Home Problems from a New Standpoint

by Caroline Louisa Hunt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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