At the University of Chicago, in the Department of Household Administration, Course 44 is on "The Administration of the House" and includes "the proper apportionment of income."
The business man says: "My sales cost, or my manufacturing cost, or my office-force cost, is such and such a per cent. of my total cost. When it goes above that, I want to know why; and I find out; and, if there isn't a mighty good reason for its going up, I make it go down again to where it was." Shall we come to the day when in spending the money which has been earned in business we shall say: "Such and such a per cent. to food; and such and such a per cent. to clothes; and such and such a per cent. to shelter; and such and such a per cent. to health and recreation; and such and such a per cent. to good works; and such and such other per cents. to various other purposes?" Shall we come to the day when we shall consume wealth with as much forethought and with as much balance of judgment between conflicting claims as we now exhibit in acquiring wealth?
They are trying to develop this "Costs System for Home Expenditures" in many of the schools and departments of Home Economics to-day. They believe that most people, because of not looking ahead and because of not making definite plans based on previous experience, come to the contemplation of their bills on the first of each month with every reason to confess that they have bought those things which they ought not to have bought and have left unbought those things which they ought to have bought. But it is not only a matter of reaching a systematic instead of a helter-skelter enjoyment of the offerings of the world. It is also a matter of reaching, by study of money values, a mental habit of economy. And it comes at a time when that habit is needed.
We are just beginning to realize in the United States that we cannot spend all our annual earnings on living expenses and still have a surplus for fresh capital for new industrial enterprises. We are on the point of perceiving that we are cramping and stunting the future industrial expansion of the country by our personal extravagance. We shall soon really believe Mr. James J. Hill when he says that "every dollar unprofitably spent is a crime against posterity."
When international industrial competition reaches its climax, that nation will have an advantage whose people feel most keenly that the wise expenditure of income is a patriotic as well as a personal duty.
But is this a matter for women alone? Do not men also consume? Are there no vats in Milwaukee, no stills in Kentucky, no factories wrapping paper-rings around bunches of dead leaves at Tampa? Are there no men's tailors, gents' furnishing shops, luncheons, clubs, banquets, athletics, celebrations? And as for home expenditures themselves, is the man simply to bring the plunder to the door, get patted on the head, and trot off in search of more plunder? We must doubt if economy will be reached by such a route. We find ourselves agreeing rather with the Home Economics lecturer who said: "There never yet was a family income really wisely expended without cooperation in all matters between husband and wife."
The Massachusetts legislature has passed a law looking toward the teaching of Thrift in the public schools. Boys and girls need it equally. And we venture to surmise that in so far as the new art and science of Consumption is concerned with wise spending, the bulk of its teachings ultimately will be enjoyed by both sexes. It will not be, to any great extent, a specialized education for women.
So much for the "Money Sense in Expenditure" which a full Home Economics course adds to "academic" education. The more we admit its value, the more convinced we must be that it ought to include every kind of expenditure and both kinds of human being.
A precisely similar conviction arises with regard to those "domestic applications of the physical and sociological sciences" which a full Home Economics course adds to an "academic" education.
Those "domestic" applications are most of them broadly "human" applications. They bear on daily living, exercise, fresh air, personal cleanliness, diet, sleep, the avoidance of contagion, methods of fighting off disease, general physical efficiency. They all amount to what Mrs. Ellen H. Richards calls Right Living. She would have four R's instead of three: Reading, Riting, Rithmetic, and Right Living.