Domestic Training will improve the Physique of the Coming Generation.
A three or four months' course of intelligent domestic training would do much, not only to solve the servant problem, but to improve the physique of the coming generation, for it is sheer ignorance of domesticity which accounts for a high percentage of the infant mortality which is a disgrace to this country. And this ignorance of the importance of cleanliness, sanitation, etc., is not confined to the poorer classes. Fashions filter downwards, and when the educated women of the upper classes show that they consider household work beneath their attention, why should they think it strange when they find the same opinion expressed by the working-girl?
Ignorance of the national value of "menial work" is one reason for the unpopularity of domestic service.
This attitude is not confined to the uneducated—only to the unthinking.
PLATE IV
THIS ILLUSTRATION SHOWS HOW MODERN COAL GRATES IN BEDROOMS CAN BE FITTED WITH GAS FIRES WITHOUT MAKING STRUCTURAL ALTERATIONS.
This type of gas fire can be fitted in almost any shape or size of coal grates; its initial cost, as well as cost of fitting, is extremely low. (Fletcher Russell)