Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1896-03-01
THE HoME-MAKiNG PROBLEM.
By Teaching the Girls Reform in
 Housekeeping ne@y Re Wrought.

By Teaching the Girls E Reform in
 Housekeeping Ru@y Be Wrought.
 Mrs. Etta Morse Hudders holds hew key to the domestic problem. It is education, of course" she said the other day. "But it is the education of our future, rather than our present servants. It concerns itself with the children, those who have nothing to un- learn and no bad habits to get rid of, whose minds are still pliable and in'- questionable For example, 1 haze found it an utter impossibility to teach full grown woman how to hold q broom properly, and not one full grown woman in hundred holds a broom properly. She presses upon it and holds it sideways and digs the dirt llp out of the carpet in a manner as reyolt- ing as it is impetent. What she should do is to hold the broom straight up ald down, and sweep with short, light, quick strokes close to the carpet. It's lust the same way with hundreds of other domestic details. Women are not only hopelessly ignorant of them, put apparently are incapable of mas tering them unless the training begins at an early age. My plan proposes to establish cooking schools in all the thicl1ly settled dictricts of the city, in which school children may be taught not only how to prepare foods in the best way, but what foods to buy in or der to attain the greatest amount of nutriment at the least cost. The prac- teal force of the plan is at once appar- ent, as an article on Our Girls in Tene- ment Houses, says: If we begin to train little hands as well as little minds, and wait long enough, we shall have trained, if not reformed, grandmoth- CTS. The working girls clubs are do- ing good work, but they do not begin on material early enough to achieve the best results. It is impossible to overestimate the value of having the earliest teaching correct To my mind, it is the solution of the domestic problem, which is nothing more or less than skilled service in the home.
 By domestic problem however, 1 do not alone mean the servant prob lem That is, indeed, portentous question, but not so portentous nor so important as the domestic question. When the latter is solved it will mean reform in hundred ways. More than half the trouble of this world comes from women not knowing how to be homekeepers not housekeepers = though precious few of them are quail flied for that = but perseryers and eheerishers of the home. This is true of all classes of society, but especially of the poorer classes. Give work ingman good dinner and insure him a quiet. comfortable, do-os-he-pleases evening, and he will be much less like ly to frequent the liquor saloon. That ireads close upon the heels of the tenn perance question, and in a much more practical manner than most answers to it do But the wife must know how to provide and prepare the dinner, and also how to insure the evenings comfort. All this constitutes home making, an accomplishment that is, unfortunately, much out of fashion, but which is the keystone to nothing less than national prosperity. This is the object of our plan-home-m -mak' ing. Of course, our great and imper- ative need is funds The manufac- turers have already donated enough appurtenances to equip several kitch- ems, but we want to employ the most competent teachers, and to do that takes money. In time, we hope that the same plan will be adopted by other cities. Every community must see the value of promoting the home spirit, and that can only be done by making homes attractive. Why, at present, the average child of the slums doesn't know the meaning of the word home" N Y SIn