Missouri Housekeepers' Conference Association. 441 



public laundry, the details of the work should not be made avail- 

 able for all women, and for all towns. 



The strength of our organizations should be used for the pur- 

 pose of securing better household goods. Manufacturers and deal- 

 ers, actuated by a desire for profit, are bombarding us with multi- 

 tudinous articles of the same general character, differing only in 

 name, with appliances which have not stood the test of experience, 

 with fabrics whose wearing power has not been proved. Before 

 this fusilade of articles the individual housekeeper is powerless. 

 The forces of commerce by dealing with us separately, conquer us. 

 It is for us to display a solid front by organizing as consumers and 

 by collecting and distributing information. We have stood help- 

 less long enough and have received what has been offered to us. 

 The time has come for us to say what we want and to use our 

 means of intercourse and our organizations to secure it. We must 

 enter actively into commercial life as consumers with our united 

 influences. 



Women must share the responsibility for all those conspicuous 

 forms of waste in industrial life which divert human energy from 

 the creation of wealth. They are in part responsible for the waste 

 involved in those forms of toil which are uneducative and which 

 render the worker less and not better prepared for future labor. 

 That the employment of children in institutions where activities 

 have neither educational purposes nor educational value comes 

 under this head, I need not say. Women are partly responsible also 

 for all that diversion of energy from useful pursuits which is the 

 result of the effort to make fabrics look like something which they 

 are not and for a large amount of sewing made necessary because 

 these fabrics wear out before their time; they are responsible to 

 a large extent for the appalling waste of precious human life in 

 the advertising business which creates no wealth, raises no food, 

 builds no houses, makes no clothes, but merely affects a distribu- 

 tion of wealth which is to the advantage, not of society at large, 

 but of a few individuals. Instead of making wealth, this form 

 of activities frequently destroys it by defacing natural beauties and 

 disfiguring towns. I do not speak of those legitimate forms of ad- 

 vertising which show where useful commodities may be bought, 

 but of those wasteful forms that merely determine which one of 

 two equally poor grades of goods shall be sold. If we could stop 

 the tremendous diversion of energy from productive activities to 

 useless pursuits, we should have plenty to use in experimenting in 



