Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1904-10-25
A REAL FIELD FoR WOMEN.
French Chefs Are Being Supplanted
BY Our Cooking School Graduates.


This is good news that comes from
Philadelphia, if it is only true. 1t is
that many Of the rich with big estab-
lishmepts are replacing high priced
French chefs with women who have
learned their trade in American cook
ing schools. The explanation is not
patriotism, but poverty, at least COM
parative poverty. The shrinking of
incomes caused by the slump in the
stock market last year led many rich
people into retrenchment and this
substitution of women cooks for high
priced men is one Of the devices to
tide over hard times. The interesting
part of the story is that the substi-
tutes are said to be satisfactory, or at
least their cooking is. 1t is even ad-
ded that these women might hope IN
which used to be paid to men cooks if
they had executive ability enough to
run big kitchen. One OF two women
run theaters, a few conduct large
shops and perhaps in time women will
develop ability enough to manage the
kitchen of country place, and to
cook also. At least the salaries paid
in that field are well worth trying for
and far exceed those earned by wom-
en-, or by all save small minority
of men, in the professions which wo-
men have shown such anxiety 10
enter.
A curious, even pathetic side Of the
movement for the emancipation OF.
women has been that while women
were anxious and proud to fill small
nitches at the bottom of the profess
sions which used to be considered as
exclusive fields for men, they have al
lowed men to usurp the places at
the top in the lines which were once
thought of as peculiar to women.
Not only were the best paid cooks
men, but the best paid dressmakers
and milliners as well. When able
women were looking for new fields
it has always been a good deal Of a
puzzle that they did not really con-
quer these original spires of wo-
mems dominions and pitch the in
truding men out. Apparently some
women are at last turning taeir eyes
toward the private Kitchens where
salaries running into thousands are
paid. There as room for a great
many more women there and the re-
wards are of professional size.
One objection to the work on the
part of women may be that cooking
of the sort demanded is both sci
ence and an art, and that excellence
in it requires years of patient and
faithful study and practice. Prac-
tice over range may not be harder
than on a piano stool, but it isn't
nearly so ornamental, and the girl
who spends three or four years learn
ing all there is to be known about
cooking cannot very we'll prevent
that she is just having fun. The
cooking schools have made this sort
of serious study easier than it used
to be, and, in spite Of the IuG;crous
results achieved by rich girls who
just smatter at cooking in them, they
seem to have done some good.
1t is commonly said, too, that the
social barrier against domestic ser
vice keeps women of education or OF
American background out of the
work. That is no doubt true so far
as general housework in ordinary
homes goes, but it is difficult to be-
lieve in any very serious social bar
rier against woman who earns So
900 or $4,000 year running the
kitchen of some plutocrat. Who is
going to administer the snub of pro-
fessionaldom TO her? VIII it be a
$4,000 doctor or a $500 teacher or
an $500 lawyer, who will rise and OBJ
ject to a woman earning four or five
times as much to the clubs and So
cieties which are open to profession
al women? That would be spec
tacle for mirth truly. Club women
furnish a good many entertaining
stories for the newspapers, but no
election in a federation ever equalled
the interest which would be COM
manded by the blackballing Of a wo-
man cook earning the income COM
manded by men in that business on
the ground that she was servant
If women really have the brains to
cook as we'll as men do, they would
better start in and prove II. The pay
is far beyond anything they can hope
ia command in medicine or law or
teaching, and the social position OF
any woman who earns that income
will take care of itself. If women
of brains are coming to see this, the
woman movement" will grow less
lopsided. Brooklyn Eagle.