The emergence from the primitive condition was slow because the few of us who did show our heads were beaten down and told we did not know. It has required many college women (from some 50,000 college women graduates) to build and run houses and families successfully, here one and there another, until the barrel of flour has been leavened. Society is being reorganized, not in sudden, explosive ways, but underneath all the froth and foam the yeast has been working. The world is going to the bad only if one believes that material progress is bad. If we can see the new heaven and the new earth in it, then we may have faith in the future.
The human elements of love and sacrifice, of foresight and of faith, are going to persist, and any apparent upheaval is only because of settling down into a more solid condition, a readjustment to circumstances. As Caroline Hunt has said[17]: “We may disregard the popular fear that the home will finally take upon itself the characteristics of a public institution.... Human intelligence, which suits means to ends, and which is ever coming to the aid of human affection, will prevent that. So long as affection lasts it will seek satisfactory expression in home life, and so long as intelligence endures it will stand in the way of the extension of the borders of the home beyond the possibilities of the mutual helpfulness to its members.”
The persistent efforts of the farsighted to secure a place in education for the subjects fundamental to the modern home are now respectfully listened to.
It is, perhaps, not strange that the first successes in modern housekeeping were gained in public institutions, for there accounts were kept and saving told. When one hospital saved $12,000 in one year by an expenditure of $2,000 for a trained woman, trustees began to take notice. When large state institutions were reorganized and made over from unsavory scandals into reputable and life-saving establishments, even legislators took notice. The trained woman superintendent proved not only more competent but less affected by perquisites.
(I do not vouch for the universal maintenance of this high standard when women managers have had longer experience; but so far conscience and sterling integrity have been attributes of all my expert women, even if they have now and then disappointed me in endurance or in ability. Is not this a fact of great social significance?)
It is universally conceded today, only a few willfully blind or croaking pessimists dissenting, that home-keeping under modern conditions requires a knowledge of conditions and a power of control of persons and machines obtained only through education or through bitter experience, and that education is the less costly.
When social conditions become adjusted to the new order, it will be seen how much gain in power the community has made, how much better worth the people are. Have faith in the working out of the destiny of the race; be ready to accept the unaccustomed, to use the radium of social progress to cure the ulcers of the old friction. What if a few mistakes are made? How else shall the truth be learned? Try all things and hold fast that which is good.
The Home Economics Movement is an endeavor to hold the home and the welfare of children from slipping over the cliff by a knowledge which will bring courage to combat the destructive tendencies. Is not one of the distinctive features of our age a forcible overcoming of the natural trend of things? If a river is by natural law wearing away its bank in a place we wish to keep, do we sit down and moan and say it is sad, but we cannot help it? No, that attitude belonged to the Middle Ages. We say, Hold fast, we cannot have that; and we cement the sides and confine or turn the river.
The ancient cities whose ruins are now being explored in Asia seem to have been abandoned because of failure of the water supply as the earth became desiccated; so was the home of our own Zunis. Does such a possibility stop us? No, we bring water from hundreds of miles. Will man, who has gained such control over nature, sit down before his own problems and say, “What am I going to do about it?”