Euthenics, the science of controllable environment / A plea for better living conditions as a first step toward higher human efficiency

by Ellen H. Richards

The influence of these great expositions is of a most subtle kind, not often to be traced, but there is a noticeable change in the estimation in which Home Economics is held dating from the time of the Mary Lowell Stone Home Economics Exhibit held at the Exposition in St. Louis in 1905. This illustrated the application of modern knowledge to home life, chiefly in economic and æsthetic lines, all bearing upon the health and efficiency of the people. The Chicago Exposition in 1893 had its Rumford Kitchen, an exhibit under the auspices of the State of Massachusetts. This practical illustration of scientific principles modified the ideas of the world as to the place and importance of cookery in education. Indeed, there seemed a distinct danger that other lines would be neglected, so that when the Exposition at St. Louis was determined upon this legacy of fifteen years before was drawn upon to show the wide scope of the subject as it had been developed.

Boards of Health might pave the way for a better understanding of their rules and regulations if they would have temporary exhibits in public places of some of the conditions known to them but unsuspected by the average citizen and taxpayer.

Traveling exhibits may show local and temporary conditions and may call attention to needs demanding immediate remedy—with the remedy suggested.

Permanent exhibits in museums should, on the other hand, teach a deeper lesson. They should always be constructive and should be replaced when the conditions have changed. The modern idea of a museum is a series of adjustable exhibits with distinct suggestive purpose. Such are found in the Town Room, 3 Joy Street, Boston, the Social Museum, Harvard College, the American Museum of Safety, and the Sanitary Science Section, American Museum of Natural History, New York.

The distribution of the printed word has become so universal that it would seem as if every family might be influenced by it; but the scientific title, or the size of the book, or the scientific terms seem forbidding, and so the whole question is thrust aside.

In the past, newspaper science was largely discounted as sensational and only one-tenth fact. Scientific workers were largely to blame for this. They could not take the time to explain the meaning of their work, and the few things they were ready to say were worked over out of all semblance to truth by the writer who must have a “story” and who had not the training in “suspension of judgment” which the scientific investigator knows to be necessary.

There is no concern of human life that cannot be made interesting, and the magazine writers of today understand that art. Read the newspaper and the world is yours. It is all things to all men. The popularizing of knowledge is now proceeding on somewhat better lines. Intermediaries between the laboratory and the people are springing up to interpret the one to the other. This work is good or bad according to the individual writer. Most of it is still too superficial. Here is one of the most fertile fields for the educated woman, since the evils of which we complain have to do so intimately with woman’s province, the home and the school. There is hope that the trained, scientific woman will take her place as interpreter. Her practical sense will give her an advantage over the young man who has never known other home than a boarding house.

But the expert knows that the man of “practical affairs” wants and needs certain knowledge, and so seeks another way. Our Federal government, through the departments of Agriculture and Education; the State Boards of Health; the educational institutions, have with care and accuracy formulated this knowledge and are sending to the people, in the form of bulletins meeting their interest and requirements, knowledge in concise and readable form, and so most valuable. More than five hundred thousand copies of Miss Maria Parloa’s bulletin on Preserving have been distributed by the Department of Agriculture.

These efforts by both men and women have meant independent scientific research, which is often the only available knowledge for the housekeeper. It is bringing to them in their “business” of life the same help that the men on the farm and elsewhere are receiving in theirs.

But the written word, however clearly put, can never reach the untrained as can the voice and personality of an earnest speaker with a compelling vitality. Lectures by those who have been engaged in research themselves, so that they have absorbed the spirit of the laboratory—not by those who have merely smelled the odors of the waste jars—are ten times more valuable than even the most attractively illustrated articles. It is well that the personality of the human being is an asset, and that there is a stimulus in hearing and seeing the person who has accomplished things. There is always a power in the spoken word. The government, with its public lectures, recognizes this as well as the private organization, and today ignorance is necessarily due only to indifference.