1448 The Cornell Reading-Courses 



welfare. It includes a study of foods, their selection, and their prepa- 

 ration; the relation that right diet bears to the health of the body and to 

 the development and efficiency of the individual; conditions of living 

 necessary to insure health and efficiency; intelligent use of income in 

 procuring food, shelter, and clothing; principles of art as applied to 

 decoration of house and of person; social and industrial forces that 

 govern the home and its activities; the child, and conditions that control 

 its inheritance and environment. 



Men are interested in the production of raw material; women, in the 

 use of that material. Farmers strive to produce good wheat, corn, and 

 other farm products; women must endeavor to use these products aright. 

 A balance in progress is not being maintained if men are educated so as 

 to obtain the best products while women remain in ignorance of the 

 principles underlying their use. 



There are excellent cooks, it is true, who have never studied chemistry 

 and who know nothing of the physiological needs of the body; but, impor- 

 tant as is good cooking to the welfare and happiness of the family, it is 

 only one phase of woman's important work. Women should know the use 

 and the place of foods in the dietary; the comparative value of a food 

 element as it occurs in one food or another; the relation of cooking to 

 digestion; the dietary needs of man, woman, and child; the principles of 

 bread-making, meat and vegetable cookery, canning and preserving. In 

 other words, women should know not only how to cook and what to cook. 

 but also what to omit from the dietary. 



A woman needs to know the relation of germ life to disease, of cleanli- 

 ness to health and well-being; the physiological needs of the body for 

 fresh air, clean water, wholesome food, sunshine, exercise, and rest; the 

 management of the income in the buying of food, shelter, and clothing; 

 the principles of art as they apply to the artistic arrangement of furnishings 

 and wearing apparel; the characteristics and values of fabrics, and how 

 to distinguish those goods that are genuine from those that are not; the 

 relation of consumer to producer and of employer to employee; the needs 

 of the house as a workshop wherein the time and energy of the worker 

 have a market value; the maintenance of proper standards of living as 

 indicated by wise expenditures. 



With the prospect of obtaining scientific training in agriculture the boy 

 may attend an agricultural college; and in like manner opportunity for 

 Lai training in home-making should be the privilege of every girl. 

 If boys in the family were trained for the work of life and girls continued 

 without educational stimulus, a new social problem would soon be pre- 

 sented. In the resulting civilization the majority of men would understand 

 the handling of machines, business management, and the culture and 



