Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1920-12-16
DOROTHY DIX TALKS
BY DOROTHY DIX
The Moving Picture
Problem
Copyright, 1920, by the Wheeler Syndi-
cate, Inc.
<tD Efficiency, what crimes are COM
mitted in thy name!" we might well


mitted in thy name!" we might well
- cry out, as Madam ROLAND said OF
liberty as she was being taken to the scafold
to die in it's name.
For these be the days when we have made
/ little tin god of system, and when we con-
slider it pious act to sacrifice every COM
fort, and convenience, and impulse on the
altar of routine, which false prophets nave
assured is the one and only way by which
we may achieve efficiency.
This process of turning human beings into
automatic self-starting and stelf-stopping
machines, has been vogue among men for
several years-where, by the way, it hasn't
worked out according to schedule. But 1T Is
one of the theories that sound so plausible
that anyone will give it the trial once any
how.
And now a strenuous effort is being made
to introduce it into the home. If you pick
up any woman's magazine, you will find
carefully Worked-out budget, compiled by old
maids, and old bachelors, and wealthy stat
isticians who have never personally grap-
pied with the problem Of feeding and cloth
ing six or seven children en- shoestring In
come, telling you just exactly how every
penny should be spent.
They know precisely how many pairs Of
shoes Johnnie is entitled to wear out, and
how often the baby has a right to be SICK
and all the other financial details that bah
ance so nicely on an imaginary ledger, and
that come to such grief the real books
of daily life.
And when you have found out just exactly
how to spread your husbands pay envelope
so that everything from the corner grocery
to the moving pictures gets it's fair pro rata,
you may cast your eye on the schedule by
which the housewife should pattern her day
if she wishes to be really efficient. It reads
something like this:
Arise six-thirty. Say prayers 6:35. Battle
6:35 to $40. Dress $40 to z, z to 1880 pre-
breakfast.
7:45 to 1859 get children ready for school.
1859 to sol kiss husband and children
CHEEKY goodbye as they start to work and
school. SOL to clean up house. to
IL sew. IL to 1890 prepare lunch. 1880
to 1 serve lunch. 1 to 1880 clean up after
lunch. 100 to dress self and baby.
to take baby for airing and do marketing.
to visit friends. to sew. to pre-
pare dinner. 6 to $50 converse with chill
dren. $3.50 to serve dinner. to 1880
clean up dishes and kitchen. 1880 to 10 en-
terrain husband. 10 to $3.50 sleep.
Repeat schedule next day, and every day
as long you live, or until they put you
in an insane asylum where you suffer from
the hallucination that you are chasing an
alarm clock and can never keep up with
l. it.
Now, I contend that the emicable theorists
who have chopped womans day into this
sort of mincemeat fragemnts, each minute OF
which has it's appointed task, know nothing
about either women or housekee4 ing. In the
first place, housekeeping is one Of the oc-
equations that cannot be run upon any cast
iron schedule, because the very essence Of it
is it's uncertainty. Sickness, birth, death, all
the whole drama Of life are pitted against
any routine in it.
You can't go on with yor little cut-and-
dried program when a new life is coming
across the threshold, or your hearts beloved
is being borne out Of the door, or all the
joy bells are ringing for you, or black de-
spair has paralyzed you with horror.
And, for another thing, women are not
creatures of routine They are simply not
built that way. They are temperamental
They have to put their heart in their work
to do good work, and they can only do this
upon impulse.
You might as we'll expect poet to COM
pose matchless sonnet because it is nine
o'clock and the time has come for him to
write a sonnet, as for woman to be able
to break her record at darning, or cake-mak-
ing, just because she has reached the darn
ing or cake-making minute on her schedule.
Every woman will tell you that If she waits
until she feels in the mood for sewing, or
cooking, or wakes up some morning with her
hands itching for the dust-pan and the broom,
she can do more work in an hour than she
can in whole day if she forces herself
at the task when she has an inward shrink
ing from it.
OF course in every business there has to
also Of housekeeping, where meals must be
served on time, and beds made, and floors
swept, but 1t is one of the consultations OF
house work that it gives woman more lee
way than any other occupation.
This is WE'LL because it is the most monot-
onous work in the world. 1t is the labor with
the fewest thrills to it, Other occupations
Bring to the worker at least companionship
with others. Housework is mostly solitary,
and because woman does walk the tread
mill all alone, is the more reason why she
should not let herself be made the slave OF
system.
If she knows days, and months, and years
before hand just exactly what she is going
to do every minute of the time, she will
find her task uncomfortable. Who could bear
to know that at nine o'clock on every We'd
nesday, long as they live, they will be
washing dishes? They will tell you in New
England that it is the methodical country
housewives who have washed Mondays,
ironed on Tuesdays, cleaned up on Fridays,
baked on Saturdays, and rocked in the same
place in their chairs until they have worn
grooves in the floor, who fill the asylums
None of us want to do the same things at
the same time every day. We even feel like
biting the people we have to kiss every day,
b. so I urge housewives to chuck the system
theory out of their windows. Get as much
variety into your work as you can by doing
it at different times and in different ways.
Go on cooking orgies, and cleaning bats, and
have resting spells, and do them all when
you feel an inward urge that way.
The real test of efficiency is getting things
done. 1t doesn't matter how, or when, you
10 thing, so you do it properly.
dorothy Dix articles will appear in this