FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 159 



the ground and wearing a little deeper each time that it illustrates what we speak of as 

 getting into the ruts — running along in the same groove — and when we have worn them 

 deep how hard it is to get out. 



SEWING IN RELATION TO THE HOME. 



MRS. J. L. K. HANER, INSTRUCTOR IN SEWING, AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE, MICHIGAN. 



The subject of Domestic Art, which means sewing and its closely 

 allied subjects — dressmaking, millinery and art needle-work— has a two- 

 fold value — the utilitarial and the educational. Neither of these should 

 be neglected at the sacrifice of the other, and this is the aim of sewing 

 4is taught in our schools and colleges today. 



It is gratifying to look back over the last few years and note the 

 changes of practical work, which have been brought about by the 

 earnest and continued efforts of industrial education. The work from 

 its educational point of view, or as a phase of manual training in high 

 schools, industrial schools and normal training schools, has attained a 

 wonderful proportion, and kept good pace with the great strides made 

 by other various phases of practical training. The supervisor of sewing 

 in the public schools of New York City says: "I have under my super- 

 vision 48 departments, 24 special teachers, 275 classes a week, with 

 about 10,500 children." As we consider the same work done in other 

 localities, we find it indeed difficult to imagine the benefits derived from 

 all this effort, as it reaches almost wholly back upon the homes of our 

 country. 



Knowledge is power, and power taken into the home, the basis of the 

 great social structure of a nation, and made to apply to even the simplest 

 necessities of home life, is a wonderful power and must be cultivated 

 and enlarged in all possible ways, and one of the greatest opportunities 

 is to make the knowledge of sewing a power to be felt in every home in 

 the land. Mothers make such a mistake who train their daughters to do 

 nothing, slaving for them, and what is the result? Hampered at every 

 point by this foolish bringing up, they are incompetent to discharge the 

 burdens which life may have in store. 



You may say that manufactured articles of wearing apparel make 

 good this deficiency or lack of knowledge in the home, but who does not 

 appreciate a home-made article better, and who does not know that it 

 does wear longer? If it is best to train the child along aesthetic lines in 

 any phase of art, then let him be trained to appreciate and prefer a 

 piece of true art in needle-work, even plain sewing, over a wholesale 

 manufactured article which may be bought at cheap rates. Let me illus- 

 trate by a school girl's sewing apron, neatly though plainly made, hand- 

 sewed by herself, and appreciated because she wove into its very stitches 

 her own power and love of doing a thing for herself, and, too, having 

 done it the best she could, over a very elaborate one selected from a 

 whole boxful in a store marked "your choice for 10c." As aesthetic de- 

 velopment and culture help to make a person a better person, so sewing 

 can be made to help a girl to become a better girl and a more powerful 

 and valuable woman to societv. 



