PART SECOND.
CHAPTER I.
NEEDFUL SCIENCE AND TRAINING FOR THE FAMILY STATE.
That women need as much and even more scientific and practical training for their appropriate business than men, arises from the fact that they must perform duties quite as difficult and important, and a much greater variety of them. A man usually selects only one branch of business for a profession, and, after his school education, secures an apprenticeship of years to perfect his practical skill; and thus a success is attained which would be impossible were he to practice various trades and professions.
Now let us notice what science and training are needed for the various and difficult duties that are demanded of woman in her ordinary relations as wife, mother, housekeeper, and the mistress of servants.
First, the department of a housekeeper demands some knowledge of all the arts and sciences connected with the proper construction of a family dwelling.
In communities destitute of intelligent artisans, a widow, or a woman whose husband has not time or ability to direct, on building a house, would need for guidance the leading principles of architecture, pneumatics, hydrostatics, calorification, and several other connected sciences, in order to secure architectural beauty, healthful heating and ventilation, and the economical and convenient arrangements for labor and comfort. A housekeeper properly instructed in these principles would know how to secure chimneys that will not smoke, the most economical furnaces and stoves, and those that will be sure to “draw.” She would know how dampers and air-boxes should be placed and regulated, how to prevent or remedy gas escapes, leaking water-pipes, poisonous recession of sewers, slamming shutters, bells that will not ring, blinds that will not fasten, and doors that will not lock or catch. She will understand about ball-cocks, and high and low pressure on water-pipes and boilers, and many other mysteries which make a woman the helpless victim of plumbers and other jobbers often as blundering and ignorant as herself. She would know what kind of wood-work saves labor, how to prevent its shrinkage, when to use paint, and what kind is best, and many other details of knowledge needed in circumstances to which any daughter of wealth is liable: knowledge which could be gained with less time and labor than is now given in public schools to geometry and algebra.
On supposition of a yard and garden, with young boys and domestic animals under her care, she would need the first principles of landscape gardening, floriculture, horticulture, fruit culture, and agriculture; also, the fitting and furnishing of accommodations and provision for domestic animals. And to gain this knowledge would demand less time than young girls often give to picking pretty flowers to pieces and saying hard names over them, or storing them in herbariums never used. And yet botany might be so taught as to be practically useful.
Next, in selecting furniture, a woman so instructed would know when glue and nails are improperly used instead of the needed dovetailing and mortising. She would know when drawers, tables, and chairs were properly made, and when brooms, pots, saucepans, and coal-scuttles would last well and do proper service. She would know the best colors and materials for carpets, curtains, bed and house linen, and numerous other practical details as easily learned as the construction of “bivalves” and “multivalves,” and other particulars in natural history now studied, and, being of no practical use, speedily forgotten.
Next, in the ornamentation of a house, she will need the general principles that guide in the making or selection of pictures, statuary, in drawing, painting, music, and all the fine arts that render a home so beautiful and attractive.