In any matter of greater beauty or economy, or in some cases of sanitary improvement, the housewife-mother's mind is open. In indefatigable zeal in direct service—no task too difficult, too long, too tedious—the servant-mother's hand is ever-ready. But the same devoted, loving, conscientious mother will fail appallingly to keep in touch with the mind-growth of the baby; will often neglect and even seriously injure its development in what is, after all, the main field of human life. The young human being needs far more than to be fed and clothed and waited on, however lovingly; or even than to be taught in schools in a few set lines of study.
We have made splendid progress in external things, in material forms and methods of production and distribution. We have travelled far and deep in scientific study, climbed high in art, and grown through grand religions. Our one great need—a need that grows daily greater in the vivid light of these swift-moving years—is for a better kind of people. The progress in human character does not keep pace with our external improvement. We are not trained in the right management of our own faculties; and come out of "the home" into "the world" well fed enough, well dressed enough, but with such unkempt, unbuttoned, dangling strings of neglected character as bespeaks the orphan soul.
Ask any mother to describe her children's complexion, costume, and tastes in eating. She will do it glibly, profusely, and with feeling. Johnny would never touch meat till he was ten; Maud would eat nothing else; Jessie could never bear potatoes. Maud was very near-sighted. She had early taken her to an oculist. She would probably have to wear glasses always. Jessie was so hard on shoes. She used two pairs to Maud's one,—even worse than Johnny. Now ask her to describe the distinctive mental characteristics of each, at what age they developed, and what measures she has taken from year to year to check Jessie's personal vanity, to increase Maud's courage, to develope patience in Johnny. Ask her what she has tried for croup, and she will discourse freely. Ask her what she has tried for the gradual reduction of self-consciousness, and she looks puzzled.
The human race is capable of beautiful development in character, as we see in occasional instances. That such beautiful development is largely assisted by right education, especially in the very first years, is proven by a thousand experiments. That most of us grow up without any intelligent psychic training, without wise attention and skilful care in soul-growth, is but too evident. Better education for the young of the human race, that education which the child never knows of, but which surrounds him with helpful influences from his first consciousness, is an imperative need.
Some attempt at this work is made by all conscientious mothers, and wonderful success is sometimes attained by a mother of special genius for child-culture (and who, by the way, is seldom distinguished as a housekeeper); but our general average in humaniculture is low. Nothing in the range of human effort is more important than the right education of children, which means the improvement of the race. The first years are of special value, the first influences and associations of pre-eminent importance.
If the household industries are incompatible with the best child-culture, they should be withdrawn from the household, specialised and professionalised like all the other industries once considered essentially domestic. When a broader intelligence is brought to bear on our infancy, when we do not grow up under the unavoidable assumption that the principal business of life is to "keep house," there will be a better chance for the growth of those civic virtues so pitifully lacking in us now. So many marks of progress in these lines are now evident that any intelligent woman can see the way open before her. The public laundry is sapping the foundations of our domestic industry; the "Domestic Service Bureau" is beginning to furnish skilled labour by the hour; the "Prepared Food Association" is solving another problem. The way out of these household difficulties is opening fast. It needs only a fuller recognition among women of the value of this change to bring it in with greater rapidity and success. For the sake of our children let us free the home from its archaic industries.