CHAPTER 79 



Housing and Clothing 



By Mrs. Cecil Baker 

 Textile and Clothing Expert, Chicago, III. 



Among the many improvements that have come to the farm in the 

 last generation, those to the farm-house have been the slowest. Many a 

 farm woman still carries on her work in the same sort of kitchen, with the 

 same tools, in the same way that her grandmother did. Her husband has 

 new barns designed according to the latest ideas of farm building, filled 

 with the most improved machinery. His high-bred stock drink from a 

 trough filled by a windmill or a gasoline engine, while his wife must often 

 carry the water necessary for her operations, by the pailful, sometimes a 

 considerable distance. If the farmer's wife and children are to have the 

 full advantage of the new life made possible to them by better roads, auto- 

 mobiles, telephones, better schools and community associations of all sorts, 

 the woman must have more time and energy for the new things. She must 

 have her share of the improvements that come to the farm. 



Leisure to the farm woman can come only through better facilities for 

 work. The amount of work to be done has not markedly decreased, help 

 from the outside is difficult to obtain, but the conveniences which make for 

 efficiency have multiplied. Some expense is involved in obtaining labor- 

 saving appliances, but this must be considered in the house as it is in the 

 barn or the field, as an investment, the profit to come to be in the form of a 

 freer, fuller life for the woman, which will mean in the end a fuller, saner 

 life for the family. 



House Plan Essentials. — Not only labor-saving devices are needed, 

 but more thought in planning and arranging the house and its furnishings. 

 Health is a vital factor; better sanitation and better facilities for personal 

 hygiene aid in conserving it. 



Finally, the more intangible psychological effect of the home on the 

 family must be dealt with. This relates to the provision for the individual 

 needs of the members of the family and the esthetic requirements of the 

 home, and is more important than is sometimes understood. 



The first requisite of a good house plan is that it shall fulfil the needs 

 of the family that is to live in it. A farm-house must be planned for the 

 farm, and not be a copy of the town house; the needs are not the same. 

 A four-room cottage may be planned to meet the requirements of a certain 

 family, but it is not likely to do so if taken from a builder's catalog. Four 

 walls with a roof will give shelter, but only with intelligent thought will it 



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