INDIANA IIORTICULTUEAL SOCIETY. , 271 



are engaged in an effort to support homes, we ought to demand a great 

 deal of the home. We must demand a gi-eat deal of it to justify this 

 extraoi'dinary expense. Now, it would be far easier if we were to live in 

 communities, if we were to live in companies of fifty, one hundred or one 

 thousand, as they do in asylums; that is a cheap way to talie care of them 

 —to have but one cook, one person to buy the clothing, one person to buy 

 the furniture, one church, one school. That is the cheap way. As we do 

 not live that way we will have to give our reasons for it. What is there 

 about the home, then, that justifies this immense expenditure of money 

 for its support? There is just one thing, and that is the protection of 

 child life. There is nothing else that can be an excuse sufficient to justify 

 it, on economic grounds. 



There are four px'opositions I wish to make in this connection. The 

 first is the definition that I have already given you of the home. Home is 

 a place and an opportunity for the right development of the physical and 

 spiritual natures. It is the place in which we have fresh water and food, 

 the right kind of clothing and such things as develop in the right way the 

 physical life. In addition to that, it is an opportunity for the spiritual 

 nature to be developed, all of those fine things, those traits that make 

 man what he is. That opportunity for the spiritual development must be 

 a part of the home. 



The second is that the organization of the home is primarily and per- 

 petually a personal and independent enterprise. The nature of the home 

 is such that it can never be organized by a> syndicate. We have seen 

 syndicates and co-operations in modern life for benevolent purposes, but 

 they can never organize and manage a home. It is a personal enterprise. 



The third proposition is, that home making and housekeeping can 

 scarcely be separated, and that taken together they form a business as 

 important and in purpose more definite than any other business known to 

 modern times. This home, then, if organized as a business, has certain 

 well defined lines and principles that underlie its successful organization. 



The fourth proposition is this: that the one who undertakes to organ- 

 ize a home and maintain it, ought to have a special training for this very 

 special personal business; a training as definite as that secured by the phy- 

 sician, as definite as that secured by the railway superintendent as he 

 passes from brakeman through all the positions to railway superintendent. 



In undertaking to secure this special education, we are at once met 

 with several difiiculties. One is the fact that there are women who dis- 

 like housekeeping and home making. It used to be considered a treason 

 to say that; it used to be thought that because she was a woman, she 

 had every quality to make her a splendid housekeeper and mother. That 

 is not true, I am grieved to say. That is one diflaculty. 



The greatest difliculty we have to contend with is, as I believe, that 

 for which I must use the very strong word, ignorance. Women don't 

 know how to keep house and make homes successful. There are many 



