The Washington herald., 1915-10-27
AS SEEN BY A WASHINGTON WOMAN
BETTER HoUSEKEEPERs NOW.

"The art and science of homemak-
ing and housekeeping is passing"
THE present tendency for women
to go out in the world is tending to
destroy the fabric of the home"
Unless our girls are again taught
to stay at home, taught to keep house
as our grandmothers were the solidity
of the family life of the nation will
be in danger"
We have all heard statements of
this sort so frequently that we are
beginning to feel as if it were a fact
that women are, to say the least,
pretty poor homemakers nowadays.
1t is encouraging indeed, then, to
hear the optimism of Mrs. Alice E.
Whitaker, president of the House
keepers Alliance She says that after
close and accurate study of condi-
tons as they have been for the past
twenty years, she is convinced that
never before did women pay so much
attention, and make such a success of
housekeeping and homemaking as at
the present time. We are better
housewives now than our grand
mothers were. And what is more,
women of today like housekeeping
better, because it is simpler and freer
from drudgery.
What is the hue and cry about any
way The schools, little and big,
public and private, are giving our
daughters training in up-to-date
housekeeping. These same daughters
would be able, if we gave them
chance, to give their mothers cards
and spades in culinary and domestic
questions.
Even the girl who has never had
any training at home and who has
never been taught housewifery at
school is quite as likely to make
good homcmaker as the home-seclud- !
cd girl of a generation OF so ago who
did her homework along traditional
lines only. For the business girl of /
today realizes her ignorance, she
realizes that she has much to learn
and that the one to learn this from
is the specialist. She doesn't go to
some old wife to get lot of time
worn conjectures, superstitions and
gucsses. She goes to some one who
actually knows, some one who is
specialist in her own branch of work,
and it is ten to one that after years
practice she will be a more efficient
housewife than the girl who has got
her training in the traditional school.
Another Washington woman with
whom we were talking recently, as
keen an observer in her way as is
Mrs. Whitaker, is not so optimistic
about the present housewives prob
lens.
THE trouble with us nowadays"
she said, as that we all want to eat
chops and none of us want hash. We
all of us want to shop in the most
exclusive shops and we all of US ape
or strive to ape the woman of
wealth"
at is part OF our American sys-
TEN, suppose" she went on, for
every one to want the best. The
housewife who keeps house on the
income feels that she ought
to order the same sort OF things as
her neighbor of many possessions.
When you show a woman how to
convert the cheaper cuts of meat into
palatable dishes she is distinctly
bored 1t is such trouble she
says, why do all that when chops
and steaks are so much easier"
Well, the judgment of this COM
mentor is probably true in a good
many cases; but do you think that
there are any more lazy, slipshop
housewives nowadays than there
used to be? For, of course, this I'M
to use cheaper cuts of
meat is really nothing more or less
than the garden variety of laziness,
"sloth," as our colonial ancestors
would have called it.
Don't you imagine that there have
been lazy housewives since the dawn
of history? And don't you suppose
that the other folk have raised their
hands in dismay as ave do today and
said, as we say now, Such are the
times in which we livel If the ten
dency continues there will be no
nome life lett"
Don't you suppose that even among
the good old Puritan DANES there
were those who would prefer to set
a dish of bean porridge cold, bean
porridge in the pot nine days old"
before their worthy sires instead of
going to the trouble of preparing a
really suitable meal. Only in those