Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1911-08-19

er and the homamaker, and for those
duties the learning acquired in the
schools often does much to unfit
them.
The result OF this unfaithfulness in
the foundation education is seen in
the extravagant habits of our mod
ern housekeeping, the ignorant
waste where the young lady finds
herself unable to teach and direct
her servants, in cases where she is
not compelled to do her own work,
and wearying of her attempts to be
queen of her own household she al
lows her little kingdom to live with
oft head. Her husband finds that
the expenses of married life is far
greater than he had anticipated and
the comfort less. AS the expendi-
lures increase he sees that his hard
work on one side is only to supply
the means OF wastefulness on the
other side, and that his children are
growing up with notions of life
which nothing can satisfy.
We need not wonder that great
discomfort prevails among many
men. 1t is this extravaganza and in
competence among women that &C
counts for the few marriages.
Today much of the education is so
managed as to unfit women for prac-
teal life. 1 would make all the i'm
provementS Of education and the &C
compfishments OF education and the
accomplishments OF manners subor-
dinate to the duties of the home, the
means TO make the home happy. God
speed the day when French will
yield to fritters, poetry to pies. when
the most studious will excel in stews
and the professors of music will play
upon pots and pans, the female pres
ident will rule the roast and stu
dents are taught to be women rather
than ladies.
But the man who prizes woman
chiefly because she is capable of per-
forming tasks of this kind does not
deserve to have a good wife He
should employ a housekeeper and
pay her good wages and the woman
whose idea of duty stops here and
whose highest ambition is to keep
house we'll. has a poor conception of
her proper dignity.
The FAULT lies with the parents.
Unless they can give their daughter
a fortune when she marries, they
perpetrate a fraud upon the young
man If by her lack of domestic train
ing they make her unfit for the po-
sition of wife in the home of the
young man who has to make his way
in the world.
True education should prepare a
young woman for her peculiar duties
as mans companion and coworker
and the nursing mother of the rising
generation. But no, the American
girl likes her liberty and talks
about the drudgery of household
duties.
The servant problem has become
one OF the most perplexing problems
in kmerica-our young women open
ly declare that they won't make
slaves of themselves and do house
work. so there you are-women
won't do it themselves and there are
not enough servants, bad as they
are, to go around, and the result is
that our cities are rapidly filling up
with boarding houses, hotels and
apartments, and these hundreds of
thousands of bachelors and spinsters
who ought to be in modest homes of
their own, like their fathers and
mothers. who began life in humble
way and realized the dreams of their
youth by working and rising to-
gether Instead of aping the vulgar
rich, not only the poor, but those of
modest circumstances, must revive
the old-fashioned virtues of thrift,
domestic economy and saving up for
a rainy day.
But a young wife may not be able
to do all the work required to be
done in the house. Not able. Not
able to cook and wash and mend and
clean the house for one young man
and herself, and that young man her
husband, too, who is quite willing to
work from morning until night, to
put ur with a cold lunch, to get up
and light the fire, to do anything that
love can contrive to spare her labor,
conduce to her convenience and pro-
mote her happiness. Womanliness
ami good housekeeping go together.
Society requires Of the man a GER
tain training when he enters a pro-
fession where great tissues are at
stake and men as a rule do master
the business which they follow and
it should be equally as binding upon
a woman to master the details of
hnmemaking.
nnAvInN' NAbo