364 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc 



EFFICIENCY IN HOME-MAKING 



By DR. HANNAH McK. LYONS, Lincoln University, Pa. 



Mr. Chairman, and Members of the Institute: There is a saying 

 "that the perfection of art is in the concealment of art," and I think 

 sometimes if this is true anywhere, it is true in our homes, where 

 our efficient worker is able to keep the little details, the little bring- 

 ings together that makes the home perfect, out of sight, as it were. 

 You say, "But we don't want to conceal art." Neither do we, but 

 after all I think if I bring you an illustration just out of the many 

 meetings that we attend in a year, you will catch my idea. For ex- 

 ample, one comes to preside at a meeting and manage it through and 

 a large part of the time perhaps you are just grated on the least lit- 

 tle bit. They are always making excuses for the person that is not 

 there and what they intended to do and meant to do and tried to do. 

 Again, you go into a meeting and your presiding officer somehow 

 never makes excuses; at the same time they have just as trying things 

 to manage; but it is always the thing we are going to do and that 

 we get done that they present to you. And so in home making; if 

 we may keep out of sight the little things that we meant to do and 

 have not quite accomplished and always bring forward to view the 

 things that we are accomplishing and that we are doing, it seems 

 to me that that is real art and yet it is the concealment of art, as it 

 were. 



Within the last few years many new words have been coined and 

 brought to us ; at least, if they are not entirely new words, they come 

 to us with a new force and new meaning. I think you will recall 

 not so many years ago when w^e all began to use that word "strenu- 

 ous;" it was the strenuous life we were leading, or someone was lead- 

 ing. Again, I think you recall when we began to use that word 

 "conservatism" so much, when we were conserving the public inter- 

 ests, that is the great natural resources of our State. Again it is the 

 word "efficiency" perhaps that we are learning to use with a new 

 meaning, and so I believe that that word "efficiency" belongs to the 

 home just as truly as it belongs anywhere. Somehow we women in 

 the home feel — well I think we have been taught to feel that and we 

 did it and we do feel it perhaps yet, that somehow the home did not 

 amount to just as much as the farm; that somehow the home was 

 not just the real thing and the whole thing perhaps. But you know 

 things have changed and to-day you and I know that the home is just 

 as important as the farm and that the home-maker ought to be 

 trained as well as the farmer is trained; that the home-maker must 

 know her work and her duty there if the farm be all that it ought 

 to be. 



Not very many years ago I think you recall the papers coming out 

 with the story that where a certain piece of work had been done with 

 perhaps six motions, that that firm was now able to produce the same 

 thing, just as good in quality, with four motions, and so that news 



