166 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



by the time they were sixteen or seventeen had commonly stored 

 away in their cedar chests a store of house linens that would last 

 more than a lifetime. Since the factories have taken from the 

 homes very much of the old housework, spinning, weaving, soap 

 making, etc., girls have been free to go to school, free to play or to 

 work outside of the home, to the neglect of the old apprenticeship, 

 and we are only slowly coming to realize that it was something 

 more than instinct that made our grandmothers good house- 

 keepers. 



In the early days women were not alone in preparing for life 

 work by the apprenticeship method. Even doctors and lawyers 

 often got their training by working in an office instead of by going 

 to school, and training schools for business, for engineering, for 

 farming, were unknown. Statistics show that it pays financially for 

 a man to take the money and years for long expensive training to be 

 an engineer. You progressive women of the Missouri Home Makers' 

 Conference recognize that it pays for young women to take pro- 

 fessional training for their work in the profession of home making, 

 but in most places the standard for woman's work in home making 

 has decreased instead of increased. Even the old apprenticeship is 

 discarded as unnecessary. 



Of course, many girls still get a practical training at home, but 

 it is not often as thorough as that of the olden days — the girls must 

 do too many other things in addition, and conditions are changing 

 so rapidly that the apprenticeship system is not so effective as it 

 used to be. Grandmother's rules, the embodiment of family tradi- 

 tional experiences reaching back through generations, do not always 

 work these days. And rules of today, unless they get back to most 

 fundamental principles, may not work a few years hence. 



The work of the home maker of today is more that of a money 

 spender than that of a producer, as of old. Of course, it takes no 

 training to empty a pocketbook. But, within normal limits, it makes 

 nearly as much difference how it is emptied as how much is put into 

 it in the first place, and as much training is needed as prepara- 

 tion for wise spending as for successful earning. The products on 

 the market are constantly changing, and it requires a good knowl- 

 edge of general principles to know even enough to read intelligently 

 pure food labels. 



Certainly a girl ought to spend time in getting ready for home 

 making! But suppose she does, suppose she even takes three or 

 four years in a college course of home economics — what then? She 



