INDIANA HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



2ld 



sary. So, if housekeeping and home making can be successfully done by 

 third, fourth or fifth-class women, of course it is not worthy of a woman 

 with a first-class brain. But we think today that agriculture is worthy of 

 the effort of a first-class brain, and we think that no other career can be 

 as fine as that of home making and housekeeping, for a young woman. 



One of the greatest problems that confronts us today is the cost of 

 living. When we speak of money spent in our homes, it covers four lines. 

 We spend money for existence, for comfort, for culture and for philan- 

 thropy, and the per cent, for each will depend wholly upon our training, 

 and not wholly upon the size of our income. If we have an income of 

 five hundred dollars, and a family of five, about eighty-five per cent, of that 

 income would be spent for existence. If we have a five thousand dollar 

 income, then the per cent, spent for existence would be cut down to 

 about twenty per cent, perhaps less. Now, is there any plan, can anybody 

 think out a plan by which we shall get every last bit of value for our 

 dollar? Has anybody a plan for a five hundred or one thousand dollar 

 income that will bring to the family the right proportionate part to spend 

 for existence, culture, comfort and philanthropy? If so, where is it? That 

 gi-eat question is unsolved today; and no question can be more important. 

 Men spend their lives, they risk everything to earn money, and the only 

 use for the money is the family use. 



When we think of all the aids and opportunities men are offered for 

 teaching them how to earn money, which is so necessary, when we think 

 of the technical schools for men, engineering, mining, scientific, business 

 colleges, apprenticeships, and everything to help the men to earn the dol- 

 lar, and then think of the benighted, stricken preparation of the woman 

 who spends that dollar, it is appalling. The value of the dollar that man 

 earns is determined by the intelligence of the woman who spends it. 

 There is a rational and just relation between income and expenditure, 

 and it is right to think of the dollar in this way, to think of investing it 

 with all the sentiment possible. 



A dollar will buy beautiful opportunities, opportunities for culture, 

 opportunities for philanthropy, for helping others. Can we find an educa- 

 tion that will help toward the use of money, toward the organization, 

 support and maintenance of the home? 



This new education is the realization of the old theory of education. 

 We have had to undo an unjust appreciation of the mind. We are emerg- 

 ing from that time when everybody was engaged in a feeling toward the 

 material things talked of so much in life. There was a reaction from that. 

 Now we are having a reaction from academic training; we are going to 

 have, or have had in many places, manual training schools, with academic 

 training. 



The first schools, as you know, were to train ministers. They were 

 the only ones for whom it was thought education was necessary; after 

 a while people saw differently, that others needed education. We had the 



18 — Agriculture, 



