191 1] Mary Louise F oster 263 



The most absorbing work o£ our research laboratories today is 

 bridging the gap between the chemistry of the test tube and the 

 chemistry of the living cell, the most wonderful laboratory of all. 

 But we know that the discovery today in the laboratory is the com- 

 monplace necessity of the world tomorrow. Already much of this 

 biochemical metabolism is familiär to us and has revolutionized 

 many industrial and agricultural processes. Why should we call on 

 these women to go out without the faintest inkling of the existence 

 of these discoveries? Why should they perpetuate the theory that 

 alcohol and carbon dioxide are the sole producta of the fermenta- 

 tion of sugar when the list of known by-products is already large 

 and we are not yet at the end ? 



We are constantly hearing about the high cost of living. Mrs. 

 Richards said it should be the "cost of high living." But which- 

 ever it is, we read about commissions of national and international 

 scope appointed to investigate these matters and find a Solution. 

 Crops are large, we have world markets and yet prices continue 

 to go up. Let US inform the women; they are the buyers, very 

 largely, and as such affect the supply and demand. If they were 

 resourceful and could Substitute some other method in the house- 

 hold for the one which no longer pays, as is the way in the industrial 

 world, this difficulty of high cost of living would disappear. It is 

 not protection by government that we need so much as a wider 

 education in the practical things of daily living. Pasteur gave his 

 attention to the infinitely little and left the world his everlasting 

 debtor. What is the use of spending years in the study of literature 

 and art only to find ourselves at the end of it unable to cope with 

 the industrial condition in our own household! Why try to re- 

 generate the so-called slums all winter, only to be forced to live in a 

 Summer boarding house where dairy and culinary methods are the 

 methods of our grandmothers ? First reform our own homes, then 

 reform others. Demand for more up-to-date methods, bacterial 

 and chemical, would stimulate the supply and decrease the cost. But 

 we cannot demand what we know nothing of. Let us educate the 

 women in our Colleges in the practical art of living, make them 

 leaders, pioneers, missionaries if you will, for more rational condi- 

 tions in all matters which pertain to living. 



