The Corvallis gazette. [volume] (Corvallis, Or.) 1862-1899, 1879-09-05
Cooperation in Housekeeping.

Says the New York Times. The man
who, to an inquiry how he came to marry
an Irish girl, replied that marrying an
American one would have compelled him
to hire an Irish girl to take care of her,
showed what is coarsely known as sshorse-
sense, if he looked only TO the question
OF getting necessary work done; for, by
some unexplained law of compensation a,
it does not seem to be practicable to get
brains and muscles in the same body.
The dexterity, nimbleness, readiness in
emergencies, and tact, which are charm
ing in the woman of to-day, are obtained
at the price of physical strength; what,
in New England, is called faculty has
lost much of the endurance that once
made it effective. Miranda knows per-
fectly how to do, with the utmost of neat
ness and good sense, and at the minimum
of labor. every detail in domestic life
but her strength is insufficient, SO she
must call in Bridget to cruelty her daily.
She is the brain; Bridget is the muscle;
but the muscle will not obey. Bridget
is can't, won't and don't personiied. She
has been dimning the eyes, fecking the
hair, thinning the hands, clouding the
brightness and shortening the days of
her American sister during the last
quarter century.
The race of servants-if it is really
written in the order of creation that
there shall be such thing-is still q
barren ideality; events have not yet pro-
duced it. There is no relief except in
lessening the dependence on servants,
by SO reducing domestic work that it
may be done by very small families, and
that upon all it may bear less severely.
There seems to be less opportunity for
applying in practice the cooperative
principle, which is simply to do in one
place, with especial facilities, some of
the heaviest portions of work-as if done
by the gas companies distributing the
results and concentrating the means.
The first step should be to make more of
the laundry. Instead of doing the
severest part of work, to which only
robust women are equal, on small
scale in thousands of scattered houses,
unite the work and thus enlarge the
facilities. The cities are full of so-called
laundries, which consist of cellar or
equivalent place, where somebody uses
on small scale the familiar old imple
ments; but, except in the great hotels,
there are very few establishments to be
found which carry out the idea, which is,
10 utlllZ0 uldcu1uofy duu ulSpeuSe Will
muscles, as in erything else that is
done economically. There has been q
laundry in Troy for many years which
receives and returns articles by express
chiefly collars and cuffstover quite an
area of country in three States at least.
In towns sufficiently compact it might
be practicable to extend the plan further
to cooking. The late M. Blot devised a
scheme of that sort in both New York and
Brooklyn, but it failed, for some reason
we do not now recall. In using the word
cooperative, however, we do not mean
that the scheme should necessarily be a
mutual one, like cooperative store
only that it shall secure concentration.
Better administrative ability would be
necessary, and more practical difficulties
might arise in carrying out the mutual
plan than in letting private ownership do
everything. On the other hand, the
partly cooperative scheme, if it once
conquers success, has manifest advan-
tages. It is impossible to deny, how
ever, that any way which should dispose
of the washing and ironing, and Tighten
the cooking, would go far to change
domestic life for American women. Co
operation has left housekeeping alone
hitherto. Is there not reasonably
promising field there for giving new
turn to it?