24 
House & Garden 
THE HOUSEWIFE AS MANAGER 
S EVERAL years ago we heard a great deal of talk about woman's 
place being in the home. The slogan was used as a campaign 
challenge and as a sneer. It was bandied up and down the country¬ 
side until we got pretty tired of hearing it. Since the privilege of 
voting has been given women and since their weight is being felt in 
elections the cr}’ has died down. The simple reason is that neither 
the employment of women in war work nor the radical challenges of 
the ultra-feminist has altered the fundamental fact that the home is 
a woman’s realm. Now you can banish her to the home and make it 
such a place of drudger}^ that she loathes it; or she can abide there as 
a queenly figure, director of its work. 
Thanks to the inventive genius of our manufacturers, the home has 
ceased to be a place of exile for a 
woman. The long hours that used to 
obtain in housework, the wear and 
tear on ner\TS and muscles, are being 
cut down by labor-saving equipment. 
The shortage of servants is being met 
with the same devices. 
It can never be expected that a big 
house will be totally servantless. 
Utopia is still far away. But it can 
be reasonably expected that every 
house will get along with fewer serv¬ 
ants. The hope of this expectation 
lies in two salient features of these 
times: (1) the simplifying of our 
home life; (2) the position of the 
housewife as manager. 
O NE of the reasons for the high 
cost of living has been the com¬ 
plication of our living. The past 
generation has been brought up to feel 
that so many more things are neces¬ 
sary to comfort than was the previous 
generation. Short-cuts to comfort cost 
money. The grocery order sent over 
the telephone saves steps but adds to 
the bill. The dress bought ready¬ 
made is a convenience—and an extra 
expense. The food and drink picked 
up at shops have added to the cost of 
living—especially the drink. Now- 
aday's Congress is encouraging the 
making of drinks at home, sensible 
women will take a basket on arm and 
supervise their own buying at grocery 
stores, and we are forgetting the silN 
twaddle about clothes not looking 
tailor-made. The way to meet the 
high cost of living is to simplify the 
manner of living. And the way to 
simplify^ the manner of living is to 
live more at home and to do more at 
home. 
We’ve reached the ebb-tide. The 
flood is leaving the restaurant and 
cabaret and turning toward home. 
Make no mistake about that. We are 
being cleansed with the fire that we 
ourselves kindled. The home is com¬ 
ing into its own, and with it, the 
woman in the home. 
T aking them by^ and large, our 
grandmothers were pretty good 
managers. They didn't have vacuum 
cleaners or electric toasters or tele¬ 
phones or a lot of other equipment 
that has cut down housework today, 
but, if you will remember, the)^ did 
have a very decided system in running 
and managing their households. 
Our mothers’ day saw the introduc¬ 
tion of labor-saving devices. The 
household work then stood on the 
rO A CRAYON ENLARGEMENT 
OF MY GREAT-GREAT 
GRANDFATHER 
1 
My father found you in the gloom 
Of Aunt Matilda’s attic-room, 
Where, o’er your frame a peacock-plume 
Still limply hung. 
How many years we coidd not say 
Since you were “done”; but when the gray 
Patine of time was brushed away 
You looked quite young. 
11 
We hung you then, you may recall 
Aye I hung you in the sight of all 
Above the mantel in the hall 
In honored state. 
Your beady eye and polished brow 
We much admired, and wondered how 
And what you thought of us and how ,— 
0, great Great-great. 
Ill 
How standards change and monarchs stoop! 
Gone! crayon-portraits, with the hoop- 
Skirt era and the Rogers groitp- 
And Marble bust! 
You’re in the cellar now, old Sire, 
For Nick, the house-man, to admire 
Who, shaking down the furnace-fire. 
Shakes up your dust. 
—George S. Chappell. 
threshold of a new era, but it didn't have courage to put a foot across. 
Moreover, the equipment had not reached the degree of proficiency 
where it could be considered practical. The machinery of household 
equipment complicated living. 
This present generation has the perfected machinery' and much more 
to come, but it lacks what our grandmothers had—a system, ^^■e axe 
dealing with old problems with new equipment. It is a case of old 
wine in new bottles—and we have to find a way of handling it. The 
secret, of course, is a system, a policy. 
The housewife of today is to her home what her husband is to his 
office. She is a house manager, a Domiologist, as one of the House 
& Garden contributors calls her. To be successful in that sphere she 
must apply the same principles of 
management to her work that her hus¬ 
band does to his. She must consider 
three things: (1) household policy; 
(2) household equipment; (3) em¬ 
ployed personnel. 
The employed personnel not only 
includes the cook and the other serv¬ 
ants of the house, but also the grocer 
from whom vegetables are bought, the 
butcher, the dealer in housewares. 
There is just as much reason for a 
housewife looking into the character 
of her butcher before she buys from 
him as she looks into her cook’s repu¬ 
tation before she hires her. In this 
respect she is a purchasing agent and 
she should apply the same exacting 
principles that a purchasing agent of 
a factory does. 
The household equipment can gen¬ 
erally be divided into departments, 
just as office work is divided into de¬ 
partments. There is the cooking de¬ 
partment, the laundry department and 
the cleaning department. These will 
be large and small according to the 
size of the family and the house. Each 
requires its own equipment and each 
should be kept separate—the cleaning 
instruments such as brushes, brooms, 
vacuum cleaner, dust cloths, etc., in 
their own department or closet; the 
things appertaining to the kitchen in 
the kitchen; the laundry equipment, 
soap, clothes lines, etc., in the laundry'. 
Some household managers may sav 
that this is an old story. Yes, to them. 
But hundreds of women complicate 
their household work by not using this 
departmental idea. So soon as they 
do, housework begins to straighten out. 
A 
HOUSEHOLD policy is less 
easy to define. In an office a 
policy is the way of conducting busi¬ 
ness—both the way and the purpose. 
In a house much the same can be ap¬ 
plied. In an office a policy is general¬ 
ly shaped in conference with the heads 
of departments and molded gradual!}- 
as changes of economic circumstances 
crop up. The household policy can 
only be decided in conference between 
a man and his wife. If they are wise, 
they will also call in the servants from 
time to time to discuss these subjects 
of expense and management and gen¬ 
eral domestic activity'. 
This last is a big question, but we 
are coming to it. As the housewife has 
been raised to the place of manager, so 
will the servant find her place more 
permanent because of her share in the 
household management. 
