THIS SKETCH OF A WOOLEN MILL OPERATED IN THE GROUNDS OF A PALACE BY A QUEEN AND HER LADIES-IN-WAITING IS TAKEN FROM A VERY OLD FRENCH TRANSLATION OF BOCCACCIO’S BOOK ON “NOBLE WOMEN.” IN THOSE DAYS EVERY HOME WAS A FACTORY AND A TRADE SCHOOL.
Photograph by Burke & Atwell, Chicago.
The daughters of the Emperor Charlemagne, who, besides being an emperor, was a very rich man, learned how to card and spin and weave. Noble women had to direct all that kind of work on their estates. They lived in the very midst of industry, of business.
So it was with those early New England women. And therefore, whether well-to-do or indigent, they passed on to their sons as well as to their daughters a steady daily lesson in the world’s work. The most intelligent mother in the United States to-day, let her be kindergartner and psychologist and child-study specialist as much as she pleases, cannot give her children that broad early view of the organization of life. The only place where her children can get it now is the school.
On the first of January of the year 1910 Ella Flagg Young, superintendent of schools in Chicago, took algebra out of the eighth grade of the elementary schools, and, in its place, inserted a course on Chicago. Large parts of what was once the home are now spread out through the community. The new course will teach the life of the community, its activities and opportunities, 59 civic, æsthetic, industrial. Such a course is nothing but home training for the enlarged home.
But we must go back for a moment to that biggest and hardest department of all in the old homes of New England.
“Deceit, weeping, spinning, God hath give
To women kindly that they may live,”
said Chaucer in a teasing mood.
But spinning was a very small part of the Department of Textiles. We forbear to dilate on the courses of instruction which that department offered. We confine ourselves to observing that: