New-York tribune., 1919-09-06
old Hearths, Ne1u Times

To tho Editor Of The Tribune.
CIR: I beg to answer the challenge OF
~ your correspondent, Mrs. Phelps, to
the college graduate. She says: "But
since women have acquired college educa-
tion and professional. careers in such num-
bers, they apparently have come to feel
that all things connected with housework
are contemplate and unworthy the atten-
tion of an intelligent person."
My answer to this is that the average
college woman, I know her, who has
elected to found a home and hopes to find
her happiness in it, does not find "ail
things connected with housework contemp-
tlbe" and unworthy of her intelligent at
tenton, but, rather, finding certain phases
OF it very much to her dislike is giving her
best attention to the task of eliminating
them. And this not by throwing the
unpleasant chores to some one else to do
for her and thus evading her response
bility. but by studying and experimenting
much as the business executive must at
tack his business problems If he is to get
larger return for the money ard labor
invested in his production.
The modern educated woman who has
earned her own living is not afraid of
work. She is. perhaps, capable of doing a
grea. deal more than her mother or her
grandmother before her, because she has
enjoyed superior mental training and be-
cause she has had an opportunity to study
and apply business methods and so has had
her nascent executive ability more fully
developed.
But there are certain types of work about
the house which she does not like, not be-
cause they disagreeable per Sc, but be-
cause they are repetitions and a drudgery,
because, in short, they make no demand
upon the mind and yet make so great
demand upon the body that the mind and
the spirit are dullcd by them.
You might suppose that while doing such
mechanical things as sweeping, making
beds or washing dishes one could easily
allow the mind to play with higher
thoughts, but this is not the case The
woman who tries to combine the mental
and the manual in this manner soon finds
that she is doing neither the one nor the
other we'll and that the only way by which
to get houscwork done quickly is to think
about it while you are doing it-always to
be thinking ono move ahead so as to waste
no time between moves!
In these rapidly changing times each gen
Grafton of women seem to find themselves
struggling for another phase of their free
dom. First, they fought for education, then
for political freedom and now for economic
freedom, in and outside of the home We
find ourselves to-day living in houses built
for another generation, for whom servants
were as easily procurable as furniture or
for people who do not know how or do not
care to use their heads to save their feet
and so, in turn, to save their heads again.
Some of US have inherited these houses and
must live in them whether we would or
not, fer nc one wants to be burdened with
such elaborated and complicated contrap-
tons. and have not the money to build
a labor saving, time-saving. self-cleaning
affair in their stead.
We are, in short, living in the kind of.
homes our ancestors bequeathed to u.s. with
the tastes and the desires they bred in US