Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1902-07-19
BAD COOKS ONE CAUSE
OF DOMESTIC INFELICITY

OF DOMESTIC INFELICITY
The failure of present-dav women
to make the home comfortable and
attractive and their inability to cook
ana sew properly is, according to the
Delief OF the Chicago bureau of char
tiles, responsible for large percent
age of the cases of estrangement be-
tween husbands and wives among the
poor. In the last issue of its Weekly
Bulletin the bureau makes Il strong
plea to charity workers for the edu-
cation of girls and household duties
The Bulletin says:
If the home is to be the center and
root of our civilization it must be made
a place worth while going to and
spending time in. 1t is the girls who
must be taught this lesson and arous-
ed to the nobility of their calling
! We are hearing clarion, notes on this
subject sounding from even the uni
verSity halls. The men and women
of thought are realizing the faults
of the old education that looked well
to filing the head with facts. Presi-
dent q. Stanley Hall of Clark uni
versity says: The home should be
served by every child, who should feel
himself useful and integral mem
Der of it, with duties. Every girl
should cook, sew, clean, polish and
perhaps wash-have something to do
with flowers, develop some domestic
taste and pride, in place of the shame
so often felt by high school girls for
| their lowly homes, for which their
education often breeds distaste
x-h H.
soft hands in the young suggest
soft brain; that hand and brain both
grow and are educated together.
The kitchen is the heart of the home;
its industries, intelligently under
stood, are among the most educa-
tional of all possible influences, and
to overcome the alienation school
often breeds for home life in the
modern American girl is one of our
most serious problems"
Women, however, who are interest
ed in public welfare and charities are
not inclined to place the blame wholly
on their sex, but agree that model
housekeepers are jewels, and their
work about the house goes a long
way toward making homes comfort
able and attractive.
1t is tremendously overstating
facts to say that a large number of
the cases of arrangements among
the poor are due to lack of ability
upon the part of the wife to make
the home comfortable and attrac-
tive" said Miss Jane Adams. Every
often the home is uncomfortable
! through no fault of the woman. 1t
certainly is trying task for a wo-
man with several children to make
home of two or three rooms ideally
comfortable. Thousands are forced
by circumstances to live in still more
cramped quarters than / speak of
1t is true great many are unclean.
Personally | do not know of a single
case where the woman's inability
TO make the home comfortable has
furnished the sole ground of com
plant in the separation of a hus-
band and wife. There are always
tributary causes. OF course a neat
housekeeper is a jewel. but that
quality comes far from being every
thing. There are many tidy women,
we all know, who are capable of max
ing themselves decidedly disagree
able
proportion of women who fail to- do
their part in home life intenigently,"
said DIR. Frances Dickinson, than
of men who fail to make intelligent
provision for homes. Manual train
ing and domestic science should be
taught to boys and girls alike. \
knowledge of both is essential to
them in home life. Later, in adult |
life, the young men and young wo-
men in the colleges should be taught |
normal anatomy and physiology. |
If they were given a course in physi- |
ology they would receive a know
ledge of food chemistry. Then there |
would be no more harping about |
eating this and that food. The ma
chine way of living would be done |
away with. In the cities the boys |
and girls of today are brought up in
fiat buildings. Flat life is the ruin
alton of home life for children"
Every girl should be taught all the
little things necessary to proper
said DIR. Anna Dryer.
There is much in making the home
attractive, and above all, in keeping |
it clean. Every woman should be
proud to be the queen of a household.
There are duties that devolve upon
a husband, too. He should be a good
provider. of course. He ought to see
that his wife has some entertain
ment outside of the home. He
should take her to the theatre &C.
casionally."