HOUSEHOLD ADMINISTRATION

ITS PLACE IN THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN

EDITED BY
ALICE RAVENHILL
AND
CATHERINE J. SCHIFF

NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1911

Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh

PREFACE

The object of this book is threefold. (1) It endeavours to define the importance and scope of household administration in the twentieth century, which, when analysed into its component parts, is found intimately to concern the right conduct and domestic care of individual human lives, from their inception to their close. (2) It seeks to demonstrate the necessity of an adequate preparation for all who assume the responsibility of such administration; particularly for those who, in consequence of their parental responsibilities, their wealth, their social status, or their professional duties, exercise far-reaching influence through their standard of life and example. (3) Finally, it gives prominence to the fact that the domestic arts are no collection of empirical conventions, to be acquired by imitation or exercised by instinct. It is clearly demonstrated that the group of sciences upon which they rest is more comprehensive than most people suspect, and that their contribution to the solution of pressing domestic problems has so far been but partially realised. It is, therefore, of considerable interest to observe the remarkable consensus of opinion on each of these points among the recognised experts in their subjects, to whom were entrusted the preparation of the various sections of this book. The writers of the papers, untrammelled by editorial restrictions, each writing from the fulness of her knowledge, tested by ripe experience, reached independently conclusions conspicuous for their unanimity. It will be evident to the most casual reader that, in the opinion of these thoughtful women, blind instinct must yield place to trained intelligence, if home life is to be preserved and modern conditions of existence adequately adjusted to human requirements.

Progressive changes, social, commercial, industrial, and, last but not least, educational, now require that this trained intelligence be fostered by organised instruction outside the home, adapted to the needs, present or prospective, of girls in every grade of society. Such instruction, whether in the fundamental sciences or in the applied arts, must be associated with individual practice in laboratory, studio, workroom, and kitchen; the details to be varied as circumstances dictate.

If, however, consistent applications of such knowledge are to be made in order that desirable saving in time, labour, money, health, or happiness shall be effected, graduate women of high attainments are urgently needed for the work. It is they only who can bring to bear upon the problems of childhood and adolescence, of food, of clothing, of housing, of domestic economics, of occupation, rest, and recreation, the patient study and research in the interests of humanity, which men of similar standing have lavished upon the advancement of commerce and industrial processes. It is by their skilled labour in the almost untrodden field of domestic science that the millions of homes will benefit which are committed to the charge of women who possess neither time, opportunity, nor ability to carry out these indispensable investigations, but who can yet effectively fulfil their responsibilities, if they be supported by systematic training and organised common sense, based on sound knowledge.

It is in the hope of forwarding these objects that this book has been prepared.

ALICE RAVENHILL.
CATHERINE SCHIFF.

Nov. 1910.

CONTENTS

A BRIEF HISTORICAL SKETCH OF WOMAN’S POSITION IN THE FAMILY
By CATHERINE SCHIFF

13

The home must always claim the first place in the large majority of women’s lives. It has done so in the past, it does so in the present, it will continue to do so in the future. But woman’s activities are no longer to be merely confined to her own fireside, though that must always hold a prominent place. The real problem of the day is the right conduct of the home on scientific lines.

In some ways the management of the home has never been more difficult. The servant problem has never been more acute than to-day; the cost of living and the standard of comfort is going up by leaps and bounds, and the old recipe of “Feed the brute,” as far as the husband is concerned, is no less inefficient. It is essential to-day to know something about food values, the arrangement of meals, which avoid monotony, and provide that requisite variety in nourishment, on which the good health and ultimately the good temper of the household depend.

Again we are realising the great complexities of all questions dealing with child-rearing and 14 education. We have travelled far from the self-complacency of the woman of thirty years ago, who based her claims to a thorough knowledge of the up-bringing of children on the fact that she had buried ten. This need for wider knowledge in all branches of housekeeping is equally important to the unmarried woman, who is more and more being called upon to act as a foster-mother, whether as a teacher or in some other capacity, to the nation’s children.

The care of the children is considered by all shades of opinion to be the clou of a woman’s life, and every day more and more responsibility is cast upon her in this respect. How can she, then, fulfil these duties as they should be fulfilled if she is utterly ignorant of the laws of health and of child-life, and how both are affected by environment and all the other grave and fundamental truths which lie at the root of the successful up-bringing and development of the child? It is now a hackneyed saying “that the child of to-day is the man or woman of to-morrow,” but a whole world of truth lies enshrined in those words; the children are the assets of the nation, and if their up-bringing is not of the best they can never attain to that full heritage of development which is the right of every soul born into the world.

Scientific training in Household Administration can alone save the sorely taxed housewife of to-day from becoming more than a slave to her domestic responsibilities. It is only by being a 15 mistress of her craft, “whether China fall or no,” that she can make sufficient time to devote herself to necessary self-culture and recreation as well as to those ever-growing outside duties which the twentieth century is imposing upon her in the shape of public and social work. If there is one thing which is becoming increasingly obvious, it is that the help and advice of scientifically trained women are absolutely necessary in the management of hospitals, the administration of the Poor Law, and the general solution of social problems.

At no other epoch in the history of mankind has woman stood on the same high plane as she does to-day, and at no other period has so much been demanded of her, intellectually, morally, and physically. It is only within recent years that Science has attempted to come to the aid of woman in helping her firstly to obtain, and then to maintain, the position for which she was originally designed, as the complement of man and as the chief element of preservation in human society.

If the history of mankind is traced back to primordial times, we find that it was the female who possessed power over the emotional nature of man, and it is becoming increasingly evident that the family owes its origin as a social factor to the Mother, not to the Father. Lippert is convinced “that the idea of an exclusively maternal kinship at one time extended over the whole earth,” and McLennan says, “We shall endeavour to show that the most ancient system in which the idea of 16 blood-relationship was embodied was a system of kinship through the females only.”

Occupation seems to have been the main factor in determining that the mother rather than the father should be the founder of the family. Agriculture originally appears to have been entirely the woman’s industry, while the men were engaged in hunting or looking after the cattle, and wherever agriculture was the predominant feature of life we find that relationship is traced through the mother; while on the other hand those tribes who were chiefly pastoral had a paternal system of relationship—that is to say, that descent was counted through the males.

Drummond, in his book on the “Ascent of Man,” places the Evolution of Motherhood long before that of Fatherhood. “An early result, partly of her sex, partly of her passive strain, is the founding through the instrumentality of the first savage Mother of a new and beautiful social state—Domesticity—while Man, restless, eager, and hungry, is a wanderer on the Earth, Woman makes a Home!” And according to the same authority we find “that to Man has been assigned the fulfilment of the first great function—the Struggle for Life—Woman, whose higher contribution has not yet been named, is the chosen instrument for carrying on the Life of Others.” Nature took many æons to make a mother, whose gift to the world was Love and Sympathy; the evolution of the Father came still later. “It was when man’s mind first became capable of making its own provision against 17 the weather and the crops that the possibility of Fatherhood, Motherhood and the Family were realised.” “The Mother-age, with its mother-right customs, was a civilisation, as I have indicated, largely built up by woman’s activity and developed by her skill; it was an age within the small social unit of which there was more community of interest, far more fellowship in labour and partnership in property and sex, than we find in the larger social unit of to-day.”[1]

In connection with this theory of the “Mother-age” it is interesting to note that the Etruscans traced their descent through the female line, and it was from the Etruscans that the Romans derived nearly all their institutions; thus many of the “initiative forces of civilisation” have come down to us from women.

It is believed that the patriarchal system—where the man was the head of the family, as amongst the Jews—which succeeded the Mother-age, grew out of the custom of capturing women belonging to other tribes, this being succeeded later on by purchase, and “as soon as the woman ceased to be protected by the force of ideas, as soon, that is to say, as she lost her position as head of the family, her downward path was certain.” But even among primitive people we find that it was an almost universal custom that a woman should be provided with an independent property, “Mitgift,” though as time went on and the patriarchal system became more firmly established, it appears 18 that this Mitgift became the husband’s property, and that every bride was expected to bring a dowry to her husband, whose property she became, thus losing all independence.

However, in Greece the position of woman, during the Heroic times was to a certain extent an independent one, as is clear from the poems of Homer and the treatment of Homeric and Heroic themes by the Athenian dramatists. But one has only to compare the “Nausicäa” of Homer or the “Electra” of the Tragedians with the women of the time of Pericles, to see how much the status of the female sex had deteriorated. The Athenian wife of that time was treated as a mere “Hausfrau,” expected to spend her whole time at home in the managing of the household, while the husband satisfied his intellectual tastes by intercourse with the “Stranger-women” attracted to Athens from other towns. “Thus arose a most unnatural division of functions among the women of those days. The citizen-women had to be mothers and housewives—nothing more; the stranger-women had to discharge the duties of the companions, but remain outside the pale of the privileged and marriageable class.”[2] To this artificial condition of domestic and social life may be partly attributed the downfall of Athens, for it is impossible to divide the functions of woman without serious risk to State and race.

19

In ancient Rome the patriarchal system was the prevailing custom. Under the Roman law the husband was the only member of the family possessing legal rights. “The family (familia) in its original and proper meaning is the aggregate of members of a household under a common head; this head was the paterfamilias, the only member of the household who possesses legal rights.”[3] It is true that there were many honoured women under the Roman Republic, such as Cornelia and Portia, the daughter of Cato, but the lot of the majority was not an enviable one. Gradually, however, the tutelage of women became less severe, and Justinian in revising the whole Roman code placed married and family life on an altogether new basis, “the husband lost his absolute control over his wife’s dower, and in case of separation he had to restore it entire.”

Women had been for so long under such strict tutelage that they were unfit to benefit by these new laws. Doubtless it will be remembered that the corruption of the women of the period is practically unparalleled in history, but it must be also borne in mind that the whole system of Imperial government was so vicious that it was almost impossible for women to escape from the widespread influence of vice and corruption.

Christianity as a force began to make itself felt while woman was yet in this low moral state, and 20 it is not therefore surprising that to the leaders of Christianity the freedom which women then enjoyed and the easy method of divorce obtainable were in a large measure responsible for the vitiated state of Roman life. In their eyes the only means of producing a more salutary state of affairs was to put a check on what they considered a menace to a Christian society.

It is of interest to notice how the attitude of the Early Fathers towards women differs from that of Our Lord as recorded in the Gospels. There indeed are women highly honoured, and it is to a woman that Christ often gives a message of the highest import. It was to Mary Magdalen that the Risen Lord first appeared and bade her tell the others, and again it was the woman of Samaria who became the instrument of salvation to her people. But to the Early Fathers the ascetic ideal was the predominant one, and in consequence thereof women were treated as the chief source of temptation to man. “Woman was represented as the door of Hell, as the mother of all human ills. She should be ashamed at the very thought that she is a woman. She should live in continual penance on account of the curses she has brought upon the world. She should be ashamed of her dress, for it is the memorial of her fall. She should be especially ashamed of her beauty, for it is the most potent instrument of the demon.”[4] In fact a decree of 21 the Council of Auxerre (A.D. 578) forbade women to receive the Eucharist in their naked hands owing to their impurity.

Unfortunately “the bigotry of the Early Christian teachers gave the first check to the tendency to freer institutions, the next was given by the fall of the Empire.”

With the influx of the Teutonic tribes we find a new code of ideas and morals, but eventually a compromise was effected between the Germanic and Roman laws. Thus from very early times we find that it was a German custom to provide every bride with a dower, and this is remarked upon by Tacitus. Afterwards the Church adopted this custom, which was strangely enough both Roman and Teutonic in origin.

From the time when the Empire went down in a cataclysm which shook the foundations of the world, until the beginning of the Middle Ages, we hear but little of woman. It was the Sturm and Drang period in the world’s history, in which woman had no real position. The women of the upper classes were of necessity confined either to the castle or the convent, and woman’s sphere was therefore a small one; man demanded nothing more than that they should minister to his physical wants in the short periods of peace he then enjoyed. Hallam says, “I am not sure that we could trace very minutely the condition of women for the period between the subversion of the Roman Empire and the First Crusade ... there seems however to have been more roughness 22 in that social intercourse between the sexes than we find at a later period.”[5]

With the end of this stormy period comes the dawn of the Age of Chivalry, and from that time forward until the Reformation, woman enjoyed a portion at least of her rightful position. It is said that “Chivalry not only bestowed upon the woman perfect freedom in the disposal of hand and heart, but required of the knight who should win her, devoted and lengthened service”; this may be, however, a rather idealised view of the situation; but there is no doubt that the Court and the Cloister became the two centres of women’s lives, and an intimate connection was maintained between the two. Nearly all women of gentle birth were educated in nunnery schools, and by the eighth century we find that these schools had attained a high standard of learning, which increased and developed in the succeeding centuries. The convent afforded a shelter to the woman who did not marry and to whom the marriage state did not appeal; there she was able to a certain extent to follow the career she desired, at the same time her personal safety was assured. “The scholar, the artist, the recluse, the farmer, each found a career open to him; while men and women were prompted to undertake duties within and without the religious settlement, which make their activity comparable to that of the relieving officer, the poor law guardian, 23 and the district nurse of a later age.”[6] It is perhaps of interest to us to note that the first hospital for lepers in England was founded by a woman, “good Queen Maud,” in 1101 at S. Giles’ on the East.

The rule of an abbey or a priory called for no mean business capacity on the part of their heads, and as a rule the abbess and prioress were women of great business and administrative ability. Before the Norman Conquest nearly all the nunneries founded in England were abbacies, subsequently priories were the most usual foundations, as according to feudal law women were unable to hold property.

The latter half of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are renowned throughout history for their women, who, occupying foremost positions in the government, were clever, cultured, and liberal-minded. One has but to mention the names of Margaret, Countess of Richmond, the “Lady Margaret” of Oxford and Cambridge; of Leonore d’Este, the mother of equally famous daughters, Isabella and Beatrice d’Este; Marguerite de Valois, sister of Francis I., and Isabella of Castile, to conjure up before one’s eyes the whole procession of the proud and capable women of these days.

“One and all have been fruitful as successive stages of growth, yet they can never recur, and only the fanatic or visionary could wish that they 24 should recur, for each is narrow and insufficient from the standpoint of a later age.”

In England “the women who were the mothers of the men who created the great Elizabethan epoch were almost without exception brought up in nunnery schools”[7] and, alas, the destruction of the nunneries and the rise of the Puritan spirit sounded the death-knell of women’s education. After the Reformation the position of woman was peculiarly degrading; in the eyes of the law she possessed practically no status, and “the old chivalrous feeling for woman seems to have faded out with the romance of the Middle Ages—she now figured as the legal property of man, ‘the safeguard against sin,’ the bearer of children ad infinitum.”

So woman was left once more to sink back into a slough of despond, until with the end of the eighteenth century there arose the humanitarian movement and the gradual awakening of woman to the sense of her responsibility, with the inevitable corollary of her rightful position as the social equal of man.

If these ideals are to be realised, woman must recognise her responsibilities and act accordingly. She has proved herself a more than apt student in all the liberal studies, she has practically forced the door of nearly all the professions, now she must realise that she must apply her higher learning to what is probably the most difficult profession of all, the management of the home, or in other 25 words she must see that the knowledge she has acquired be adapted and turned to practical aims.

Up to the present time the conduct of the home has been regulated purely by rule of thumb methods; if however in the future it can only be administered with the same method and scientific exactitude as prevail in other great business enterprises, the drudgery of housekeeping will diminish and woman will cease to be a slave to household duties. She will have more time to devote to the cultivation of her own mind, and thus, while becoming a more real companion to man, she will be free to take a more enlightened interest in the education and development of her children.

“Incidentally this may go to prove that a sound knowledge of the household sciences and arts may serve, not to tie a woman more to the storeroom and kitchen, but to enable her to get better results with the expenditure of less time and energy, by enabling her to apply to everything simple and complex within the household the master-mind, instead of the mind of the uncertain amateur.”

Her responsibilities are great not only as an individual but as a member of the community to which she belongs; and if she is to fulfil these responsibilities in respect to the home, she cannot do so without a thorough scientific preparation.

The home is the “cradle of life,” it was the birthplace of those industries which to-day form the great centres and constitute the means of livelihood for millions. In some of these there is reason to believe that woman took her share as 26 originator. With the process of time, these primitive practices have grown into the great industries and arts of to-day, yet it is still to the woman that the call comes to cultivate and use her taste in these matters, so that when it falls to her to be responsible for the decoration and furnishing of a house, she may be able to choose in all departments of life what is the best, to the everlasting benefit of herself and her family, both physically and morally.

If man be the producer and distributer of wealth, woman is certainly the director of consumption. On her rests the responsibility of expending wisely and well the money entrusted to her for the nutrition and clothing of her family, and how can this be adequately fulfilled if she have no real knowledge of the subject beyond what she is able to pick up as she goes along, a method detrimental to all concerned? Little would be thought of any business house which entrusted its most delicate operations to inexperienced buyers, or of any municipality which allowed its affairs to be conducted by an amateur. Far less would be heard of misery, poverty, and ill-health if the art of buying and preparing food, for instance, were properly understood by those whom it most concerns.

Again, the chief racial responsibility falls on woman; it is just in the most precious years of childhood that her influence is so potent, and it is the mother, who besides helping to sow all the ethical and spiritual seeds, should safeguard the perfect physical condition of her children, in 27 order that an unimpaired vitality and constitution be handed on from generation to generation. No proverb is truer than “Mens sana in corpore sano”; the two go hand in hand together, and their accomplishment is the proud privilege of the woman.

From the family flows the life of the nation, and the power to guide it aright lies largely in the hands of women, whether they be married or single. With the married woman her own family comes first of all, and then through it her duty as a citizen; the unmarried woman’s duties as a citizen are manifold, and each year they increase and expand. Nearly all the activities of public life are open to her; for instance she may sit on County Councils, Municipal Councils, District Councils, urban and rural Parish Councils,[8] 28 Boards of Guardians, &c.; in fact in the growing field of social work, her services are being more and more recognised as indispensable, and it is impossible in a few words to enumerate all the possibilities of service which lie before her, both professional and philanthropic.

Consequently if a healthy nation is desired, the women of a country must be educated both academically and scientifically. “If women are to be fit wives and mothers they must have all, perhaps more, of the opportunities for personal development that men have. All the activities hitherto reserved to men must be open to them, and many of these activities, certain functions of citizenship, for example, must be expected of them. Moreover, whatever the lines may be along which the fitness of woman to labour will be experimentally determined, the underlying position must be established that, for the sake of the individual and race character, she must be a producer as well as a consumer of social values.”[9]

Now how is this most desirable end to be attained? The succeeding papers will deal with the subject in extenso; here can only be briefly indicated the scope and purpose of the majority.

An eminent authority tells us that “the objects of nature may be designated as the objective point of view. It is the standpoint of biology and affords the natural conditions for the successful 29 investigation of the laws of life, not only of the lower organisms but of the human race as well.”[10] This immediately demonstrates the vital necessity that women should know something of these fundamental laws of life, which biology alone can teach, in order that she may apply these to her ordinary daily life and recognise them as operating in all her surroundings.

The transition from this stage to the next is an easy one. Woman having learnt the laws of life, will immediately view her economic responsibilities with a clearer eye and fuller understanding. It is true that throughout the ages woman has striven to acquit herself as best she could, but until the present day it has mostly been a groping in the dark, without the aid of any exterior agency. Now light is beginning to be thrown on many points hitherto obscure.

Household economics has been well said “to rest on two chief cornerstones, the economy of wealth and the economy of health, and encloses the groundwork of human happiness and human aspirations ... even all departments of science must contribute to its development.”

But a mere knowledge of biology and economics is useless without bodily efficiency, and true bodily efficiency is only possible where the environment is favourable to growth and life. It cannot be expected that full physical development can ever take place in ill-lighted, badly ventilated, 30 defectively drained or otherwise objectionable houses. And it must never for a moment be forgotten that if the body be neglected, then, as an inevitable consequence, the mind and spirit must also become warped. It is not that we desire man to develop his physical nature at the expense of his spiritual, but rather that we would see him placed in such a condition that he is able to apply those great faculties, which distinguish him from the brute creation, to their highest and best use.

The ancients recognised in very early times the need of sanitary precautions to protect themselves from the onslaught of disease and the consequent decimation of their race.

We find Mena, King of Egypt (5000 B.C.), mentioning in his Ordinances that offences in diet were one of the things through which “the genius of death becomes eager to destroy men.”

The Levitical Laws contain many enactments of a sanitary character, they are one of the oldest known sanitary codes, and have many wise and necessary provisions for the health of the people.

Rules for the conduct of rural life were formulated so far back as 100-500 B.C. in Bœotia. Tarquinus Priscus began and Tarquinus Superbus completed the great works for the drainage of Rome in the fourth and fifth centuries B.C., of which the Cloaca Maxima was the most remarkable feature; even to-day the ancient water-supply of Rome and her system of baths are still a source of admiration to the modern world. And 31 to their credit be it said that the Romans carried this knowledge with them to the countries which they conquered; we find aqueducts at Great Chester and Lanchester, an arterial sewer at Lincoln, and the well-known baths at Bath.

From the destruction of Rome until well-nigh ten centuries later was a period in which no advance in sanitation was made; on the contrary, retrogression was the keynote of the time. Warfare, religious segregation, and the spread of asceticism were the chief reasons for this; the ideals of both Christian and Pagan were opposed to personal and public hygiene. “The ascetic violated all laws of personal hygiene, the monastery’s ideal was inconsistent with public hygiene, and both glorified God by teaching submission to pestilence,”[11] which from time to time swept over the country, devastating it from end to end.

But with the increase of trade it became necessary to adopt certain measures for the preservation of human life, and in 1348 we hear of the first street-cleaning and quarantine in those two great centres of commerce, Venice and Cologne. It was in the same year that the most terrible plague which the world has ever known attacked Britain and practically depopulated it, finding its chief prey in the filthy streets of the City. This led in 1379 to an Order in Common Council for keeping the streets clean. But despite this, all through mediæval times personal health was shamefully neglected and 32 public health practically unknown. The consequences are easy to trace; the country was again and again swept by epidemics which were naturally followed by severe famines, and thus on every side progress was checked. The Fire of London at least cleansed London of its filth, and from that time forward matters began to improve. All through the eighteenth century, smallpox, typhus, scurvy, and ague were rampant, and it is not till 1834 that we find the beginning of sanitary legislation. In 1837 the Act for the Registration of Births and Deaths was passed, which at once provided the indispensable foundation for reliable statistics; previous to that date all that there was to depend upon were the Baptismal Registers and the more or less accurate Bills of Mortality. This has been followed by a long series of Public Health enactments concerned with practically every department of life. In fact during the last fifty years the public conscience has been quickened to an extraordinary degree. Much however has yet to be done which cannot be touched by legislation, and it is to the woman, who has been trained in the right conduct of life both private and public, that the world looks for the preservation of healthy human life, much of which is now needlessly sacrificed on the altar of ignorance. In many cases the woman is the only person who can prevent this, therefore she must equip herself for her high and noble duty with all that Science can provide and Art can suggest, neither must 33 she forget that her own home must ever be the starting-point of every endeavour. For the “Mrs. Jellabies” of this world are not those who help forward its progress, rather are they the clogs on its wheels.

Not only charity, but all other virtues begin at home. “So long as the first concern of a nation is for its homes, it matters little what it seeks second or third.”

FOOTNOTES:

[1]

Karl Pearson, “The Chances of Death,” p. 3.

[2]

Donaldson, “Woman,” p. 58. Longmans & Co.

[3]

Greenridge, “Roman Public Life,” p. 18. Macmillan & Co.

[4]

Lecky, “History of European Morals,” vol. ii. p. 358.

[5]

Hallam, “History of the Middle Ages.”

[6]

Eckstenstein, “Woman under Monasticism,” p. 106.

[7]

“The Mediæval Education of Women in England,” Journal of Education, June 1909.

[8]

It is interesting, however, to note the following Electoral Disabilities for women in England and Wales, which, however, do not exist in Scotland or Ireland:—

No married woman can vote in any Town Council election or in any County Council election outside London.

No woman owner has any right, in virtue of her ownership, to vote in any local election. Until 1894 women owners, as such, were entitled to vote in Poor Law Guardian elections, but the Local Government Act of that year disfranchised them, while enlarging the voting rights of men owners.

No woman lodger can vote in any local election, although men lodgers can vote in District and Parish Council and Guardian elections, and in the election of the London County and London Borough Councils.

For women there is no service franchise—such as entitles men to vote in District and Parish Council and Guardian elections, and in the election of London Borough Councils—i.e. no occupation of a dwelling as an official or servant (for example, as matron or caretaker) entitles a woman to be placed on the Register.

For neither men nor women is there any ownership franchise, lodger franchise, or service franchise for Town Council elections or for County Council elections outside London.

[9]

Parsons, “The Family,” p. 346.

[10]

Lester Ward, “Dynamic Sociology,” vol. ii, p. 120. D. Appleton and Co., New York.

[11]

Sanitary Record and Journal, Nov. 24, 1904.

35

THE PLACE OF BIOLOGY IN THE EQUIPMENT OF WOMEN
By WENONA HOSKYNS-ABRAHALL, M.A. (Dublin)

37

In considering what is the best mental equipment for women in civilised countries it is as well not to contemplate only the great general facts of life, such as wifehood, motherhood, and the woman’s position in the household. It is necessary to take into account also the special characteristics and circumstances of our own times and civilisation; for, unless a woman is prepared to meet these successfully, she cannot be deemed adequately equipped, even if from other points of view her education be ideal. In the beautiful old-fashioned education of Japanese women we have an instance of such ideal excellence, which is yet proving unable to cope with the requirements of actual life in modern Japan.

The most striking, and also the most radical and pervasive, characteristic of our time is, of course, the progress made in scientific knowledge. Month by month enormous numbers of facts are, in every department, added to the knowledge already acquired. To let one’s imagination range, even in a cursory way, over the work that is being done in 38 chemistry and physics merely as they concern biology—to enumerate the subdivisions of these sciences, or to look down a list of recent publications relating to research carried on in them, is enough to make one’s brain reel.

This ceaseless widening of the borders of knowledge is, we must gladly allow, most inspiriting; and yet, seen from another side, it may well give rise to fears. For it is fairly obvious that the progress of human happiness goes by no means pari passu with this progress of knowledge; and, on looking more closely, we may even observe miseries and degradations which can be traced up directly to the practical application of some of those scientific discoveries.

To what must we ascribe this? It would seem to be the outcome of two lines of tendency just now predominant.

The first of these is that very strong bent towards mere accumulation of fresh facts which may be noted in the most able and active workers all over the world. Just as, in other times, the best minds have flung themselves with enthusiasm upon art or literature or philosophy or statesmanship or war, so now they fling themselves eagerly upon the discovery of more and more recondite truths in science—leaving the ordinary government of affairs, on the whole, to minds of the second order.

The next is the reckless way in which isolated scientific discoveries—more especially in physics and chemistry—are brought to a practical application 39 and introduced into the scheme of everyday human life. This is done without consideration of anything beyond ensuring some obvious superficial convenience, and—what is a principal determinant—the opening up of new financial enterprises. Advantages of a sort no doubt are won—but often only at a fearfully disproportionate cost. The game—if we would but look at it unconventionally, from the standpoint of true biological science—is not worth the candle; for it involves a sacrifice of life itself to what can hardly be considered even as the means of life.

Thus the chemicals used to preserve food impair its nutritive qualities; while other chemicals, as well as a number of ingenious mechanical processes, serve to facilitate adulteration. We all know how difficult it is to obtain pure milk and butter, or pure bread from pure flour, or jams made with sugar from fresh and good fruit. Bread may be made from flour which has passed through no less than seven processes,—a sad contrast this to the old home-made bread, the product of home-ground meal, whole and sweet as nature made it. What is sold in enormous quantities to the people as sugar, whether alone or as part of preserves, turns out often to be glucose. Butter, so-called, is often only skilfully-treated fats, the weight helped out by water. These three articles of diet alone, when adulterated as they thus often are, mean serious deterioration in the food—and therefore in the physique—of the nation; and to them we have 40 yet to add the effect of the chemicals used for keeping fish and meat in place of the genuine, old-fashioned pickling, salting, and smoking.

Machinery, again, growing ever more and more complicated, has destroyed an incalculable wealth of traditional activity: and therewith, generation by generation, it tends to destroy the finest capacities of individual men and women, whether producers or consumers of the finished product. The consumers suffer through the lack of opportunity to acquire and exercise manual dexterity and resourcefulness—as well as through a great lack of experimental knowledge. The producers suffer through the monotony and narrowness of their labour.

We may take as other instances of recklessness our common use of unprotected illuminants—electric light and incandescent gas-mantles—which give off ultra-violet rays injurious to the eyes; the use of portable electric lamps and switch lampholders, which is by no means free from risk; and again the extreme recklessness of the so-called “medical electrician,” who will actually venture to give electrical massage to a patient immediately after wet pack.[12]

As a last example we may take the rage for speed, and in particular the use of electrically driven motor-cars. The exact effects upon the human frame of the rapid motion, of the vibrations, of the presence of the electric current and escaping gas have never been adequately investigated—though 41 sundry ill consequences of motor-driving have been noted without any diminution of the practice.

A very cursory reflection may show us that, while the progress of science is the great characteristic fact of modern life to which we all have to adjust ourselves, we must be prepared not only to take advantage of the good it offers, but also to discern and counteract the perils it brings with it, when applied to human life in our present somewhat random way.

The random nature of our proceedings may be illustrated from yet another side. There are a number of facts and principles, long since agreed upon as truly ascertained, which have never, or only very partially, been brought to bear upon custom and daily life. We all know that plenty of fresh air is a first condition of health and vigour; and are so far convinced of this verity that open-air treatment is generally accepted as the proper mode of attacking and mastering consumption. Yet we crowd together into cities: our houses are often very imperfectly ventilated, and our public buildings—churches, theatres, halls, schools and institutions, as well as our railway-carriages and tram-cars—provide only for the very minimum of change of air. Similar neglect of definitely ascertained facts may be seen in dress, in food and drink, in furniture, in occupations. Noise is well known to be injurious to the brain, and destructive to thought: more than that, it has been discovered that it is harmful to the viscera. We insist, more or less, upon quiet 42 for the sick: but no trouble is taken about quiet for those who are well. Our thoroughfares echo with noises of all kinds, from the roar of traffic to the howling and whistling of errand-boys; and the authorities would be much surprised if they were accounted specially negligent for not making some effort to suppress them. Yet to any biologically trained person this noise must appear not disagreeable merely, but a real handicap to the health and energy of the community. Wherever faithfulness to scientific principle involves trouble without prospect of money-making, it is likely to be shirked, however great the benefits known to come from it.

This is not entirely due to laziness, nor yet to ignorance, it is due quite as much to circumstance and to the pressure of our present social institutions. It is closely bound up with the great social question of the ownership of land, and with the husbandry and use of the resources of the land, our rivers and our sea-shore. Wasting a great measure of what these have to give us, polluting them in different ways by our manufactures and by the refuse of our cities, we are constraining whole masses of our population to look to the work and the products of other countries for the first necessities of life. Whole masses of our population are removed from direct contact with the soil, which is the nursing-mother not only of the body, but also of the mind of man; the people and the land being thus alike impoverished. Inquiring how so dangerous an error can have 43 arisen, we may find at least part of its cause to lie in an ignorance of the fundamental principles of biology, the science of life.

What, it may now be asked, is to be done to counteract these disadvantages and dangers? And, again, how does all this bear on the equipment of women?

Taking the latter question first: it is indisputable that an enormous proportion of our commerce and manufactures is concerned with food and with articles required for the home. But things for the home are made to be dealt with and used by women. In so far as science comes in and modifies this material it is imperative that women should be placed in a position, not only to know what are the essentials for life, but also to criticise and estimate accurately that which is offered to them as scientific improvement. For we need, in this connection also, to remember that science can only be fought by science—that is, by knowledge belonging to the same plane.

We have now in part answered our former question. What we need is a central or basal science to which—for practical purposes and in regard to its practical application—the work done in other sciences can be brought to be accepted, or rejected, or modified. This central science can, in the very nature of things, be none other than biology: the science, that is, which gives an account of the functions and inter-relations and structure of all living things, and deduces therefrom 44 those principles which, in a rather loose way, we speak of as the laws of life.

It would, we think, be a very happy turn of affairs if, not all, but some of that genius, which is now spending itself in the research for fresh facts, could be diverted to the work of correlating with one another facts already known, and bringing all those that are appropriate to be grouped as it were in order of service around biology.

But perhaps not less important than this is what we may call the practical synthetic work of women in their households. There are, indeed, two circumstances which would give the ordinary woman of average intelligence, if she were but adequately instructed, some advantage, so far as the service of mankind goes, over even the most brilliant man of genius. The first is the vantage-ground of her position in the home—at the very point, that is, where so many sciences thrust themselves up together to the surface of actual life—where in some way or other, however roughly, they have to be correlated, compared, their different claims adjusted. The second is the natural inclination of the womanly mind towards synthesis rather than analysis, towards practice rather than theory.

We ought now to consider rather closely—exhaustively we cannot—what is included under the term Biology. It stood for some time chiefly to mean an account of the structures of animals and plants, structure being pursued into ever further minuteness, down to the cell and the constituents and parts of the cell. With this has 45 gone insistent inquiry into the process of reproduction and growth; and more lately, in bio-chemistry and bio-physics, the conformity of living substance to the order recognised in non-living matter has been, and is being, most eagerly investigated. And now a school of biologists is arising whose aim is the vindication of the claims of function as against the too exclusive study of structure. Function, of course, involves activity; and activity, in a complex, multicellular organism, involves the interplay of parts. This interplay, again, cannot be studied without reference to the environment, and to the relations between the organism in question and others—whether of its own or of other species. In this way it seems likely that biology—moving as it were in a spiral—will by-and-by return, though at a much higher level, to the standpoint of the older naturalists, whose interest in plants and animals was focussed more upon their activities, habits of life and special environment than upon their morphology—and even disdained not to consider their possible uses for man. Also, more thoroughly and extensively than before, the study of man himself is being caught up into the great web of Biology. It is seen as an integral part of Biology, and pursued in the biological spirit. Whether we look to psychology on the one hand, or to anthropology and its associated sciences on the other, the present is a most propitious moment for drawing public attention to this vast science, as being the true centre and foundation of that practical knowledge which is 46 needed as a guide, and also as a stimulus, for practical everyday life.

It will, of course, be instantly objected that the subject is indeed vast—much too vast. But not too vast, surely, if, by means of a very simple principle, we select out what is of immediate definite use, and necessary for everybody, from what may be, by the majority, safely left on one side. We shall then get, on this side, the highly specialised Biology of the laboratory with its minute researches and nicely calculated experiments, and, on that, what we may, for our present purpose, call Common-sense Biology.

Just one word of explanation is perhaps needed at the outset. Common-sense Biology does not mean anything like that slipshod dealing with miscellaneous phenomena of nature which sometimes goes by the name of Nature Study. It is a course of work systematic and strictly scientific, conducted as truly as any other in the scientific spirit. It presents, however, two points of contrast with special or analytical Biology, in that, whereas, in analytical Biology, a beginning may be made practically anywhere, with any series of facts one may prefer to take first, in Common-sense Biology there is only one right mode of starting, and that of the utmost importance; while, secondly, Common-sense Biology combines some of the characteristics of an art with the ordinary characteristics of a science.

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COMMON-SENSE BIOLOGY

It is this latter form of the science—this science, which is also an art—that we would advocate as essential for the equipment of women. With this view let us examine it further.

And first, what is its proper starting-point? Its proper starting-point is accurate instruction concerning the living things with which the student is, or can easily be, brought into immediate practical contact. And, again, in the study of these living things—plants and animals alike—attention is directed first towards the organism in its totality and in its activities—towards function rather than towards structure; and also towards mode of life, relations with environment, and, where possible, towards its use or danger to mankind. Structure will, no doubt, early have to be introduced, but only in its larger details as explanatory of function, for the sake of a better knowledge of the animal or plant as a whole.

What are to be the types and examples of organisms studied?

This is an important question, and the writer would most strongly urge that the principle of selection should be that of locality; that the student should start with those plants and animals—both wild and domestic—which are to be found within a given radius of the place where she is living and working. The first things to know about are habit, activity, inter-relation and use to 48 human beings. In respect to these, the presence of one organism will react upon others, and therefore no plant or animal within the area should be lightly overlooked.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BACTERIOLOGY

We must not, however, confine attention to the higher multicellular animals and plants. One of the most important factors in the environment is the existence of bacteria; and it is of great importance that an outline of bacteriology should be included in our course of Common-sense Biology. This outline should be kept close to the common necessities of everyday life. For the sake of making clear and real to the mind the manner in which bacteria multiply and the extreme rapidity of the process, a certain amount of microscopical work ought to be done, the examples being few, but carefully chosen. This kind of work, nevertheless, should be kept subordinate. The effects wrought by bacteria in water, earth and air, in stored foodstuffs, and in the tissues of the living body are the important subjects for study; and naturally, connected with these, the conditions which permit the access of bacteria or which, in the case of noxious bacteria, will best ensure protection.

The rationale of toxins and anti-toxins, with the relations of these to the blood-serum should also, in a general way, be known; and moreover the student should be prepared to learn that many 49 diseases, which are at present very imperfectly understood—we may take, for instance, forms of insanity—have their vera causa in the action of toxins, and require to be treated accordingly.

Perhaps, for those who cannot take more than the shorter courses of our Common-sense Biology, it will be sufficient to consider only those forms of inimical bacteria which we have to combat in our own islands. But the writer would strongly urge that, at least among women of the leisured classes, this instruction should be extended to cover the bacterial and other minute parasitic forms of disease most prevalent in our colonies and in our foreign possessions. The wives of officers, civil servants and missionaries ought to know, in a clear, scientific way, the causes, modes of attack, and methods of prevention of the principal tropical diseases, so far as these have at present been made out.

METHOD OF STUDY

What should be the method of this study?

The sketching out of a course would be far beyond the scope of this paper. Here it may only be said that the work must, of necessity, fall into two main parts. There must be, on the one hand, field-naturalist’s work, for the greater proportion of the animals and plants studied ought—so far as is in any way practicable—to be observed in their natural surroundings; and there must be, on the other hand, work allied to that of the gardener and farmer, the rearing of selected 50 plants and animals for purposes of experiment and of closer examination. Nothing worth mentioning can be done on either of these lines without some study of the food and climatic conditions required by each creature; and this will involve a study of soils, temperature, atmosphere, and so on—and also a study of the nutrient properties of those organisms which furnish forth the food of other organisms. From this knowledge, gained thus through direct observation and experiment, would be deduced the general principles which—so to express it—govern life; and upon it as foundation would be reared the more specialised knowledge of all that pertains strictly to the life of mankind. Throughout the aim should be to use books mainly for reference.

It is not necessary—as it might have been a few years ago—to show that a training on these lines is better, as a preparation for life, than that offered by the ordinary school and university curriculum; but it may be worth while to show how far and why it is superior to a well-planned course in the analytical biology of the laboratory. The superiority is surely twofold: in that the kind of knowledge acquired is of greater practical utility; and, again, in that the development which it ensures, to the powers, bodily and mental of the student, is more varied, thorough, and effective.

COMMON-SENSE BIOLOGY AS AN ART

As has been said, this Common-sense Biology partakes of the nature of an art. Now it is 51 characteristic of any art that, for its satisfactory exercise, it demands not only knowledge, but also intuition;—not only conscious volition, reflection, and endeavour, but also subconscious nervous and muscular activity, and, together with that, a certain emotional state—a trend, tendency, disposition of the whole being, which likewise is chiefly subconscious.

Without such a disposition to begin with you cannot have an artist. Neither will you get an artist, if, on the other hand, this disposition is never given an opportunity for displaying itself and developing its capacities. You cannot play an instrument properly if you have no music in you, and the music in you will never come forth if you have no instrument to play upon. When disposition and opportunity are happily met, and the true artist arises, it is in the subconscious that the chief riches, gained by her work and experience, are stored, and from the subconscious that she draws her skill; while in the subconscious, again, lie the mysterious sources of original inspiration. We all know well how over-consciousness spoils art, as it spoils most kinds of action. The happiest effects, the loveliest deeds spring, as it were, spontaneously.

What is true of such arts as music and poetry is at least equally true of the art of living. The rich and well-harmonised subconsciousness is the proximate source whence all that is strongest and most beautiful in human activity is derived. The domestic arts, conversation, power of rapid judgment 52 at a crisis, the care of the sick, the care of children, tactful daily dealing with one’s fellows, all these, and so much else, we recognise to be dependent for perfection upon practice; and that is only another way of saying that they depend on the efficiency and the character of the subconscious. But the character and efficiency of each person’s subconscious being depend in their turn—not solely, yet principally—first, upon the knowledge she has acquired, and secondly, upon the actions she has habitually performed. Action and being, as we all know full well, are for ever acting and reacting upon one another.

Action is a more potent influence upon the subconscious even than knowledge; and when to mere activity there is added emotion—such emotion, for instance, as pleasure or love, or solicitude, or desire for truth—we may feel assured we have brought into play the most powerful of all the forces which, in an ordinary way, go to vivify and to form human character.

The subconscious is even more important for women than for men, because women have more calls upon their emotions, and more need for intuition, and also more need for general resourcefulness and skill. It is because the Common-sense Biology whose claims we are urging involves so much activity, such care, quickness of observation, patience and ready wit, that it makes a better preparation for life than the more highly specialized work in the Biology of the laboratory alone could be.

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THE GAINS AND LOSSES OF CIVILISATION

Is there, it may now be asked, anywhere any definite evidence to bear out this contention. There is: and in abundance. For it, however, we must look away from civilised communities, especially from the educated portion of their populations. Civilisation, no doubt, gives much; but it also takes much away. It has taken away much of the traditional lore of women, and more and more of their traditional activities. This does not merely mean that the practical ability and knowledge of civilised women is greatly restricted; it means also that the peculiar intuitive wisdom of women—the fruit of a richly-stored subconsciousness—is much diminished. In capacity for pure thought the educated woman of civilised communities no doubt excels all the rest: in most other respects the barbarian or savage woman will—with some few exceptions—probably be found her superior, whether judged merely by her mastery of the conditions amid which she has to work, or, more broadly, by the amount of her real knowledge and the range of her effective capacities.

Take, as an example, the Eskimo woman, who is considered to represent the woman of palæolithic times. As there is no Eskimo Board of Education—no paraphernalia of Primary, Secondary, Technical, and other Schools, with their red tape and officialism—she is free to carry on the tradition 54 of her ancestresses, and to rear, in the good old ways, children who grow up to be sturdy men and women. The preparation she had for her task was chiefly that of watching and imitating her own mother. Thus, as a child, she followed all the processes of turning the dead reindeer to account—learning thereby an economy and an unwillingness to waste which were essentially scientific—learning, too, subconsciously. She saw the flesh of the reindeer made into pemmican—cut into thin slices, and dried in the sun or in the smoke of a slow fire, then pounded between stones (the use of stones is worth noticing) and stored under a cover of melted fat, poured over it in due proportion. She saw the bones—after the marrow had been extracted from them—pounded down and boiled to get out the residual fat; the horns set aside to make fish-hooks, chisels, needles, and fishing-spears, work for the long winter evenings; the skin carefully dressed with a split bone and cut into shape to make clothing, and snow-shoes, thongs, bow-strings, fishing-nets, and so on. The very tendons make threads for sewing: and the garments thus fashioned are not only strong and serviceable, but beautiful with that particular beauty, which may perhaps be called barbaric, but which almost invariably denotes vigour and fulness of subconscious life. The Eskimo women also make their own boats and their own tools; they are good fishers and hunters. Their year’s work comprises an exercise of dexterity and quick wit of which the ordinary Englishwoman can have no idea.

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We might take as another example the North American Indian woman, with her varied forest-lore; but, since space is limited, let us pass for one further illustration to the despised Australian aboriginal. She too knows and does things worthy of our admiration and imitation. For instance the English housewife’s preparation of the household food is nothing like so conscientious as the Australian’s, whose proceedings have the keen disinterested concentration proper to a bit of scientific research. Thus, to take but one example of the processes connected with the preparation of one form of food—a seed of a species of eucalyptus: “With a hooked stick she pulls down the terminal branches of the tree and spreads them out to dry on a piece of ground cleared for the purpose. After allowing them to lie there for a period determined by temperature, she collects the distal ends of the branches, damps them and brushes the seeds off into water. For a period of two or more hours these seeds are kept soaking, but the water is repeatedly changed, so as to remove all traces of the ‘gum.’ After this they are dried and ground on a stone. Again, she builds their rough, but wisely devised home most carefully according to ancient tradition. She takes her little girl, armed with a miniature digging-stick, out to track the honey-ant with her, and to learn by the way what are the birds and beasts and plants, friendly or inimical, which surround their home-camp.”

Alongside of this direct learning about nature goes the learning of the legends and traditions of 56 the tribe, together with the customary dances, rituals, and religious practices. The activity of savage life is everywhere such that no anomalies like our physical exercises are needed,—for the physique of the young men and women is as graceful, strong, and enduring as need be.

If we turn to savage or barbarian peoples higher in the scale we shall find their knowledge, abilities, and accomplishments higher and also more varied. But, on the whole, until we come to the average modern woman of a civilised community, we shall find that the women—through their happily developed subconsciousness—are equal to the best the community requires of them. They do not call their training Common-sense Biology, but that is what it practically is. They know all about their surroundings, and what to do therein. And grace and beauty wait upon what they do.

This ideal is not, however, quite without parallel among the more highly civilised peoples. The Greeks conceived of Athene, the great goddess of wisdom and of war, as also Athene Ergane, the Workwoman, the goddess of handicrafts in the home. In our own country—to take examples near to us and familiar—the names of Caroline Herschel, Jane Austen, the Brontës, Mary Somerville, and George Eliot not only attest the fact that exquisite skill in domestic arts is not, in a woman, incompatible with learning and genius, but may also lead us to suspect that the exercise of this 57 skill actually aided and furthered their better-known achievements.

In our civilised communities—from the point of view of the subconscious—women are in two ways at a disadvantage. First, excessive division of labour, with our dependence upon machinery, has made the life of the State far more complicated than in former days; and secondly, the activity of the individual, from the same causes, is far more monotonous, far less well-calculated to bring out all her powers and train her being as a whole, than it used to be. Hence, as we said, women have lost a good deal subconsciously—even though, in consciousness, they may have gained.

There is nothing in which the character of the subconscious is more clearly seen than in a person’s attitude towards the great mysteries of life: towards birth and marriage and death on the one hand—towards religion on the other. It is, of course, matter of common knowledge that in regard to marriage the customs of some savage tribes are what we should describe as licentious. A truer understanding of the savage mind has, however, mitigated many of the judgments passed even upon the worst of these practices—at least in so far as they were taken to indicate gross inward depravity on the part of the women. And among many peoples there are found laws and customs of real beauty and noble significance, witnessing to reverence, fine intuition, and real care for the highest good of the tribe. And in general of all savage races it may be said that whatever 58 their laws and customs are—though perhaps born of ignorance and selfishness—they feel seriously about them as about sacred things, and observe them scrupulously.

The better side is exemplified chiefly by the women. When anthropological work is more largely undertaken by women, and when, through their sympathy, the jealously guarded secrets of the women’s tradition, now almost entirely unknown, are yielded up to us, it is probable that our conceptions of savage life and thought will have to be radically modified. However that may be, it is even now sufficiently well known that the women do not leave the question of reproduction and marriage to chance in the education of their girls. The girls are definitely, carefully, and it would seem often tenderly, taught; and if, among some peoples, they are made to undergo great sufferings, a closer study usually reveals in these the effects of the long subjection of the women to the cruelty and uncontrolled passions of the men. All this should not blind us to the fact that the maternal instinct is here actively grappling with the great realities of life: and we may contrast this with the ways of the modern woman who, less developed in subconsciousness, is not so forcibly impelled to make any such attempt, and, for the most part, practically lets the whole thing slide. Here, as in other directions, the fuller development of the subconscious would compel and also enable us to correct a grave omission: while the knowledge 59 necessarily acquired concerning reproduction and birth in the course of biological work would fill up that which has hitherto often been wanting even in the best-inspired women who have dealt with this question.

It must by now have been made clear that our object in advocating this Common-sense Biology is to recover what was excellent in the equipment of the women of the past, and to unite it with what is most excellent, and most germane to woman’s life, in the methods and knowledge of the present. Since modern household life is deficient in the requisite opportunities we are obliged to have recourse to definite educational schemes. But education of this sort will assuredly continue to be necessary even after many improvements in the home have been brought to pass; because it will always be necessary to keep the knowledge and activities of women in correspondence with the advance of science. At the same time it is worth while to remember that the earlier the child begins to observe living things, to live with them, learn about them, and take care of them, the better the final result will be; while the ideally trained mother in the ideal home, herself practical and active, will be able to do more for her children in this regard than most people, perhaps, would now dream of.

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THE INFLUENCE OF COMMON-SENSE BIOLOGICAL TRAINING ON SOCIAL WORK

Biological training of the order we have been considering is, we believe, desirable for all women in the interests, first, of the home and of the rearing of children. But it is equally desirable for the women who are not destined to be wives and mothers, and particularly so as a foundation for any kind of university work, even for the different literary or philosophical schools.

Here it is, perhaps, worth while to urge upon women the claims of the other great division of Biology, that of the laboratory. A considerable number of women who go up to the universities have, indeed, intellectual abilities deserving special cultivation, yet abilities which show no very distinct inclination in any one direction. These have been very commonly drafted into the study of history. It may be questioned whether some branch of Biology would not be better for them, and more useful to the community. Women working at Biology in the universities ought to serve, and to aim at serving, as the channels by which each fresh addition of scientific knowledge finds its way to, and its appropriate place in, the schemes of Common-sense Biology generally obtaining.

In another field—the field of public work—it is to be hoped that ere long a knowledge of biology will come to be considered a sine quâ non for women. It would be superfluous to point 61 out in how many kinds of public work women are gradually coming to the fore—in those especially which deal with education and with the care of the disabled. Already the influence and the peculiar gifts of women have in some degree made themselves felt; but these might operate much more powerfully if they were more commonly associated with scientific knowledge—with a knowledge of those branches of biology, more especially of bio-chemistry and bio-physics, which bear most nearly upon humanity.

It would take up too much space to give an account of the many ways in which biology is here of service: two great lines of utility may just be indicated as examples.

First, biology would lead to certain modifications of practice—particularly in our treatment of children, and of persons deemed criminal or insane. The biologist, when anything was amiss—before she pronounced any one to be mentally or morally unsound, defective, or bad—would presume, to start with, that there was some definite physical trouble to be set right, not necessarily anything dangerous in itself or mysterious. In New York they now make it a rule to examine for adenoids every young offender against the law, before punishing him; and it is amazing how often adenoids are found, and when removed carry the child’s wickedness away with them. Adenoids and divers glands are responsible for a great proportion of youthful wrongdoing; and yet other physical troubles will account for a great 62 proportion of the rest. The writer herself once came across a young girl who was, in intention and attempt, a murderess—yet was so only through the effect of a common physical condition, easy enough to treat when once ascertained. Until our general conception of a child—or indeed of a human being—is a more truly biological one, framed more closely upon the facts of its bodily life, we shall have but little effective intuition into its state. And such a sound biological conception is not to be had apart from some good measure of sound biological knowledge.

When, however, the most careful observation reveals no local or definite mischief to be dealt with in the person under consideration, the biologist will still not hastily set him down as bad—or even as unsound or defective. He will next suspect that he is one whose physical organisation is not fitted for its environment: if he can be placed in a better environment perhaps he will grow better. If this change is, from whatever circumstances, impossible, the biologist in treating him, however troublesome he may be, will still never regard him as wholly responsible for what he is, will still try to ascertain the exact ways in which the environment presses injuriously upon him, and to help him in those definite particulars. If we desire the work of our reformatories and prisons and the disciplinary work of our schools really to be and not merely to appear effective, it is only by such nicely-calculated methods that we shall attain our object.

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This brings us to our second point. Biology, when a knowledge of it is more widely spread among us, will assuredly work a change in public opinion. We have among us thousands of men and women whom we account failures in life; whose existence constitutes our gravest social problem. The drunkard, the wastrel, the thief, the prostitute—these are characters whom society thrusts out. They have proved themselves unfitted for their environment; they cannot act in it with any regularity or seemliness: its laws are not their laws. And the assumption most generally is that these are beings of a lower stamp than the average, unhappily surviving in, or at war with, an environment which postulates a nobler sort of men and women. Is it so?

The finer and more delicately poised a mechanism—whether it be chemical balance, galvanometer, electroscope or what not—the more sensitive is it to its surroundings. Thus the instruments once at Kew Observatory have had to be transferred to the wilds of Scotland to ensure their perfect working—rendered impossible at Kew by the noise and vibrations of encroaching London. Thus, again, the mind of Darwin required for its proper functioning the quiet of a study at Down, in the heart of the country. A ray of light will spoil a delicate experiment: the presence in an observatory of one steel key will hinder the work of the instruments. A boy commits suicide because of the noise of the factory in which he is compelled to work. A girl drowns herself 64 because the worries of her home are intolerable.

The point I would press is that these different examples belong fundamentally to the same category. Whether it be the instrument devised by man, or whether it be the human nervous system itself, that which we are looking at is a mechanism too delicate for the cruel exigencies of an unyielding gross environment. We have but to reflect on one organ alone—on the exceeding fineness of structure, and nicety of adjustment, and definiteness of sense-limit, of the eye—in order to realise that the comparison between the human nervous system and the most delicate of our delicate instruments is more than justifiable.

How do we know, when dealing with any given drunkard, that we have not before us a fine, fine nature, to which the harsh and low conditions of our Western civilisation have simply proved intolerable? How do we know that, instead of blaming him and trying to adjust him to the world, we ought not rather to blame the world, and try to make it a fit place for him to live in?

This consideration—strictly scientific as it is—ought to have very great weight in that new department of biological work which has been named Eugenics. Before lightly saying of any stock that it is not good to breed from, or that it is good to breed from, pains should surely be taken to ascertain whether irregularities and disease evinced by members of that stock do not in 65 reality proceed from their superiority to their environment and to the average men and women about them. Individually they may be irreclaimable, yet, thrown out of gear, miserable and wasted as they are, they may be the carriers of the finest hopes of humanity, of a promise for the fulfilment of which we are not yet ready. Perhaps there is a tendency to be a little over-hasty in our estimates of good and bad stocks to breed from. Perhaps we have not yet fully learnt either the significance of recessive characters or the importance of the mere fact that the unit-characters of a human being are immensely numerous, and their inter-relations therefore extremely intricate. And yet, again, perhaps we are too intolerant of variety, too eager for uniformity.

Here in England we have a mixed population, sprung from many diverse origins. The differences between individuals are many and great. Yet the majority of the population is thrust into the grooves of one educational system, and thereafter compelled to settle down to occupations and modes of life which are the same for thousands together. Any attempt to leave the common rut is looked at askance. What wonder that there are rebels, and that the rebels are unhappy! A society constructed in conformity to true biological principles, instead of suppressing variety would give it welcome as one of the most precious of national characteristics, and would purposely adjust itself and its systems with more 66 accuracy so as to give every sort and type of person the best possible chance for developing his or her peculiar gifts. In a society so constituted, very rare indeed would be the occurrence of insanity.

These considerations should have weight in yet another direction: in determining the counsel which ought to be given to girls as to the choice of a mate.

The importance of soundness of stock has here too been well brought into prominence by the workers in Eugenics; and perhaps it may not be amiss to make one or two suggestions with a view to obviating a too narrow application of the principle of the sound stock.

We must remember, first, that disease is not necessarily evidence of unsoundness. Like some forms of moral obliquity, it may be merely evidence of a quality in the stock which renders it unable to tolerate a given environment. And this quality may be in itself an excellence of the most precious kind. This would be the true account of many cases of insanity, while others would be covered by the action of toxins on the brain. Heredity, we are told in many instances of “insanity,” is more probably a heredity of “special liability to the production of toxins or to the action of toxins on the brain,” than heredity of insanity proper. This view will naturally entail modifications in our methods of treating the “insane,” as well as a considerable change in public opinion with regard to the significance of insanity.

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And, secondly, we must remember the importance of the environment, more especially of the human part of it. A man of sound stock is very commonly brought up as a sportsman, whose first idea is to kill; or as an idler, whose chief occupations are eating, drinking, and smoking, with travel and some amount of gambling thrown in by way of variety. Or he may easily be above all things a money-maker and a lover of money. His habits of this sort will determine to a very great extent the early—and that is the critical—environment of his children. The tendency in his family will be towards uniformity, towards one level, and that not a high level, of thought, activity, and character. His example and influence will go very far to counteract the advantages presumably ensured by the soundness of his stock.

On the other hand, a man whose ancestry is eugenically not flawless may have such wide interests, so many and such fine powers, so much skill in different activities, and so high and generous a personal ideal, that the environment which his manner of life would make for his children—the inspiration he would be to them—might well be expected very largely, if not wholly, to counteract the disadvantages of defects in the stock.

No doubt this principle should be applied with all reasonableness and care, but it is extremely important for the highest welfare, for the development of the best possibilities of the people, that it should be definitely recognised.

68

ANTHROPOLOGY A BRANCH OF BIOLOGY

A word must here be said as to the importance—more especially to the biological student who aims at social work—of some knowledge of Anthropology. Biology is, in fact, incomplete without anthropology; for in its absence there is a danger of applying biological principles too summarily, and therefore unscientifically, to humanity. Anthropology, of course, goes behind art and history and the literary ideas current among civilised peoples. It gives life and meaning to customs, legends, handicrafts, details of dress, ornament, and furniture which otherwise go unheeded or misunderstood. It helps to interpret for us the ways of contemporary peoples and classes which are on a level different from our own. It gives a unity in infinite diversity to our whole conception of humanity. When more widely studied, there can be little doubt that it will cause us to reconstruct many of our judgments, both concerning the history of the past and concerning the civilisations of the present day.

We cannot but believe that a time will come when it will be assumed of all women that they know the broad truths of biology, just as it is now assumed that they know the alphabet. It will be taken for granted that they have mastered the essential domestic arts with their own hands, 69 just as we now take for granted they can write with their own hands. We shall have reached then the beginning of a new era—an era which we may hope will unite the excellences, moral, æsthetic, and hygienic, of earlier times, with the excellences, more purely intellectual and scientific, of our own day.

WOMAN’S SYNTHETIC POWERS AS AN INSTRUMENT TO EFFICIENCY

The most effective instruments for bringing this about are the synthetic powers of woman herself, combined with her practical skill and her ready intuition. As we have tried to show, the best chance for the eliciting and the disciplining of these powers of hers, so as best to fit them for the struggle of modern life, is afforded by biology.

It must be clear how many reforms—impossible to the nominally educated women of the present day—would flow easily from this better training of women; for those so trained could certainly not endure the futility of some of our educational ideals, nor that haphazard disregard of the nature and needs of the child, which still characterises so much of our educational method. They could not support the continuance of many of the common evils of modern life—the noise and dirt, the brutality of manners, the scamping of work, the rush for pleasure. These, however they may or may not affect the adult, are plainly impairing the best 70 promise of the children; and that fact will be enough for the truly educated woman.

Knowing, too, as she will, more accurately and scientifically than women to-day generally know, how largely energy and depression, irritability and calm strength are questions of right or wrong food, the educated woman may be trusted to find a means to put an end to the crying iniquity of adulteration. Directly or indirectly, by the pressure of her determination that the race shall no longer be offered a sacrifice to Mammon, she will assuredly find a way to put an end to all not absolutely necessary dangerous trades.

The opposition of such women to what is wrong in social custom, in government, in education, will be a very different thing from the opposition of well-meaning but imperfectly instructed women on the one hand; or, on the other, that of a few thoroughly trained and informed ones working more or less in isolation, scattered over the country. It would mean a body of sound, enlightened, disinterested public opinion, so vast, so far-reaching, yet so intimately cognisant of all the little daily details of life in the home, that it is difficult to see what other body of opinion could be found mighty enough to resist it.

If, unhappily, this advance should not be made—if our present Western civilisation be allowed to run unchecked down the groove into which it has sunk—there seems nothing before it but destruction.

FOOTNOTES:

[12]

“The Electrical Resistance of the Human Body.” Gee and Brotherton, Manchester Lit. and Phil. Soc., 1910.

71

SCIENCE IN THE HOUSEHOLD
By Mrs. W. N. SHAW

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The slow development of the demand for the training of girls of the middle and upper classes in the details of household management has been to a great extent due to the common observation that persons of imperfect education are frequently proficient in the domestic arts, and to the assumption that good housekeeping consists entirely in the efficient exercise of those arts.

The fact that in the early Victorian period girls living much at home learned, almost insensibly, from their mothers the routine of daily duties in the house, has made elder women look askance on the lectures dealing with domestic economy which appear to them so needless, and has led them to foster the superstition that woman qua woman should be equal to any demand that may be made upon her as organiser of her own household.

That the housekeeping of to-day is more complex than that of half a century ago is incredible to the older woman who remembers the baking and brewing, and divers other matters, that demanded the attention of the notable housewives of the forties and fifties of the nineteenth century. 74 That the horizon of women’s lives has widened, and that other interests than those appertaining to their immediate circle claim their attention, is not acceptable to all; it is however the claims of these outside interests that have awakened in the more thoughtful the desire so to order their households that they may in some degree free themselves from petty cares, and be able to help in the amelioration of the lives of less fortunate persons; or to pursue other branches of knowledge in which they have learned to take a keen intellectual pleasure.

It is a paradox that one of the difficulties with which the modern mistress has to contend is the fact that her house is “replete with every modern convenience.” Every labour-saving contrivance, every mechanical convenience, calls for vigilance to ensure its proper use, and for knowledge as to the ways in which it may fail, and of the method of readjustment if it should happen to do so. No apparatus which is not thoroughly understood by the mistress will be well used by the servants, and servants will rarely if ever exercise any knowledge they possess to prevent the expense of calling in a workman. If the mistress of a house can use such ordinary tools as a hammer, a screwdriver, a gluepot, and a soldering-iron, a great deal of expense may be saved in small repairs; on the other hand, ignorant meddling with scientific apparatus may be worse than useless. There can be no doubt that a course of instruction in natural philosophy, combined with work in 75 a well-equipped laboratory and workshop, should find a place in the curriculum of every girls’ school, whether elementary or secondary, as this training lays the surest foundation for a superstructure of experimental domestic science. The argument against including the application of the physical sciences to domestic methods in the ordinary educational course of every girl, namely, that she may not be called upon to keep a house of her own, cannot be sustained; there are no circumstances in which knowledge of the laws which govern the health and well-being of human beings can be useless. We all live in houses, either our own or other people’s, and we are all liable to disease and discomfort caused by the faulty construction of the house or the unhealthy practices of the inmates.

THE AIM AND METHODS OF MODERN EDUCATION

The aim of education is to enable a person to act wisely in every emergency of life whatever his particular calling may be, but it is hardly possible to act wisely without some knowledge of the relation between cause and effect. This is true whether we are engaged in the practical affairs of life, in the pursuit of knowledge, or in the effort to extend knowledge by research. It is sometimes argued that a woman of trained intellect can easily acquire the art of housekeeping, and this is no doubt 76 the case if we limit the art to the choice and supervision of competent domestics, but there can be no doubt that there are many women of trained intellect who not only suffer themselves but entail suffering on others from inability to discern good housekeeping, in our sense of the word, from bad. It must be remembered that courses of education should be framed for the training of unmethodical and unpractical minds, which may and often do accompany the highest forms of intellect, as well as for those of a naturally orderly and practical bent.

We all consciously or unconsciously make use of the facts of science: we do not send eggs by parcel post merely placed in a box, we do not even send one egg in a box that exactly fits it, we are careful to surround each egg with soft paper or some other elastic material in sufficient quantity to distribute the effects of the blows that we know the box will be subjected to in the post, so that the eggs may not be broken; if we place a tray of china on a table, we are careful that it should not project beyond the table so as to fall when we let it go; we do not pour hot water into cut-glass tumblers, and we do not mix effervescing drinks in wine-glasses. We should call a person ignorant who was unaware of the probable results of doing the things enumerated above; but if the accidents following want of knowledge were always so simple, ignorance would not be a matter of much importance, and we might be willing to let our girls learn by experience. Unfortunately, the neglect of a 77 scientific law has led in the past, and may lead in the future, to much more serious, even fatal results, and Solomon has applied a not very complimentary epithet to those who have wisdom forced upon them by involuntary experience. It is to the publication of statistics which show the alarming spread of such diseases as consumption and the terrible waste of infant life, that we owe the awakening of the public mind to the need for systematic training in science and scientific method.

THE VALUE OF A SCIENTIFIC TRAINING

Scientific method seeks to establish relations between isolated facts or phenomena, and the relation generally takes the form of cause and effect; so that persons with a scientific training are accustomed to examine the grounds for considering this relation of cause and effect in circumstances which are selected with a view to exhibiting the reality of the relation. From that training it becomes possible for them, when confronted with circumstances presenting some difficulty, to form a better opinion as to what is the cause of the difficulty than they could if they were confronted with the same difficulty without the previous training. Any attentive observer of human nature will be struck by the fact that every person is accustomed to refer every event to some cause; if it is an illness, the occasion for 78 contracting the illness is defined; if it is any unforeseen event in the domestic economy, a reason is nearly always forthcoming; the question which the housewife is called upon to decide is whether the reason offered is a real and sufficient one. Meteorologists tell a familiar story of an Indian nabob who found that there was a deposit of moisture on the outside of his tumbler of brandy and water, and tasting it with his finger, remarked it was very curious that the water came through the glass but the brandy did not. Plenty of reasons offered for domestic incidents have no better ground of fact than the nabob’s opinion that the water came through the glass.

A good deal of the comfort of a modern house turns upon a right judgment as regards cause and effect, and therefore some preparation which will fit the housewife to appreciate the rights and wrongs of domestic reasoning is an indispensable qualification for success. It is not always possible for the most profound student to offer offhand the true explanation of various facts of domestic life, but it is possible to approach the consideration of these questions with some hope of deciding whether the explanation offered is a true or a fictitious one. The ability for this is largely a question of habit of mind or training; and for our purpose the training must include those departments of knowledge, the laws of which find daily expression in the manifold experiences of domestic life. The ultimate foundation for these laws is to be found in the study of Physics, which deals with those 79 changes in the state of matter which stop short of the alteration of its composition; of Chemistry, which deals with changes involving an alteration of the composition of the substances under consideration; and of Physiology, which is the identification of the processes which take place in living animals and plants and their relation to the laws of physics and chemistry. Without a knowledge of the fundamental principles of these sciences and of the methods by which those principles are established, it is not to be expected that any person can deal adequately with the common experiences of life.

It is true that experience, if it is sufficiently extensive and prolonged, may lead to the formulation of a set of practical rules that will carry a housewife through the ordinary household round without discredit, but the question which we have to put to ourselves is whether, by organising and directing the experience, success may not be made certain and more instructive. In these days domestic life is more complicated than it used to be; at the same time experience is in a sense more restricted. Many of the instructive processes, practical experience in which conveyed valuable if unconscious scientific training, are now conducted on a large scale, and are outside the range of domestic duties, and the housewife has to supply, by special training in scientific principles, the judgment that in days gone by was acquired as a matter of habit.

It is impossible in the short space of a 80 single article to set out the details of a systematic course of training sufficient to fit the housewife to use her judgment wisely in circumstances which require a knowledge of the principles of the fundamental physical sciences. The most that we can attempt is to give a few examples which illustrate the application of the principles of physics and chemistry. Our purpose in doing so is to suggest illustrations which appeal to every householder, and may create a desire for fuller knowledge rather than to supply a course of instruction. What we aim at is not to provide the equipment of scientific training, but to show that the scientific habit of mind will find opportunities for useful employment in many of the most ordinary affairs of life. The problems that present themselves in the course of experience are sometimes difficult and intricate; patience and careful observation as well as knowledge are required for their solution. Sometimes this solution is beyond the immediate resources of those concerned, and it is a part of scientific training to recognise when this is the case, so that effort and money may not be wasted in endeavours which are foredoomed to failure. We may cite a case in point where an extra bell was desired in a system of electric bells in a flat at a time when electric installations in private houses were somewhat rare, and workmen with any knowledge beyond that necessary for carrying out instructions were not easily found. To the confusion of the tenant, the introduction of this extra bell caused all the bells in the flat to strike 81 work. A mathematical lecturer living in the same building was consulted, and opined that the battery of two somewhat small-looking cells was insufficient, so he obtained and added a larger cell, but the bells were obdurate and did not resume work. A lady with knowledge of physics examined the installations and discovered that the wire connections as altered were entirely wrong and did not connect the bells to the battery. A plan of the correct connections was shown to the workman, who a few days later reported that now all the bells rang at once, and he had had to disconnect the battery! He produced a sketch of the connections he had made, and on his error being pointed out he was able to rectify it, and the bells answered to touch without the use of the extra cell. Generally speaking, a failure on the part of electric bells is corrected by filling up the cells which compose the battery with water, an operation which any one may undertake.

It is not safe, however, for an inexperienced person to interfere with electric light fittings further than to remove a worn-out lamp and place a new one in the socket, and even this operation may be attended with disaster. A young friend of ours who was taking part in some private theatricals obtained the loan of a row of electric footlights. It did not occur to any one concerned to ask the voltage of the lamps or of the current to which they were to be applied. When the footlights were turned up they blazed for a brief period, and then every light in the house went 82 out! Electrical science for the housewife has been resolved into a knowledge of electric terms and of a few practical rules useful and interesting in themselves, but not immediately suitable for our purpose of showing how scientific study may aid the housewife in her daily routine.

PHYSICAL SCIENCE IN THE HOUSEHOLD

We may for this purpose examine some of the laws of common physical and chemical phenomena, neglect of which has resulted in much needless discomfort in daily life, and even more serious consequences. For instance, the laws of expansion of gases and liquids with heat, and their subsequent behaviour, are phenomena that are often imperfectly realised. There is probably no person who is unacquainted with the law of gravitation, but there are many persons who accept literally the statements that smoke rises and that balloons ascend. A clear understanding of what actually takes place when gases and material masses appear to move in opposition to the law of gravitation is essential to any scheme for warming and ventilating the house.

A very simple experiment will serve to reconcile the apparent contradiction of the universal law by the observed fact. Suppose we have two fluids, oil and water, of which oil is, bulk for bulk, lighter than water. If the oil be poured into a glass beaker, it will be seen to rest at the bottom of the beaker; if water be now poured into the same 83 beaker the water will go to the bottom of the beaker and will displace the oil and lift it up so that the oil will float on the water; the oil may be lifted to any height we please if sufficient water be poured in to lift it to that height. If a single drop of oil be introduced into the water by means of a pipette and be liberated at the bottom of the beaker the water will close in under it, and lift it up to the surface. In both cases the oil “rises” through the water. Oil, however, has no tendency to “rise” by itself, and in this case it lay motionless until it was lifted by the heavier fluid. We may use colloquial language when describing phenomena if we bear in mind what is really taking place.

A balloon “rising” through the air is exactly analogous to the drop of oil in the water. The balloon is, bulk for bulk, lighter than air; the air therefore closes in under it and lifts it just as the water lifted the bubble of oil.

EFFECTS OF CHANGES OF TEMPERATURE ON AIR

Let us apply this to air. Air when warmed expands, and therefore warm air is, bulk for bulk, lighter than cold air. Warm air behaves in the presence of cold air as the balloon: it is displaced and lifted by the cold air, the result being an ascending stream of warm air, which is called a convection current.

The movement of ascending smoke is essentially 84 the same as that of the warmed air. Smoke is warm air made visible by the particles of soot with which it is laden. The particles of soot would fall to the ground except that they are carried upwards in the stream of warm air. Dr. W. N. Shaw has called attention to the importance of these phenomena in his book on “Air Currents and the Laws of Ventilation,” in the Cambridge Series of Physical Text-books. He there says: “The dominant physical law in the ventilated space is the law of convection. It is at once the condition of success and the cause of most failures. Without convection, ventilation would be impossible; in consequence of convection, nearly all schemes of ventilation fail.

“The law of convection is the law according to which warmed air rises and cooled air sinks in the surrounding air. Its applications are truly ubiquitous. Every surface, e.g. a warm wall, or a person warmer than the air in the immediate neighbourhood, causes an upward current; every surface colder than the air in contact with it causes a downward current.

“Ventilation would be much easier if warmed air or cooled air could be carried along at any height required; but the law of convection is inexorable: warmed air naturally finds the ceiling, cooled air the floor.”

It is true that the ventilation of a house is generally considered to be the business of the builder and architect, yet there are many unpleasant phenomena that come under the observation 85 of the housewife which are due to this law of convection, and it will be useful to consider a few of them.

Let us take first the universal annoyance to housewives caused by the sight of dirt on the ceiling. That all air is full of dust is seen when a stream of sunlight crosses a room; the particles of dust are then clearly perceived moving rapidly in all directions in the air. These dust particles, when air is at rest, constantly fall to the ground under the action of gravity, and are deposited on shelves and ledges, from which they have to be removed daily by the housemaid. When air is warmed and ascends it carries the dust particles with it, and these particles striking against any cold surface with which they come into contact stick to it. This is the cause of the necessity for the periodical sweeping of chimneys. The walls of the chimney are colder than the smoke that comes into contact with them, and the particles of soot in the smoke striking against them are deposited on them. In the house the effect of the bombardment of surfaces by dust-laden streams of air is seen most conspicuously over burning gas-lights. Burning gas does not itself produce all the dirt which is found on the ceiling above it, but it causes upward streams of hot air, which carry up the dust and deposit it on the ceiling. The practice of suspending a shade over the gas-light does not lessen the amount of dust and smoke in the air, but the shade serves to spread out the air over a larger surface, and thus to render the dirt on the ceiling less apparent. 86 That the shade itself remains clean is due to the fact that it gets hot. A heated surface promotes the activity of the motion of the air-particles in its neighbourhood, and by this local activity the dust is repelled, so that a surface remains clean or becomes coated according as it is more or less hot than the invading current. The validity of this explanation may be tested by holding a cold spoon over a lighted candle when it will be seen that the spoon becomes blackened; if a hot spoon be substituted for the cold one it will remain clean.

In order that the hot, vitiated air of a room may escape easily, it has been in many cases the custom to place an exit opening for it in the chimney over the room fireplace. The wall in the neighbourhood of this ventilator invariably becomes black; but as this wall is warm it is not probable that dust is deposited on it by the outgoing air, the explanation given by the housewife that the smoke from the chimney gets through the ventilator into the room is probably correct, though these ventilators are supplied with mica flaps which should swing open when air from the room strikes against them, and close when the air from the chimney does so.

When a house is heated by hot-water pipes and radiators, the walls over these pipes are another source of trouble (Fig. 1). A good deal of scientific ingenuity is required if the walls are to be kept clean.

Fig. 1.

That some ceilings appear striped with broad light and dark lines is due to inequalities in the temperature of the ceiling. The light stripes are under the joists, which prevent to some extent the escape of heat from the ceiling, and the dark correspond to the unprotected parts of the ceiling. The dust rising from the room is slightly repelled 88 by the currents from the warmer parts of the ceiling, and sticks more readily to the colder parts.

Let us take for our second example the apparently trivial matter of smells in the house. Smells may be of various kinds from various causes. The best judge of the kind, and therefore of the cause, is the nose. Suppose the smell to be the common one in houses of all classes—the smell of cookery! The smell of cookery in the house is generally a winter phenomenon. The air in an inhabited house is always in a state of motion, induced by the inequalities of temperature caused by the inhabitants themselves, and to a greater extent by the fires, of which there will certainly be one in the kitchen. We must remember that cold air will get into the house through all available openings, to take the place of the air which supplies the fires. The most obvious available openings in an ordinary dwelling-house are the casual ones of the open chimneys of unused grates, and the loosely fitting doors and windows. In cold weather fires are lighted in the sitting-room grates; these fires when lighted should warm the air in the chimneys above them and cause an upward draught in the chimney. Sometimes however the chimney will be found to be occupied by a current of air coming down to feed fires in other rooms, and so long as this goes on the smoke from the newly lighted fire comes into the room. The down-draught can be stopped by opening a window to supply sufficient cold air to counteract it, otherwise we 89 have to adopt special devices to make the smoke go up the chimney in the first instance. Sometimes a newspaper is burnt in the grate to give the necessary amount of warm air, but this is a dangerous practice by which the chimney may be set on fire. Sometimes air is supplied by the bellows. A newspaper is often held in front of the grate so as to close the opening above the fire and cause the cold air to pass through the fire, thus promoting combustion and the supply of hot air in the chimney. In any case, the warm air of the fire is carried up the chimney by the cold air of the room, and this cold air is drawn from the casual openings already referred to. It has been demonstrated by laboratory experiments that the amount of draught in any chimney depends on the height of the chimney and the fire in its grate.

Smells are conveyed about a house by the flow of air to feed the fires, and they nearly always find their way from all parts of the house to the ground-floor sitting-rooms when the doors are left open and the fires are burning. On their way they pass through passages and are therefore nearly ubiquitous. The air of any room in the house is in communication with that of every other room, and it is only by the nature of the smell that we can tell its probable source. There are people who like when they open the bedroom door in the morning to know that coffee and bacon await them downstairs, or on coming into the house from a cold winter’s walk to meet a “delicious 90 smell of Irish stew.” To other people all smell of cookery is abhorrent, and they feel a sense of irritation that their guests should on entering the house be regaled with the odour of the preparation of food. To many mistresses the only remedy that suggests itself is a message to the cook, who is powerless in the matter and returns an answer that she is sorry, but that she doesn’t know why there should be a smell of cooking upstairs as there is none in the kitchen. A visit to the kitchen will generally confirm the cook’s statement as to that particular spot, but a considerable smell will be encountered on the kitchen stairs. We may inquire into the cause of this. The usual equipment of the kitchen includes a closed range, supplemented in many cases by a gas stove. The kitchen fire draws a plentiful supply of air from casual openings, and this air for the most part passes with the smoke up such flues as are open. The oven is provided with a ventilator, which carries off the odour of baked or roasted meats. The odour in the hot air over the closed range has no escape except into the kitchen—the cook says that ever so slight an opening in the top of the range will prevent the oven from heating. This odour-laden air therefore comes directly into the kitchen, and being hot is directed to the ceiling, thus escaping the cook who is in the draught of the fresh air supply. Travelling along the ceiling the hot air passes through the opening at the top of the door and mingles with the fresh air on its way upstairs. The same thing happens when the 91 gas stove is in use. The only remedy is to provide some exit for the hot air of the kitchen which will be more easily accessible than that by way of the door, for the hot air will travel by the easiest path. A considerable knowledge of science is required to achieve this object.

Fig. 2.

Closely allied with the smell of cookery is the smell of the gas stove. Many persons consider that the use of a gas stove either in the kitchen or in a bedroom is inseparable from the peculiar odour of partially consumed gas. It may therefore be useful to consider how the gas supplied to stoves and incandescent lights differs from that of an open gas fire or that of an ordinary burner. Gas stoves and incandescent lights get their supply of gas through what are known as Bunsen burners, so called after the German chemist whose invention they are. In an ordinary burner the gas mixes with atmospheric air at the opening at which it burns; the supply of air obtained in this way is insufficient for complete combustion until the outer layers are reached; the interior part of the flame is bright and smoky. In the Bunsen burner the gas issues from the main through a nozzle which opens inside a bulb. The bulb is perforated to allow of the ingress of atmospheric air; the gas and air mix in the tube which is a prolongation of the bulb, and the mixture is lighted at the top of the tube. Fig. 2 shows a representation of the Bunsen burner as applied to a gas stove. In this the gas escapes from the main at the nozzle n, into a bulb of which the tube A is a prolongation, 92 air is admitted to the bulb at the openings a a, and the mixed gas and air is burnt at the openings in the tube A. The amount of air supplied is regulated by the size of the openings a a and the holes where the gas is lighted. The gas thus supplied with air is completely consumed where combustion begins, and a clear, blue, non-luminous flame is the result. If the holes through which the mixture of gas and air issues are partially closed by rust or by accretions from the “boiling over” of saucepans it is evident that, the gas supply being unchanged, less air can be drawn through them; consequently the gas will not be entirely consumed, and acetylene (C₂H₂, one of the products of partially consumed coal gas) will pass into the atmosphere and will give rise to the peculiar odour associated with gas stoves. This product of partially consumed gas is very poisonous, and all gas stoves should be furnished with chimneys to carry off the fumes to the open air. The phenomenon known as “burning back,” that is, the ignition of the gas at the nozzle in the bulb, is caused by the pressure of gas being too small for the supply of air. The gas should at once be 93 turned out and relighted till it burns at the proper places. The simple remedy for smell from a gas stove is the cleansing of its burners, unless indeed the kettle is too close to the holes from which the gas issues for complete combustion to be possible.

There is another winter phenomenon which is very disagreeable—the presence of fog in the house; and the perplexed housewife asks, Where does the fog get in when all outside doors and windows are closed? We have already pointed out that the sitting-room fires must have air, and that that air will be drawn from casual openings. Among these openings are the chimneys of fireless grates; the greater part of the fog in the house comes down these chimneys. On a foggy day it is wise to close the chimneys of fireless grates and provide some other opening for the supply of air; but all air from the outside is full of fog. The problem of how to let in air and keep out fog suggests the question, What is fog? Fog consists of material particles (dust or smoke) on which vapour has condensed; if these particles can be removed the air will be clear. The problem for the housewife is how to free a sufficient quantity of air from these particles.

A smell of gas in any part of the house may be very dangerous if no one on the premises has any scientific knowledge, for it may be premised that the escape of gas is not where the smell is first perceived. Gas being lighter than air is carried upwards, and the smell is at first above the place of escape; it may even be in a room over where 94 the gas is escaping. The only safe detector of the source of mischief is the nose; the mixture of coal gas and atmospheric air is explosive, and no light must be struck. The upper sash of the window should be pulled down to allow the gas to escape, and if the accident is at night time must be allowed before searching for the source of escape further than can be done by feeling the taps in the dark or following the scent by the nose.

Further illustration of the effect of convection currents in the air of a dwelling-house are needless, but the student may profitably spend time and thought in considering how fresh air may be introduced into a room without causing cold air to lie on the floor or hot, vitiated air to cling to the ceiling. It is the old problem (with a difference) of teaching a grandmother to suck an egg. He may also interest himself in seeking answers to the questions (1) What action is expected to take place when a poker is placed against the bars of a grate to make the fire draw? and (2) Does the sun put the fire out, and if so how? In connection with the expansion of air with heat he may consider the popular fallacy that an inverted empty pot in a pie keeps in the juice.

EFFECT OF CHANGES OF TEMPERATURE ON WATER

Accidents have occurred in houses owing to ignorance of the full effects of heating or cooling water from its ordinary temperature. Water at 95 any ordinary temperature expands when subjected to the action of heat; it contracts on cooling till it reaches a temperature seven degrees above the freezing point; from this temperature it expands until it becomes a solid mass of ice. At still lower temperatures ice contracts.

Let us consider first the effect of heating water. If water at the ordinary temperature be poured into a vessel which is placed on a fire or other source of heat the water at the bottom of the vessel will be warmed and will expand; it will therefore be lighter, bulk for bulk, than the water nearer the top of the vessel. The cold water will therefore descend, and the warm water will rise. All ordinary water contains air; presently the air in the water will become visible as small bubbles which rise to the surface of the water and escape noiselessly into the atmosphere. As more heat is applied some of the water in the bottom of the vessel will be formed into steam, and bubbles of steam will expand and rise into the cooler water above and collapse there with a rattling noise which is characteristic of the state known as simmering. These bubbles of steam rising and bursting aid the convection currents in stirring and mixing the water so that it presently becomes of even temperature throughout. When this occurs the bubbles of steam rise to the surface and burst explosively into the atmosphere, throwing the water violently about; the water is then boiling. It is an important point to remember in cookery that boiling water will not 96 become any hotter with the application of more heat, but it will “boil away;” that is, it will be completely converted into steam. The steam resulting from any volume of water occupies a space 1700 times that of the water from which it is produced, but what concerns the housewife most seriously is that the change of water into steam is accompanied with the evolution of tremendous mechanical force that will burst any vessel in which the water is enclosed. It is the fact of this tremendous exercise of mechanical force that has led to serious accidents when hot-water bottles have been put into the oven to keep warm. It has been assumed by some people that if the hot-water bottle be not completely filled, that if what they consider to be sufficient room is left for the expansion of the water, no harm can result from putting the bottle into the oven, but no arrangement can make such a course safe.

The bursting of the kitchen boiler is an accident resulting from disregard of the phenomena of heated water. It sometimes happens that the hot-water supply of the various taps in the house fails. If the boiler supplying the water is a hand-fed one some one whose duty it was to fill it has neglected that duty. An empty boiler with a removable lid will do no harm, but it is not advisable to leave it empty, as the heat of the fire will destroy the iron of which it is made. No attempt, however, should be made to fill the boiler while it is hot, as the result of pouring cold water into it will be the sudden and violent conversion of the 97 water into steam, and the person pouring in the water will assuredly be scalded. If the boiler be one that is filled automatically, one of two things has probably occurred: either the pipes are blocked by fur—that is to say by sediment from the boiled water—or the supply-pipe is frozen. In neither case is it safe to light the fire. If the pipes are blocked by fur steam will be formed in the boiler and it will burst; if the supply-pipe is frozen the heat may thaw the ice, and the inrush of cold water will at any rate crack the boiler.

Fig. 3.

When water expands with heating convection currents are formed in it, and the hot water rises to any height we please if cold water be available to take its place. This law of convection is applied to maintain a circulation of hot water in pipes used for warming a house. The general arrangement of such a system is shown in Fig. 3. The furnace heats a boiler in the basement or on the lowest storey of the house; HB and HL’ are parallel vertical pipes connected with a horizontal pipe H’H at the top of the house; C is a small cold-water cistern which is furnished with a ball-tap to maintain the supply of cold water to the pipe H’L if any water is drawn off at any part of the circuit. The short pipe A acts as a valve for the escape of air from the pipes. The pipes H’L, H’H, and HB are filled with water. When the fire is lighted in the furnace, hot water is driven up the pipe HB by cold water descending through H’L, and this circulation goes on so long as a difference of temperature is maintained in the pipes; that is, so long as the fire is burning. Any number of coils of pipes may be introduced into the circuit between the boiler and the top of the pipe HB. In filling the pipes with water allowance is made in these coils for the expansion of the water with heat and for the air which we have seen escapes from heated water, and a tap is fixed in each coil for letting out any air that may have lodged in it. If free air remains in the pipes the circulation of the water will be hindered and the boiler may become dangerously overheated. 99 It is therefore necessary when the heating apparatus is in use to examine these taps and see that water and not air escapes from them.

The installation of a heating apparatus in middle-class houses is fairly common, and where one is not found many persons use gas or oil stoves in the passages in the winter, for it is now realised that it is not possible to heat rooms by means of open fires without creating cold draughts in them from the cold passages into which they open. And, moreover, the constant change of temperature encountered in passing from one warm room to another through cold passages is not only disagreeable, but is not found to be conducive to health.

Let us turn to the cooling of water. Water expands about one-eleventh of its volume on becoming ice. This change of state, like that of change into steam, is accompanied by the evolution of tremendous mechanical force. If water freezes in pipes it bursts the pipes, and on a thaw taking place the pipes are found to leak. The appropriate remedy for this state of things is to protect the pipes from cold or to empty them when a frost is apprehended. In all properly built houses there is a tap by means of which the water supply can be cut off from the house, thus allowing the pipes to be emptied on a frosty night. The custom of leaving the taps dripping is effective, because the pipe is generally liable to freeze at some particular point where it is in immediate contact with the cold air, probably in the unclosed 100 chink where the pipe passes through the wall; keeping the water moving in the pipe prevents any part of it getting cold enough to freeze, but the practice should not be resorted to, as it wastes water.

RADIANT HEAT

Fig. 4.—Section of a Convex lens.

It is pleasant on a dry, still day in winter, when the ground is covered with crisp snow or glistens with hard frost, to feel the warmth of the sun’s rays, and it is becoming quite a fashion for people of leisure to spend the winter months at the pleasure resorts amid the snow-laden mountains of Switzerland. It is a matter of some interest to inquire how it happens that the sun’s rays are warm when the thermometer tells us that the temperature of the air is below freezing-point. There is an old and pretty experiment in which a burning glass is made of ice; it is not a difficult thing to do. If the scale-pan of an ordinary balance be made hot and be pressed against a slice of ice (the concave side of the scale-pan towards the ice), first on one side of the slice and then on the other, the ice can be formed into a convex lens (Fig. 4). If now this lens be placed in the path of a sunbeam and the light be brought to a focus, that is, to a bright spot on a piece of paper, the paper will be heated and will take fire while the lens through which the heat passes remains 101 ice. From this we may surmise that the heat of the sun does not affect the medium through which it passes.

Clerk Maxwell suggested yet another experiment in illustration of this law. By means of an ice lens he collected the sunlight to a focus in the middle of a basin of clear water, and observed that no effect was discernible in the water. He then directed the focus (the spot of light) on to a mote in the water. The mote became hot, the water was agitated, convection currents were formed, and the mote was carried up in them. This showed that rays of light from the sun do not affect the substances through which they can pass, and that they heat bodies through which they do not pass. It has been demonstrated by laboratory experiments that all hot bodies emit rays of heat, whether we see the rays or not. When we see the rays the bodies are said to be red or white-hot. The process by which heat passes from one body to another without warming the intervening medium is called radiation. Radiation takes place only through transparent bodies. Rays of heat, like rays of light, pass through transparent bodies; whereas they are absorbed by, that is they make hot, opaque bodies. Heat rays travel in straight lines and are reflected from polished surfaces; their intensity varies inversely as the square of the distance of the object on which they fall from their source. The heat of an ordinary fire is radiant heat; when we sit round the fire we act as opaque bodies and absorb the heat, and 102 are what we call scorched if the fire is very bright. If we move away from the fire, still letting the same firelight shine on us, we are not scorched; this is because the heating power of the rays varies inversely as the distance from their source, therefore if we move away double the distance we receive one quarter of the heat that we received before we moved. If we draw our chairs to one side we are not scorched, because the rays of heat do not travel round a corner.

CONDUCTION OF HEAT

We have seen that the ice-lens was not affected by the passage of heat through it. If we now take hold of the lens we shall experience a feeling of cold, and the lens will begin to melt. Heat has passed from our hand into the ice. The process by which heat passes from one body to another in contact with it is called conduction. The fundamental law of conduction is, that heat always passes from a warm body to a cold one. Clerk Maxwell illustrated this law in a series of very simple experiments. He placed a silver teaspoon in a cup of hot tea, and noted that the handle became warm gradually from the hot tea; the heat passed from the bowl of the spoon in the tea to successive parts of the handle until the whole spoon was hot. His second experiment was to put two cold spoons, one of silver and one of German silver, into the tea, when he found that the same phenomenon took place, but that the silver 103 spoon became hot much more quickly than did the German silver one. He then put three spoons into the tea, made respectively of silver, of German silver, and of bone. In the result, he found that when the other two were hot, the bone spoon hardly showed any sign of heat at the end of its handle.

The conclusion to be drawn from these experiments is that heat passes at different rates through different substances. Substances through which heat passes quickly are called good conductors of heat. The law of the conductivity of heat is that in a homogeneous body the flow is continuous, and is from the region of high temperature to the region of low temperature, and that it continues until the body is of uniform temperature throughout. The law is the same for bodies of different materials when in contact one with another.

The conduction of heat is in operation in every department of domestic life. People live in houses and are clothed to protect them from the vicissitudes of the weather, including the cold of winter and the heat of summer; use is made of the phenomenon in warming the house and in the preparation of food.

In selecting materials for various purposes, account has to be taken of their conductivities, for in some cases it is desirable that the transfer of heat should take place slowly, and in others that it should take place quickly. It might be thought that the conductivity of a substance could 104 be estimated by touch, but a little reflection will show that this cannot be the case. The flow of heat between two bodies depends upon the difference of temperature between them, and if there should be no difference of temperature between them at the moment of touch there will be no flow of heat, though both are bodies of greater or less conductivity. Let us take, for example of the uncertainty of estimation by touch, a well-known experiment. Suppose we have a basin of hot water and a basin of cold water, and place a hand in each for a few moments; suppose we withdraw the hands and plunge them into a basin of tepid water, we shall find that the tepid water feels cold to the hand that was in the hot water and warm to the hand that was in the cold water.

Luckily, it has been found possible in the laboratory to refer substances to a common standard and to assign numerical values to them in order of their conductivities, so that substances can be compared and a selection made for any desired purpose. Pure silver has the highest conductivity; other useful materials take the following order: copper, zinc, lead, iron, steel, marble, glass, brick, slate, wood, fur, cotton, flannel, water, air. Fur and wool no doubt owe much of their warmth to the fact that they consist of fibres which enclose a good deal of air, but as a matter of fact the warmth of loosely woven woollen and knitted articles in general is often overrated; they are very warm as under garments or in calm 105 weather, but in windy weather the air in them is rapidly changed and the cold seems to blow through them. If for any purpose we select a material from its place in a table of comparative conductivities, and use it without reference to the law of conduction of heat, we shall probably be disappointed with the result. We know that cotton burns easily; if we stretch a cotton handkerchief over the back of a gold watch and place a red-hot cinder from the fire on the handkerchief on the watch, the handkerchief will not be burnt.

Many interesting problems present themselves when a house has to be built or rented. There is often opportunity for some choice of material in walls or roof, and some peculiarities to be considered. Are the top rooms of a thatched cottage warmer or colder than the top rooms of a house covered with slates? Is a wooden or an iron building warmer? What difference does it make if the iron building is lined with wood? If the iron walls were twice as thick, what would be the effect inside the room? Would the walls of such a building be always dry inside? It sometimes happens that the end wall of a row of houses is covered with slates to preserve it from the effects of storms of wind and rain; will that inside wall be always dry?

But the housewife is probably more interested in those articles in use in the house which it is her business to provide. Shall the stoves be of slate or iron? In olden days warming-pans were made of copper. What change in the manner of 106 use justifies making them of earthenware or India-rubber? The slow transmission of heat through thick woollen materials has been applied to the construction of Norwegian cooking-stoves (Fig. 5). These stoves consist of a wooden box, lined with well-padded felt. The cooking vessels are of metal; the food when at boiling point is placed in these vessels and the lids put on, a thick padded felt is placed on the vessels and entirely fills the wooden lid of the box which is then closed; the heat is preserved so that the cooking is continued without further attention. Would it be possible to use the Norwegian stove as a refrigerator? Would it keep an ice pudding cold without any alteration? In connection with this we may ask why freezing machines have the inner vessel in which the freezing takes place of zinc, and the outer vessel which contains the ice and salt of wood? What would be the effect of interchanging the materials?

Fig. 5.

It is possible that the excellence of some continental cookery is due to the extensive use on the continent of earthenware cooking utensils through which heat passes very slowly. The growing 107 fashion of using enamelled cooking vessels must have some effect on the food cooked in them as heat certainly passes quickly through them. Reference has been made to them simply to demonstrate the universality of the application of physical laws, and we may now return to the house and its arrangement for the comfort of the inmates.

METHODS OF DOMESTIC HEATING

The two methods of warming a house are by radiation and conduction. We may surmise that in any case both methods will be in use, but the one will predominate; for instance, in heating by an open fire radiation will predominate, and in heating by stoves and radiators conduction will predominate. In planning a house a decision must be made between the two. This decision being made there is the further consideration of where the source of heat shall be placed. In the case of an open fireplace shall it be in an end wall, in a corner, in an outside wall, and so on, the object being to make the greatest possible use of the heat that passes up the chimney and of that which radiates into the room. The same consideration must be paid to the situation of the closed stove; where will it pass heat by conduction to the greatest volume of air, and where can its radiant heat be utilised?

In a room heated by a stove there is frequently a vessel of water placed by or on the top of the stove. If we ask what is the purpose of this 108 water we shall be told that the stove dries the air in the room. Now, it is impossible that the heat of the stove should remove any moisture from the air; we must therefore seek an answer to the question, What is dry air? The sensation of the dryness or moisture of the air does not depend only upon the amount of vapour in the air but upon the ratio of the amount present to the amount that the air is able to hold at the given temperature. The warmer the air is the more vapour it can hold, hence when the air is warmed the percentage of water present to the possible amount in it is lowered; that is its humidity, which is the percentage amount, is lowered, and we feel it to be dry. The question may arise why we should feel this when the room is heated by a stove and not when it is heated by an open fire? It may be that in a room with an open fire we are warmed by radiation and give out heat to the surrounding air which is constantly changed by convection currents, so that the air we breathe is colder than we ourselves; and that in a room warmed by a stove we receive heat from the air and are constantly breathing air that is warmer than we ourselves. But it is more than probable that the custom of providing a source of moisture to the air persists from the suggestion of a single person in seeking to relieve the disagreeable feeling attending the breathing of air laden with the poisonous products of half-consumed gas, and that it has no real scientific foundation.

How to estimate temperatures.—Whatever method 109 is adopted for warming a room, the housewife may be assured that the resulting temperature will not be pleasing to every member of the family. One will find it too warm, and another will at the same time find it too cold, and this not from any wilful captiousness but from the cause that we have already alluded to, that the feelings are a very uncertain test of temperature. It is therefore advisable to keep the air of the room as far as possible at a standard temperature. To do this it will be necessary to have a thermometer in the room, and to know what its readings indicate. When the thermometer registers 32° Fahr. or less, water will freeze in the room, and the vessels in which it is kept will burst; it is therefore wise, when it is anticipated that the temperature will fall below 32° Fahr., to empty the ewers and bottles that may be in the room. From 32° Fahr. to 40° Fahr. the room will be very cold, up to and including 58° Fahr. it will be too cold to be pleasant; the standard temperature may be taken as between 62° and 64° Fahr.

It may appear a simple matter to hang up a thermometer and read it, but a little thought will show that it is not so easy as it seems. If, for instance, the thermometer is placed in front of the fire at a distance, say of four feet from it, what will its reading indicate? Will it be the temperature of the air of the room or the temperature of the fire, or if neither, what will it be? Suppose we have two identical thermometers, and hang them on adjacent walls, one of which is an outside wall, 110 which of the two readings shall we take as that of the temperature of the room? It is not an easy matter to decide. In a sick-room, where one person’s comfort only has to be considered the doctor will order the thermometer to be hung at the bed-head, but we cannot adopt this plan in a general sitting-room.

CHEMICAL SCIENCE IN THE HOUSEHOLD

In our endeavour to establish the claims of the science of chemistry to a prominent place in the educational equipment of women, all reference to those most interesting and important chemical phenomena that accompany the exercise of the physiological functions will be omitted; as also those which are most immediately concerned with the preparation of food. Attention will be confined to some of the common occurrences of daily life, the methods of dealing with which are typical of the method adopted in considering more important and abstruse problems.

Perhaps one of the most disappointing experiences of the novice in housekeeping is the rapidity with which everything assumes a shabby aspect. Bright paint grows dull, dull paint wears away, curtains and fabrics fade, and very soon mistress and maids alike feel that the house no longer repays the trouble incurred in the spring-cleaning that it must still undergo. This spring-cleaning, the primary object of which is the preservation of the beauty and substance of the 111 house and its appointments, is in the result the cause of much of their deterioration.

Cleaning consists in removing dirt by means that are partly physical and partly chemical; for instance, the removal of dust by sweeping, shaking, or brushing is a physical operation, and the removal of dirt and grease by dissolving them in soapy water involves their change by a chemical process. If the surfaces or materials to be cleaned include a substance on which the cleansing agent can operate the agent will not confine its work to the removal of the dirt only; in washing coloured fabrics we know how often the colour comes out with the dirt. Knowledge therefore, not only of the composition and properties of cleansing agents, but also of the surfaces and materials to which they are to be applied, is essential, and we should find that it is not always the powder or paste which makes the greatest show of cleanliness in the shortest time, with least expenditure of labour, that is the most to be desired.

The use of alkalies.—The most common cleansing agents are hot water, soap, and soda. Hot water is itself a detergent; that is, it has the power of dissolving dirt. It does not, however, dissolve grease, and all household dirt is more or less greasy, hence we cannot do our cleansing with water only, and we are accustomed to add to it soap or soda.

It is not easy or even possible to discuss the chemical properties of substances without the use 112 of chemical terms. Substances are classified for chemical purposes in groups, every member of which exhibits the same chemical property, and we shall require to distinguish between the group called acids and the group called alkalies. It will be sufficient for our purpose just now to know that acids have a sour taste and that alkalies counteract acids. From this definition lemon-juice will easily be recognised as an acid. If we add soda to lemon-juice there will be a brisk effervescence and the lemon-juice will no longer be sour, hence soda is an alkali. Alkalies have another well-known chemical property—they dissolve grease and oil and enable them to mix with water. If we have some hot water in a tumbler and pour oil into it the oil will float on the water, and if we stir the two together the oil will break into globules but will still float on the water; we cannot mix them together. If we dissolve some soda in hot water and pour in oil we shall find on stirring that the mixture becomes milky or soapy in appearance and the oil and water are no longer discernible as different fluids. Moreover, on standing the oil will not again separate from the water; it has been emulsified. Oils themselves have the chemical power of dissolving resins. Resins are hard, bright vegetable gums which will come under our notice when we consider the composition of varnishes.

All hard soaps are made from soda, grease, and resin; the cheaper soaps contain free soda, the dearer ones contain an excess of fat. Yellow 113 scrubbing soap contains about eight per cent. of free soda. Both soap and soda can be dissolved in water, and are so dissolved for cleaning purposes. Knowing the constituents of our cleansing agents, we can consider their action on paint and varnish. Paint contains white-lead, linseed-oil, and colouring matter. It is not very hard when dry and can be easily scratched with the nail. Varnish is made from linseed-oil, resin, and turpentine. When dry it should be very hard and bright.

The whole of the painted woodwork of the house is subjected to spring-cleaning whatever its appearance with regard to dirt may be. The operator throws into a pailful of hot water a “handful” of soda, soaks a scrubbing-brush in the mixture, rubs it well with soap, and uses it to brush the somewhat soft paint or harder varnish. The soda and soap, aided by the heat, soften the paint and the brush removes a quantity equal to about a coat of paint. The effect is certainly pleasing for the time being, but there will be no difficulty in understanding that the process can only be repeated until the paint and varnish grow shabby or disappear.

It is not wise for the inexpert housewife to trust to unscientific friends for advice as to the best materials to use when cleaning paint. A foreman painter once gave, as a recipe for this purpose, an instruction to add a tablespoonful of “salts of tartar” to three-quarters of a pailful of water. The result was a very rapid and complete removal 114 of dirt from the paint, but the housewife, being dissatisfied with the rather dull appearance of the white varnish, stroked it with her finger and found that it was covered with a fine white powder. The maid’s assurance that this was all right and only needed to be removed by dusting did not satisfy her, and she began to wonder what chemical action was to be expected from “salts of tartar.” A first search for information revealed that salts of tartar was an old name for “potassium carbonate,” but the housewife knew no chemistry and had never heard of potassium carbonate, so this information was useless to her. She had, however, had some scientific training and was not satisfied to rest in ignorance. A search in a book on elementary chemistry disclosed the further truth that the commercial name for “potassium carbonate” is pearlash! She then remembered that being desirous at one time to remove the paint from some oak carving said to be two hundred years’ old, she had successfully used a solution of pearlash painted on with a brush. The paint when dry from the application had been scraped off in long, tough ribbons. Of course the mixture had been very much stronger than that prescribed by the painter, but the effect had been very much more apparent.

Acids and alkalies are to some extent responsible for the fading of fabrics in the wash when these fabrics owe their colour to vegetable dyes. Acids turn vegetable blues red, alkalies turn vegetable blues green and vegetable yellows brown. 115 It is easy to illustrate this action of acids and alkalies on vegetable colours. A blue liquid can be obtained by boiling a red cabbage in water. If we take two portions of this water and add any acid, say lemon-juice, to one portion we shall obtain a red liquid; if we add any alkali, say soda, to the other portion we shall obtain a green liquid. If we go a step further and add lemon-juice to the green liquid and soda to the red liquid we may approach very nearly to our original blue liquid. These experiments suggest a remedy for the change of colour in fabrics on washing with soda, but the dyes most commonly used are not vegetable dyes, and the fading of the fabrics is due to chemical changes, into which we have no space to enter.

Strong acids and alkalies act as caustics; that is they destroy fabrics. Continued washing in strong soda and water not only tends to destroy, but also spoils the appearance of all kinds of wearing apparel and household linen. White silk and wool at once become yellow on being washed with soap that contains free soda, and linen is affected in the same way though not to the same extent.

The widely advertised pastes and liquids for cleaning metal-work, particularly brass, often contain acids or alkalies that are injurious to metals. If after cleaning there should be a green deposit on brass or copper it will be wise to inquire into the composition of such deposit, and to discontinue the use of that paste or liquid. When brass pans are used for boiling fruit for jams, it is usual to rub them inside with a slice of 116 lemon before putting in the fruit. A careful housewife will consider the reason for this custom. We remember once seeing a copper pan, that had been provided for the preparation of oatmeal porridge, with a band about an inch wide of green crystals on the inside. Inquiry elicited that the cook had thought it a convenient pan in which to prepare the fish (salt haddock) for breakfast. Ignorance of the chemical action of salt and acids on metals may lead to very serious results. The common name for the green deposit on brass and copper is verdigris, and most people know that verdigris is a poisonous compound; the difficulty is that, not knowing its chemical composition, they do not recognise verdigris when they see it. The cook thought that the complaint made had reference only to the misuse of the pan, and said that it was quite easy to clean the green deposit off!

THE CHEMISTRY OF THE BODY

It is to the science of chemistry that we owe our knowledge of the composition of the various foodstuffs from which dietaries are selected, as well as of the several parts of the human body which relies for its sustenance on those dietaries. But the adjustment of dietaries to the work they have to do is a more complex problem than those we have hitherto considered. We learn from the science of physiology that the human body is a laboratory in which certain juices are secreted for the digestion of foods, and that in this laboratory 117 foods must be reduced to the consistency necessary for their passage through animal membranes; for it is by passage through membranes that the nutritive parts of food find their way into the general circulation of the blood which carries them to all parts of the system. Very few foodstuffs are available for use in their natural state, and the majority of them are prepared for consumption in the first place by more or less elaborate processes included in the art of cookery. When thus prepared they should be in a fit state to undergo in the body the physical changes comprised in mastication, and the chemical changes associated with the process of digestion.

It might be surmised by the thoughtful parent that as the child’s body lacks some of the external features of the adult body, such as hair and teeth, so there might, and probably would, be corresponding lapses in the internal economy, and that therefore the food prepared for the adult would be, even in the smallest quantity, unsuited to the child. Physiologists tell us that this is so, and in particular that the secretions which in adult life are called saliva and pancreatic juice and which have the function of preparing starch for digestion, are at this time scanty in amount and deficient in chemical action. But these secretions are essential for the digestion of starchy foods, and chemists tell us that starch abounds in the vegetable kingdom from which most of the food of children is derived. It is therefore a matter of some importance that every person in charge of 118 an infant should have that amount of knowledge of chemical reactions which is requisite to enable them to detect whether a food does or does not contain starch. A child fed entirely on starchy foods suffers from malnutrition of so serious a character that death may, and often does, ensue. Even if other suitable food, such as modified milk, be given, the internal economy of the child will be seriously disturbed.

The names by which patent foods are advertised are very often misleading to unscientific persons, and invalids have suffered much from the mistaken idea that jellies and meat extracts are foods. Meat extracts have their use, but any invalid fed on extract of beef only would die sooner than one left with no food at all. The reason for this can be learned from the knowledge of the constituents of beef extracts and the part they play in the human organism.

CONCLUSION

If we have seemed to lay stress on the value of a knowledge of the sciences of physics and chemistry to the exclusion of the mention of others, our justification of the fact is that space is limited, and that we believe that physics and chemistry underlie all the other sciences and are of paramount importance to students of all other subjects. In the sciences of biology, physiology, botany, geology, &c., little advance can be made without a knowledge of the fundamental 119 laws of nature. The physical laws control movement, and the chemical laws control growth, whether of animate or inanimate nature. Physical and chemical phenomena are concerned in the upheaval of rocks and mountains which govern the contour of the continents of the world. These contours influence climates and peoples; as the contours change the people change. The dwellers in the mountain regions differ in character from the dwellers in valleys and plains; the inhabitants of cold districts differ from the inhabitants of warm districts; but it is people who make history, and historians cannot afford to pass by natural environments and natural laws.

If a foundation of the fundamental sciences be laid at school the student can subsequently build upon it the special science that is suited to his career. It matters little what the calling in life of any person may be; if he aim at success in that calling he must acquaint himself with the laws by which he has his being, and by which he must perforce be guided in all his actions as well as in his intercourse with his fellow-men.

The many avenues now open to women for public work entail on them the responsibility of fitting themselves for that work. They as much as, if not more than, the housewife need to study the sciences which treat of the safeguarding of human life. As councillors dealing with sanitary and building laws, as inspectors of workrooms, of institutions, and of the conditions of child-life, they owe it to themselves and to the community they 120 serve not to undertake those duties without adequate knowledge. Adequate knowledge must be taken to mean scientific knowledge of those matters of which, by offering themselves for such appointments, they assume an expert knowledge. It is an irony that scientific training should be willingly and even eagerly acquired when it is a question of qualifying for a salaried post for work among strangers, and that a mother should be content to bring to bear on the well-being and lives of her own circle unscientific and amateur experience.

We have only been able to touch the skirt of a great subject, but our end will have been achieved if we have succeeded in pointing the way for a fuller realisation of the aims of earnest men and women for the saving of child-life and the mitigation of disease, and if we have shown how great that subject is—how much too great for anything but the most superficial treatment in a single article.

121

THE ECONOMIC RELATIONS OF THE HOUSEHOLD
By MABEL ATKINSON, M.A. (Glasgow)

123

I. INTRODUCTORY

The household has been treated by economists with curious negligence. The founder of political economy showed so little insight into the real nature of the work carried on there as to class those whom he described as menial servants with unproductive labourers.[13] The later classical economists have followed his lead. Marshall, it is true, shows throughout his books an appreciation of the position and responsibilities of the housewife and the mother which is foreign to most of his colleagues.[14] But he has never attempted to analyse the economic functions of the household, or to show its varying relations to the rest of the community; neither has he pointed out the peculiar factors which differentiate the position 124 and remuneration of the women employed in domestic activities from those of all other workers. On the other hand, the more modern school of economists, those who devote themselves to the history of economic development in the past or to the intensive study of special economic institutions in the present, have equally failed to discuss with any adequacy the organisation of the household.

The economic historians describe with minuteness the rise and fall of gilds and chartered companies, the workings of different methods of education and of poor relief in successive epochs. They rarely indicate how the various forms of industrial organisation translated themselves into the domestic expenditure of the people. It would, for instance, be very difficult to extract from the pages of the economic historians an answer to the question, “What were the conditions determining the supply of domestic servants at the close of the Middle Ages, in the eighteenth century and in the nineteenth century respectively?” It is not easy to answer definitely even simpler and more fundamental questions than these. It is often stated, for example, that the household arrangements of the serfs on the mediæval manors were rude and uncomfortable to the last degree,[15] but it is certain that this is not so universally true as has been thought. Some at all events of the more 125 prosperous inhabitants of the manors possessed household furniture and equipments of a kind not inferior to the outfit of the casual labourer to-day. Sheets, for example, are mentioned several times in extant inventories. But much more investigation than has yet been possible would be necessary before it could be determined whether these instances of a higher standard of comfort are or are not exceptions to a general rule.

To take other instances of unsettled problems: How was pottery made in the Middle Ages—by travelling potters as in the East to-day, by gilds of potters, or by the inhabitants of the manor directly for their own use? Or again: When did the custom of building houses to let on rent first become general in England? It is clear that the habit of living in rented houses has and must have the most profound influence on family life and national character. But so far, neither from economic histories on the one hand nor from histories of architecture on the other, have I been able to obtain any reliable information on this point.

When one turns to even more important questions—such, for instance, as the industrial position of women at different epochs—it is equally difficult to obtain precise and detailed knowledge. Without a very lengthy and elaborate investigation of the extant original materials, many of them scattered in municipal chambers in distant parts of England, it would be quite impossible to say on what terms women were admitted as members of 126 the gilds and fraternities which extended over the whole area of industrial life in the Middle Ages. The character and organisation of the household and the position of women in the Middle Ages are subjects still practically untouched by the economic historians.[16]

When we turn to modern times, a little more material has been collected. There is an investigation by the Board of Trade into the wages of domestic servants, and a book on domestic service by Professor Lucy Salmon of Vassar College. It deals of course mainly with American conditions, but cannot be neglected by any English student of the economic relations of the household.

Humanitarianism has prompted studies more or less elaborate of the dietaries and housing conditions of the working classes, especially in towns,[17] but it would be idle to pretend that there has been yet more than a beginning made of the task of determining how for each class of the community its share of the national income as stated in money is translated into the necessaries, comforts, and luxuries of life, into house-room, fuel, food, cleanliness, clothing, insurance, domestic service, recreation, and culture. The generalisations available are of the most meagre description. We can, for instance, say with tolerable certainty that the agricultural labourer spends three-fourths of his income on food, the town labourer two-thirds, 127 the artisan a half, the middle-class man from a third to a fourth; but there is practically no reliable information with regard to very large incomes, or to sums spent on clothing in any section of the community.

Moreover, there is one class—large, growing in importance, and an essential element in modern civilisation—about whose domestic expenditure we have no scientific knowledge at all. This is the class which may be named “the routine brain-workers,” the people who as clerks, book-keepers, salesmen, typists, &c., are responsible for the routine administration of modern commerce. They have been compared to the nervous system, for like that system in the animal body they serve for the communication and the mechanical record of the life of the community on its industrial side. With them may be classed elementary school-teachers, reporters, and the lower ranks of the Civil Service, though I should not be prepared to say that some of these—especially the teachers—ought to be regarded as performing only routine brain-work. But all these workers can be conveniently studied together in that their labour is carried on under somewhat similar conditions—it is sedentary, highly regimented, exhausting to the brain and nervous system, and is generally remunerated by a fixed salary, &c. They earn an income larger than that of the manual labourer, but considerably less as a general rule than that of the professional man. There is a total absence of information as to the domestic expenditure of 128 this class. It is sometimes declared that its less well-paid members suffer as severely from poverty as do sections of the working-class, and that the poor clerk is really much more to be pitied than the well-to-do trade unionist, the skilled manual worker.

But no one has yet attempted to test the truth of this view by the only scientific means, namely, by the collection of precise details as to the domestic expenditure of the routine brain-working class, showing what sums are spent on house-room, food, clothing, &c., and what kind of accommodation is obtained for the money spent. In short, the investigation of domestic expenditure has never yet been carried out in a purely scientific spirit solely for the sake of the resultant knowledge. It has always been undertaken with some special practical problem in view, and is consequently always fragmentary and frequently biassed.

Yet if it is important to know how the wealth of the country is produced, it is of equal importance to know how it is consumed, and that whether the consumption takes the form of porridge and flannelette for the child of a dock-labourer, of drink and admission to a football match for the miner or cotton-operative, or of a gardener, and a holiday in Switzerland for the hard-working doctor or stockbroker. Domestic expenditure should be investigated as impartially by the economist as are the variations of plants or animals by the biologist. His one aim should 129 be the discovery and statement of truth, as complete and as unbiassed as he can make it.

Hitherto, as I have said, this field of research has remained comparatively untouched. In the first place, economists have generally been men, and have naturally devoted their energies to the elucidation of the problems of industry and business which concern men most closely. Few women, on the other hand, have until recently received any training in economics, and it has never occurred to them that the familiar and wearisome problems of the rent, the butcher’s bill, and the children’s clothes, together with the difficulty of finding a satisfactory cook, may have a wider aspect than the narrow and personal one. But even as it is, the few women who have distinguished themselves in the sphere of economics have in a note or a casual remark pointed out distinctions between household management and other branches of industry which cast a flood of light on the whole subject. There is a paragraph in the second volume of “Industrial Democracy”[18] which lays down the difference between the underlying principles of business and of the administration of the home in a few words which might serve as the text for a volume. It is precisely this difference, first clearly indicated by Mrs. Webb, which constitutes the second ground for the common neglect of this branch of economics. A factory or a shop is run for profit; a household 130 simply to provide comfort and convenience for its members. To put it in technical language, in the world of industry we are concerned with exchange values, but in the home with use values alone. From this distinction, overlooked by reason of its obviousness, there flow a large number of consequences which will be discussed later. At present we are only concerned to show that economists, with their eyes fixed on trade and the mechanism of trade, very naturally neglected that section of life in which values, material and immaterial, were being continually created, but for use alone, not for commercial purposes.

The wife who cooks her husband’s dinner, or caters, organises, and keeps accounts for him, is really engaged in work which in any rational interpretation of the word has far more right to be called productive than is much of the labour employed in manufacture or business. But the work accomplished by the wife in the household has never yet received its full acknowledgment from the economists. The truth is that, although they constantly warn students to avoid the vulgar error of confusing money wages with real wages, they themselves have been so biassed by the commercial conception of profit-making that they have almost completely overlooked even the purely economic value of much work, such as cooking, cleaning, and clothes-making, which is carried on within the home, not for profit-making or for a salary, but as part of the duties attaching to the status of wife and mother. It is acknowledged 131 by the economists themselves[19] that although in theory they have set aside a section to be devoted to the discussion of “consumption” as other sections deal with “production” and “distribution” of wealth, yet in practice the treatment of consumption has been meagre and ineffective. This, perhaps, is inevitable—it is certainly regrettable—and women economists would be performing a most useful work if they were to undertake a careful and detailed investigation into the consumption of wealth at different epochs and by different classes of the community, and one, moreover, for which their connection with housekeeping, which is only the practical application of the science of the consumption of wealth, would have already partially prepared them.

There is still another reason why a scientific treatment of the consumption of wealth has been delayed. It could not be developed until medicine and hygiene had provided us with satisfactory standards of the needs of the human body. When food, for example, was still regarded purely as a matter of individual likes and dislikes, it was impossible to discuss at all adequately the sufficiency or insufficiency of the food consumption of a given class. But now that we know that the varying tastes simply express in different ways the need for so much proteid, carbo-hydrates and fats, we have a firm basis on which to work. It is true that it is not yet quite so firm as we could 132 wish; the scientists have not yet succeeded even for a single class in fixing a dietary standard which would be accepted by all in particular, and recently the investigations of Professor Chittenden have suggested that the amount of proteid hitherto thought essential may be excessive. Moreover, little attention has yet been paid to the need of different food for different work. Yet it seems probable, to say the least, that the sedentary worker, using his brain and not his muscles, may require lighter and daintier food than the labourer in the fields or the docks, and may really suffer as seriously if that better food be denied him as does the latter if he fails to secure a sufficiency of coarser and cheaper nutriment. This question would be of great importance in investigating the expenditure of the clerk class. But although the scientists have here failed to provide the students of domestic expenditure with all the data required, yet there is sufficient knowledge of the general principles of dietetics to enable us to base our study of food consumption on a fairly sound basis.

In the same way a standard of housing accommodation establishing the minimum of space per head necessary for health is generally recognised; and on these and similar calculations, correlated with the cost of house-room and commodities, it will be possible to build up a science of consumption which will be really a science and not a series of guesses and vague generalities.

It is true, again, that it is easier to deal with the grades of society practising the roughest and 133 least-skilled labour than with those engaged in the higher forms of brain-work, but we can at all events set ourselves to discover what is the average distribution of the expenditure of men earning £1000 a year, and can afterwards appeal to the hygienists to decide for us what kind of food, house-room, and recreation is essential for a man who makes his living by the higher activities of the intellect. A very close connection between economics and hygiene is essential if the division of our subject that deals with consumption is to be adequately treated.