But it does mean something, this Home Economics 98 disturbance. And something very different from what it seems to.
Mr. Edward T. Devine, of the New York Charity Organization Society, has distinguished himself in the field of economic thought as well as in the field of active social reform. Among his works is a minute but momentous treatise on “The Economic Function of Women.” It is really a plea for the proposition that to-day the art of consuming wealth is just as important a study as the art of producing it.
“If acquisition,” says Mr. Devine, “has been the idea which in the past history of economics has been unduly emphasized, expenditure is the idea which the future history of the science will place beside it.”
We have used our brains while getting hold of money. We are going to use our brains while getting rid of it. We have studied banking, engineering, shop practice, cost systems, salesmanship. We are going to study food values, the hygiene of clothing, the sanitary construction and operation of living quarters, the mental reaction of amusements, the distribution of income, 99 the art of making choices, according to our means, from among the millions of things, harmful and helpful, ugly and beautiful, offered to us by the producing world.
Mr. Devine ventures to hope that “we may look for a radical improvement in general economic conditions from a wiser use of the wealth which we have chosen to produce.”
This enlarged view of the economic importance of consumption brings with it a correspondingly enlarged view of the economic importance of the Home. “If the factory,” says Mr. Devine, “has been the center of the economics which has had to do with Production, the home will displace the factory as the center of interest in a system which gives due prominence to Enjoyment and Use.”
“There will result,” continues Mr. Devine, “an increased respect on the part of economists for the industrial function which woman performs,” for “there is no economic function higher than that of determining how wealth shall be used,” so that “even if man remain the chief producer of wealth and woman remain the chief factor in determining how wealth shall be 100 used, the economic position of woman will not be considered by those who judge with discrimination to be inferior to that of man.”
Mr. Devine then lays out for the economist a task in the discharge of which the innocent bystander will sincerely wish him a pleasant trip and a safe return.
“It is the present duty of the economist,” says Mr. Devine, “to accompany the wealth expender to the very threshold of the home, that he may point out, with untiring vigilance, its emptiness, caused not so much by lack of income as by lack of knowledge of how to spend wisely.”