544 



Federation of Women's Institutes. 



[Sept., 



" Handicrafts " indicates a lesson learnt as to a national charac- 

 teristic. The original idea was to encourage industries on com- 

 mercial lines. The Institute was to turn out articles by the 

 gross to provide the Institute with funds. The County Organiser 

 was to be responsible for supplying raw material and for making 

 contracts to supply ' ' the trade ' ' with the products of the various 

 industries; she was supposed to compile a register of Home In- 

 dustries in England and to keep in touch with like developments 

 in other countries. Alas! in Dorset, at any rate, we did not like 

 or understand undertaking contracts in our spare time, and, 

 except in a few cases, we did not care to work up to standard. 

 If we did make things the trade would take, we liked them to 

 be sold in our own county at some shop where a relation could 

 go and report as to their position in the window! By means 

 of classes and showing at exhibitions, however, we still aim at 

 making articles up to trade standard for orders, the object of 

 exhibiting being more to obtain orders than to sell our exhibits 

 bazaar fashion. 



Meanwhile we work at the basis of this branch — the improving 

 of each individual's work — and have widened our list of handi- 

 crafts to include several *' home crafts." The English house- 

 wife has not a good name for thrift, but on the programme of 

 any Dorset Women's Institute there are certain to be found 

 demonstrations, lectures, or classes on a variety of home crafts. 

 It almost seems as though thriftlessness is largely a product of 

 the system of education in the past. Lessons in dressmaking, 

 plain needlework, embroidery, millinery, dyeing, all branches 

 of cookery, laundry work, upholstery, rugmaking, cobbling, and 

 slipper and glovemaking, are asked for by nearly all, and the 

 classes are always well attended and followed with much keen- 

 ness. So great has the demand become for instruction in 

 scientific cutting-out and dressmaking that we have had to ask 

 the County Education Committee if it can provide an Instructor. 

 The request for such classes was formerly not sufficient in Dorset 

 to justify the employment of a teacher of dressmaking, but a 

 change has come, even since the War. and is in no small way 

 attributable to the study of home economics — one of the objects 

 of the Women's Institute Movement. The passing of the phase 

 for anything cheap and the incidence of the new desire for 

 instruction is remarkable and noteworthy. 



Naturally enough the county could not produce enough In- 

 structors, for handicrafts of all kinds are in great demand. A 

 very satisfactory fortnight of classes to train Instructors was 



