1860 Report of Farmers' Institutes 



wlio has had to stniggle against the same odds in his occupation 

 as have women in the occupation of housekeeping? Yet, if you 

 say to a man : '' Let your daughter be trained to keep house 

 scientifically," or " Let your wife go away for a few months' 

 study, to get a new viewpoint of the work that has grown to seem 

 only drudgery," is he not apt to say: ''Why should my wife or 

 my daughter be trained i I am not at all sure that a house kept 

 by rule is a comfortable place. In such a house, if you come in 

 late to dinner you get black looks, and if you track in a little 

 mud you get a lecture on germs. No, I have no use for trained 

 housekeepers." How long ago was it that many people had 

 exactly that feeling about the hospital-trained nurse ? How many 

 times have we heard it said: " I do not want a trained nurse in 

 my house. She cannot adapt herself to conditions. She makes 

 more work than she saves. I have no use for her." Yet we have 

 all learned by this time that the trained nurse who' deserves such 

 criticism is an exception. If the objections I have quoted can be 

 truthfully made against training either the housekeeper or the 

 nurse, it must bo because a necessary ingredient has been left 

 out of the training: It lacks the salt of common sense. This 

 was well voiced by a woman who was a most successful poultry 

 keeper and who was asked by a writer on poultry topics, whether 

 she followed his methods. Smiling brightly at him, she said : 

 " Yes, we follow your methods mixed with a little common sense." 

 Certainly she hit the nail upon the head. Training without com- 

 mon sense is as powerless as common sense without training. 



" But," says another man, " can you train a housekeeper ; 

 isn't she born, not made?" How does that theory work out in 

 other professions ? The fact that the occasional boy or girl is 

 born with a genius for mathematics does not relieve common 

 folk from laboring over the multiplication table. The fact that 

 here and there a wonderful painting is produced, or a fine piece 

 of music composed, without previous training, does not relieve 

 the rest of us from the laborious straight lines and five-finger 

 exercises with which we begin our artistic careers. jSTor does 

 great talent in any of these professions mean that the possessor 

 of the talent will cease to study, l)ut rather that he will be the 

 mo^e eager to learn all that he can about his chosen work. So 



