368 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



if we only knew the methods a little better, if we only knew some of 

 the things, the how of it a little better, that we would have plenty 

 of time to do both. 



Unfortunately we women are not mechanical, as a rule. You 

 will find it occasionally that we are, but as a rule we are not me- 

 chanical, and it seems to me that there the brothers can come into 

 the home making with such splendid results. May I give you a 

 homely illustration just there: A wife became sick; she was the 

 chicken raiser of the home; and as the small potatoes and kitchen 

 refuse was kept for the chickens and heated you know, cooked up 

 as they do sometimes and meal mixed, she just mixed it in the 

 vessel in which it was put. Well, we women know how the meal 

 will get spilled around the floor and won't mix very well and how 

 long it takes to do it; but when she became sick her husband had 

 to feed the chickens during that time and there was a splendid 

 little trough built in the corner of the entry near the feed box, and 

 some remark was made about it and he said, "I never bothered 

 with that pot a day." It was all right, she had bothered with it 

 for weeks and he had never seen it, but when he had the chickens 

 to feed and the food to mix, he saw it. So, men, suppose you see 

 a little bit before the wife gets sick and do these little things that 

 count so much for efficiency and will mean so much for time and 

 help to her after awhile. Many times a great deal of the lost 

 motion in efficiency is in the arrangement of our homes, especially 

 our kitchens, where we spend so many hours of the day, and here 

 with our kitchen table as it were in the center of the floor or near 

 the stove, where it ought to be or must be, might be grouped or 

 ought to be grouped the stove and cupboard and the things we must 

 go to back and forth, so that there will be just as few steps as 

 possible to be taken in that home. 



Many times efficiency may mean simply planning. It is not that 

 you must know so much of great things, but simply that you will 

 plan and be willing to plan. When we get up in the morning and 

 start out for the dav's work, if we don't have a picture of that 

 day's work, a mental picture as it were, we will not accomplish 

 in the same time nearly so much, but if you sit down with pencil 

 and paper and write out the next thing you would do and 

 the next thing and the next thing, you will find that at the end 

 of the day you have done quite as much as you would otherwise have 

 done. Somebody will say, "But I have no time to take pencil and 

 paper and write out what I have to do:" but yon have saved more 

 time than you have taken in writing it out and planning it out, 

 by the mere fact of sitting down and writing out and planning out, 

 and this is especially true where there are children to train and 

 child helpers. If you will jot down with pencil and paper the next 

 thing and the next thing and the next thing that is to be done 

 during the day, the children somehow will take it up and will not 

 forget and will be much more efficient helpers than if they try to 

 remember and try to just go along and go along as it were picking 

 up here and there and not knowinar whether there is anything to 

 be done next until they have been called and been reminded that they 

 have been very remiss. 



And so we might go on with this word efficiency and find all 

 the way through the day's work and the year's work that it fits 

 in everywhere. But that we women need to know more of the methods 



