The morning call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1878-1895, 1895-01-28
so SAYS HELEN CAMPBELL.
A Plan for Remedying all Our
Household Grievances.
COOKING WILL THEN Be A DELIGHT.
How People Of Moderate Means Can Par
take Of Meals Prepared by
Skilled Chefs.

considerable interest mas Deen arOuSeu
among the members of the Collegiate
Alumn@ Association by paper upon
"Co-operative Housekeeping, which
Helen Campbell. the well-known sociolo-
gist, read before the alumn9 at the Gen.
hurry Club on Saturday. The conservative
ladies experienced a positive shock, that
any one could live with soul so dead as
to seriously advocate severing the connec-
ton between the kitchen and the home,
while other women were almost allured at
the prospect of being freed from the wor-
ries of a servant and the preparation of
three meals day.
When asked yesterday to describe CO.
operative housekeeping, Helen Campbell
said:
sWhat we understand is to have one big,
well organized kitchen, presided over by
skilled chefs, instead of perhaps fifty little
kitchens, where unskilled help or over
worked mothers try to do the cooking,
''Look at all the homes in block! Each
one is doing it's cooking in its own way,
and very unskillful way it often is. Co
operative housekeeping would arrange one
big kitchen for the whole block"
In reply to the question whether each
householder would have the privilege Of
cooking her own family meals in the big
kitchen, Mrs. Campbell replied, laughing |:
mo one would enter the kitchen except
the authorized person. The cook would
probably go insane if other people came
crowding in, for In genuine cooperative
housekeeping your chef is in charge Of the
kitchen. Of course the word cooperate,
taken. literally, would mean that every one
had access to the culinary department, but
it makes one recoil to think of the 6endish
muddle that would ensqe if they had.
Think of fifty women cooking In the same
kitchenl" and Helen Campbell shuddered
as she pictured the exciting scene.
1.-THE charm of cooperative housekeep-
ing is that it gives the entire management
of preparing the food and doing the house.
work into the hands of skilled people, art
lists, in fact. 1t would be like living in a
big hotel, only the comfort would be
greater. Any number of families could
would be appointed to manage the help
and appoint a steward to do the purchas-
ing, and the meals could better be deliv-
cred to each family at an appointed hour,
or those who preferred it could dine in a
table d'hote way.
at must be clearly understood that CO.
operative housekeeping does not destroy
home life. Each family could have its own
dining-room and its own china and table
service. The idea is that instead of being
cooked in a small kitchen ten feet from
the dining-room the meals would be cooked
in big kitchen 100 or 200 yards away"
In answer to the question whether
women would be debarred from doing any
cooking at all, if they consented to live un-
der the cooperative plan, Helen Campbell
replied that it would be good idea to let
those who liked a moderate amount of
cooking retain the culinary appliances in
their houses.
$50 many people think, when you begin
to talk about the scheme, that it would en-
tirely rob them of the joys of putting up
berries and making pies. There are women
who cannot live without moderate
amount of cooking. They would put up
berries over an alcohol lamp rather than
not put them up at all, and they would
make pies if they had nothing but slate
to make them on and a Sodawater bottle to
roll out the paste with.
''Those women are not going to be de-
prived of the pleasure of cooking, and the
cooperative system would allow them
latitude to do it in their own homes, though
none but professional cooks would work in
the common kitchen.
"The idea can be worked out in a
thousand different ways. People can live
in a model apartment-house, like the
palace that is being built in Chicago, where
every comfort and luxury are being pro-
vided for cooperative housekeeping, or, if
the right people get together, cooperative
housekeeping can be carried on in a num-
Der of smaller homes, like the ones we live
in at present"
As an additional emphasis to her ideas
on cooperative housekeeping, Helen Camp
bell declared that she considered the
present mode of living "infernal." 1.-THE
frail wooden homes, the proximity to one
another and the consequent noises are the
cause of half the prevalent insanity" she
said. when people build for cooperative
housekeeping there will be more real
privacy and home life, for the houses will
be solid and sound-proof."