FOOD PREPARATION 287 



times so nobly to adjust the personalities of themselves and their fam- 

 ilies to adverse conditions, Professor Devine says, " "We find the be- 

 ginnings of those tendencies which often lead to suicide or crime, to 

 disabling disease or helpfulness." In this same connection of the prep- 

 aration of home makers for adapting themselves and their families to 

 their environment, charity workers agree that among working people 

 the women who have been in domestic service are much better able to 

 manage on their income than those who have spent their girlhood in 

 factories. 26 Intemperance, which is known by all charity workers to be 

 a prolific cause of crime, is often excused in its first manifestations as 

 resulting from innutritious food. In families where the wages would 

 be sufficient to supply nutritious food, the homemakers do not know how 

 to buy or to prepare it. Hence previous domestic training is of great 

 value. 



This " unpreparedness " of women in our homes is not confined 

 alone to a knowledge of foods. Because woman is specialized by so- 

 ciety for housework, and the care of children, the general responsibility 

 for the health of her family is hers also. But so often through igno- 

 rance she is not equal to this responsibility. For instance, statistics 

 and the reports of the various state charitable institutions show that a 

 large per cent, of blindness among children is due to diseased condi- 

 tions which might be remedied by intelligent care at birth, 27 or might 

 have been prevented years before by a proper knowledge of sex hygiene. 



Intermarrying is also given by experts as a cause of physical de- 

 generacy such as deaf mutism. Both of these social errors might be 

 diminished by greater knowledge on the part of the guardians of the 

 homes of the vital necessities of the race in the matter of sex and re- 

 production. The economic necessity which presses so hard to-day upon 

 the man as bread-winner of the family lays all the more responsibility 

 upon the woman in the home not only as in the first essential of food, 

 but in all hygienic matters which pertain to vital efficiency. 



Statistics tell us that with the present home system divorce is 

 increasing much faster than the population. Divorce was about three 

 times greater in 1905 than in 1870. 28 



The special census report of the Department of Commerce and 

 Labor shows that the most important ground for divorce is desertion 

 and of the divorces granted to the husband nearly one half had de- 

 sertions as their cause. That is, one half of the husbands who sued for 

 divorce had for a cause the desertion of the wives. It would look from 

 this fact as though women are growing weary of home conditions. 



We have then the fact that with our present system of homes, one 



28 More, "Wage Earner's Budgets." 

 27 See report for 1908 Illinois Institution for the Blind. 

 23 "Marriage and Divorce," p. 11, Special Census Beport, Department of 

 Commerce and Labor. 



