There can be no doubt that the prosperity of the family depends quite as much on the wise use of the income as upon the size of that income. The first essential of good household management is that the housewife should know definitely how much there is to spend. Nothing is more productive of marital discontent than the habit which many husbands have of doling out money to the wife at irregular times and in indefinite amounts. It destroys the wife’s self-respect, it places her in a degraded position before her children, and it removes all incentive to thrift. It not infrequently supplies a powerful motive for deceit. If the wife is inexperienced, unwise, or extravagant in the use of money, so much the more reason why the husband should patiently and firmly teach her how to spend, both for her own sake and that of the family welfare. An arrangement by which the wife controls the expenditure of a certain portion of the income is very easy whenever the man receives a salary or regular daily wages. A regular income tends to develop thrift and to teach people to avoid debt; but there is always a tendency to live up to the limit of it, and the margin for saving and for extra pleasures is always small. Salaried people seldom get deeply in debt, but they as seldom become very rich.
On the other hand, whenever the family income is irregular, as from farming and most other kinds of business, the problem of household financiering is much more difficult and requires both greater self-control and better judgment. It is usually possible for such families to determine upon a definite minimum amount which may be counted upon for ordinary living expenses. The margin above this may vary widely, but if the scale of living be habitually adjusted to come within the minimum income, there will be no terror of debt. The expenditure of the surplus, when it comes, becomes a unique and unexpected pleasure. Whatever the plan adopted for distributing the family income, the wife should have at her command and should be expected to live within, a definite share of the income.
After the minimum expenses of the family have been determined, the next most important question is how and when they shall be paid out. Cash payments are much to be preferred. They have two advantages: whoever pays cash asks no favor of the tradesman, and commands the best quality at a given price. The tradesman who lends money by allowing the payment of bills to be postponed, must pay for his goods and must have interest on the money necessary to carry on a credit business. He must necessarily, therefore, reimburse himself by charging a higher price, or by giving a poorer article. It should never be forgotten that credit costs something. The cash customer is always considered a good customer, and can always have the first choice of the market, and favors if any are desired. Whenever monthly or quarterly bills are run, the debtor is apt to acquire a most dangerous habit—the habit of spending now, to pay at some future time. The more remote the time, the more dangerous the habit. It is evident that the oftener bills are paid, the less likelihood there is of mistakes and deceit. If bills must be run, it should never be for longer than a month, and prompt payment of them is a solemn obligation. The article should be done without rather than the seller asked to wait for his money. Whatever plan the housewife adopts will be conditioned by the customs of the locality in which she lives and by the habits of the local tradesman.
Women waste much time and energy in buying things one by one; they spend in this way, too, much more than they realize, and then they wonder where the money has gone. China, linen, and the stock of clothing necessary for changes of season, should be bought by the set, or quantity, marked and prepared for use at regular intervals. Women buy a collar or two, a pair of stockings, a bit of ribbon, a bread plate, a few glasses, etc., and then are surprised that they seem to have very little for the money. Unless the housewife be really poor, or unless the money be doled out to her irregularly, it will invariably pay to buy in quantity things which are not perishable, and which the household wears out and, therefore, habitually needs. Handkerchiefs, stockings, underclothing, china, drinking glasses, cost less by the dozen and half-dozen than by the piece. Lamp chimneys are continually broken, toilet paper and soap used up, yet very few housekeepers realize that they waste both time and energy, beside suffering inconvenience, when they buy these one at a time. Buying piecemeal is demoralizing, as well as wasteful, because it is unsystematic. Successful housekeeping involves attention to numberless details; if by periodic instead of incessant attention some of these can be disposed of in the mass, there will be immense saving of energy.
Many housekeepers will object to this, either because it involves the immediate expenditure of a larger sum of money for one class of articles, or because, not having more wholesome social and intellectual interests, they find recreation in wandering from store to store, or counter to counter, pricing much and buying little; or because they love to find “a bargain.” The instinct to get something “cheap,” that is, to get something for nothing, or, more properly, to get more than we pay for, lies very deep in human nature. Because women have usually lived from hand to mouth, without foresight, it has perhaps been exaggerated in them. There are the bargain-hunters, and there are the bargain-scorners; both are doubtless equally illogical. When an article is phenomenally cheap, it is so, usually, either because too many of its kind are on the market, or because the seller is sacrificing a normal profit to draw general custom, or because the people who have produced it have done so at less than a decent living wage, or because it is going or gone out of fashion. Good buyers are rightfully suspicious of bargains. No one should be willing to buy or use articles which have been produced at starvation wages under wretched sanitary conditions. It is never good economy to buy things which are gone out of fashion unless one is quite satisfied to be out of fashion. If the article offered on the bargain counter be of good quality, and in staple use in the household, it is often well worth buying. Flannels, linens, sometimes woolen dress goods of inconspicuous patterns, may be bought at the end of the season much cheaper than at the beginning, and are a good investment if one has money to spare and is sure what is going to be needed by the family. Over against the money saved in securing a bargain, must always be reckoned the time and energy used in finding it, and the risks that its quality may prove inferior, or that it may be unsuitable when finally used. If a woman has nothing better to do with her time and strength than to hunt bargains, there is nothing further to be said; but if she has, it is usually more economical and more satisfactory to buy the articles needed for definite use at a reliable place and at a fair price.
All the suggestions that have been made imply accurate knowledge on the part of the housekeeper. A thoroughly trained housekeeper of long experience may possibly keep all the household detail in hand without keeping books of account, but it is absolutely impossible for the inexperienced or unsystematic housekeeper to do so. The mental training involved in keeping an accurate account of family income and expenditure is as valuable as a course in mathematics. For her own self-discipline, as well as for the better distribution of the family income, every housekeeper should keep an itemized account. Until she can balance her account accurately at the end of every month she has not learned the a b c of thorough housekeeping. After having learned to do this easily, she may, perhaps, allow herself a very small margin for those “sundries” which have not been put down, and which would waste valuable time to hunt out. Every housewife knows by experience that it is not the regular meat and grocery bills that eat up the income; if adequate care is taken of them, they can be reduced to a definite scale and kept there; but it is the incidentals. A system of accurate accounts will speedily show how many of these are extravagant or unnecessary. Book-keeping is a bugbear to most women, chiefly because the system which they undertake is too complicated. The simplest form is the best. Any blank book may be used; put down on the right hand side everything bought; on the left side all money received; at the end of the week or month the total sum of the right-hand column plus the money still on hand should equal the total of the left-hand column. If it does not, some item has been omitted or not accurately entered. It is better in the beginning to balance the account at least once a week, for then inaccuracies can be more easily traced. The secret of success is to put down at the time of the transaction what has been received and spent. When the account has been balanced, a second step is much more interesting. In another book or in the back of the day-book, if it be large enough, open several accounts on separate pages, as follows: groceries, meats, fuel, clothing, subscriptions and charities, incidentals, etc. Copy each item from the day-book into its proper account; at the end of a month or year, by adding up these separate accounts, the housewife can tell exactly what proportion of the income has been spent for each class. Mr. Lawes, the famous English agriculturist, when traveling in America, was able to quote accurately the cost of the various items of expenditure in his own house.
Economy is a relative, not an absolute thing. Economy of money is often wastefulness of life, yet extravagance, on the other hand, is a serious cause of human degeneration. With the exception of poor management, poor service is probably the most wasteful factor of all in the household, yet there are conditions in which poor service is certainly less wasteful of the family resources, than none at all. The end of housekeeping is the health, comfort, and serenity of the family. The two main factors in producing this result are the family income and the mother’s strength and energy. Saving, however desirable, is merely an incidental end. The mother’s intelligence, therefore, if she be in command of her fair share of the income, must be used to save not only money but her own resources. The lack of nutritious, palatable food and of nursing in illness, the lack of service when the mother is weakened by labor and child-bearing, is sometimes economy with most disastrous results. Health and serenity are worth more to the family than houses and a bank account. A good education given to an intelligent child is worth ten times its cost saved up for him to inherit in middle life.
Every device, therefore, which saves the housewife’s energy is a true economy. A clothes-washing machine, a cabinet table, a slop-hopper for kitchen and chamber waste-liquids, are all obtainable and of special value in saving labor. In planning the kitchen, economy of steps in reaching water and fuel should be considered. China should be kept either in wall cupboards opening on one side into the dining-room, on the other into the kitchen, or in a pantry between dining-room and kitchen. Kitchen utensils need no longer be of black, heavy, ugly iron, but of granite ware, nickel plate, and aluminum; they may be placed in shelves close to the range, or hung along the wall beside it. A dumb waiter or hand elevator, from kitchen to cellar, saves much going up and down stairs. The height of sinks and work-tables should be adapted to that of the woman who works over them. A tall stool—a clerk’s stool—in the kitchen allows the housewife to sit while doing some kinds of work. Distances between sink, range, dishes, and store-room, should be as short as possible, while the ventilation and lighting of the kitchen should be particularly good. Every step up and down from kitchen to shed, or kitchen to cellar, is an extra drain on the overtaxed woman. Small, cheap contrivances, such as dish-mops, iron dish-cloths, pan-scrapers, small scrubbing-brushes, wire screen garbage-pans, and many others, lighten the work and make it possible for the housewife to be more dainty in her personal appearance.
In no respect does farm life differ more from city life than in the kind of food provided and the method of serving it. The farmer’s table is loaded down with a great abundance and variety of food, all placed on the table at once, and often rich and indigestible. The city table has half as much, both in variety and quantity, served daintily in courses. The city housewife provides variety from meal to meal, seldom repeating any dish, except the staple ones, more than once or twice a week; the rural housewife puts a large variety of the same things on the table at every meal. Abundance of well cooked, appetizing food there should be, but variety from meal to meal, and from day to day, is far preferable to excessive variety at any one meal. Not only is it better for the digestion to eat of a very few kinds of food at one meal; but, since novelty stimulates appetite, any particular dish will be more appetizing if not served too frequently. The farmer’s family, while very economical in the expenditure of money, is often very wasteful of food. Vegetables, fruit, chickens, pork raised on the farm, seem to cost no money, but they cost much vital energy, which is quite as valuable. The value of milk, butter, and eggs is recognized, because it is customary to sell them in town; but the cost in the labor of those who raise and those who prepare food, is often overlooked. The farmer’s table is thus not only overloaded, but really extravagant. Here, again, quality is more desirable than variety; simplicity should accompany abundance.
Since rural life involves a certain degree of isolation, the family must keep in touch with the world chiefly through literature. Even at the sacrifice of some of the rich variety of food on the table or of new clothes, books and papers should be provided. The local newspaper is apt to contain little beside local gossip; it should be supplemented with an agricultural paper and a family journal, a housekeeping magazine, a children’s magazine, if there be children, and other general magazines if they can be afforded. But better than the general magazines, would be the gradual purchase of the standard works of history, travel, poetry, and fiction. A musical instrument, a small library, and interesting games will do more than admonition to keep young people at home. Children naturally want a good time; if it is not provided for them at home they will go to other and perhaps less desirable places to get it.