FOOD PREPARATION 291 



A proper education in the fundamentals, the purposes, the methods and 

 the results of home work would no doubt go far to lessen the dislike 

 for that form of labor. The difficulty with the " Man With a Hoe " 

 and the woman with a broom is often the mere fact that they see no 

 connection between present effort and remote results, and thus have no 

 sense of satisfaction or happiness in their work. 



Until by a process of evolution some plan of farther combination or 

 socialization of home industries is worked out, in order to raise the 

 standard of home industries it is necessary to take immediate steps to 

 improve conditions in our homes. A wholesale campaign of education 

 of our girls, beginning with the grade schools and extending through 

 our colleges, is the most hopeful means available for improving our 

 homes in their work of developing and maintaining individual and 

 social welfare through the proper adjustment of the individual to 

 society. 



2. Home Methods of Developing Personality 



One of the difficulties of our educational system to-day is that 

 educated women seem to feel that when they assume the responsibilities- 

 of home work they have been made to surrender to disuse whatever 

 mentality they possess. Indeed, one very capable woman said to the- 

 writer soon after her marriage, when she was wrestling with the diffi- 

 culties of domestic management, " Do you not feel your mind becom- 

 ing atrophied with all this petty round of duties ? " In order to be 

 loyal to our little home nest, I replied, " No indeed, I find that my 

 domestic science takes as much mentality as my political science did." 

 I have been trying ever since to live up to that remark, and I have 

 found that the homemaker by following out her path of duty can have 

 an opportunity for mental, moral and social development in propor- 

 tion to her desire for growth. 



The whole world of science centers around the daily work of pre- 

 paring food. The housewife who wishes mental expansion in this line 

 can begin by perusing the numerous food bulletins of the Department 

 of Agriculture which are provided free. She can hang her kitchen 

 walls with the food charts furnished by the Department of Agriculture 

 for a consideration and learn while at her work the relative values of 

 foods. This knowledge will prepare her to be interested in the many 

 food experiments of the large experiment stations, and while following 

 them through the publications she can add to them by carefully kept 

 records of similar experiments in her own home, and if she is of a 

 literary turn of mind she will find a ready sale for such articles as she 

 chooses to write on the subject. Personal experience has verified this in 

 the study of the food requirements of growing children. 30 



Her interest in her own growing family can lead her to a study of 

 the development of the family, primitive culture and the development 



30 E. W. and L. C. Eockwood, Science, XXXII., p. 351. 



