Missouri Housekeepers' Conference Association. 459 



economic's work must play an important part, then, in the develop- 

 ment of the farm home in making it attractive to the best women 

 of the country, so that the farm-holder is not handicapped in a 

 matrimonial way, and so that in the future, as in the past, the most 

 virile and effective people of the world will be born on the farm. 

 After all, then, the home economics' movement lies at the very 

 base of our civilization and of our social life, and deserves to be 

 speedily enlarged and developed to meet this great responsibility. 

 Instead of a department, crowded into these few rooms, it should 

 be the central feature of a woman's building, the handsomest struc- 

 ture the University owns, where the young girls who come to the 

 University may be brought in contact with it, and, therefore, in 

 sympathy with its work, in spite of themselves and of their errone- 

 ous ideas of what this is all about, in spite of their earlier and 

 wholly illogical prejudices against it. 



THE DEPARTMENT OF HOUSEHOLD SCIENCE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF 



ILLINOIS. 



Dr. Eugene Davenport, Dean of the Illinois Agricultural Col- 

 lege, spoke at some length on the value of the work and its develop- 

 ment in Illinois. Among other things, he said that : 



The Department of Household Science was opened in the Uni- 

 versity of Illinois, due to a desire to give to the women of the uni- 

 versity as fair a chance to be educated for life as was being given 

 to the men. 



The Department was organized in 1900. For a time it occu- 

 pied rooms in the Agricultural building. Now it finds itself 

 crowded for room in the large wing of the Woman's building, into 

 which it moved less than four years ago. 



The State evidently appreciates the work it is doing, for the 

 last legislature appropriated for its use, in addition to its regular 

 annual income, of $6,000, $10,000 more for each of the next two 

 years. 



THE INDUCTIVE OR SCIENTIFIC METHOD OF TEACHING 



COOKING. 



(Miss Louise Stanley, Instructor in Home Economics, University of Missouri.) 



The object of this discussion is to show what the inductive or 

 scientific method of cooking is, and how it differs from other 

 methods. 



First, is there a science of cooking? The fund of human 



