FOOD PREPARATION 289 



ing the commissary departments of our homes are suggested by means 

 of education. 



2. Suggestions are made of a practical and natural method of de- 

 veloping the efficient social personality of the child in the home, and an 

 attempt is made to show how a woman following out the industry for 

 which mankind has specialized her can develop her own social per- 

 sonality. 



3. At least one preventative of divorce and unhappy home life is 

 suggested. 



1. The Need of Educated Homemakees 



Let us bear in mind the fact stated before that the home and its 

 caretakers stand as a connecting link between the knowledge of what is 

 best for the individual and the finished product of personality as we 

 find it in society. Or, in other words, the function of the home and of 

 those who minister there is the adjustment of the individual to society 

 through the utilities of the home which are both economic and cultural. 

 Certainly such important work should require some special training. 

 While primarily woman's work is that of dietitian in the home, she 

 must not specialize in this capacity at the sacrifice of her effectiveness 

 as a teacher or the cultural size of home life will suffer. Neither must 

 her training as a dietician and a teacher exclude the training necessary 

 as a financier and as an employer of labor in a broad sense, for the 

 home is in direct touch with the labor problem on all sides. The live- 

 liest imagination and inventive genius she will need also to develop to 

 enable her to meet with discrimination and equanimity the daily com- 

 plex problems of home life. 



It is to be hoped that as yet woman's education is in a transitional 

 stage. The last half century has been given up to proving that women 

 can learn the same lessons as men if they wish to do so. It is very de- 

 sirable that the next half century may mark a much greater triumph in 

 woman's education by making plain and popular the fact that although 

 she can learn the same lessons as a man she, as a woman, has more im- 

 portant ones to learn of an entirely different nature, bearing on her 

 profession of home making. 



N"o man without special training is likely to be employed as con- 

 sulting engineer on so important an enterprise as the Panama Canal, 

 yet women the country over are intrusted with the vital, the mental, the 

 moral and social welfare of the individuals who make up the state, 

 without any preparation whatever beyond an inheritance of tradition 

 and such additional information as can be gained from home maga- 

 zines or such other literature as their minds are able to grasp. 



There is a sentiment current in respect to woman's higher educa- 

 tion that if she is given culture studies, ability will in some way come 

 to her for her life's work. Culture studies are good, but they are only 

 part of the preparation needed by her. She needs for her life's work 



VOL. LXXIX. — 20. 



