FOOD PREPARATION 283 



many of the most potent influences which fashion the character of the 

 social personality or the social man. 



Naturally then the sociologist in considering the factors which de- 

 termine social welfare must give especial attention to the home and 

 many phases of its life. 



For instance, if the physiological chemists prove that the individual 

 requires for full vital development food of certain quality and quantity 

 to produce from 2,500 to 3,000 calories of energy per day and that 

 individual in his home through the ignorance on the part of those who 

 prepare and serve the food consumes a greater or less amount of in- 

 nutritious food, just to that degree is the home responsible for the 

 weakening of the vital power of the social personality and since vital- 

 ity is fundamental, the mentality, the morality and sociality of the 

 individual will in time also suffer. 



As custom is at present, we all concede that the home is the center 

 of food supply to the individual and woman's main work in the home 

 for which to-day she is specialized by society is the serving of food to 

 her family which in the majority of instances she has herself prepared, 

 for we are told that only ten per cent, of the women in the country 

 have the luxury of a cook other than themselves. If in fulfilling this 

 humanly appointed mission of food center, any individual or group of 

 individuals in the home in carrying out this plan lose from overwork 

 or under education an opportunity for the harmonious development of 

 the four divisions of social personality — the vital, the mental, the moral 

 and the social, the home standing as it does midway between the knowl- 

 edge of what is best for human nature in its development and the fin- 

 ished product or the social individual in society — is a hindrance to hu- 

 man progress. 



Applying the sociological tests of personality to home life we have a 

 right to ask if our homes, as at present conducted, are making mankind 

 better as human beings, more rational, more sympathetic, with an 

 everbroadening consciousness of kind, and whether there is a decrease 

 in the number of the defective, the abnormal, the unmoral and de- 

 socialized. We have a right to go a step further and ask if in the de- 

 velopment of this social personality there comes to the individual the 

 satisfaction of its own activity and growth or what Giddings calls 

 " cumulative happiness." That is, in the performance of this special- 

 ized industry as homemaker is woman enjoying a sense of satisfaction 

 in her own growth and activity and is she happy in her work ? Neither 

 men nor women can have a sense of satisfaction or cumulative happi- 

 ness in their tasks unless they are fitted for them and do not overwork 

 at them. 



"We are here according to the modern interpretation of the teach- 

 ings of Jesus to perform our best service to society and we can do this 

 only by the best individual growth and expression. The right kind of 



