FOOD PREPARATION 281 



value only as they serve the individual life, the higher life of moral and 

 intellectual development. By their means is developed a social person- 

 ality, and this social personality — so far the highest product of evolu- 

 tion — the moral, intellectual and social man is the ultimate end of the 

 social organization. 



These proximate ends or public utilities take the form of various 

 organizations in the political, the legal, the economic and cultural 

 systems. 



The supreme test of the efficiency of any social organization is the develop- 

 ment of the personality of the social man. If the man himself becomes less 

 social, less rational, less manly; if he falls from the highest type -which seeks 

 self-realization through a critical intelligence and emotional self-control to one 

 of these lower types that manifest only the primitive virtues of power; if he 

 becomes unsocial — the social organization whatever its apparent merits, is 

 failing to achieve its supreme object. If, on the contrary, man is becoming ever 

 better as a human being, more rational, more sympathetic, with an ever-broaden- 

 ing consciousness of kind — then whatever its apparent defects, the social organ- 

 ization is sound and efficient. 15 



The home is one of these utilities for the development of the social 

 man. The purpose of the home as a social organization is two-fold — 

 economic and cultural. It is a purposive organization existing for 

 convenience in the consumption of wealth as well as for the cultural 

 purposes of parents and children. 



Since the development of social personality through its organiza- 

 tions is the ultimate end of society, the cultural side of the home should 

 perhaps be more emphasized than it is, but as our economic system is 

 organized to-day the economic side of home life receives undue empha- 

 sis, owing to the social waste of labor which occurs because each house- 

 wife does her own housework, the food preparation, the sewing, the 

 laundry work for her own little group, when by combination there could 

 be a great saving in time and strength and more leisure for real cultural 

 advancement. Society is coming slowly to understand something of 

 this social waste of labor and gradually there have been developing in- 

 dustries which relieve the homes of much sewing, laundry work, and 

 even food preparation. 



The home is a human institution, and as such is capable of change 

 and improvement. Other human institutions have come and gone, but 

 the home of to-day in many particulars remains essentially the same 

 as it was when our cave-dwelling ancestors left the woman at home to 

 guard the fire, care for the children and, incidentally, to prepare the 

 food, while they roamed abroad in search of game and new experiences. 

 Those who insist that a woman's place is at home by divine decree need 

 only to study the life of primitive man to find out how very human are 

 some of our domestic customs, for they will then see this distinction, 

 that while nature has specialized woman for child-bearing, it is society 

 "Giddings, "Inductive Sociology," p. 249. 



