COLLEGE WOMEN AND THE NEW SCIENCE. 675 



With the thirty thousand girls who have already graduated from 

 colleges, according to Alice Freeman Palmer, carrying these reason- 

 ings into innumerable towns and hamlets, the outcome must be 

 something definite, and it is no source of surprise to find that some 

 of them have gradually collected the present knowledge on all topics 

 relating to the welfare of the home, under the comprehensive title 

 of household economics or domestic science, and that great numbers 

 of them are working hard in various lines of this subject. 



Let us examine this work of some of our college graduates who 

 have done most in this direction. 



The active interest of college women in the subject of household 

 economics was shown as long ago as 1883, when the Boston branch 

 of the Collegiate Alumnae organized its Sanitary Science Club, the 

 first organization of distinctively college women for the study of any 

 branch of household economics. The report at the end of its first 

 year's work says : " The members of the Sanitary Science Club can 

 not too strongly urge upon the Association of Collegiate Alumnse 

 the importance of giving thought and attention to the hygiene of the 

 home. This duty falls more or less upon all women, but with none 

 should it be more exacting than with college graduates." 



The efforts of this club for science in the home have been produc- 

 tive of great results, as we shall see. 



After five years' study, a manual for housekeepers, called Home 

 Sanitation, was prepared by this club and edited by two of its mem- 

 bers, Mrs. Ellen H. Richards and Miss Marion Talbot. This manual 

 has been for some time one of the standard works upon the subject, 

 and used as a basis for study in home science clubs. 



One of these editors. Miss Marion Talbot, who has the degrees 

 of A. B. and A. M. from Boston University, and of S. B. from the 

 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, after having first realized the 

 importance of the subject in this club, began lecturing regularly upon 

 domestic science in 1886 at La Salle Seminary, and continued till 

 1800, when she took charge of this department at Wellesley Col- 

 lege. In 1892 she was called to the University of Chicago as dean 

 of the woman's department, where she is now carrying on courses in 

 sanitation and the study of foods. 



The first interest of the other editor of Home Sanitation, Mrs. 

 Ellen H, Richards, in domestic science dated from a much earlier 

 period. Having graduated at Vassar in 1870, she went to the Massa- 

 chusetts Institute of Technology to work in the chemical laboratory 

 preparatory to taking the degree of S. B., which she received from 

 that institution, as well as the degree of M. A. from Yassar, in 1873. 

 While working in the chemical laboratory in 1871, a prominent 

 educator, now deceased, made the sneering remark to her, '' What 



