St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1891-09-01
WANT OF METHOD
Lies at the Bottom of Hearta che
in Homework.

Lies at the Bottom of Hearta ches
in Homework.
At the bottom of all the heartache
and headache caused by modern house
work there usually lies one trouble
want of method. Only within the last
hundred years has there been any
effort made to train woman, SAYS
recent writer in the New York
Tribune. She was regarded as being
to be governed by instinct or intuition,
and all her work was expected to be
done by some sweet haphaZard method
which should make itself right in the
end by some rule unknown to every law
of nature. Any one who suggested
direct rules of doing homework
was held up to derision as
game of chance, and success and failure
were looked upon generally as matters
of luck. The breadmaker who meas
ured the ingredients for her bread was
looked upon as little less than daft. The
natural result of want of method i'm
breadmaking at home was the coming
in of the foreign baker, whose
loaves, though inferior in every way
to good homemade loaf. could always
be depended upon to be of uniform
quality. The baker produced loaves
which were always the same size and
quality, while the domestic loaf though
delicious at times, was often a failure,
owing to the want of method. When
home methods become systematic
methods then the home baker may come
into 2ctive competition with the profess
sional baker.
Though there are thousands of women
who could bake better bread than the
tradesmeD bakers, and would gladly
earn the money for doing so, they have
not been able to gam any considerable
market because they cannot be depended
on for a positively uniform result.
Whenever woman conducts the work
of baking by purely business methods,
bakes her bread by strict uniform rule
as baker does, and charges only the
regular price for it, she finds remuner-
alive market at once for her work.
From remote generations men have
taught to do their work by rule. No
man hires a laborer without engaging
his time for a certain number of hours.
The man servant knows distinctly when
and what time he must devote to
his work. The female servant
alone is expected to do her work in a
happy-go-easy way. At one time she is
looked at other times. The trouble with
servants is largely due to want
of order in laying out their work
and making them adhere rigidly
to it. The average maid-of-allwOrk has
some reason i'll rebelling against her po-
sitiOn when her work depends, as it often
does, upon the whimsical fances of the
mistress, who drives her from one thin5
to another without system or order.
Strange as it may seem, it Is yet trne
that there are no housekeepers who
have so little trouble with their help as
those who exact to the uttermost that
is required, but who do not break into
the routine of work by ordering all
manner of unexpected and unnecessary
drudgery. The secret of peace in
the household, of freedom from the
thousand and one petty worries induced
by domestic mismanagement, lies in one
brief word-method. When women are
trained to do their household work as
craftsmen do theirs, when the head of
a house manages her help with
the same exactness that the master
workman manages his men, making
sure that every stroke of work tells to-
ward the end, then we shall begin to see
a solution of the problems of domestic
service. The problems present them
selves on every side, and have even
reached point at which they threaten
to turn our homes into vast hostelries,
to be managed on the cooperative plan.