 2,000 commercial travelers. This gives us
a large number of women who are engaged in the sale of goods. For the
girl of the commercial mind, salesmanship in some form presents
certain possibilities, although there is far less chance for her to
rise in this work than for a boy. She must begin at the most
rudimentary work, as cash or errand girl, and her progress will
necessarily be slow. She will require an ability to handle with some
skill elementary forms of arithmetic, an alert and observing mind, an
interest in and some knowledge of human nature, and good health to
endure the confinement of the long day. She will be fortunate if she
finds a place in one of the stores in which a continuation school is
conducted. At such a school in Altman's department store in New York
the girls pursue a regular course designed to be especially helpful in
their work, and are graduated with all due formality, in which both
public-school and store officials take part. Such a school helps girls
to feel a pride in their work and to feel that they are under
observation by those who will recognize and reward real endeavor.
Filene's in Boston and Wanamaker's in New York and Philadelphia are
other notable examples of such schools.
In a government report previously quoted we find interesting figures
as to the possibility of advancement for the saleswoman. In a study of
twenty-six of the largest department stores in New York, Chicago, and
Philadelphia, employing more than 35,000 women, the workers were
classed as follows:
Per Cent
Cash girls, messengers, bundle girls, etc 13.2
Saleswomen 46.2
Buyers and assistant buyers 1.2
Office and other employees 39.4
"It will be seen," adds the report, "that the opportunity for reaching
the coveted position of buyer or assistant buyer is small."
The disadvantages and dangers of salesmanship for girls, other than
small pay and improbability of much advancement, we shall consider in
a later chapter. We may say here, however, that these disadvantages
and dangers, for the really commercially minded girl, are to a certain
extent neutralized by her nature and possibilities. She is the girl
whose mind is more or less concentrated on "the selling game." Her
nerves are less worn because of a certain exhilaration in her work.
She is the girl who passes beyond the underpaid stage and is able to
live decently and to rise to a position of some responsibility, partly
because of her concentration and partly because she has been able to
resist the influences about her which make for mediocrity or worse.
_Office work_. The girl emerging from high school and looking for work
is usually on the lookout for what in a boy we call a "white-collar
job." Especially in the case where the girl has been kept in school
at more or less sacrifice on the part of her parents, both they and
the girl feel that the extra years of schooling entitle her to a
"high-class" occupation of some kind. Girls are far less willing than
boys to "begin at the bottom" and work up through the various stages
of apprenticeship to ultimate positions near the top. They resent
being asked to take the "overall" job and fear mightily to soil their
hands.
[Illustration: Office girls at work. The successful office worker
must be neat and accurate and have a temperament in which pleasure in
arrangement takes precedence over joy in production]
Twenty-five years ago a large proportion of high-school graduates went
at once into the teaching force, where they succeeded (or not) in
"learning to do by doing," without professional training of any sort.
Now, however, teaching as a profession is in many places fortunately
reserved for the girls who prepare in college or normal school; and a
larger proportion of girls who cannot have this professional training
are looking for other occupations. Office work attracts a large
number, and, with present-day business courses in high schools, many
girls find employment as stenographers, typists, cashiers in small
establishments, bookkeepers, or general office assistants. In any of
these positions girls without special training or experience must
begin at very low wages. Whether they rise to higher ones depends to
some extent at least upon the girls themselves.
What sort of girl shall we encourage to enter office work? Not the
girl whose talent lies in making things, for to her the routine of the
office will be a weary and endless treadmill entirely barren of
results; nor the girl who requires the stimulus of people to keep her
alert and keyed to her best work; nor the girl who cannot be happy at
indoor work. Office work seems to require a temperament in which
pleasure in arrangement takes precedence over joy in production; in
which neatness, accuracy, and precision afford satisfaction even in
monotonous tasks. Coupled with these a mathematical bent gives us the
cashier or accountant or bookkeeper; mental alertness and manual
dexterity, the stenographer; a talent for organization, the secretary.
Girls who enter upon office work directly from high school must be
content with rudimentary tasks and must beware lest they remain at a
low level in the office force. Girls with more training may begin
somewhat farther up, the best positions usually going to those whose
general education and equipment are greatest. Stenographers are more
valuable in proportion as their knowledge of spelling, sentence
formation, and letter writing is reinforced by a feeling for good
English and an ability to relieve their superiors of details in
outlining correspondence. It is not enough that bookkeepers know one
or several systems of keeping business records, or that cashiers
manipulate figures rapidly and well. More important than these
fundamental requirements is the determination to grasp the details of
the business as conducted in the office in which they find themselves
and to adapt their work to the needs of the person whose work they do.
General knowledge and the ability to think not only supplement, but
easily become more valuable than, technical training.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
The successful secretary must have a talent for organization]
A careful study of local conditions as they affect office positions
will enable girls and their guides to have a better conception of
requirements and rewards in this field. A valuable study of conditions
among office girls in Cleveland has recently been published which
sheds considerable light on the ultimate industrial fate of the
overyoung and poorly trained office worker. A more general study is
found in the volume on _Women in Office Service_ issued by the Women's
Educational Union of Boston.
THE SERVICE GROUP
The third, or service, group of workingwomen covers without doubt the
widest range of all. Here we find the domestic helper (or servant, as
she has usually been called), the telephone operator, the librarian,
the teacher, the nurse, the physician, the lawyer, the social worker,
the clergyman or minister. All degrees of training are represented,
and many varieties of work, from the simplest to the most complex.
Strictly speaking, service has to do with personal attendance and
help, but it is constantly overlapping other lines of work. The
household assistant is not only a helper, but at times a producer; the
telephone operator and the librarian are distributors as well as
public helpers; the secretary is an office worker, although she is a
personal assistant to her employer as well. For successful work in any
of these lines, however, a girl must possess certain definite
characteristics, to which her peculiar talent or tendency may give the
determining direction as she chooses her work.
In service of any sort the girl is brought into constant relation with
people. Hence she must be the sort of girl to whom people and not
things are the chief interest of life. She should have an agreeable
personality, that she may give pleasure with her service; she needs
tact, that she may keep the atmosphere about her unruffled; she needs
to find pleasure for herself in service, seeing always the end rather
than merely the often wearisome details of work. Beyond these general
qualities we must begin at once to make subdivisions, since the
additional traits necessary to make a girl successful in one line of
service differ often widely from those required in any other line. We
must therefore take up some of the lines of work in more or less
detail.
_Domestic work_. The untrained girl who naturally falls into the
service group has a rather poor outlook for congenial and successful
work as conditions exist. With ability which she perhaps does not
possess, and with training which she cannot afford, she would
naturally become a teacher, a nurse, a private secretary, a librarian,
or a social worker. Without training, she finds little except domestic
service open to her; and domestic service finds little favor with
girls, or with students of vocational possibilities for girls.
These are unfortunate facts. For the untrained girl of merely average
abilities, with no pronounced talent or inclination, but with an
interest in persons and a pleasure in doing things for people, helping
in the tasks of homemaking ought to prove suitable work. It is,
however, the one vocation for the untrained girl which requires her to
live in the home of her employer, thus curtailing her independence,
rendering her hours of work long and uncertain, and cutting off the
natural social environment possible if she returned to her own home at
the end of the day's work. The social position of girls in domestic
service, especially in the towns and cities, is peculiarly hard for a
self-respecting girl to bear. It is in large part a reflection upon
her sacrifice of independence. The derisive slang term "slavey"
expresses the generally prevalent public contempt. It is small wonder
that a girl fears to brave such a sentiment and as a result avoids
what is perhaps in itself congenial work in pleasanter surroundings
than most noisy, ill-smelling factories.
Almost all the conditions surrounding the domestic worker are such
that it is practically impossible to say except of each place
considered by itself whether or not it is a suitable and desirable
place for a girl, or whether work and wages are fair. Practically no
progress has been made in standardizing household work. The factory
girl knows what she is to do and when she is to do it and how long her
day is to be. The housework girl seldom knows any of these things with
any degree of certainty. Any plan which will make it possible to
regulate these matters according to some recognized standard, and
which will enable domestic workers to live at home, going to and from
their work at regular hours as shop, factory, and office employees do,
will help very materially to solve the problem of opening another
desirable vocation to the untrained girl.
The untrained girl who is willing to accept a difficult and trying
position in a private kitchen with the idea of making her work serve
her as a training school for better work in the future may make a
success of her life after all. Such a girl will have good observing
powers and ability to follow directions and gauge the success of
results. She will have adaptability, patience, and a very definite
ambition. For domestic service may be a stepping stone.
For the high-school girl a better opening may sometimes be found as a
mother's helper. Many women who find the ordinary household helper
unsatisfactory give employment to girls of refinement and high-school
training who are capable of assisting either with household tasks or
with the care of children. Girls in such positions are usually made
"one of the family," and are sometimes very happily situated. Their
earnings are often more than those of other girls of their
intelligence and training who are in offices or stores; but there is
of course little chance of advancement, and there is still the
prejudice against domestic work to be reckoned with. Here, as with
household assistants, the greatest drawback is probably lack of
standardization of work and of working conditions.
The girl who wishes to become a "mother's helper" must have a natural
refinement and some knowledge of social usage if she is to be a sharer
in the family life of her employer. She must use excellent English,
must know how to dress quietly and suitably, and must not only _know
how_ to keep herself in the background of family life, but must be
_willing_ to remain somewhat in the shadows.
Probably no better field for the investigation of these trying
questions could be found than the high school. The ranks of employers
of domestic help are being constantly recruited from the girls who
were the high-school students of yesterday and have now taken their
places as housekeepers. The high school then, where the problem may be
approached in an impersonal manner quite impossible later when the
question has become a personal one, is the proper place in which to
study the domestic service question and to attempt its standardization.
The higher positions involving domestic work are more in the nature of
supervisory employment. Many women are employed as matrons in
hospitals, boarding schools, and other institutions, as housekeepers
in hotels, club buildings, or in large private establishments. These
positions of course call for women who are not only thoroughly
familiar with the work to be done, but are skilled in managing their
subordinates who do the actual work. They require women who have
administrative ability, knowledge of keeping accounts, proper
standards of living and of service, and initiative.
For the woman who has a desire to enter business for herself there are
openings in the line of domestic work. From time immemorial women have
managed lodging and boarding houses, sometimes with good returns. They
are also the owners and managers of tea rooms, restaurants, laundries,
dyeing and cleaning establishments, hairdressing and manicure shops,
and day nurseries. All these occupations can be followed successfully
only by the woman of business ability and some technical knowledge.
They require not only knowledge but aptitude on the part of the
worker. They are usually undertaken only by women of some experience,
and are the result of some earlier choice rather than the choice of
the vocation-seeking girl.
[Illustration: The true teacher represents a high type of social
worker]
_Teaching_. The teacher differs from the person who has merely an
interest in human kind in the abstract, because she has a special
interest in one particular class of human beings--those who are most
distinctly in the process of making. She is interested in children, or
she should not be teaching. This, however, is not enough. The girl who
wishes to teach must possess certain well-defined characteristics. Her
health must be good, and her nerve force stable. Temperamentally she
must be enthusiastic and optimistic, but capable of sustained effort
even in the face of apparent failure. Her outlook must be broad, and
her patience unfailing. Intellectually she must be a student, and if
she possess considerable initiative and originality in her study, so
much the better. She must not, however, become a student of
mathematics or history or languages to the exclusion of the more
absorbing study of her pupils, nor even to so great a degree as she
studies them. The true teacher represents a high type of social
worker. Many girls enter upon the work of teaching badly handicapped
by the lack of some of these essential qualities and are in
consequence never able to rise to real understanding and
accomplishment of their work.
Teaching in these days is a broad vocation, covering many different
lines of work; probably no occupation for girls is so well known with
both its conditions and rewards as this. In general, more girls than
are by nature fitted for the work stand ready to undertake it. There
is nevertheless difficulty for school officials in finding real
teachers enough to fill their positions. For the right girl, teaching
has much to offer.
_Library work_. The librarian in these modern days is a most important
public servant, and many openings in library work are to be found. The
services to be performed range from purely routine work to a very high
type of constructive service for the community. In the small libraries
an "all-round" type of worker is required. In the larger ones
specialties may be followed. In these larger libraries there are to be
found permanent places for the routine workers. In smaller ones each
worker should be in line for even the highest type of constructive
work.
The routine worker in the library is merely an office worker, and the
same girl who would do well at the mechanical tasks of an office will
do well here. The real librarian is of a different sort. She must have
the neatness, precision, and accuracy of the office worker, to be
sure; but to these she must add a broad conception of the place of the
library in the community, and must display initiative and originality
in bringing it to occupy that place. She must know books; she must
know people. She must be in touch with current history, and be alert
to place library material bearing upon it at the disposal of the
people. She must have quick sympathies, tact, the teaching spirit
(carefully concealed), and much administrative ability. And she must
be trained for her work.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
A well-equipped library. The successful librarian must be
scientifically trained for her work]
_Nursing_. The nurse is in many ways like the teacher, and the girl
who has the right temperament for successful teaching will usually
make a successful nurse, temperamentally considered. Her mental
traits, or perhaps more exactly her habits of thought, may be somewhat
different. The teacher must be able to attend to many things; the
nurse must be able to concentrate on one. Originality and initiative
are less to be desired, since the nurse is not usually in charge of
her case directly, but rather subject to the doctor's orders. She
must, nevertheless, be resourceful in emergencies, and of good
judgment always. She should be calm as well as patient, quiet in
speech and movement, a keen observer, and willing to accept
responsibility. Absolute obedience and loyalty to her superiors is
expected, and a high conception of the ethics of her calling.
Underlying all these qualifications, the nurse must have not only good
health but physical strength.
[Illustration: Copyright by Keystone View Co.
During the World War nursing offered to women perhaps the largest
opportunities for service. Here is shown Princess Mary of England in
the Great Ormond Street Hospital, London]
_Social work_. This term covers many occupations which overlap the
work of the teacher, the nurse, the secretary, the house mother or
matron, and even that of the physician and lawyer. The field of work
is a large one, including settlement leaders and assistants, workers
in social and community centers and recreation centers, vacation
playgrounds, public and private charities, district nurses and
visiting nurses sent out by various agencies, deaconesses and other
church visitors, Young Women's Christian Association leaders and
helpers, missionaries, welfare workers in large manufacturing or
mercantile establishments, probation officers, and many others.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
Settlement work at Greenwich House, New York. The settlement worker
to succeed must be truly altruistic]
The social worker must of course have the same suitability for
teaching or nursing or any other of the various tasks that she may
undertake as has the teacher or nurse or other person who works under
different auspices. She must have in addition a truly altruistic
spirit, a deep earnestness which will survive discouragement, and a
real insight into the circumstances, handicaps, and possibilities of
others. This insight presupposes maturity of thought; and the young
girl must serve a long apprenticeship with life before she is at her
best as a social worker. It sometimes seems as though no field was so
exactly suited to the abilities of the married woman who has time for
service, or the mother whose children are grown, leaving her free
again to teach or nurse the sick or bring justice to the little child
as she was trained to do in her youth.
Less common vocations for women--but still often chosen after all--are
reserved for those whose abilities are so specialized and so striking
that they compel a choice. Singers, artists with brush or pen, the
natural actress, the journalist or author, need usually no one to
guide their choice. Our great difficulty here is not to open the
girl's eyes to her opportunity, but to restrain the one who has not
measured her ability correctly from attempting that which she cannot
perform. The same is true of girls who aspire to be physicians,
lawyers, or ministers. Some few succeed in all these vocations. Many
more have not the scientific habits of mind, the stability, or the
endurance to make a successful fight for recognition against great
odds.
Many girls mistake what may be a pleasant and satisfying avocation for
a life work. For the girl who will not be held back, there may be a
life of achievement ahead, with fame and all the other accompaniments
of successful public life; or there may be the disappointments of
unrealized ambition. We must see that girls face this possibility with
the other.
CHAPTER XII
THE GIRL'S WORK (Continued)--VOCATIONS AS AFFECTING HOMEMAKING
Choice of vocation is far from being a simple matter for either boy or
girl; but for the girl who recognizes homemaking as woman's work,
double possibilities complicate her problem more than that of the boy.
_The girl must prepare for life work in the home, or life work outside
the home, or a period of either followed by the other, or perhaps a
combination of both during some part or even all of her mature life_.
It is the part of wisdom for us to study vocations in their relation
to homemaking. Will the girl who works in the factory, for instance,
or who becomes a teacher or a lawyer or a physician, be as good a
homemaker as she would have been had she chosen some other occupation?
Will she perhaps be a better homemaker for her vocational experience?
Or will her life in the industrial world unfit her for life in the
home or turn her inclination away from the homemaker's work?
These questions have somehow fallen into the background in the steady
increase of girls as industrial workers. "Good money" has usually come
first, and after that other considerations of social advantage,
working conditions, or local demand. Marriage and motherhood are still
recognized as normal conditions for most women, but we let their
industrial life step in between their homemaking preparation in home
and school, with the result that many lose physical fitness or mental
aptitude or inclination for the home life. We treat marriage as an
incident, even though it occurs often enough to be for most women the
rule rather than the exception. At some time in their lives, 93.8 per
cent of all women marry.
The first broad classification of vocations in their relation to
homemaking is: (1) those which are favorable to homemaking, (2) those
which are unfavorable, (3) those which are neutral.
It must, however, be recognized at the outset that few hard-and-fast
lines between these groups can be drawn, and that "the personal
equation" is as important a factor here as in most personal questions.
It is true, nevertheless, that helpful deductions may be drawn from
facts which it is possible to gather concerning the physical, mental,
and moral results of pursuing certain occupations as a prelude to
marriage and the making of a home.
In a general way, economic independence, that is, the earning of her
own living by a girl for several years before marriage, tends to
increase her knowledge of the value of money and to make her a better
financial manager. Probably this same independence makes a girl
slightly less anxious to marry, especially since in most cases she has
hitherto been expected to give up her personal income in exchange for
an extremely uncertain system of sharing what the husband earns.
Independence of any sort is reluctantly laid aside by those who have
possessed it. This very reluctance on the part of girls ought to be a
force in the direction of economic independence of wives, a most
desirable and necessary condition for society to bring about. Gainful
occupation has then much to recommend it and little to be said against
it as part of the training for matrimony.
Certain occupations, however, are so essentially favorable to the
girl's homemaking ability and to her probable inclination to make a
home of her own that we do not hesitate to recommend them as the best
directions for girls' vocational work to take, _other things being
equal._ We have already said that the girl distinctly not home-minded
is more safely left to her own inclinations. She would not be a
success as a homemaker under any circumstances. Other girls may be
made or marred by the years which intervene between their school and
home life.
[Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood
The value of domestic work of any sort as a preparation for
homemaking is generally admitted without argument.]
The value of domestic work of any sort as a preparation for homemaking
is generally admitted without argument. Closely in touch with a home
throughout her maturing years, the girl may undertake her own
housekeeping problems with ease and efficiency. Conditions as they
often exist, however, especially for the younger and untrained
domestic worker, do not allow the girl to obtain other experience
quite as necessary if she is to become not merely a housekeeper but a
true homemaker. The untrained girl who enters upon domestic work at
fourteen or fifteen should have opportunity--indeed the opportunity
should be thrust upon her--of attending a continuation school, where
the special aim should be to counteract the narrowing tendency of work
which revolves about so small an orbit. Ideals of home life are either
lacking or distorted in the minds of many working girls, and when such
girls become wives and mothers they strive for the wrong things or
they fall back without striving at all, taking merely what comes. They
fail to be forces for good in their family life.
[Illustration: Demonstration by teacher in domestic science. Teaching
affords excellent preparation for the prospective homemaker.]
Teaching and nursing may be grouped together as excellent preparation
for the prospective homemaker. It may be contended that the teacher
and the hospital nurse spend years outside the home environment and
that their minds are turned to other problems than those of
housekeeping. This contention is undoubtedly true; and if we were
striving merely to make housekeepers, it might be worthy of serious
consideration. The home, however, as we have defined it, is a place in
which to make people, and both the nurse and the teacher serve a long
apprenticeship in this sort of manufacture. Expert workers in either
line concern themselves with the bodies and the minds of their pupils
or patients. They, together with physicians, lawyers, and social
workers, have opportunities which can scarcely be equaled for learning
by observation and experiment about the human relations that will
confront them in their own homes. They learn to be resourceful and to
meet the emergencies of which life is full; they have the advantage
of trained minds to set to work upon the administrative problems which
underlie successful home life.
[Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood
Women medical students. Physicians and surgeons have unusual
opportunities for learning by observation and experiment about the
human relations that will confront them in their own homes]
A question may arise as to the physical fitness for marriage and
motherhood of the girl who has given her nerve force to the exacting
and often depleting work of nurse, teacher, or physician. It is
unquestionably true that nurses and teachers do often wear out after
comparatively few years at their vocation, although of the majority
the opposite is true. This merely means that conditions surrounding
these vocations should be studied with a view to their improvement, if
necessary, since we believe the vocations to be suited to women and
women to the vocations.
Office work may prove an excellent training for certain phases of
homemaking work. Neatness, accuracy, precision, the doing again and
again of constantly recurring tasks, all find their place and use in
the housekeeper's routine. The calm atmosphere of the well-kept office
even when typewriters and calculating machines are rattling is a
better preparation for an orderly home than the rush of the department
store or the factory. Purely routine workers, who put little or no
thought into their daily tasks, will enter upon homemaking lacking the
initiative that homemakers need. But the able office worker is not
merely a follower of routine. The greatest lack of office work as
preparation for a homemaking career is that the girl's interests
during so large a part of her day are led away from the home and all
that pertains to it. She works neither with people nor with the things
which go to make homes. Probably, on the whole, office work in a
general way may be classed as a neutral occupation, which neither adds
to, nor reduces, in any great degree the girl's possibilities as a
homemaker.
Salesmanship for girls, especially in the great department stores of
the cities, is a vocation of at least doubtful advantage for the
home-minded girl to pursue as a step in her training for managing her
own home. In the quiet of the village store, with few associates in
work, and with one's neighbors and fellow townsmen for customers,
salesmanship takes on a somewhat different aspect. But the city store
means usually hurry, excitement, nerve strain, a long day, with quite
probably reaction to excessive gayety and hence more nerve strain at
night. It means spending one's days among great collections of finery
which tend to assume undue importance in the girl's eyes. It means
constant association with people who spend, until spending seems the
only end in life. It means almost always pay lower than is consistent
with decent living if the girl must depend alone upon her own
earnings. And none of these things tends toward steady, skillful,
contented wifehood and motherhood in later years. This question of
underpaid work is of course not found alone in the department store.
But, wherever it is found, we may be sure that it tends on the one
hand toward marriage as a way of escape from present want, and on the
other toward inefficiency in the relation so lightly assumed.
The factory girl is in many respects in a position parallel to that of
the saleswoman. She earns too little to make comfortable living
possible. She too must leave home early and return late, wearied by
the monotony of a day in uninteresting surroundings, with neither
energy nor inclination for anything other than complete relaxation and
"fun." This desire for relaxation leads her often away from a crowded,
ill-supported home in the evenings, until the habit settles into a
confirmed disposition. This is a decided handicap for a homemaker.
Coupled with the mental inertia resulting from years of mechanical
work without thought, it provides poor material from which to make
steady, responsible, efficient women. We have already noted, however,
that factories differ widely. It follows of necessity that the girls
who work in them come from their work with all grades of ability.
The actress, the artist, and the literary woman are usually spoken of
as far removed from the true domestic type. This I cannot believe to
be true, except in individual cases. All these women, as makers of
finished products, stand far nearer to the traditional type of woman
than many others we might name. The life of the actress tends more
than the others perhaps to break home ties, but in the case of real
talent in any direction ordinary rules do not apply. The actress, the
artist, and the writer are much more likely to carry on their work
after marriage than the teacher, the office worker, or even the
factory woman. Many of them succeed to a remarkable degree in doing
two things well. Many more, of course, are less successful, but we
must not overlook the fact that the failures are more noised abroad
than the successes.
It is a matter for regret that most women, upon leaving an industrial
career for marriage, drop so completely out of touch with their former
work. In the case of the untrained woman, who has received little and
given little in her work, it is a matter of no moment; but when years
have been given to skilled labor, it is economic waste to have the
skill lost and the process forgotten. Many times the woman finds
herself after a short life in the home obliged to earn a living once
more for herself or it may be for a family. She returns to her
teaching or her office work or a position in the library; but she is
no longer, at least for a considerable time, the expert she once was.
Why should not the former teacher keep up her interest in educational
literature and the new ideas in what might have been her life work?
Would it not be well for the one-time stenographer to keep a gentle
hold upon the quirks and quirls which once brought to her her weekly
salary? A young mother of my acquaintance who was a concert violinist
of much ability has found no time for more than a year to practice,
"since baby came," and thousands of dollars spent in making her a
player are being thrown away. To some this might seem the right thing.
She has found "the home her sphere." To others it seems a serious
waste. We advocate often that the middle-aged woman who has reared her
children should return in some way to the work of the world outside
the home. In the case of the trained woman her training should be made
of use in such return. She should, however, beware lest her tools are
rusty from disuse.
We may not perhaps leave the questions involved in a discussion of
vocations as they affect homemaking without noticing that certain
occupations are considered especially dangerous to the moral stability
of girls. Nursing, private secretaryship, and domestic service present
dangers in direct proportion as they bring about isolated
companionship for the girl and a male employer. Girls must not enter
these employments without the knowledge of how to protect themselves
from lowering influences.
CHAPTER XIII
THE GIRL'S WORK (Continued)--VOCATIONS DETERMINED BY TRAINING
The question of vocation choosing begins to make itself felt far down
in the grammar school, first among the retarded and backward children
who are old for their grades and are merely waiting and marking time
until the law will allow them to leave school and go to work. These
children are usually either mentally subnormal or handicapped by
foreign birth and so unable to grasp the education which is being
offered them.
As soon as they are released the girls go to the factory, to the
store, or to help with some one's baby or with the housework. No other
places are open to them, and their possibilities in any place are few.
They cannot rise because they are mentally untrained.
The upper grades of the grammar school lose annually many children who
would be able to profit by the help the school offers to those who can
remain. Some drop out because they see no need of remaining when the
factory will employ them without further knowledge. Others chafe at
spending time on what seems to them, and what sometimes is, quite
unrelated to the life they will lead and the work they will do. Some
leave reluctantly, because their help is needed in financing a large
family. Many go gladly, because they will begin to earn and to have
some of the things they ardently desire. And until yesterday the
school paid little attention to their going, regarding it as one of
the necessary evils. Still less attention did it pay to what these
pupils became after they left. The school's responsibility ended at
its outer door.
Now that these conditions are being changed, the school is finding
responsibilities and opportunities on every hand. The foreign-born are
taken out of the regular grades where they cannot fit, and are taught
English by themselves first of all. The subnormal children are studied
for latent vocational possibilities, and where minds are deficient,
hands are the more carefully trained for suitable work. Courses are
being revised with a view to holding in school the boy or girl who
wants practical training for practical work. Secondary schools have
taken their eyes off college requirements long enough to consider
fitting the majority of their pupils to face life without the college.
Studies of vocations are being made; vocational training is being
offered; vocational guidance is at last coming to be considered the
concern of the school.
Vocational work is sometimes concentrated in the high school, but this
is reaching back scarcely far enough, since those who do not reach
high school need help quite as much as the older ones, while those who
expect to continue their training can do so better if they have some
idea of the goal to be reached.
What are the options that the grammar-school teacher may present to
the girls under her care?
First of all, as we have already said, the school records must be kept
with care and discrimination, so that the teacher may know the girl to
whom she speaks. With the records in hand, she will ask herself the
following questions:
1. Is further training at the expense of the girl's family
possible? Do the girl's abilities warrant effort on her
parents' part to give her further opportunity?
2. Could the girl's parents continue to pay her living expenses
during further training if the training were furnished at the
expense of the state?
3. Could the girl obtain training in return for her personal
service, either with or without pay?
4. Would the girl be able to repay in skill acquired the expense
of her training, whether borne by herself, her parents, or the
state?
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
A flower-making class for girls of various ages. There is no reason
why vocational work should not begin in the grammar school]
Lines between obtainable work for the trained and the untrained girl
are fairly sharply drawn, and the possibilities for each type must be
clearly understood by the guide. If it is evident that training cannot
be obtained before the girl must begin to earn, the choice is
necessarily a narrow one. The factories in the neighborhood should be
thoroughly studied, and, under the guidance of the teacher, girls
should prepare detailed reports with respect to their working
conditions. The "blind-alley" job should be plainly labeled, that it
may not catch the girl unaware. Girls who must take up factory work
should at least be enabled to choose among factories intelligently,
and if possible should be fortified with an avocation that will supply
them with the interest their daily task fails to inspire and that will
provide an anchor against the instability toward which the factory
girl tends.
[Illustration: Millinery class in a trade school. Where trade schools
do not offer such training, there are opportunities for apprentice
work for girls]
The possibilities for apprentice work with dressmakers or milliners or
in other handwork should also be made known. Girls begin here, as in
the factory, at simple and monotonous tasks, but the possibilities of
advancement are far greater and mental development is unquestionably
more likely. The ability acquired by such workers, as they progress,
to undertake and carry through a complete piece of work is not only
satisfying to the workers themselves, but of value in later years.
They learn to analyze their constructive problems and to work out the
various steps of the work to its ultimate conclusion--a knowledge
which the factory girl never attains.
Some few girls will need to be shown the possibilities which lie in
independent productive work. For the girl who has talent or even
merely deftness in manual work, coupled with initiative and some
degree of originality, such work may bring a better return than
working for others. Most girls, however, lack courage to start upon
independent work, especially if they are in immediate need of earning
and are untrained. It often happens, however, that they do not
appraise at its true value the training they have received. The
grammar-school girl, under present methods of teaching, is often fully
qualified to do either plain cooking or plain sewing, but since she
does not desire to enter domestic service, she considers these
accomplishments very little or not at all in counting her assets for
earning. Some girls have found ready employment and good returns in
home baking, in canning fruit and vegetables, or in mending, making
simple clothes for little children, or in making buttonholes and doing
other "finishing work" for busy housewives. Work of these sorts,
undertaken in a small way, has often assumed the proportions of a
business, requiring all of a young woman's time and paying her quite
as well as and often better than less interesting work in shop or
factory. A girl of my acquaintance earns a comfortable living at home
with her crochet needle. Another has paid her way through high school
and college by raising sweet peas.
The untrained girl who loves an outdoor life has fewer opportunities
than other girls unless she is capable of independent work. If she is
capable of this and has sufficient ability to study her work,
gardening and poultry or bee culture may open the way for her to work
and be happy. School gardens, poultry clubs, and canning clubs have
shown many a girl what she may do in these ways.
[Illustration: Courtesy of U.S. Department of Agriculture
Some girls have built up a good business canning fruits and
vegetables at home]
Many times too little is realized of the possibilities of these
grammar-school girls who are crowded by necessity into the working
ranks. We cannot shirk our responsibilities in regard to them,
however, although they escape from our school systems and bravely take
up the burden of their own lives. Quite as many of these girls as of
more favored ones will marry and be among the mothers of the next
generation. The work they do in the interval between school and home
will leave its impress even more strongly than upon the girl whose
school life lasts longer and who is therefore older as well as better
equipped when she enters upon her work. Few of these younger girls in
times past can be said to have done anything other than drift into
work which would make or spoil their lives and perhaps those of their
children after them. It is well that the responsibility of the school
toward them is being recognized and met.
[Illustration: A prosperous poultry farm. Poultry farming opens the
way for the girl who loves an outdoor life to work in the open and be
happy]
A distinct duty of the grammar-school teacher is to make known the
facts concerning short cuts for grammar-school girls to office work.
Unscrupulous business "colleges" sometimes mislead these immature
girls into believing that a short course taken in their school will
enable the girls to fill office positions. Facts are at hand which
show the futility of attempting office work under such conditions, and
teachers should be very careful to see that all the facts are in the
possession of their pupils.
In the early days of high schools usually the only distinction, if
any, in courses was "general" and "classical." To-day we have many
courses, or in the larger cities different schools fit boys and girls
for varying paths in life. The college-preparatory course or the
classical high school leads to college. The commercial course or
school leads to office work. The manual training or industrial or
practical arts course or high school leads to efficient handwork. The
trade school leads to definite occupations. The difficulty now is to
help girls choose intelligently which course or school will best meet
their requirements. This involves vocation study in the grammar
school.
[Illustration: Benson Polytechnic School for Girls, Portland, Oregon.
The trade school leads to definite occupations. The girl with
mechanical ability may find her vocation in millinery, dressmaking, or
the various sewing-machine trades]
The girl who terminates her formal education with her graduation from
high school may find herself not very much better placed, apparently,
than the girl who has dropped out of school farther back. Many
openings into desirable occupations are still closed to her. Often
her opportunities, however, are much greater than they seem. All facts
go to show that the high-school girl makes more rapid progress in
efficiency, and therefore in pay, than the younger girl, even when she
seems to begin at the same work. Some fields, too, are open to her
that are not usually possible for the grammar-school girl. In office
work the high-school girl who has specialized in her training may make
a very creditable showing. Many thousands of high-school graduates are
received into telephone exchanges where with a brief period of
practice they become efficient workers. A very few high-school girls
become teachers in country schools without further training, but the
number is decreasing every year. If she meets the age requirement, the
high-school girl may enter a training school for nurses, gaining her
specialized training in return for her services to the hospital.
The high-school girl who can spare time and money for some further
training finds a larger field open; but, to make the most of what high
school has to offer, her plans should be made as early as possible in
the high-school course--at the very beginning if it can be managed.
The girl must know what further training she is making ready for, must
choose electives in high school to help her make ready, or possibly to
offset the specializing of this later work by some general culture she
may otherwise miss entirely. Vocation study, therefore, and vocational
guidance must be quite as much a part of the course for the girl who
will "train" for her special work as for the girl who goes directly
from the secondary school to her vocation.
One high-school Senior writes: "My special vocation has not yet been
chosen, but if it becomes necessary for me to earn my own living I
should like to be either a nurse, a teacher, milliner, or director of
a cafeteria. I would probably choose the position that was open at the
time."
Here we have the girl who is in no hurry to choose, and who probably
has a more or less vague notion of the comparative conditions,
requirements, and rewards of the four vocations she mentions. In
contrast to this, listen to a high-school student who has been
studying herself and her possible vocation in much detail in class
work. She says: "I find that I have made good school records only in
subjects where I had materials I could see and handle. I have never
done well in arithmetic or mathematics, but in drawing, physics,
elementary biology, and domestic science I made good marks. I do not
like to sew, because it tires me to sit still. I enjoy cooking and
marketing.
"I like to plan meals and to make up new recipes. I hear that
hospitals and institutions employ women at very good salaries to buy
all the foodstuffs used in their kitchens. The expert dietitian also
plans meals and arranges dietaries. I learn that Teachers College,
Columbia, has courses of study leading to this profession, and I have
written to ask for full information."
In the class of which this girl is a member, each girl is considering
her future as this one is doing. Each gathers all available data in
regard to the vocation she is studying. Her reports become a part of
the class records. She makes as full a report as possible as to the
duties and responsibilities of the occupation, the schools or training
classes that prepare for it, the length and cost of preparation,
possibilities of employment, salaries paid, and other details.
Since training cannot alter fundamentals, but merely builds upon the
girl's nature and heredity, the same classifications obtain in the
choice of the girl who can have training as in that of the girl who
goes untrained to her vocation. There are still the producers, the
distributors, and those who serve; and it is still important that the
girl should find a place in the right group.
The producers will include the designers, the interior decorators, the
expert dietitians, the municipal inspectors of food and housing, rural
consulting housekeepers, state or country canning-club agents, the
women who organize and carry on model laundries, either coöperative or
otherwise, the managers of manufacturing enterprises, the farmers, the
photographers, the artists, the journalists, and the authors.
The distributors are chiefly represented by the higher type of office
workers, who are the "idea thinkers" of the business world, since they
neither make nor handle products, but merely manipulate the symbols
which stand for the products they seldom if ever see. The women who
manage buying and selling enterprises for themselves usually belong to
the trained group.
The service group among trained women is a large one, including
nurses, teachers, doctors' and dentists' assistants, various social
workers, librarians, secretaries and other confidential office
assistants, directors or "house mothers" in school and college
dormitories and in institutions, dentists, physicians, lawyers,
ministers.
Within the group there is wide range of choice, differing
qualifications are necessary, and varying training is to be
undertaken. Girls, with the help of a vocational expert, should
analyze their physical and mental qualities and habits, and should
study somewhat exhaustively the vocation for which they seem to find
themselves fitted.
"I should like to be a nurse, or a teacher, or a milliner, or the
manager of a cafeteria" will not do, since those vocations presuppose
some years of widely differing training. Perhaps the girl will narrow
the choice to nursing or teaching. Then she must place over against
each other the two professions--special qualifications required,
length and cost of training, personal obstacles to be overcome, and
especially the demand and supply of nurses and teachers in her
locality. Upon these depends the girl's chance to succeed when she is
fitted and launched.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
The children's ward in a hospital. The nurse must be resourceful and
possess good judgment]
The student who takes up college work, not as a specialized training,
but as a completion of her general education, stands somewhat by
herself. Such a girl may perhaps put off vocational decision until she
is part way through her college years. The college sometimes awakens
ambitions and brings to light abilities not hitherto discovered; and
even when this does not occur, the choice may be made from the highest
and most responsible positions filled by women. From the college girls
we draw our high-school teachers and college instructors, our
doctors, lawyers, and preachers, in so far as these professions are
filled by women.
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
Among the many vocations belonging to the service group teaching is
one of the most popular]
We are confronted by the statement, made again and again and
reinforced by formidable rows of figures, that the more training a
girl receives, the less she is inclined to marry or, if she does
marry, to have children. The fact seems undeniable that in our larger
eastern women's colleges, at least, not more than half the graduates
marry up to the age of forty, which we may accept as the probable
limit of the marriage age for the average woman. The natural inference
is that a college education in some way prevents or discourages
marriage. This may or may not be true. To be quite fair, the
statistics should cover the coeducational colleges as well as the
colleges for women alone. Also some attempt should be made to
discover how the likelihood of marriage is affected by the age at
which girls finish their college course. Do the younger girls of a
college class marry, while the older ones do not? Are the younger
married graduates more often mothers than the older ones, or do they
have more children?
[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
The influence of the librarian extends far beyond the walls of the
library]
If it is true that training is interfering with marriage and
motherhood for our girls, the next step is not necessarily, as some
modern hysterical students of the question seem to suggest, that we
immediately cut out the training which, in case they do marry, will
make them far more valuable wives, mothers, and members of the
community; but rather so to time and place the training, and if
necessary so to alter its character, that any such tendency away from
marriage will be removed and that the trained women of the college and
professional school shall be available for the great work of mothering
the nation of the future.
A final word as to the place of the vocational guide in the choosing
of vocations may not be amiss. That every teacher should consider
himself or herself a helper in this most important work we must agree;
but that any teacher must walk carefully, and use the guiding hand but
sparingly, is equally true.
The object of vocational help is not merely to keep the "square peg"
out of the "round hole." The girl arbitrarily placed in a suitable
occupation may never discover why she is there, and may be handicapped
all her life by a deep conviction that she fits somewhere else. "Know
thyself" is a good old maxim yet. The teacher or vocational guide is
fitted by the place of observation she holds to help the girl to study
herself and the possibilities that life holds out to such as she thus
finds herself to be. The final choice should be made by the girl.
CHAPTER XIV
MARRIAGE
Marriage may, or may not, in these days, be the opening door into the
homemaker's career. Many a young woman is a homemaker before she
marries. On the other hand, women sometimes marry without any thought
of making a home.
But, after all, it is safe to assume that marriage and homemaking do
go hand in hand. The great majority of wives become managers of homes
of one sort or another. Shall we then frankly educate our girls for
marriage--"dangle a wedding ring ever before their eyes"? Or shall we
regard marriages as "made in heaven" and keep our hands off the whole
matter?
The proportion of marriages in the United States which terminate in
divorce was in 1910 one in twelve. Divorce in this country is now
three times as common as forty years ago. The success or failure of
marriages cannot, however, be measured merely by the divorce test. We
cannot avoid the knowledge that many other unhappy unions are endured
until release comes with death. When we say unhappy marriages, we mean
not only those which become unendurable, but all those in which
marriage impedes the development and hence the efficiency of either
party to the contract. Unhappy marriages include not only the
mismated, but also those whose unhappiness in married life is due to
their own or their mate's misconception of what marriage really means.
It is obviously impossible even to estimate the number of marriages
which are happy or unhappy; but we are safe in saying that the
processes of adjustment in many cases are far harder than they ought
to be, and that many marriages which seemingly ought to bring
happiness fail of real success.
In view of the fact that so many marriages fall short of what they
might be, it would seem that some sort of assistance to the girl in
choosing a husband and to the young man in choosing a wife would be
wise, such as the instruction we give boys and girls to enable them to
be successful in the industrial world. In short, it is not enough to
prepare girls for homemaking by making all our references to marriage
indirect. Young men and women are entitled to more knowledge of
marriage, its rights, privileges, and duties; they need to realize
that in these days of complex living marriage is a difficult relation
which requires their best energies and wisest thought.
The modern marriage differs from the marriage of earlier centuries in
direct proportion as the status of woman has changed. The ancient
marriage, and indeed the medieval one, and the marriage of our own
grandmother's time began with submission and usually ended with
subjection. But the modern marriage at its best is a spiritual and
material partnership. It is the modern marriage at its best and
otherwise with which we have to do.
Half a century ago girls married at eighteen or even earlier, took
charge of their households, were mothers of good-sized families at
twenty-eight or thirty, and were frequently grandmothers at forty.
Nowadays early marriage is the exception. For years the marriage age
has been steadily rising, until some students profess to be alarmed at
a prospect of marriage disappearing, the maternal instinct becoming
lost by disuse, and the race finally becoming extinct. However, the
maximum marriage age, at least for the present, seems to have been
reached, and statistics show a slight dropping within the last two or
three years.
The forces operating to fix the marriage age are exceedingly complex.
The higher education of girls has undoubtedly been a large factor in
the postponement of marriage. Its effect has been wrought in a variety
of ways. The increasing years in schoolroom and lecture hall have been
directly responsible in many cases. The ambitions aroused account for
many more. The increased ability of girls to earn their own living and
public acceptance of their doing so have practically removed "marriage
as a trade" from the consideration of girls and their parents. Girls
no longer need to marry in order to transfer the burden of their
support from father to husband. Instead they may "go to work." And
once at work they are often reluctant to give up a personal income for
the uncertainties of sharing what a husband earns. Then, too, the
broadening effect of education makes marriage in the abstract a less
absorbing, momentous subject for the girl's thoughts. Also the rebound
toward selfishness coincident with woman's "emancipation" leads girls
to put off what they are sometimes led to consider a sacrifice of
themselves. The tragedies of the divorce courts are directly
responsible for many a girlish determination not to marry, a
determination which is broken only when the first zest of mature life
has passed and when the woman begins to long for the home ties she has
resolved to deny herself and decides to take the risk. The increased
cost of living and the ever-increasing responsibilities of rearing,
educating, and launching a family of children lead many young people
to postpone marriage until they can command a larger income. The
strain of modern industrial life, with its fierce competitions and its
early discard of the elderly and unfit, finds many girls who would
otherwise marry burdened with the care of parents who can ill spare
the daughter's help.
[Illustration: The Halliday Historic Photograph Co.
LOUISA M. ALCOTT
Miss Alcott's lifelong devotion to the interests of her family is a
well-known story. She made a happy home for them, and at the same time
attained marked success in the literary field.]
If all these obstacles to early marriage could be overcome, the
question of the wisest time for marrying might be approached fairly
and squarely on its merits.
Too early marriage means immaturity in choice, with the possibility
always of unfortunate mistakes and sad awakening. Too late marriage,
on the other hand, means settled convictions which often result in
that incompatibility which seeks relief in divorce. The plasticity of
youth at least _promises_ adaptability. The mature judgment of later
years ought to afford a wise choice. Between extreme youth then and a
too settled maturity is the wise time.
In order to approach the ideal in the marriage relation, the time of
marriage should be so placed that the girl is (1) physically fit, (2)
fully educated, (3) broadened by some experience with the world.
She must not be too old to bear children safely, or to rear them
sympathetically as they approach the difficult years. She must not be
physically worn by excessive industrial service, nor with enthusiasms
burned out by the same cause. Probably between twenty-two and
twenty-five the girl reaches the height of physical fitness. She may
also by that time have completed a liberal education, and she may even
have done that and also have put her training to useful service. It
would be better if girls completed their college courses earlier than
most do. However, since the great majority of girls do not have a
college education, the generally increased age of marriage cannot
rightfully be laid, as many seem to lay it, at the doors of the
college women. Schemes of education in the future will undoubtedly try
to remedy the defect of present systems in this respect. If most girls
could finish their training in college or professional school at
twenty, as some do now, the world would be rewarded by earlier
marriages and probably more of them. There would be more children,
reared by younger and more enthusiastic mothers. The more difficult
professions, which could not be successfully undertaken by the girl of
twenty, would then be reserved, as they generally are now, for the
women whose ambition is unusually strong and absorbing. Attempts are
frequently made to show that ambition is becoming an inordinately
prominent quality in all women, but there are few facts to support so
wide a contention.
[Illustration: Photograph by Paul Thompson
RUTH MCENERY STUART
Mrs. Stuart was one of those in whom the talent for homemaking and
the talent for creative literary work existed side by side. On her
husband's plantation in Arkansas she found many of the types for the
characters in her stories]
The girl graduate of twenty, reinforced by from two to five years of
work in the vocation she has chosen, is usually fit, physically and
mentally, for marriage. More than that, she may by that age, usually,
be trusted to know what she wants, even in a husband, if she is ever
going to know.
In the day when girls married nearly always "in their teens," wise
choice of a husband called for selection of a man considerably older
than the girl herself. This disparity is less common in these days,
and is really less desirable than it once was. The girl of the earlier
time reached maturity of mind earlier than the girl of to-day with her
prolonged education, and much earlier than the boy of her day did. He
was still being educated in school or as an apprentice, and was hardly
ready to undertake the responsibility of a family at an age when the
girl's scanty education was long since completed and it was considered
high time that her support was laid upon a husband's shoulders.
It used to be said, "Men keep their youth better than women," so that
any disparity in age at the time of marriage was soon lost. This is no
longer true as it was once. The early marriage, with early and
excessive childbearing, overwork, and the numerous restrictions that
custom laid upon her, were responsible for woman's loss of youth.
These conditions no longer exist. The woman of forty or fifty can now
usually hold her own with the man of her own age in point of youth.
[Illustration: LOUISE HOMER AND HER FAMILY
Madame Homer's great success in the difficult art of operatic singing
has by no means interfered with her career as a homemaker.]
Another consideration in favor of more nearly equal age lies in the
fact that formerly men did not look for wives who were their mental
equals. They did not really desire mental equals as wives. To-day they
do, or, if there still lingers in the minds of some of them the old
notion that wives must be clinging vines, the lingering notion will
soon be gone. The marriage of equality possesses too many advantages
for both parties to be thrown aside. The wife who can think, who is
mature enough to be capable of real partnership, is the wife surely of
to-morrow, if not of to-day.
Among the forces that control marriage may be mentioned (1) physical
attraction, (2) continued social relationships, (3) dissimilarity, (4)
affection, (5) barter.
It is usually difficult to say of any marriage that any one of these
forces alone caused the mating. It may have been physical attraction
together with everyday companionship; or physical attraction and
dissimilarity or strangeness, resulting in what we know as love at
first sight. Or it may have been affection of slow growth, or
affection with an element of appreciation of worldly advantage, or it
may have been a little physical attraction with a great deal of desire
for social position or wealth, or, ugliest of all, it may have been
pure barter, without personal attraction of any sort. For these worldy
advantages you offer, I will sell you my body and my soul.
To secure the finest marriages for girls we must insure three
conditions: (1) high ideals of marriage among our adolescents, (2)
better knowledge of men, and (3) wise companionships during the years
from fourteen to twenty-five.
[Illustration: MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON
The South is justly proud of this poet of no mean rank who gave
herself unstintedly to her home duties and responsibilities]
Physical attraction on one or both sides is undoubtedly the greatest
force in marriage selection. It is only when physical attraction
exerts its influence upon a girl whose ideal of a husband is low or
vague or incorrect that the danger is great. Physical attraction is
not love, but it may be--often it is--the basis of love when it exists
between two who are suited to a life together.
Generally speaking, girls will find married life easier, and their
husbands will find life more satisfactory, when the two have been
reared with approximately the same ideals. The girl who falls in love
with a man largely because he is "different" from the boys among whom
she has grown up often finds that very difference a stumbling block to
domestic happiness. Marriages across such chasms where there should be
common ground are more hazardous than between those whose education,
social training, friends, and beliefs are of the same type. When they
do succeed, they undoubtedly are the richer for the variety of
experience husband and wife have to give each other; and, too, they
show an adaptability on the part of one or both which argues well for
continued happiness. Commonly, however, they do not succeed.
There are, also, deeper matters than these to be considered. Is this
man or this woman worthy of lifelong devotion? Is the love he offers
or she offers in return for the love you offer, the love that gives or
the love that merely takes? Has he been a success at something,
anything, that counts? Has he a sense of responsibility in marriage
and the burdens it brings? Does he desire a home? Do his views as to
children reflect man's natural desire to found a family or merely the
selfish desire for the freedom and luxury which the absence of
children may make possible? Has he a right to approach fatherhood--is
his body physically and morally clean?
[Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood
COLONEL AND MRS. ROOSEVELT WITH MEMBERS OF THEIR FAMILY
Colonel Roosevelt's own family was preëminently one in which the
father shared with the mother a keen sense of the responsibilities of
marriage and the highest ideals of home life]
These are serious questions with which to weight the wings of a young
man's or a young woman's fancy. But the attraction which cannot stand
before them is not safe as a basis for marriage. Many a young man or
woman has willfully turned closed eyes to the selfishness or the
irresponsibility which will later wreck a home, because attraction
blinded common sense.
Barter, the lowest form of marriage, exists and has always existed
whenever the material benefits that either husband or wife expects to
derive from the connection are the impelling forces in the union. The
woman desires wealth, social position, a title--or perhaps nothing
more than security from poverty or the necessity of work outside the
home, or perhaps no more than the mere security of a home itself. The
man in other cases desires wealth, or social position, or a wife who
will grace his fine home, or some business connection which the
marriage will afford. And upon these things men and women build, or
attempt to build, the foundations of home life.
It is not true of course that every girl of moderate means, or without
means, who marries a man of wealth does so because of his money. Nor
is it always true when the cases are reversed. Love may be as real
between those two as between any others. But when it is true that the
marriage is an exchange of commodities, it is no different from
prostitution under other circumstances. In fact, it is prostitution
under cover, without acceptance of the stigma which for centuries has
been the portion of voluntary selling of the body to him who cares to
buy.
[Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood
JULIA WARD HOWE AND HER GRANDDAUGHTER
In the life of Mrs. Howe was exemplified the identity of ideals of
husband and wife. They worked side by side in the literary field and
in their philanthropic and reform work]
Eugenics, a modern science which aims at race regeneration, lays down
many laws and restrictions for those who are selecting their mates. By
the following of these laws and restrictions in the selection of
husbands and wives, undesirable traits in the offspring are to be
weeded out and desirable; ones are to be fostered and increased.
That these laws should be studied with the care used by breeders of
plants and animals goes without saying. That if they are followed
strictly the number of marriages would be materially reduced, at least
for a considerable time, is doubtless true. That marriages in which
eugenics has played the major part in selection will present new
problems is probably equally true. If marriages were mere temporary
unions, for the purpose of obtaining offspring, eugenic principles
could not be too exactly nor too coldly applied to the selection of
mates. But since marriage implies living together and becoming, or
continuing to be, worthy members of the community, and since the
offspring are fashioned no less by the conditions of their upbringing
than by heredity, selection of mates must involve more than looking
for eugenically perfect fathers and mothers for the generations yet
unborn. Eugenics, however, is in infancy as a science, and, like the
human infants it would protect, must react to the environment in which
it finds itself and must feel the chastening hand of time before its
value can be known. Agitation in the direction of allowing posterity
to be "well born" can never be out of place. What being well born is
and how it shall be attained is a worthy subject of research. As a
cold, exact science, however, eugenics can never hope for application
without some consideration of the personal equation which makes
marriage at its best not a mating merely, but a joining of souls.
Choosing a husband or a wife is, after all, merely the beginning of
the marriage problem. Good husbands are not discovered, but made, from
originally good or perhaps indifferent or in rare cases from even poor
material, by the reaction of married life upon what was previously
mere "man." Even so with wives.
[Illustration: CAROLINE BARTLETT CRANE
Mrs. Crane, an expert on sanitation, has successfully applied the
principles of good housekeeping to civic affairs in many cities, and
has thus made women more of a factor in the community at large]
The successful marriage presupposes unselfishness, even carried if
necessary to the point of sacrifice, but it must be unselfishness for
two, not for one alone. Neither the "child wife" who must be carried
as a burden, nor the complacent husband who forms the center of a
smoothly revolving little world patiently turned by a silent wife, has
any part in the marriage of equality--the only marriage worthy of the
name.
The successful marriage calls also for freedom--again for two. Women
sometimes hesitate to marry because the old idea of marriage involved
loss of individuality, and they have little faith in men's readiness
to accept any other idea. Men, on the other hand, fear to marry
because the "new woman" demands so much for herself--development, a
career, a chance to work out her own ideals of life. The man sees
little in this for himself but the "second fiddle" which woman for
centuries played to his first. Ideal marriages, however, do take place
in which there is no sacrifice of personality--in which, indeed, each
lives a fuller life than would have been possible without the
marriage. For this to be realized, there must be full recognition of
the responsibility of each for his or her own deeds, and a standing
aside while each works out his destiny. This does not mean a
separation of interests nor an abandonment of common counsel. It means
merely that in individual matters each must have the freedom enjoyed
before marriage took place. It must mean for women some sort of
economic independence, and in addition a spiritual independence such
as men enjoy. When this freedom is cheerfully given, and in return the
wife gives a like liberty to the husband, the great incentive to
concealments and deceptions or to nagging and controversy is removed.
The petty annoyances of the day are lessened, trust is increased,
and both man and woman find their strength increased rather than
depleted by the relation.
[Illustration: Courtesy of George Herbert Palmer
ALICE FREEMAN PALMER
Mrs. Palmer's was one of the ideal marriages in which husband and
wife each lived a fuller life than would have been possible without
the marriage. Happy in her home life, Mrs. Palmer yet had time to
achieve a brilliant success in administrative educational work]
Common interests are an almost certain safeguard in most marriages.
Common duties are more often than not a source of difficulty. An
untold number of matrimonial ventures fail because of inadequate
responsibility in adjustment of expenses to income. Many more are
rendered inharmonious by failure of parents to agree as to the
management of children. In both these directions increased knowledge
will do much to secure harmonious action. Family traditions are more
than likely to clash when they are adopted as principles of family
discipline. "Children must mind," says the father, in memory and
emulation of his father's method with him. "Children must not be
coerced," says the mother, who has been reared by a different method.
Clearly a course in child psychology would have been of value to these
parents in determining a common procedure. There is probably no
subject upon which either father or mother finds it so hard to yield
to the other's way as upon this. Each feels, and rightly, that the
material to be trained is so precious, and that failure, if it comes,
will be so stupendous, that neither dares do what seems wrong to his
own mind. Nothing but common knowledge and a predetermined policy can
solve this problem so near to the root of success or failure in
marriage itself.
Girls are commonly taught too little of the duties of married women to
their husbands. They look for a lifetime of unalloyed bliss. If they
fail to realize their impossible dream, they turn their faces toward
the divorce court. Many girls have had too smooth a pathway, too
little of responsibility, and too little of disappointment, before
undertaking the serious duty of establishing and maintaining a
lifelong partnership. There has been little in their lives to
prepare them for long-continued relations of any sort. On the other
hand, the same girls have equally little idea of what they have a
right to expect of marriage for themselves. Much of the necessary
adjustment is left to chance.
[Illustration: Photograph by Paul Thompson
AMELIA E. BARR
Far from interfering with her career, Mrs. Barr's home interests were
the inspiration for it. Thrown on her own resources by the death of
her husband, who sacrificed himself in a yellow fever epidemic in
Texas, Mrs. Barr took up writing to make a living for her children]
Scarcely any phase of woman's part in marriage is arousing more
attention at present than the question of childbearing. Women, and
especially educated women, are accused of sterility or of
intentionally avoiding motherhood. They are said to believe that
children interfere with their careers, that they can render greater
service to the world in public work than in childbearing. They "prefer
idleness and luxury to the care of a family." The "maternal instinct
is fading." They threaten us with "race suicide," the "extinction of
mankind," a silent world given over to dumb beasts who have not yet
learned the principles of "birth control" and "family limitation."
Thus on the one hand.
On the other: "The world is better served by the small family well
reared than by the large one necessarily less well cared for." "Women
are not merely the instruments of nature for multiplying mankind. They
have a right to some time for living their own lives." "The maternal
instinct has not faded, but merely come under control of a wisdom
which directs that it shall not bring forth what it cannot care for."
And so on, with added arguments for either side.
In all these discussions of birth control the fathers or the husbands
who desire not to be fathers are usually left in the background. As a
matter of fact, however, men as well as women desire luxury and
freedom from the care of a family. It is a general sign of the times,
not a characteristic of one sex alone. Men as well as women fear for
their ability to care for and educate large families. With the
demands of our present complex existence bearing heavily upon them,
one can scarcely wonder at the hesitation of either man or woman to
add again and again to their already pressing cares. There is but one
remedy--not to cut off education for women, as some suggest, but to
learn the joys of a simpler life which will afford people time and
strength and means to bear and rear their young. To this end let us
teach our girls and our boys something of the essentials of a useful
and a happy life, and teach them how to eliminate the non-essentials
which waste their time and spirit.
Who can best instruct the girl in what we may call the ethics of
marriage? Her mother? Usually the mother's viewpoint is too personal.
Her teacher? Most of her teachers are unmarried and know little more
about the subject than she does herself. A specially selected married
teacher? Perhaps, but only if she is a deep student of human nature
and of marriage from a scientific standpoint.
An ideal course for every girl somewhere before her education can be
considered complete would cover "woman's life" as (1) industrial
worker, (2) wife, (3) mother, (4) citizen, (5) civic force.
Here, without undue "dangling of the wedding ring," girls might study
marriage as an important phase of woman's life. Such a course,
simplified or elaborated to suit the circumstances of the girls who
participate, might well be given in all girls' schools and colleges,
in continuation schools, in settlement-house clubs and classes, in
rural clubs and neighborhood centers. For, reduced to its simplest
terms, marriage in the tenement rests upon the same principles as
marriage in the mansion.
Happily married, or happy unmarried, with her life work stretching
before her, the girl enters upon her heritage of work. We have
trained her to be a homemaker, but we need feel no regret in regard to
her training if she finds her life work in an office or a schoolroom
or a hospital. She may never "keep house," although we hope that she
will some time help to make a home. But, whether she becomes a
homemaker or not, a true understanding and appreciation of the value
of the home and a knowledge of the principles underlying its
maintenance will make her a broader woman and a better worker than she
could otherwise be. In the home, or wherever she may be, she cannot
fail to show the girls who are growing up about her what home means to
her and what it means to the race. And in her hands we may safely
leave the future of the home.
SUGGESTED READINGS
GENERAL BOOKS WHICH INTRODUCE THE READER TO THE LARGER PHASES OF THE
WOMAN MOVEMENT
BRUÉRE, MARTHA B. and ROBERT W. _Increasing Home Efficiency_. New
York: Macmillan.
COLQUHOUN, MRS. A. _The Vocations of Woman_. New York: Macmillan.
GILMAN, CHARLOTTE PERKINS. _Women and Economics_. Boston: Small,
Maynard & Co.
KEY, ELLEN. _Love and Marriage_. New York: Putnam.
SCHREINER, OLIVE. _Woman and Labor_. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co.
SPENCER, ANNA GARLIN. _The Challenge of Womanhood._
TARBELL, IDA M. _The Business of Being a Woman_. New York: Macmillan.
Some of these books are conservative, others very radical. They are
recommended, not because the writer agrees with them, but because
every mother and teacher who acts as a vocational counselor should
know both conservative and radical points of view.
MORE DISTINCTLY VOCATIONAL BOOKS
BLOOMFIELD, MEYER. _Readings in Vocational Guidance_. Boston: Ginn &
Co.
The following articles in this book are especially recommended:
"The Value, during Education, of the Life-Career Motive." By
CHARLES W. ELIOT.
"Selecting Young Men for Particular Jobs." By HERMAN SCHNEIDER.
"The Permanence of Interests and Their Relation to Abilities." By
EDWARD L. THORNDIKE.
"Survey of Occupations Open to the Girl of Fourteen to Sixteen
Years of Age." By HARRIET HAZEN DODGE.
BREWER, J.M. _Vocational-Guidance Movement_. New York: Macmillan.
BREWSTER, EDWIN T. _Vocational Guidance for the Professions._ Chicago:
Rand McNally & Co.
BUREAU OF EDUCATION, Washington, D.C.
_Bulletin 1913, No. 17._ "A Trade School for Girls."
_Bulletin 1914, No. 4._ "The School and a Start in Life."
_Bulletin 1914, No. 14._ "Vocational Guidance Association."
Papers presented at the organization meeting, October, 1913.
_Annual Reports_ of the Commissioner of Education:
1911, chapter viii, "A School for Homemakers."
1914, chapter xiii, "Education for the Home."
1915, chapter xii, "Home Economics."
1915, chapter xiv, "Home Education."
1916, chapter xvii, "Education in the Home."
BUTLER, ELIZABETH BEARDSLEY. _Women and the Trades._ New York:
Charities Publication Committee.
----. _Saleswomen in Mercantile Stores._ New York: Survey Associates.
DAVIS, JESSE BUTTRICK. _Vocational and Moral Guidance._ Boston: Ginn &
Co.
DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE AND LABOR, Washington, D.C.:
_Twenty-fifth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor._
Contains nineteen volumes on "Condition of Women and Child
Wage-Earners in the United States." The most comprehensive
study of conditions of women in industry before the war.
_Bulletin No. 175._ "Summary of the Report on the Condition of
Women and Child Wage-Earners in the United States." Gives
in condensed form the findings in the nineteen volumes.
GOWIN and WHEATLEY. _Occupations._ Boston: Ginn & Co.
HOLLINGWORTH, H.L. _Vocational Psychology: Its Problems and Methods._
New York: D. Appleton & Co.
LASELLE and WILEY. _Vocations for Girls._ Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.
LEAKE, ALBERT H. _The Vocational Education of Girls and Women._ New
York: Macmillan.
MCKEEVER, A. _Training the Girl._ New York: Macmillan.
PRESSEY, C. PARK. _A Vocational Reader._ Chicago: Rand McNally & Co.
This book shows the teacher the kind of stories that can be
used for inspiration for grade-school girls.
PUFFER, J. ADAMS. _Vocational Guidance_. Chicago: Rand McNally.& Co.
WOMEN'S EDUCATIONAL AND INDUSTRIAL UNION OF BOSTON:
_Vocations for the Trained Woman_.
_The Public Schools and Women in Office Service_.
THE INDEX
Acting as a preparation for homemaking, 201
Adolescent girl, 130-150. _See also_ Girl
Agriculture, possibilities in and qualifications for, 173 ff.
Arithmetic applied to household problems, 114 ff.
Art courses as education for homemaking, 40, 118 f.
Artist, work of, as a preparation for homemaking, 201
Arts and crafts, possibilities in and qualifications for, 173
Auburn, Washington, Central School, manual arts courses in, 119
Bibliography, 241 f.
Bruère, Martha B., quoted, 18, 51 f.
Budgets, 50 ff.
Building problems, 32 ff.
Census, statistics regarding women in industry, 151, 152, 153, 154
Chapin, Dr., quoted, 50 f.
Child:
imitative instinct as influencing training of, 90, 102
training for habits of industry, 96 ff.
training for self-control, 93 ff.
training for sympathy, 90 f.
training for unselfishness, 95 f.
training the little, 86-101
Church:
as a means of betterment in the community, 67
girl influenced by, 84 f.
homemaking as influenced by, 84 f.
women and the, 67
Citizenship, woman and, 71 f.
Clothing (_see also_ Dress):
problems of, in the home, 57 ff.
problems of, for the adolescent girl, 139 ff., 147 f.
Community:
church as a means of betterment in, 67
home, relation between, and, 62 ff.
working women, relation to, 157 ff.
Consolidated school, 110
Continuation schools, 179 f.
Cooking classes in grammar schools, 110 f.
Decoration of the home, 40
Department stores:
continuation schools in, 179 f.
statistics concerning women employed in, 180
Dietetics, knowledge of, necessary to the homemaker, 54 ff.
Divorce, dangers of, 82, 218, 220
Doll's house as a means of teaching the child mechanics of
housekeeping, 102-121
Domestic work:
as a preparation for homemaking, 196 f.
as a vocation, possibilities in and qualifications for, 185 f.
Dress (_see also_ Clothing):
principles of selection, for the adolescent girl, 139 ff.
problems of, for the adolescent girl, 139 ff., 147 f.
Dressmaking, possibilities in and qualifications for, 171 f.
Education:
for homemaking, 25 f.
of women, effect on home life, 8 ff.
Educational agencies involved in "woman making," 75-85
Eugenics as influencing marriage, 230
Factory work:
as a preparation for homemaking, 200 f.
possibilities in and qualifications for, 170 f.
Father, characteristics of the ideal, 23 f.
Feeding problems in the home, 53 ff.
Financial knowledge necessary for homemaking, 49 ff.
Food production, possibilities in and qualifications for work in, 175 ff.
Food questions, study of, in schools, 118
Frederick, Mrs., quoted, 18
Furniture, principles governing selection of, 42
Games, training afforded by, 123 ff.
Geography applied to household problems, 116
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, quoted, 56
Girl:
adolescent, 130-150
church's influence upon, 84 ff.
dress problems of the adolescent, 139 ff., 147 f.
educational agencies involved in training the, 75-85
health of adolescent, methods of safeguarding, 130 ff.
inner life of, 122-129
plan for training adolescent, 136 ff.
school center of society of, 129 ff., 143 ff.
teaching the mechanics of housekeeping to, 102-121
work of, 151-217
Grammar school, part played in vocational guidance, 204 ff.
Hall, G. Stanley, quoted, 76
Handwork, classification of, 170 ff.
Health of adolescent girl, methods of safeguarding, 130 ff.
Heating apparatus, 35 f.
High school, part played in vocational guidance, 211 ff.
Home:
as a means of training for homemaking, 81 ff.
building problems in, 32 ff.
clothing problems in, 57 ff.
community, relation to, 62 ff.
decoration of, 40
establishing a, 27-48
feeding problems in, 53 ff.
furniture, principles governing selection of, 42
heating problems in, 35 f.
income in, apportionment of, 50 ff.
industrial revolution, effect of, on, 7 ff.
industries in, 12 ff.
labor-saving devices in, 44 ff.
running the domestic machinery, 49-72
servant question in, 44 ff.
site for, selection of, 31 f.
the ideal, 18-26
urban conditions as affecting, 10 f.
waste disposal in, 37 ff.
water supply in, 36 f.
women, effect of education of, on, 8 ff.
Homemaking:
community problems in country and city affecting, 28, 30
dietetics, knowledge of, necessary to, 54 ff.
education for, 25 f.
educational agencies involved in training for, 75-85
financial knowledge necessary for, 49 ff.
home's influence in training for, 81 ff.
tasks suitable for the small child, 109
teacher's responsibility in training for, 78, 80 f.
the real business of woman, 14 ff.
vocations as affecting, 194-202 (_see also_ the specific vocations)
Home work, school credit for, 105 ff.
Housekeeping:
tasks suitable for the small child, 109
teaching the mechanics of, 102-121
Hygiene, study of, as a preparation for homemaking, 120
Income, apportionment of, 50 ff.
Industrial revolution, effects of, on home life, 7 ff.
Industries (_see also_ Vocations):
in the home, 12 ff.
women in, Census statistics concerning, 151, 152, 153, 154
women's wage statistics, 160
Industry, teaching the child habits of, 96 ff.
Imitation, evils of, 59 f.
Imitative instinct, influence of, in training the child, 90, 102
Labor-saving devices in the home, 44 ff.
Leominster, Massachusetts, a school lunch room, 111
Library work, possibilities in and qualifications for, 189 f.
Literary work as a preparation for homemaking, 201
Marriage, 218-240
age of, for women, 152, 219 f.
factors influencing, 226 f.
ideals of, 226 f.
Massachusetts plan of school credit for home work, 106
Millinery, possibilities in and qualifications for, 172
Montclair, New Jersey, school lunchroom, 111
Montessori materials as means of teaching habits of industry, 98
Mother (_see also_ Woman):
characteristics of the ideal, 21 ff.
community institutions, relation to, 65 ff.
school, duty to, 65 ff.
Nearing, Scott, quoted, 18
Newark, New Jersey, Central High School, lunch room in, 111
New York City, Public School No. 7, model school home, 113
Nursing:
as a preparation for homemaking, 197 ff.
possibilities in and qualifications for, 190 f.
Occupations. _See_ Vocations; _see also_ the specific occupations
Office work:
as a preparation for homemaking, 199
possibilities in and qualifications for, 180 ff.
Oppenheim, quoted, 120
Oregon plan of school credit for home work, 106
Physiology, study of, as preparation for homemaking, 120
Puffer, J. Adams, quoted, 152, 155
Reading for the adolescent girl, 146 f.
Reform, woman's opportunities in, 68, 70 f.
Salesmanship:
as a preparation for homemaking, 200
possibilities in and qualifications for, 178 ff.
School:
art courses contributing to homemaking knowledge, 118 f.
consolidated, 110
continuation, 179 f.
cooking classes in, 110 f.
homemaking, duty to educate for, 35, 47 f., 76 ff.
mothers' relation to, 65 ff.
sewing classes in grammar, 110, 111 f.
vocational guidance, responsibility in, 167 ff., 204 ff., 211 ff.
School credit for home work, 105 ff.
School gardens, 108
Schreiner, Olive, quoted, 152
Servant question, 44 ff.
Sewing classes in grammar schools, 110, 111 f.
Sex knowledge, instruction in, 80, 128, 148 ff.
Social work, possibilities in and qualifications for, 191 ff.
Society:
school and playground center of girls', 126 ff., 143 ff.
woman's place in, 3-17
Suffrage, 71
Tarbell, Ida M., quoted, 15
Teacher:
as a vocational guide, 167 ff., 204 ff., 211 ff.
homemaking, responsibility of, in training for, 75 ff., 78, 80 f.
Teaching:
as a preparation for homemaking, 197 ff.
possibilities in and qualifications for, 188 f.
Urban conditions as affecting home life, 10 f.
Vocational guidance:
considerations in, 163 ff., 194 ff.
grammar school's part in, 204 ff.
high school's part in, 211 ff.
need for, 161 f.
object of, 216
school's part in, 167 ff., 204 ff., 211 ff.
teacher's part in, 167 ff., 204 ff., 211 ff.
Vocations (_see also_ the specific vocations):
as affecting homemaking, 194-202
choice of, considerations in, 163 ff., 194 ff.
classification of, 163-193
determined by training, 203-217
distributing group, 178-183
producing group, 169-177
service group, 184-193
Wage statistics, 160
Ward, Lester F., quoted, 15
Waste disposal, 37 ff.
Water supply, 36 f.
Womanhood, present-day ideals of, 1-72
Woman (_see also_ Mother):
and citizenship, 71 f.
as buyer, 70 f.
church, relation to, 67
community's relation to working, 157 ff.
education of, effect on home life, 8 ff.
in industry, Census statistics, 151, 152, 153, 154
marriage age 152, 219 f.
reform, opportunities in, 68, 70 f.
society, place in, 3-17
status of, views concerning, 5 f.
the real business of, 14 ff.
wage statistics, 160
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