As far back as 1835 household economics was taught in young women's seminaries of the United States, as we are informed by Benjamin R. Andrews of the School of Industrial and Household Arts at Columbia University. In 1912 there were over 130 schools which gave collegiate degrees for proficiency in the courses in home-making, and it was clear from the way things were going that ere long every woman's college and high school in the country would have a domestic science department, if only to meet the competition of the Domestic Science schools which are springing up everywhere.
These special schools for home-making turn out the really up-to-date girls—the girls whom young men want to marry.
In recognition of the growing importance of this branch of education Representative Wilson of Illinois introduced, in 1911, a bill providing that a Bureau of Domestic Science be established in the Department of Agriculture, with the object of investigating methods and appliances for the preparation of food and of gathering information to be used in training the boys as well as the girls of the schools and colleges in household and institutional management.
In 1910 there were in the elementary schools of Chicago only 75 kitchens available for use in giving the girls practical instruction in the art of cooking. In view of the fact that at least eight out of every ten girls in these schools are fated to spend a part of their lives in the kitchen, the superintendent of schools, Mrs. Ella Flagg Young started an agitation to have this number increased to 250.
In commenting on this subject the Chicago "Tribune" remarked: "A girl who has to hold in after life solemn communion with stewpans and gridirons had better learn in advance how to use them. It will save her mortification, bitter tears, and scoldings."
Not every husband takes the matter as calmly as the brute who, when his young wife met him with tears in her eyes and the information that the cat had eaten the first pie she had made for him, replied: "Don't cry, dear; we can easily get another cat!"
Bad cooking drives a man to drink sooner than anything else. Many honeymoons are shortened by home-made dyspeptic pangs. "Poor food ruins dispositions as well as digestions."
"Fashionable private schools are adding cookery to their subjects," I am informed; and the girls "have lots of fun with it." A wise thing; for even if these girls marry men who are wealthy enough to hire a cook they ought to know something about culinary art—the more the better—so they can tell the cook how they want things. Cooks in general are not so bad as they are painted. Many of them are simply inexperienced and glad to learn the better way. I know this from abundant experience in my own household, and I bless the stars that I have a wife who can tell what's wrong and how to mend it.
Most of the public schools in New York and many other cities now have courses in household science, including cooking. In the high schools attention is given, among other things, to the adulteration of foods and its detection; to the effects of certain bacteria, useful or harmful, on foods; to nutritive values; to the physiology of digestion; to money and labor-saving appliances; nursing and diet for the sick; cost of living; home sanitation; home-made fireless cookers; food adulteration; cooking as a moral agent; etc. The courses vary somewhat in different schools, but that all of them tend to domestic happiness and lowering of the death rate is certain.