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If, then, domestic science is to be made a subject of serious study and is to be accorded a permanent place in the school curriculum, if the household is to profit by the educational progress of the day, it can only be after the university has taken the initiative and has made all matters pertaining to the house and home a subject of scientific research.

THE RELATION OF COLLEGE WOMEN TO DOMESTIC SCIENCE

In a Western city, somewhat addicted to the formation of literary clubs and reading-circles, is a company of women who meet for the study of history, closing the afternoon's work with a discussion of current events. In alluding to these discussions, a member once said, "No matter what subject is introduced, we always drift off to the woman question." The half-jesting remark has in it more of wisdom than of criticism. The so-called "woman question" is not, as was once popularly supposed, synonymous either with woman suffrage or with the higher education of woman--it is as broad and as deep as the thoughts and activities of woman. It was inevitable that for many years efforts should be made to open new occupations to women, to give them better preparation for their work, and to secure fair remuneration for service well done. It was inevitable, because, however much some sociologists may wish it otherwise, the fact remains that woman is and must be to a certain extent a wage-earner. These efforts have been reasonably successful; almost every avenue of work is open to women, and almost every coveted opportunity for preparation is hers. The reaction, however, has come, and the pertinent question is being asked, "Why has so little been done to improve the work of woman in those fields which have always without question been considered legitimately hers?"

A glance at our periodical literature does indeed show unusual interest in all questions affecting domestic life. Economists are asking why the wages paid for domestic service are higher than those paid the average woman in other occupations, and why, in spite of this, the demand for household workers is greater than the supply. Philanthropists are puzzled to know why girls prefer to live in crowded tenement-houses on the merest pittance rather than enjoy many of the comforts of home life as a household employee. Experienced housekeepers find life a burden when it becomes necessary to change the divinity who rules the kitchen or the nursery, and wonder why it is so difficult to secure efficient help. Educated women without homes who desire to learn the principles of domestic science can find no explanation for the fact that the United States with its hundreds of thousands of schools affords scarcely one where this subject can be studied as a serious profession as is law, medicine, or theology. None of these questions has been satisfactorily answered. The editor who discourses of "half-baked writers on political economy" settles one of them by saying that there is no reason whatever why women should dislike domestic service. But the autocratic assertion has not visibly increased the number of women desiring employment as house-servants. The benevolent individual who has not yet learned that thousands of girls have neither mothers nor homes, blandly answers another of these questions by saying, "Let girls learn housekeeping at home." The world at large cuts the gordian knot and says, "It is an unfortunate condition of affairs, but we cannot reform all evils at once."

Before considering the relation that college women sustain to the general subject of domestic science, it must be noted that the subject is one of general interest.

It is of interest to all women, because so large a proportion of them marry and become actively engaged in housekeeping; the number of married women who do not keep house is possibly equaled by the number of unmarried women who do. Moreover, the majority of women whose primary occupation is not housekeeping are at various times called upon to spend a portion of their time in household duties. It is of interest to all men, whether they have a full appreciation of it or not, because all questions affecting the house and the home are so inextricably bound up with all questions of life.

It must be assumed at the outset that there is a necessity for improvement in the conduct of household affairs. As the household is at present organized, the duties of the housekeeper are multifarious. The ideal housekeeper must have a knowledge of culinary affairs. Not only must she know how to make food palatable, but she must understand its nutritive and its economic value. She must be able to superintend the cutting and making of ordinary garments. She must understand the over-sight of her household employees; the details of marketing; the principles of laundry work; the keeping of household accounts; the care of the sick. She must know how to care for the house and all of its furniture, from attic to cellar. She must be master of all these special lines of work, and know a thousand and one things about the household not enumerated. She must not only be the housekeeper, but the homekeeper. She must furnish her house with taste, and often at the same time with economy. She should understand the principles of the kindergarten, and not shrink from applying the fundamental ideas of ethics and psychology to the training of children. She must at all times be ready to perform her social obligations in the circle in which she moves.

It is generally assumed that the only preparation necessary to become proficient in these multiform tasks is found in the instinctive love of domestic life common to all women. But this of itself does not make a woman a successful housekeeper any more than a taste for medicine renders a young man a skillful surgeon, or a talent for law constitutes a learned jurist. There has been a growing recognition of this fact, but at the same time it is said that the home training of every girl ought to be sufficient. There are many reasons why this is not so. If we apply the principles to the case of girls who become household employees, it is seen to be at fault. It is from the ranks below the so-called middle class, to use an invidious phrase, that the great army of household employees is recruited. It is impossible for a girl belonging to this class to go into a family whose social advantages have been greater than her own, and become at once an adept in the conventional forms of table service, an expert cook, or a good general houseworker. She has had neither the means, nor the opportunity, to gain even a knowledge of what duties will be required of her, to say nothing of knowing how to perform them. An incompetent mistress is unable to give the necessary instructions; a competent one has often neither the time nor the patience to undertake such training, and indeed it ought not to be expected of her any more than it is supposed that a banker who desires an expert accountant will teach the applicant the process of addition and subtraction.

If, on the other hand, it is assumed that the home training in domestic affairs is sufficient for girls of the middle and upper classes, there is also danger of error. It is often quite as difficult to give regular instruction in the home in these matters as it is in the ordinary school branches. The Law School of the University of Michigan, after thirty years' experience, said a few years since in regard to the previous reading of law: "It is not often that the student receives the needed assistance except in law schools. The active practitioner, engrossed with the care of business, cannot, or at least, as proved by experience, does not, furnish the students who place themselves in his charge the attention and assistance essential to give a correct direction to their reading, and to teach them to apply it usefully and aptly in their subsequent professional life." This same principle too often applies in regard to housework, even when the teacher is the mother. The most competent mothers often have the most incompetent daughters--it is far more easy to do the work than to teach another how to do it. Sometimes it is assumed that the daughter can learn, as the mother has learned, by the hard road of experience. It is, also, too often a question of how the blind shall lead the blind. Again, many girls are early left without homes, and thus deprived of the opportunity.

There are evidences of some appreciation of these facts. Cooking-schools spring up spasmodically, where in "ten easy lessons" the mysteries of theoretical and practical cooking are disclosed. Some of our fashionable boarding-schools, ever on the alert to foresee a public demand, announce courses in domestic science. Charity schools in our larger cities attempt to teach girls cooking and sewing in connection with arithmetic and grammar. The great interest in industrial education has had its influence. In some cities cooking and sewing have been made a part of the required work in all the public schools, not so much, however, from a desire to teach these branches as from a belief that the hand as well as the brain needs training. New York is the home of the kitchen-garden, where the thought of the originator has been to teach the children of the poorer classes how to make their own homes brighter, rather than to train them to do housework for remuneration. In many of our large cities schools have been established to give domestic training, but this training, unfortunately, is often given more in name than in reality. All these forms of activity are indications of a desire to help lessen, wholly or in part, the widespread ignorance of domestic work and aversion to it.

Several reasons for this ignorance have already been suggested. Housework has always been classed in the category, not of skilled but of unskilled labor. Nor has it in every-day business life received that practical consideration which the ponderous volumes on the influence of woman would lead one to expect. Popular sentiment has not yet demanded that when a woman marries she shall possess at least a theoretical if not a practical knowledge of household science; it is deemed sufficient if she acquire it after marriage at an enormous cost of time, patience, energy, sometimes even of domestic happiness. Nor has public opinion demanded that every woman who does not marry should have a general knowledge of domestic affairs; it is assumed that she has no use for such knowledge, either practically or as an accomplishment.

When popular opinion insists that every woman who marries shall have a practical familiarity with these subjects as strongly as it insists that every man who marries shall be able to provide a comfortable home for a wife; when public opinion insists that every woman, whether she marries or not, shall have an education so symmetrical that she can fulfill any duty which as an individual she may be called upon to perform, then will more serious efforts be made toward lessening this ignorance.

This lack of knowledge explains to a certain extent why so many are unwilling to perform household work. It is natural to dislike work that brings failure, to enjoy what brings success. The average girl who "hates to sew" and "hates to do housework" would often find pleasure in both did she but have systematic knowledge concerning the work. The city boarding-house, crowded with women who "can't endure housekeeping," is one product of this combination of ignorance and aversion. In New York City there are said to be but thirteen thousand families in individual houses. The rest of the population are crowded into tenements, rookeries, boarding-houses, flats, and hotels.

But there are other reasons besides ignorance that explain this aversion to household work. There is a well-founded belief that the majority of women dislike both manual labor and self-supporting labor, and this fact applies both to housekeeper and to housemaid. We have passed the stage when it is permitted a man to say, "The world owes me a living." We not only allow a woman to say this in effect, but we sometimes praise her for her womanliness in saying it. How often one hears the remark, "Her father has abundant means, it is unnecessary for her to support herself." The average woman without family cares is self-supporting because dire necessity compels, not because honorable work is the birthright inheritance of every human being. Again, the mistress of the household constantly speaks of the routine work of the house as drudgery, and the houseworker, whose chief interest in it is one of dollars and cents, coins a still harsher term, and calls work a curse.

This ignorance and aversion are too widespread, and have existed too many centuries to be removed in a single generation, nor can we expect any one remedy to prove a panacea. But we may ask how far the efforts made have proved successful. The cooking-school is now in vogue, and doubtless has done much to teach new ways of preparing food, but the cooking-school has the same relation to the general subject of household science that an evening class in arithmetic has to a college education. The mistress learns a few things in a general way, and the maid does not care to learn at all. It is ephemeral in its nature, and while it attracts public attention to the need of more thorough instruction on the subject, it is far from going to the root of the question, even of how to teach cooking. The same may be said in general of domestic economy in our fashionable schools. Sewing and cooking as taught in charity schools do apparently give practical help in teaching the children of the poor to assist in the care of their own homes; but this work, like that done in the public schools on the same lines, distinctly disclaims any desire to give technical information. In the public schools the object of instruction in sewing and cooking is purely an educational one, and it is an incidental result scarcely to be expected when it leads girls to look upon housework as a means of support.

It has long been a belief with many, and one that it has been most difficult to give up, that schools for the training of domestic servants would do more than anything else to solve the domestic service problem, and thus indirectly provide for the overflow in shops and factories. In all of our large cities the experiment has apparently been faithfully tried. The theory has seemed unexceptionable, labor and expense have not been spared to carry it out, but the result has been, if not an utter failure, at least far from commensurate with the effort expended. In one school personally visited accommodations for twenty were found. When asked what was done in case there were more than twenty applicants for membership in the class, the superintendent replied that no such difficulty ever arose, as their numbers were never full. The answer was at least significant.

In one city the Women's Guild organized cooking-classes with the thought of domestic service in mind. In a demonstration course where only ten cents a lesson was charged, the average attendance was never more than fifteen or sixteen, the greatest number ever attending being thirty-two. In a course of practical lessons in cooking, given at equally reasonable rates, the class numbered only four or five. One of the most efficient managers of such schools says after twenty-five years of experience that she is forced to believe that nothing in this line can be done. Similar testimony comes from a gentleman of wide practical knowledge of philanthropic work in New York City, and on the theoretical side from a lady widely known for her writings on economic subjects. Miss Mary Rankin Hollar has recently investigated one hundred schools and classes where domestic training is supposed to be given. She finds that less than ten per cent give systematic work, and only two have any maids in their classes. In the light of these and of similar facts the conclusion must be accepted that the question cannot, certainly at present, be settled by establishing training-schools for employees, no matter how thoroughly equipped or how reasonable in charges these schools may be. The conclusion seems to be that all these efforts, from fashionable cooking-school to charity kitchen-garden, have not been able to remove, scarcely to lessen, either ignorance or prejudice.

The average housekeeper does not yet know the best, the easiest, the most practical, or the most scientific way to manage her household affairs. Her work is often monotonous and wearisome, and must be so until its true place as a profession is acknowledged. The inexperienced housekeeper recognizes her own likeness only too faithfully drawn by Dickens in Bella and her struggles with "The Complete British Housewife." If she desires instruction, she finds it impossible to secure it in a systematic way. Kind friends offer suggestions, the cook-book gives hints, and the "Housekeepers' Guide" bridges over a temporary difficulty. But this combination of instruction in regard to isolated facts in housekeeping is much like the attempt to learn a new language by memorizing words from the dictionary.

It is not strange that the novice still believes that housekeeping can be learned only by experience, nor, on the other hand, is it any more strange that in the effort to gain this experience she too often breaks down in health, or gives up the attempt and resorts to boarding. The cooking-school and the class in domestic economy, when taught in connection with a dozen other subjects, will not solve the question for her.

While the mistress is unskilled in work, the maid will be unwilling to work. Bridget does not suspect that she does not rise to the social position to which she aspires because her conversation is ungrammatical, perhaps even vulgar, her manner insolent, her spirit rebellious, her dress untidy and devoid of taste. She attributes her ill success to the work in which she is engaged. The facts most obvious to her are that her mistress does not understand practical housework, yet is socially her superior. She at once draws the conclusion that house service is degrading. She tries to escape to other work less remunerative but more satisfactory, and if she is unsuccessful, returns to house-service, determined to secure every possible privilege. She will not spend even three months' time, or pay a nominal sum to learn housework, as a trade or profession. The training-school for domestic servants is a failure because they will not attend it.

It is said that the only way to strike at the root of all these difficulties is to dignify labor; the practical question is, how this is to be accomplished. In the light of all that has been done to attain this end, and the reasons for the comparative failure which has followed, may we not say that one great difficulty has been the fact that reform has begun at the wrong end? unless the chasm has been bridged between kitchen and parlor we cannot dignify labor in the kitchen alone. All true reform must begin at the top. This has been the experience of every great movement that has looked toward the improvement of mankind.

But what is the relation that college women bear to these problems of the household? They cannot revolutionize society, nor would they if they could. They cannot bring about any reform either in mistress or in maid. It may be answered truly that they can do but little. They are few in numbers--and they cannot assume the ability to settle questions with which previous generations of women have not been able to grapple. But are they justified in shielding themselves behind these excuses and in refusing to look the question squarely in the face? Women have proved themselves equal both mentally and physically to a college course, but if their training does not lead them to assist in the discussion of some of these vexed questions pertaining to the welfare of society, it may seriously be asked whether the higher education of women is worth all that it has cost. A statement as to what college women are now doing may perhaps be of help in answering what can be done.

A few years since a carefully prepared paper read before the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, showed that of the 2619 women graduates of the fourteen colleges then represented in the association, thirty-eight per cent were married, thirty-six per cent were teaching, five per cent were engaged in other occupations and professions, and twenty per cent were "at home," that is engaged in no occupation for remuneration. Those married and at home, to whom the subject of domestic science is presumably of most interest, form fifty-nine per cent of the whole number, while the forty-one per cent engaged in teaching and other occupations are certainly not indifferent to it. With trained mind and a realization that opportunity has brought responsibility, most often in a position where domestic affairs are those most prominently before her, the woman who is a college graduate is especially well situated to turn her attention to this subject.

What can she do? She can prove, as she is proving, that her college education has not unfitted her for domestic pursuits. Before the college door was opened to them, the education of women was largely a matter of information and accomplishment. Within two generations systematic training has been substituted for the acquisition of information and the advantage of this change should be seen first in improved methods of domestic work. The college graduate who is married or who is at home can prove more effectually than any other class of graduates the practical utility of college education for women. She can prove how puerile is the assertion that the average girl does not need a thorough course of technical study, because her household duties will not demand a knowledge of these subjects. The lawyer forgets his science, the business-man his classics, the theologian his mathematics, and the physician his metaphysics, yet each proves daily the value of these studies. So the college woman brings into every-day life, and may bring still more, the evidences of the advantage to her of a college course. She may go further, and show that resources within herself enable her to rise above much of the inevitable drudgery of household work, and thus overcome, in a measure, the common distaste for routine duties.

The college woman can do much by way of discussion. The love of study fostered by her college course shows itself after graduation in the formation of clubs and societies for literary work. There is scarcely a town that has not from one to a dozen, and there are few college women who have not belonged to one or more. There is a tendency, too, for college women to organize among themselves select classes for the pursuit of favorite studies. All of these clubs are valuable up to a certain point in giving help through association, but in too many cases they seem examples of misdirected effort. Their great numbers show that women have time and interest to give to intellectual matters. Cannot college women divert a part of this zeal from the discussion, for example, of the tulip mania in Holland, into the channels of social and domestic science? No company of political economists will ever work out for women "the servant-girl problem," or make possible for women to learn systematic housekeeping. The college woman can do something--not everything--by showing that these subjects deserve consideration; that their proper place on the programme of the women's club is not the closing half-hour of informal conversation, but the post of honor as one of the chief subjects of thought and study. But she need not wait for the movements of the literary club; she can herself organize a society whose sole purpose shall be the discussion of ways and means to lessen the friction in the ordinary household between mistress and maid, to remedy the scarcity of competent help, to relieve the overburdened housewife, a society which shall attempt to understand the "saleslady" situation, and to study the causes of the prejudice that still clings to household service as well as the means of removing it. She can help to show women that it is a matter of more vital interest to themselves and to society as a whole to discuss these topics than to seek after information that may not be worth the acquisition.

There is another phase of the question the thoughtful consideration of which the college woman can urge. She can at least make the attempt--her prospects of success may seem dubious--to bring before her sisters the subject of the wise expenditure of money. Women have bequeathed fortunes for every object from the endowment of theological seminaries to the establishment of a hospital for invalid cats; they have multiplied buildings and apparatus that language and science might be taught according to the Presbyterian, the Baptist, or the Methodist creed. The college woman may at least suggest that a long-felt want has been that of a polytechnic, an institution where the college graduate can learn household science as a serious profession, as an advocate or physician studies the principles of law and medicine. Such an institution, requiring a college degree for admission, and providing in a two years' course for instruction in sanitary science, physiology and hygiene, the care of the sick, cooking, marketing, the care of the house, sewing, the principles of the kindergarten, artistic house-furnishing, domestic economy, and such other subjects as belong distinctively to the care of the house and home, would certainly have for a few years a limited number of students. An examination, however, of all that has been done and of the underlying principles leads to the conclusion that more could ultimately be done in this way than in any other to dignify that part of labor connected with domestic occupations. It would most certainly not do everything--no one thing could do that--but it would do much.

In a word, the relation of college women to the question of domestic science is first of all the duty of recognizing the importance of the subject itself, and of its special importance to them as college women; and second, a duty of examination, of discussion, of intelligent study, of appeal to public sentiment, of effort to secure at no distant day the establishment of a technical school of domestic science which shall in no sense be a substitute for collegiate and academic training, but shall be built upon such training as its most secure foundation. The present strain coming upon the majority of women is too great to be much longer borne. Relief must come, either in improved facilities for individual work, or in co?perative enterprises. The home must be preserved, and at the same time household work must be reduced to a minimum. College women owe it to themselves and to society to do their part toward attaining this end.

FOOTNOTE:

SAIREY GAMP AND DORA COPPERFIELD

A wholesome corrective for the impatience with which we are wont to regard the lack of progress made in regard to all matters which concern the house and home was found at a recent International Health Exposition held in New York City. In one section was arranged an old-time sick-room, presided over by Sairey Gamp. The clock on the mantel pointed to the hour of midnight, and the patient was presumably sleeping, but on a feather bed, under heavy comfortables, with thick draperies hanging about the large high-post bedstead. On a table by the bedside were the remedies administered,--paregoric, salts, castor-oil, goose-grease, and other tradition-honored medicines. Another table bore the remains of the patient's supper,--fried ham, bread and butter, cucumbers, and milk. Sairey herself reposed in an armchair, flanked, on one side, by the empty gin-bottle, and, on the other, by a pot of tea.

In a neighboring booth was found a motley collection of old-time remedies. It comprised elderberry flowers for pleurisy, honey for insomnia, hornet's-nest tea for colds, baking-soda for the stomach and for bee-stings, cold potatoes for burns, and hot potatoes for ear-aches, cobwebs for hemorrhage, a cat's skin for pneumonia, to be applied while the animal was still warm, and bags of camphor and assafoetida to be worn around the neck for protection against disease. All of these remedies are within the recollection of most persons who have not yet passed middle life.

These two booths were the text from which the silent sermon of comparison was preached by the eighty booths containing the educational exhibits of the training-schools for nurses and of many modern hospitals. The old-time sick-room has given place to one not only attractive to the eye, but furnished with every scientific appliance for the prevention as well as for the cure of disease. In place of Mrs. Gamp is the trained nurse of to-day, attractive in dress, agreeable in manner, intelligent in mind, scientific in methods of work, a friend and a companion, as well as a staff and a dependence. The contrast could not be more world-wide. Yet the time required to revolutionize methods of caring for the sick has been scarcely more than thirty years. The exhibit shown of a ward in Bellevue Hospital, in 1872, is almost as far removed from a modern hospital ward of to-day as it is from Mrs. Gamp.

What is the explanation of the transformation of Mrs. Gamp into the trained nurse, and of the evolution of the modern hospital and the modern sick-chamber from the old-time crude, semi-barbarous methods of treatment?

The secret of it all lies in the one word,--investigation. Investigation is the product of training, of education, of an eager and absorbing desire for knowledge, of minds open to conviction and ready to hold the judgment in suspense until it can be based on facts. The steps in the process of the evolution are equally clear. Given an investigating spirit, it follows that every investigator must work with singleness of purpose, in his search for facts, that is, for truth; and that this truth, when found, is to be held, not as a personal acquisition, but as a good to be shared with all. Thus progress is made, not through the individual efforts of isolated investigators, who are working along parallel lines, but it is made by geometrical progression, because each investigator is able to take, as a starting-point, the goal reached by his predecessor, and because he knows that he is co?perating with all other investigators to secure the same end. Everywhere to-day scientists appreciate the fact that progress in science is conditioned on scientific investigation. They also appreciate the fact that this progress can be made only as each investigator shares in the results obtained by every other investigator. Every scientific discovery made by one scientist becomes the common property of all. In this apparently simple fact lies the explanation of the disappearance of Sairey Gamp.

"Martin Chuzzlewit" was published six years before the first part of "David Copperfield" was issued. But while Mrs. Gamp has become but a name, Dora Copperfield is still with us, and he would be a rash prophet who would venture to predict the times and the seasons that wait upon her going.

Yet although intuition and instinct have so long been made to play the part in the household that ought to be taken by scientific investigation, it is not unreasonable to believe that a change must in time come. It is not many years since illness was attributed to divine interposition, which to-day is known to be the result of impure water, defective drainage, insufficient nourishment, or lack of ventilation. We must in time, although the specific time cannot be predicted, come to believe that women's minds have been given them to use, and that nowhere can they be used more effectively than in the organization and management of a household.

This comparison has been suggested, because the question is so often asked: Why can we not have trained domestics as we have trained nurses? The answer must be that, in the present condition of affairs, the resemblance between nurses and domestics is only superficial. The trained nurse is the product, not of the family that has suffered from the lack of such trained service, but of the discovery by the medical profession that its labors must be ineffectual if orders are not carried out by those who understand the reasons why these orders are given. The more rapid the advance in scientific investigation made in the medical world, the more rapid the advance made in all grades of service connected with the medical profession. Pressure is exerted from above and works downwards. More and more the subject of health becomes one of the prevention, rather than of the cure, of ill health. The distance between physician and nurse and nurse and patient grows less as each understands better the function each has to perform in securing good health.

Some parts of the household have already been put on a scientific basis. It is to-day protected from impure water-supply, from defective drainage, from poisonous foods, from contagious diseases, but not through the efforts of the household itself. These benefits it has reaped through the labors of scientific experts who, through unwearied investigation, have discovered the means of preventing certain large classes of diseases. Sanitary engineering and sanitary chemistry have become professions through the work of scientific investigators. When housekeepers, through scientific investigation, have made a profession of housekeeping, then, and not till then, will trained service in the household be possible.

It is very easy to see why progress in the household has up to this time been so slow, and why it has, for the most part, been made through forces exerted from without rather than from within. But the Chinese wall that has so long surrounded it is giving way, and the signs of the times point to another international exposition, when, side by side with Mrs. Gamp and the trained nurse, will be found Dora Copperfield and the new home,--the product of the trained minds of scientific investigators.

ECONOMICS AND ETHICS IN DOMESTIC SERVICE

The cynic observed yesterday that the interests of womankind were confined to the three D's--Dress, Disease, and Domestics. To-day the bicycle has become a formidable competitor of dress and promises to do its part toward settling some of the disputed questions in regard to the rival it has partially supplanted. Biology is wrestling with disease, and bids fair to be the victor. Domestics still hold the field, but if business methods are introduced into the household, as it seems inevitable will be the case, the interests of women will have passed on and upward from the three D's to the three B's, and the cynic will be forced to turn his attention from woman to a more fruitful field.

It is not indeed strange that the old conception of household service should have yielded so slowly its place in the thoughts of women. The whole subject of economic theory of which it is but a part is itself a recent comer in the field of discussion; it was scarcely more than a century and a quarter ago that Adam Smith wrote his "Wealth of Nations" and gave a new direction to economic thought.

As a result of these economic studies of the present century something has already been done to improve industrial conditions outside of the household. They have led to improved factory legislation, to better relations between employer and employee, to wide discussion of the principles on which business is conducted, but what has been accomplished has been brought about through an unrest and an agitation that have often brought disaster in their train.

From this general economic discussion the household has been in the main cut off, largely because it has been considered as belonging to the domain of sentiment rather than of business, because the household has shrunk from all agitation and discussion of the questions with which it is immediately concerned, because it has refused to see that progress is conditioned on this agitation and discussion, because it has cried "Peace, peace, when there was no peace." It is this very aloofness that constitutes to-day the most serious obstacle in the way of any improvement in domestic service--the failure on the part of men and women everywhere to recognize that the occupation is governed by economic law, that it is bound up inextricably with every other phase of the labor question, and that the initial step toward improvement must be the recognition of this fact. Housekeepers everywhere resent what they deem interference with their personal affairs; they betray an ill-concealed irritation when the economic side of the question is presented to them, and they believe, if their own household machinery runs smoothly, that no friction exists anywhere and that their own responsibility has ceased. Nothing to-day is so characteristic of women as a class as their inability to assume an impersonal attitude toward any subject under discussion, while in methods of work they are prone to work from day to day and seldom plan for results to be reached years after a project has been set on foot.

This means that before any improvement in household affairs can come, the attitude of mind with which they are approached must undergo a radical change; both men and women must recognize the analogy between domestic service and other forms of labor, and must work, not for more competent cooks and parlor-maids in their individual households, not for any specific change for the better to-morrow, but for improvements in the system--improvements, the benefits of which will be reaped not by this but by subsequent generations. It is a fact from which we cannot escape that domestic service has been affected by historical and economic development, that it is to-day affected by economic conditions, that it must in the future be in like manner affected by them. That we do not all see these facts does not in the least alter their existence. Nothing is so inexorable as law. Law works itself out whether recognized or not. If we accept the workings of the law and aid in its natural development, peace and harmony result; if we resist the action of law and struggle against it, we do not stay its progress but we injure ourselves as the bird that beats its wings against prison-bars. "Delhi is far," said the old king of Delhi when told that an enemy had crossed his border. "Delhi is far," he answered when told that the enemy was in sight. "Delhi is far," he repeated when the enemy was at the gate. "Delhi is far," he still repeated when the sword of the enemy was at his throat.

Yet certainly we may hope that another view is coming to prevail, and that housekeepers will not shrink from the storm and stress period that is the inevitable accompaniment of discussion of household affairs, but will bring the courage of their convictions to bear on the discussion of the problem. It is indeed encouraging to find so many of them beginning their studies of household affairs, not with a proposal of remedies that may chance to meet the disease, but with a recognition of the existence of a great question to be investigated, with a determination to understand the problem.

What is the problem that is presented to the housekeeper? To have a healthy, happy, virtuous and useful household. What are some of the external conditions necessary to such a household? Palatable, nourishing food, regularity of meals, prompt and efficient service. With what tools has the young housekeeper heretofore been expected to grapple with the problem in her own home? Instinct, intuition, love of home, the cardinal virtues, especially meekness and humility, orthodox views in regard to the relation of the housekeeper to her home, and a belief that personal experience, however restricted, is an infallible guide.

What has been the result? Often disastrous failure, sometimes a measurable degree of success, always an unnecessary expenditure of time, money, and mental, physical, and spiritual energy. That most pathetic story in "Pratt Portraits," "A New England Quack," has had more than one counterpart in the household. The results of innocent quackery there may not always be so consciously pathetic, the effects may be more subtile, but they are none the less fatal. Dora Copperfield has been, unhappily for the race, no mere picture of the imagination.

The problem should not in itself be an insoluble one; a happy, well-ordered household ought to be the normal condition of every home. But to expect to secure this end with the means given a young housekeeper is often to expect the impossible. Behind the housekeeper is not only personal ignorance but all the force of tradition; she must face difficulties so deep-seated as to seem almost inherent and ineradicable.

One of the greatest of these difficulties is the belief that the subject is not worthy of consideration and that time and strength are wasted in discussing it. This attitude of mind is well illustrated by Lord Orrery's "Remarks on the Life and Writings of Swift," apropos of Swift's "General Instructions to Servants." Lord Orrery may not indeed have been altogether free from malice and jealousy in penning these words, and he certainly showed himself deficient in a sense of humor, but whatever his motive, his comments on Swift's work illustrate fairly well a belief still prevalent. "How much time," Lord Orrery comments, "must have been employed in putting together such a work! What an intenseness of thought must have been bestowed upon the lowest and most slavish scenes of life!... A man of Swift's genius ought constantly to have soared into higher regions. He ought to have looked upon persons of inferior abilities as children, whom nature had appointed him to instruct, encourage, and improve. Superior talents seem to have been intended by Providence as public benefits; and the person who possesses such blessings is certainly answerable to heaven for those endowments which he enjoys above the rest of mankind. Let him jest with dignity, and let him be ironical upon useful subjects; leaving poor slaves to heat their porridge, or drink their small beer, in such vessels as they shall find proper."

Another great difficulty is the persistent refusal to consider domestic service as a question of general interest and a part of the labor question of the day. "What is needed," an English critic remarks, "is an infallible recipe for securing a good ?16 girl and for keeping her when secured." But alas, who shall give an infallible recipe for accomplishing the impossible? Who shall lay down the principle that will make coal-miners contented with low wages and long hours, that will make the employers of masons satisfied with bungling work that threatens life and limb, that will lull into ease a conscience aroused by the iniquities of the sweating system? Nothing can be more chimerical than to expect a perfect automatic adjustment of the household machinery while other parts of the industrial world are not in harmonious relation to each other.

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