Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-01-22
COOPERATIVE HOUSEKEEPING.

The sixty housekeepers of Evanston, ILL.,,
who essayed cooperative housekeeping, and
discharged their cooks, are still struggling
! with difficulties which cause the unregen-
crate part of societies to indulge in jeers.
The main difficulty is stated by one of the
critics as follows:
There is a dead cold void in the heart of the
house, and they find the expense of a common
kitchen greater than they had anticipated.
Then there are other drawbacks In spite of
heated hampers the food is often cold when it
reaches them. The bill of fare, too is uniform,
not individual There are roast beef days,
when the whole sixty families must eat roast
beef Roast chicken days. when. notens uolens,
| all must eat roast chicken.
This statement makes it the reverse of
strange that the attempt should fail As to
its bearing on cooperative housekeeping,
the failure is of no moment, because the at
tempt was not in the line of cooperative
housekeeping at all. 1t is an adaptation of
the plan of serving meals by caterers, which
was tried in many cities years ago, and
failed on account of its inconvenience, lack
of economy and difficulty of keeping the
food warm in transit. Another reason of
failure is apparent in the expectation that
the bill Of fare is to be varied and profuse.
Every private family much below the stan
dard of the millionaire's has its roast beef
days and chicken days; and the ordinary
mass of mankind has its hash and stew
day. That an experiment of this kind
should fail where extrayagant expectations
are entertained is not singular, but natural.
However. intelligent attempt at co-opera-
tive housekeeping to organize and divide
the domestic labor of several families is
another thing. For the families in which
housewives can afford to be kept in purely
ornamental position, the family hotel, or the
apartment house with restaurant attached,
furnishes a more economic and satisfactory
resort. But for the great majority whose
wives must do their share of the work in
keeping up the home, it remains a vital
question whether the work of number of
families cannot be united and systematized
so as to secure a very great advance over the
present state OF affairs. Certainly there
have been as yet no experiments of such
character as to impose a negative to the
probabilities which reason shows in favor of
such an idea.
In nearly every department of masculine
efforts the organization and division of work
has been successfully carried out with the
results of far greater efficiency than other
wise possible. One man will build houses,
another sell groceries, another sell hardware,
another pave the streets and so on, but the
division does not stop there. In building q
house, for example, one set OF men will do
the digging. another lay the foundations. a
third lay the brickwork, fourth do the
carpenter work, fifth the plastering, a sixth
the painting, and so on. The results are
well known to be better not only because one
man may naturally be better at carpentering,
and another at stone work, but because if
the capabilities are equal the man who gives
all his attention to carpentering can learn to
do better work than if he splits his efforts up
among half dozen trades. 1t is likely that
the failure to apply this same division of
labor to household affairs is an inheritance
from the agricultural life of the nation when
the separation of homesteads made CO.
operation impossible; but for communities
where people live in close juxtaposition the
parity of the case indicates that the CO.
operative idea, supplying this division of
labor, would yield as great an enhancement
in results as it has in other work.
Let us take the average family living in
houses costing $500 apiece. OF a group of
ten housewives. il is certain their capacities
for different kinds of housework will vary as
one star differeth from another. Some will
be better cooks than seamstresses; others
will have an especial knack for dressmaking,
and some will possess an especial art for
ironing linen in the best style. The division
can be pursued further; but the illustration
indicates one of the great gains from in
telligent organization and division of the
labor of. say ten households. 1t is clear,
too, that such a combination should develop
other marked advantages. A large part of
its supplies could be bought at wholesale.
When tentative experiments had demon
strated the practicability of the plan, a
great economy could be secured by abolish
ing the kitchen part of each dwelling house,
and grouping the individual home about a
central kitchen, storeroom, cellar and
laundry.
Of course the difficulty would be, first in
overcoming the prejudice in favor of the
present state Of affairs; and, second, in in
ducing women to adapt themselves to the
work of organized household labor. Both of
these difficulties are likely to be so great as
to doom all early attempts to failure The
advantages must be demonstrated and
learned step by step before the female half
of society can understand how to work to-
gether as men do. Whether such organiza-
tion will ever be possible or not we can rest
assured that all attempts at cooperative
housekeeping which try to make idle ladies
of housewives will necessarily be economic
failures.