Evening star., 1938-02-27
Mrs. Paul Ho'ce Specialises
In Scientific HOme-Making o
Combines Careers of
Wife, Mother and
Researcher.
By JESSIE FAINT EVANS.

ny fAlN = ANS
An excellent example of successful
combination of a home and a career
is Washington's Mrs. Paul Howe wife
of the chief of the division of animal
industry, Department of Agriculture.
Mrs. Howe is the mother of family
of two daughters and heads the Con-
sumer Relations Service of the Ma
tional Home Economics Association at
its Washington headquarters in the
Mills Building.
Mrs. Howe's present part-time pro-
fessional occupation which she con-
ducts with one hand, 50 to speak,
while she keeps her hearth and home
intact with the other, is direct out
growth of her college training and
later specialization as we'll as con-
tinuing interest in the home makers
relation of her activities to the world
at large.
Her husband, she laughed, Con-
siders her the scientific guinea pig Of
the family, available to her profession
whenever it required a trained per-
son who could contrive and allocate
the leisure for certain Of its trail
blazing activities"
Mrs. Howe was born Harriet Rinaker
OF Carlinville, ILL.,, and was one of a
family Of four children whose mother
made their home the center of neigh
borhood activities, yet always found
time, during the course of her days,
to bake great pans of cinnamon buns
for her children and their friends
after their mile walk from school and
college.
1t was natural, therefore, for her
youngest daughter to be interested in
housekeeping and home-making as an
art, which might also be made a pro-
feSsion.
Both her father and grandfather
were lawyers and as the Rinaker home
was but 40 miles from Springfield,
grandfather Rinaker knew Abraham
Lincoln and treasured many stories
of his meetings with the Great
Emancipator
Thomas Rinaker, Mrs. Howe's
father, in his practice of the law, con-
stantly encountered pathetic instances
of women, suddenly deprived of their
men folks care. being thrown upon
their own resources without adequate
preparation for earning a livelihood
for themselves or their dependent
children. He was, however, adamant
in his belief that "woman's place was
in the home unless necessity put her
out" A daughters role, for instance,
was that of being "a gracious member
of her fathers household" while she
awaited the coming of the eventual
Prince Charming.
Directed Their Education.
As trustee of Blackburn College
he saw to it that his three daughters
and son received classical A. B.
education, which included knowledge
of both Latin and Greek.
For Harriet to wish to specialize in
the science of home making at the
Lewis Institute in Chicago was asking
more than even broad-minded par
ent could be expected to sanction.
A visit to sympathetic uncle in
Kansas City, Mo-, after she had COM
pleted the Institutes course in two
terms, resulted in a headline on the
Kansas City Stars first page to the
effect that Harriet Rinaker was one
of the citys first two appointees as a
teacher of cooking and sewing in its
public schools.
In addition to appeasing a father
who saw no reason why his daughter
should be possessed to teach when
she could stay home" hers was the
problem not only of charting her own
teaching procedure, but of stabilizing
it into course of study for Kansas
City's public educational system.
Then came her fathers sudden re-
versal of opinion to the effect that, IF
career she must, then she would bet
ter have the most scientific back
ground for it that her native State af-
forded." Two years of specialization
followed in home economics at the
University of Illinois and her masters
degrees from it, this institution being
one of the early universities in Amer
lea to place this subject upon a college
basis.
All unwittingly, by this step, her
father had chosen her future husband
for her, too, since one of her profess
sors in chemistry was a young assist
ant, Paul Howe, working toward his
doctors thesis in biochemistry.
While he was winning his scientific
spurs, tour years in her chosen field
followed for her upon the faculty of
the University of Illinois.
With their marriage and different
scientific posts in connection with the
upward steps in her husbands career.
it was at Columbia University,
New York City; the Rockefeller Gen.
ter, at Princeton University, his World
War service as captain in the Sani-
tary Corps in charge of nutritional
surveys for our troops, or his work
here in Washington, always there has