Missouri Housekeepers' Conference Association. 457 



family are sold for money, and his wife, instead of spending her 

 energy in helping him in production is commissioned to spend this 

 money for the necessities and comforts of the home. It takes 

 no small knowledge of food stuffs, dry goods, and house furnish- 

 ings, to say nothing of the ways of the market, to be able to buy 

 wisely. And in addition to all this, it is necessary to have a sym- 

 metrical idea of family needs that one interest may not be culti- 

 vated to the exclusion of others necessary to the all-round develop- 

 ment of every member of the family. 



This knowledge is not born in woman. Is it best that they 

 should gain it all in the slow, expensive school of experience? 



THE HOME ECONOMICS MOVEMENT. 



AH. J. Waters, Dean of the College of Agriculture and Director of the Experiment 

 Station, Columbia). 



We have not yet realized the full meaning of this Home Eco- 

 nomics movement. The first thought associates it' with the idea 

 of teaching young women how to become cooks, seamstresses and 

 housekeepers, and this conception of it found expression in the 

 name which was first attached to the movement, "Household Eco- 

 nomics." I am pleased to note that Miss Day does not employ that 

 title here, but calls it the Department of Home Economics, or the 

 economics of home building. This means that the home is vitally 

 concerned in the development of this subject and in the outcome of 

 this convention. You call this a housekeepers' conference. My 

 notion is that you would do well to call it a conference of home- 

 makers. 



We are not so much concerned in how this or that article of 

 food shall be cooked, but how the human race shall be fed so that 

 they may have what the ancients dreamed of — a strong mind in a 

 sound body. We have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, and 

 many years of patient toil in determining how best to feed and house 

 and- manage our horses and cattle and sheep and hogs, that they 

 may continue in good health and strength, and have well-developed 

 bodies and perform their normal functions. The good, sound liter- 

 ature on these subjects in our libraries will be represented by shelf- 

 fuls, while the literature of this character in relation to the feeding 

 of the human race, and the housing and the nourishing of our chil- 

 dren that they may grow into strong and useful men and women, 



