The Idaho Republican. [volume] (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1904-1932, 1910-06-24
A PLEA FOR BETTER, HAPPIER
HOME LIFE
An Appreciation of the Department of
Domestic Science of the Acad-
envy of Idaho
BY Mrs. Horace Miles Doty, Member
of Study aapro popata1ln

BY Mrs. Horace Miles Doty, Member
of Study League, Pocatello.
No thinking person can contem-
plate with Indifference. the tendency
of the American people to abandon
homelife. We all agree in our minds
that the home is the cornerstone, not
only of the nation, but of Heaven as
we'll; but what have we done in our
selves to retain that which is the
nearest approach of the Kingdom of
Heaven upon earth; and avert the
dangers arising from the herding to-
and conditions of men and women,
having neither legal nor moral re-
strictions placed upon them.
We learn from Holy Writ that
"God selleth the solitary in families"
Since He so sets the approval of In
finity upon the home it seems hardly
safe or right to abandon the tried and
happy road for a dangerous, man
made highway whose grade is down
hill all the way.
Why, we wonder, the tendency to
sink the identity of the family life
and choose form of existence even
more patriarchal than that of Abra-
hams time, for even then the head
of the family had authority, always
respected which led the way to
things uplifting, always struggling
after good.
But the present head of the tribe
being worldly ambition-wedded to
sensual pleasure can hardly be de-
pended upon as wise counselor.
In our great cities the head of the
family is rarely more than a mere
money-getting machine or possibly a
lay figure wound up for social
career.
In the former case he rarely sees
his family except at meals, and they
are frequently of so dyspepsia
breeding nature, that he more and
more frequently remains down town
and knows his family only by its in
creasing demands upon his pocket
book.
Meantime what of the family? In
the great apartment houses there re-
m of 10 nj TO
prepare the meals and a maid or two
usually is employed by families of
very moderate means. Indeed Mr..
Hill very truly remarks upon "the
increased cost of high-living"
The wife may be one of. several
classes of wives. She may spend her
time in idleness or worse. She need
have no very marked tendency to-
wards uselessness or wrong doing.
All that is necessary is an emptiness
of right ideals. The human soul
cannot be vacuum. One apartment
house or tenement needs but one
strong personality of false or low
ideals and the results are unmistak-
able and intellectually disastrous.
You notice we say wife not
mother for this is too often the only
true term.
Again the wife may be a wage
Garner, because she prefers a bust
ness career to domestic life-in other
words she is emancipated.
In that case, the evening which
should be the bright, happy crown of
the day, proves simple business
meeting of husband and wife, or is
spent in very questionable pleasure,
enervating both to body and soul.
Or the wife may in some weak,
cheap way and slip-sho6 manner try
to reflect in her house, some dimly
remembered home.
Now we have not, in that last par
agraph struck the keynote of the
situation?
Does not that phrase "slip-shod
fashion" explain much?
Is it not because of lack of prop
er training that domestic service has
become distasteful and all house
work is considered mental and de-
grading?
For many years now the trend of
popular education has been wholly
away from home-making which in
cludes housekeeping.
This ought never to have been and
was not a fault of the educational
system, but of home training--or
rather lack of it. The daughter
was encouraged to place a far too
high estimate upon perfectly mani
cured hands, huge pompadores of
false hair, whose arrangement occu-
pied all her leisure time, while her
soul was politely ignored in a per-
fectly conventional way, and left I'M
clothed and unadorned.