The Washington herald., 1920-12-16
Dorothy Dix's
Excellent Aduice
Copyright, 1890, Wheeler
Syndicate. Inc.
EFFICIENCY-REAL AND
THEORETIC.

20 Efficiency, what crimes are
committed in thy namer we might
well cry out, as Madame ROLAND
said of liberty as she was being
taken to the scaffofd to die in its
name.
For these be the days When we
have made a little tin god of sys-
TEN, and when We consider it a
pious act to sacrifice every comfort,
and convenience, and impulse on the
alter of routine, which false proph-
cts have assured us is the one and
only way by which We may achieve
efficiency.
This process of turning human
beings into automatic self-starting
and self stopping machines has
been a vogue among men for sew
eral years-where. by the way, it
hasn't worked out according to
schedule. But it is one of the the
cries that sound so plausible that
anyone will give it the trial once,
anyhow.
And now a strenuous effort is be-
ing made to introduce it into the
home. If you pick up any woman's
magazine you will find a carefully
worked out budget, compiled by old
maids, and old bachelors, and
wealthy statisticians, who have
never personally grappled with the
problem of feeding and clothing six
or seven children on a shoestring
income, 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 balance
SO nicely on an imaginary ledger,
and that come to such grief on the
real books of daily life.
And when you have found ont
just exactly how to spread your
husbands pay envelope SO that
everything from the corner grocery
to the motion pictures gets its fair
pro rata, you may cast your eye on
the schedule by which the house
wife should pattern her day If she.
wishes to be really efficient. 1t
reads something like this:
Arise $50. Say prayers 6:35.
Battle 6:35 to $40. Dress $40 to
700. 700 to 1880 prepare break
fast. 1880 to 7:45 eat breakfast.
7:45 to 1853 get children ready for
school. 1853 to SOL kiss husband
and children a CHEEKY good-by as
they start to work and school. SOL
to 500 clean up house. 800 to 1900
sew. 1900 to 1890 prepare lunch.
1880 to 100 serve lunch. 100 to
1870 clean up after lunch. 1870 to
200 dress self and baby. 200 to
$500 take baby for airing and do
marketing. 800 to 400 visit friends.
400 to 500 sew. 500 to 500 pre-
pare dinner. 500 to $40 converse
with children. $50 to 7:00 serve
dinner. 700 to 1880 clean up dishes
and kitchen. 1880 to 1000 entertain
husband. 1000 to $50 sleep.
Repeat schedule next day, and
every day as long as you live. or
until they put you in an insane
asylum, where you suffer from the
hailucination that you are chasing
an alarm clock and can never keen
up with it.
Now, contend that the amiable
theorists who have chopped a wom-
ans day into this sort of mincemeat
fragments, each minute of which has
its appointed task. know nothing
about either women or houselxe cen.
ing. In the first place, housekeep-
ing is one of the occupations that
cannot be run upon any cast-iron
schedule, because the very essence
OF u is its uncertainty. Sickness
birth, death, all the whole drama
OF life are pitted against any rout-
inc in II.