, 1879-12-04
A School for the Kitchen.

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adoption of some plan which may recon
cile our young women to the department
of labor which affords them the best
compensation and most careful protec-
tion. The first necessity of such plan
is to eradicate from the minds Of young
women the idea that household work is
less honorable or a greater mark of in
ferior station than other occupations
which women follow for a living. A
merchant, who has risen to membership
in the firm of which he was once porter
or Office boy, does not seek to hide the
fact. On the contrary, his promotion is
Justly regarded as an evidence of his
ability and integrity. There should be
no greater barrier between service in
the kitchen and proErietorship in the
drawing room than there is between the
lowest and highest places in mercan-
tile firm. In either case, the present
proprietors are more competent to fill
their positions by reason of having
served in the lower ranks. But young
women do not hesitate to become mis-
tresses of house without the faintest
idea of the duties devolving upon their
position. They seem to imagine that
when they meet their husbands at the
door, help him off with his overcoat, and
make the sitting room bright with their
presence, they have done all that can be
required of them. They ring for dinner,
and if it is not well cooked tney wonder
helplesslv what the cook can be thinking
about. 1t does not occur to them that
they ought to know if the cook is in
competent or careless, and still less that
their ignorance in this respect may
bring very dark cloud over their do
mestic happiness. But the young wife
whose husband cannot afford to hire
cook is even worse of. The majority of
men are in this position. The burden of.
q wife who is helpmeet should not be
too great to be borne but when a wife
involves one or two servants, and the
waste that is incident to the average
servants undisputed sway in the kitchen,
matrimony becomes serious affair. A
critical examination of the domestic
question suggests that women should be
trained to hous excepting as men are
trained to business. Every young
woman hopes to marry and be mistress
of house, yet it is only now and then
one knows any thing about housekeeping.
When she marries she becomes the de-
pendent member of the firm Of Husband
and Wife, and her deficiencies are vital
ones. They prevent the money he
earns from insuring the home com
forts it ought to insure, and in cases of
limited income render impossible the ac
cumulations that youth should make for
age The conscientious young wife, who
sees her husbands means wasting away
in consequence of her ineapacity, often
wishes, when too late, that she had been
taught what everv woman has occasion
to practice, if to the neglect of compar-
atively useless accomplishments. If we
turn to the unmarried young women, we
find general complaint of lack Of re-
munerative employment. There is a
music teacher for every two or three
pupils, and surplus of competent pub
lie school teachers. Even the less liber-
ally paid occupations are more than full
The trouble with girls is not their un-
willingness to work, but their disinclin-
alton to any kind of work which cannot
be dropped at moments notice. They
have dread of household service, part
ly because it is confning, and partly be-
cause, in some vague way, the household
servant is thought to hold an inferior
social position. Any plan to bring girls
and the kitchen more closely together
must include guch an elevation of house
hold service as will remove this feeling.
Household serviceais now held in light
esteem partly because no fixed standard
of qualification is required in entering
upon it. The dearth of good servants is
such that ladies who are competent often
take raw material and work it up into
servants. 1t has been suggested that
school for teaching plain cooking in all
its branches would at once enable girls
to fit themselves for this department of
service, and remove the popular objection
to such service. Such school should
be open to girls who desire themselves
to take charge of their own house, and
to those who would serve for time lin
the houses of others, such school might
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