DCATIONAL GUIDANCE FOR GIRLS DICKSON VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE FOR GIRLS OTHER VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE BOOKS J. ADAMS PUFFER, Editor VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE THE TEACHER AS A COUNSELOR By J. Adams Puffer A VOCATIONAL READER By C. Park Pressey VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE FOR THE PROFESSIONS By Edwin Tenney Brewster "Vocational guidance seeks the largest realiza- tion of the possibilities of every child and youth, measured in terms of worthy service." Photograph by Brown Bros. CAMP FIRE GIRLS The lessons of patriotism, kindness, and industry taught by the Camp Fire Girls' organization make it a power for good VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE FOR GIRLS By MARGUERITE STOCKMAN DICKSON Author of "From the Old World to the New" "A Hundred Years of Warfare. 1689-1789," "Stories of Camp and Trail" "Pioneers and Patriots in American History" RAND McNALLY & COMPANY Chicago New York Copyright, IQIQ, by RAND MCNALLY & COMPANY 3DS- THE CONTENTS PAGE A Foreword ix PART I. PRESENT-DAY IDEALS OF WOMANHOOD CHAPTER I. WOMAN'S PLACE IN SOCIETY 3 II. THE IDEAL HOME 18 III. ESTABLISHING A HOME 27 IV. RUNNING THE DOMESTIC MACHINERY .... 49 PART II. GUIDING GIRLS TOWARD THE IDEAL V. THE EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES INVOLVED . . .75 VI. TRAINING THE LITTLE CHILD 86 VII. TEACHING THE MECHANICS OF HOUSEKEEPING . . 102 VIII. THE GIRL'S INNER LIFE 122 IX. THE ADOLESCENT GIRL 130 X. THE GIRL'S WORK 151 XI. THE GIRL'S WORK (Continued} CLASSIFICATION OF OCCUPATIONS 163 XII. THE GIRL'S WORK (Continued) VOCATIONS AS AFFECTING HOMEMAKING .... . . 194 XIII. THE GIRL'S WORK (Continued) VOCATIONS DETER- MINED BY TRAINING ; . . 203 XIV. MARRIAGE 218 Suggested Readings 241 The Index 243 vii 4C8303 A LIST OF THE PORTRAITS PAGE LOUISA M. ALCOTT 221 RUTH McENERY STUART 223 LOUISE HOMER AND HER FAMILY 225 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 227 COLONEL AND MRS. ROOSEVELT WITH MEMBERS OF THEIR FAMILY 229 JULIA WARD HOWE AND HER GRANDDAUGHTER . .231 CAROLINE BARTLETT CRANE 233 ALICE FREEMAN PALMER . . 235 AMELIA E. BARR 237 vm A FOREWORD Fortunate are we to have from the pen of Mrs. Dickson a book on the vocational guidance of girls. Mrs. Dickson has the all-round life experiences which give her the kind of training needed for a broad and sympa- thetic approach to the delicate, intricate, and complex problems of woman's life in the swiftly changing social and industrial world. Mrs. Dickson was a teacher for seven years in the grades in the city of New York. She then became the partner of a superintendent of schools in the business of making a home. In these early homemaking years there came from the pen of Mrs. Dickson a series of historical books for the grades which have placed her among the leading educational writers of the country. During the long sickness of her husband she filled for a while two administrative positions homemaker and superintendent of schools. Her three children are now in high school and are beginning to plan for their own life work. With the broad training of homemaker, wife, mother, teacher, writer, and administrator, Mrs. Dickson has the combi- nation of experiences to enable her to introduce teachers and mothers to the very difficult problems of planning wisely big life careers for our girls. The book is so plainly and guardedly written that it can also be used as a textbook for the girls themselves in connection with civic and vocational courses. The only difficulty with the book for a text is that it is so attrac- tively written on such vital problems that the student will not stop reading at the end of the lesson. J. ADAMS PUFFER ix "Vocational guidance has for its ideal the granting to every individual of the chance to attain his highest efficiency under the best conditions it is humanly possible to provide." PART I PRESENT-DAY IDEALS OF WOMANHOOD "How to preserve to the individual his right to aspire, to make of himself what he will, and at the same time find himself early, accurately, and with certainty, is the problem of vocational guidance" VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE FOR GIRLS CHAPTER I WOMAN'S PLACE IN SOCIETY ANY scheme of education must be built upon answers to two basic questions: first, What do we desire those being educated to become? second, How shall we proceed to make them into that which we desire them to be? In our answers to these questions, plans for education fall naturally into two great divisions. One concerns itself with ideals; the other, with methods. No matter how complex plans and theories may become, we may always reach back to these fundamental ideas: What do we want to make ? How shall we make it ? Applying this principle to the education of girls, we ask, first : What ought girls to be ? And with this simple question we are plunged immediately into a vortex of differing opinions. Girls ought to be or ought to be in the way of becom- ing whatever the women of the next generation should be. So far all are doubtless agreed. We therefore find ourselves under the necessity of restating the question, making it: What ought women to be? Probably never in the world's history has this question occupied so large a place in thought as it does to-day. In familiar discussion, in the press, in the library, on the platform, the "woman question" is an all-absorbing 4 /, : I "caitional Guidance for Girls topic. Even the most cursory review of the literature of the subject leads to a realization of its importance. It leads also into the very heart of controversy. It is safe to say that no woman, in our own country at least, escapes entirely the unrest which this controversy has brought. Even the most conservative and "old- fashioned" of women know that their daughters are Photograph by Brown Bros. Suffrage parade in Washington. Women will parade or even fight for their rights living in a world already changed from the days of their own young womanhood; and few indeed fail to see that these changes are but forerunners of others yet to come. They know little, perhaps, of the right or wrong of woman's industrial position, but "woman in industry" is all about them. They perhaps have never heard of Ellen Key's arraignment of existing marriage and sex relations, but they cannot fail to see unhappy marriages in their own circle. They may care little about the suffrage question, but they can hardly avoid hearing Woman's Place in Society 5 echoes of strife over the subject of " votes for women." And however much or little women are personally con- scious of the significance of these questions, the questions are nevertheless of vital import to them all. The "uneasy woman" is undeniably with us. We may account for her presence in various ways. We may prophesy the outcome of her uneasiness as the signs seem to us to point. But in the meantime she is here! Naturally both radical and conservative have panaceas to suggest. The radicals would have us believe that the question of woman's status in the world requires an upheaval of society for its settlement. Says one, the "man's world" must be transformed into a human world, with no baleful insistence on the femininity of women. It is the human qualities, shared by both man and woman, which must be emphasized. The work of the world with the single exception of childbearing is not man's work nor woman's work, but the work of the race. Woman must be liberated from the over- emphasized feminine. Let women live and work as men live and work, with as little attention as may be to the accident of sex. Says another, it is the ancient and dishonored insti- tution of marriage which must feel the blow of the icono- clast. Reform marriage, and the whole woman question will adjust itself. Says still another, do away with marriage. "Celibacy is the aristocracy of the future." Let the woman be free forever from the drudgery of family life, free from the slavery of the marriage relation, free to "live," to "work," to have a "career." Men and women were intended to be in all things the same, except for the slight difference of sex. Let us throw away the cramping folly of the ages and let woman take her place beside man. 6 Vocational Guidance for Girls Not so, replies the conservative. In just so far as mas- culine and feminine types approach each other, we shall see degeneracy. Men and women were never intended to be alike. Thus we might go on. Without the radicals there would of course be no progress. Without the conserva- tives our social fabric would scarcely hold. Between the two. extremes, however, in this as in all things, stands the great middle class, believing and urging that not social upheaval, but better understanding of existing conditions, is the world remedy for unrest ; that not new careers, but better adjustment of old ones, will bring peace; that not formal political power, even though that be their just due, but the better use of powers that women have long possessed, is most needed for the betterment of mankind. It is not the province of this book to enter into con- troversy with either radical or reactionary, but rather to search for truth which may be used for adjusting to fuller advantage the relation of woman to society. First of all must be recognized the fact that the "woman movement" deserves the thoughtful attention of every teacher or other social worker, and indeed of every thoughtful man or woman. The movement can no longer be considered in the light of isolated surface outbreaks. It is rather the result of deep industrial and social undercurrents which are stirring the whole world. In our study of the modern woman movement, which as teachers in any department of educational work we are bound to make, the fact is immediately impressed upon us that home life has undergone marked changes. Con- ditions once favorable to the existence of the home as a sustaining economic unit are no longer to be found. New conditions have arisen, compelling the home, like other Woman's Place in Society 7 permanent institutions, to alter its mode of existence in order to meet them. Briefly reviewing the causes which have brought about these changes in home life, we find, first, the industrial >s -v/ revolution. A large number of the activities once carried / on in the home have removed to other quarters. In earlier times the mother of a family served as cook, housemaid, laundress, spinner, weaver, seamstress, dairy- maid, nurse, and general caretaker. The father was about the house, at work in the field, or in his workshop close at hand. The children grew up naturally in the midst of the industries which provided for the main- tenance of the home, and for which, in part, the home existed. The home, in those days, was the place where work was done. With the invention of labor-saving machinery came an entire revolution in the place and manner of work. The father of the family has been forced by this industrial change to follow his trade from the home workshop to the mechanically equipped factory. One by one, many of the housewife's tasks also have been taken from the home. To-day the processes of cloth making are prac- tically unknown outside the factory. Knitting has become largely a machine industry. Ready-made clothing has largely reduced the sewing done in the home. In the matter of food, the housekeeper may, if she chooses, have a large part of her work performed by the baker, the canner, and the delicatessen shopkeeper. Even the care of her children, after the years of infancy, has been partly assumed by the state. The home, as a place where work is done, has lost a large part of its excuse for being. Among the poorer classes, women, like their husbands, being obliged to earn, and no longer able to do so in their homes, have 2 s Vocational Guidance for Girls followed the work to the factory. As a result we have many thousands of them away from their homes through Photograph by Brown Bros. Glove making. Women, like their husbands, have followed work to the factories long days of toil. Among persons of larger income, removal of the home industries to the factory has resulted in increased leisure for the woman with what results we shall later consider. Practically the only constructive work left which the woman may not shift if she will to other shoulders, or shirk entirely, is the bearing of chil- dren and, to at least some degree, their care in early years. The interests once centered in the home are now scattered the father goes to shop or office, the children to school, the mother either to work outside the home or in quest of other occupation and amusement to which leisure drives her. A second change in the conditions affecting home life is found in the increased educational aspirations of women. Once the accepted and frankly anticipated Woman's Place in Society g career for a woman was marriage and the making of a home. Her education was centered upon this end. To-day all this is changed. A girl claims, and is quite free to obtain, an education in all points like her brother's, and the career she plans and prepares for may be almost anything he contemplates. She may, or may not, enter upon the career for which she prepares. Marriage may often does interfere with the career, although nearly as often the career seems to interfere with marriage. Under the new alignment of ideals, there is less interest shown in Copyright by Keystone View Co. Employees leaving the Elgin Watch Company factory. Thousands of women are away from their homes through long days of toil homemaking and more in "the world's work," with a decided feeling that the two are entirely incompatible. The girl, educated to earn her living in the market of the world, no longer marries simply because no other 10 Vocational Guidance for Girls career is open to her; when she does marry, she is less likely than formerly, statistics tell us, to have children A typical tenement house. Congestion means discomfort within the home and decreasing possibility for satisfying there either material or social needs the only remaining work which, in these days, defi- nitely requires a home. Marriage and homemaking, there- fore, are no longer inseparably connected in the woman's mind. Girls are willing to undertake matrimony, but often with the distinct understanding that their "careers " are not to be interfered with. To them, then, marriage becomes more and more an incident in life rather than a life work. A third disintegrating influence as affecting home life is the great increase of city homes. Urban conditions are almost without exception detrimental to home life. Con- gestion means discomfort within the home and decreasing possibility for satisfying there either material or social needs; while on every hand are increasing possibilities for Woman's Place in Society ii satisfying these needs outside the home. Family life under such conditions often lacks, to an alarming degree, the quality of solidarity which makes the dwelling place a home. No longer the place where work is done, no longer the place where common interests are shared, the home becomes only "the place where I eat and sleep," or perhaps merely "where I sleep." The great increase of urban life during the last half century is thus a very real menace, and, since the agricultural communities constantly feed the towns, the menace concerns the country- as well as the city-dweller. Believing that for the good of coming generations the true home spirit must be saved, we shall do well to admit at once that the old-time home was an institution suited In the cities there are increasing opportunities for satisfying material and social needs outside the home to its own day, but that we cannot now call it back to being. Nor would we wish to do so. There is no pos- sible reason for wishing our women to spin, weave, knit, 1 2 Vocational Guidance for Girls bake, brew, preserve, clean, if the products she formerly made can be produced more cheaply and more efficiently outside the home. There is danger, however, of generalizing too soon in regard to these industries. There is little doubt that in some directions, at least, the factory method has not yet brought really satisfactory results. How many women can give you reasons why they believe that it no longer "pays" to do this or that at home as they once did? Do the factories always turn out as good a product as the housekeeper? If they do, does the housekeeper obtain that product with as little expenditure as when she made it? If she spends more, can she show that the leisure she has thus bought has been a wise purchase? Is she justified in accepting vague generalizations to the effect that it is better economy to buy than to make, or should she test for herself, checking up her individual conditions< and results? The fact is that the pendulum has swung away from' the "homemade" article, and most of us have not taken the trouble to investigate whether we are benefited or harmed. It may be that investigation will show us that the pendulum has swung too far, and that, in spite of factories mechanically equipped to serve us, some work may be done much more advantageously at home. It is even possible, and in some lines of work we know that it is a fact, that homes may be mechanically equipped at very little cost to rival and even to outclass the factory in producing certain kinds of products for home consumption. Spinning weaving, and knitting are doubtless best left in the hands of the factory worker. But, under present conditions, buying ready made all the garments needed for a family may be an expensive and unsatisfactory Woman's Place in Society 13 method if the elements of worth, wear, finish, and indi- viduality are worthy of consideration, just as buying practically all foodstuffs "ready made" presents a com- plex and disturbing problem to the fastidious and consci- entious housewife. There is at least a possibility that it would be as well for the home of to-day to retain or resume, systematize, and perfect some of the industries Copyright by Keystone View Co. Linen-mill workers. Spinning and weaving, whether of cotton, linen, silk, or wool, are more satisfactorily done by factory workers than in the home that are slipping or have already slipped from its grasp. It is possible to reduce some processes to a too purely mechanical basis. 14 Vocational Guidance for Girls A woman lived in our town who wasn't very wise. She had a reputation for making homemade pies. And when she found her pies would sell, with all her might and main She opened up a factory, and spoiled it all again. Nonsense? Yes but with a strong element of sense, nevertheless. Entirely aside, however, from the industrial status of the home, unless we are to see a practical cessation of childbearing and rearing, homes must apparently con- tinue to exist. No one has yet found a substitute place for this particular industry. It is a commonly accepted fact that young children do better, both mentally and physically, in even rather poor homes than in a perfectly planned and conducted institution. And we need go no farther than this in seeking a sufficient reason for saving the home. This one is enough to enlist our best service in aid of homemaking and home support. From earliest ages woman has been the homemaker. No plan for the preservation of the home or for its evolu- tion into a satisfactory social factor can fail to recognize her vital and necessary connection with the problem. Therefore in answer to the question "What ought woman to be?" we say boldly, "A homemaker." Reduced to simplest terms, the conditions are these: if homes are to be made more serviceable tools for social betterment, women must make them what they ought to be. Con- sequently homemaking must continue to be woman's business the business of woman, if you like a con- siderable, recognized, and respected part of her "business of being a woman." Nor may we overlook the fact that it is only in this work of making homes and rearing off- spring that either men or women reach their highest development. Motherhood and fatherhood are educative Woman's Place in Society 15 processes, greater and more vital than the artificial training that we call education. In teaching their children, even in merely living with their children, parents are themselves trained to lead fuller lives. " The central fact of the woman's life Nature's reason for her is the child, his bearing and rearing. There is no escape from the divine order that her life must be built around this constraint, duty, or privilege, as she may please to consider it." 1 It is the fashion among some women to assume that it is time all this were changed, and that therefore it will be changed. They look forward to seeing womankind released from this "constraint, duty, or privilege," and yet see in their prophetic vision the race moving on to a future of achievement. The fact, however, ignore it as we may, cannot be gainsaid: no man-made or woman-made "emancipation" will change nature's law. It was well that after centuries of repression and sub- jection woman sought emancipation. She needed it. But the wildest flight of fancy cannot long conceal the ultimate fact. Woman is the mother of the race. "The female not only typifies the race, but, metaphor aside, she is the race." 2 Emancipation can never free her from this destiny. In the United States, where woman has the largest freedom to enter the industrial world and maintain herself in entire independence, the percentage of those who marry is higher than in the countries where woman is a slave. Ninety per cent of the mature women in our country become homemakers for a certain period, and probably over 90 per cent are assistant homemakers for another period of years before or after marriage. 1 Ida M. Tarbell, The Business of Being a Woman. 2 Lester F. Ward, Pure Sociology. 1 6 Vocational Guidance for Girls Any vocational counselor who fails to reckon first with the homemaking career of girls is therefore blind to the facts of life. All education, all training, must be con- sidered in its bearing on the one vocation, homemaking. The time will come when the occupations of boys and men must likewise be considered in relation to home- making, but that problem is not the province of this book. Women will bear and rear the children of the future, just as they have borne and reared the children of the past. But under what conditions the best or those less worthy? And what women again, the best or those less worthy? Has woman been freed from subjection, from an inferior place in the scheme of life, only to become so intoxicated with a personal freedom, with her own per- sonal ambition, that she fails to see what emancipation really means? Will she be contented merely to imitate man rather than to work out a destiny of her own? We think not. When the first flush of freedom has passed, the pendulum will turn again and woman will find a truer place than she knows now or has known. Two obstacles to the successful pursuit of her ultimate vocation stand prominently before the young woman of to-day: first, the instruction of the times has imbued her with too little respect for her calling; second, her educa- tion teaches her how to do almost everything except how to follow this calling in the scientific spirit of the day. She may scorn housework as drudgery, but no voice is raised to show her that it may be made something else. With the advent of vocational guidance, vocational training of necessity follows close behind. And with vocational training must come a proper appreciation, among the other businesses of life, of this "business of being a woman." Woman's Place in Society 17 Must we then educate the girl to be a homemaker, and keep her out of the industrial life which has claimed her so swiftly and in which she has found so much of her emancipation? No, we could not, if we would, keep her from the outside life. We must rather recognize her double vocation and, difficult though it seem, must edu- cate her for both phases of her "business." She will be not only the better woman, but the better worker, because of the very breadth of her vocational horizon. Training for homemaking, then, must go hand in hand with training for some phase of industrial life. Voca- tional guides must consider not only inclination and temperament, but physical condition and the supply and demand of the industrial world. They will consider the girl not merely as an industrial worker, but as a potential homemaker. They will, therefore, also study the effect of various vocations upon homemaking capabilities. How then shall the teaching of this double vocation be approached? How shall we, as teachers of girls, make them capable of becoming homemakers? How shall we make them see that homemaking and the world's work may go hand in hand, so that they will desire in time to turn from their industrial service to the later and better destiny of making a home? This book offers its contribu- tion toward answering these questions. CHAPTER II THE IDEAL HOME r I A HAT we may understand, and to some extent A formulate, the problem which we would have girls trained to solve, we must of necessity study homes. What must girls know in order to be successful home- makers ? A historical survey of the home leads us to the con- clusion that although times have changed, and homes have changed, and indeed all outward conditions have changed, the spiritual ideal of home is no different from what it has always been. The home is the seat of family life. Its one object is the making of healthy, wise, happy, satisfied, useful, and efficient people. The home is essen- tially a spiritual factory, whether or not it is to remain to any degree whatever a material one. " Home will become an atmosphere, a 'condition in which,' rather than 'a place where,' " says Nearing in his Woman and Social Progress. "The home is a factory to make citizenship in," writes Mrs. Bruere. But although this spiritual significance of home has always existed, we are sometimes inclined to overlook the fact. Because conditions have changed, and because our external ideals of home have changed and are still changing, we fail to see that the foundation of home life is still unchanged. "I sometimes think that many w r omen don't con- sciously know why they are running their homes," says Mrs. Frederick, author of The New Housekeeping. We might add that many of those who do know, or think they 18 The Ideal Home 19 know, are struggling to attain to purely trivial or funda- mentally wrong ideals. It seems wise, then, for us to face at the outset the question "What is the ideal home? " Copyright by Keystone View Co. An attractive living room in which there is that atmosphere of peace so conducive to a happy family life Laying aside all preconceived notions, and remembering that changes are coming fast in these days, let us look tor the ideals which may be common to all homes, in city or country, among rich or poor. First of all, the home must be comfortable, and its whole atmosphere must be that of peace. In no other wav can the tension of modern life be overcome. This 20 Vocational Guidance for Girls implies order and cleanliness, beauty, warmth, light, and air; but it implies far more. It means a home planned Photograph by Brown Bros. A well-arranged kitchen forms an important part of the smoothly running mechanism of the ideal home for the people who will occupy it, and so planned that father's needs, and mother's, and the children's, will all be met. What does each member of the family require of the house? A place to live in. And that means far more than eating and sleeping and having a place for one's clothes. There must be not only a place for every- thing, but a place for everybody in the ideal house. The boys who wish to dabble in electricity, the girls who wish to entertain their friends in their own way, the tired father who wishes to read his newspaper "in peace," the younger children who want to pop corn or blow bubbles or play games, all must be planned for. There will be no room too good for use, and no furnishings so delicate The Ideal Home 21 that mother worries over family contact with them. There will be a minimum of "keeping up appearances" and a maximum of comfort and cheer. There will be little formal entertaining, but many spontaneous good times. In addition to being comfortable, the ideal home must be convenient. There will be places for things, and every appliance for making work easy. The ideal mother, who is the mainspring of the smoothly running mechanism of the ideal home, will be scientifically trained for her position. Her "domestic science" will no longer be open to the criticism that it is not science at all, nor will she feel that her business is unworthy of scien- tific treatment. Always she will keep before her the object of her work to make of her family, including herself, good, hap- py, efficient people. She will not be overburdened with housework, for overworked moth- ers have neither time nor strength for the higher as- pects of their work. She will know how to feed bodies, but also how to develop souls. She will clothe her children hygienically, but she Photograph by Brown Bros. Contrast this old-fashioned kitchen with the modern one shown on the opposite page 22 T 'ocational Guidance for Girls will teach them to value more 'the more important vest- ments of modesty and gentleness and courtesy. She will require obedience, but, as their years increase, the requirement will be less and less obedience to authority and more and more obedience to a right spirit within. Photograph by Brown Bros. The wise mother will teach her children the true value of work by making them wish to work with her She will work for her children and will make them wish to work with her, teaching them the true value of work and sacrifice. She will play with them, for their pleasure and development, and she will also play, in her own way, for her own rejuvenation and her soul's good. She will study each member of her family as an individual prob- lem, and, abandoning forever the idea of pressing any child's soul into the mold that she might choose, will rather strive to aid its growth toward its natural ideal. She will strive to hold and to be worthy of her children's confidence, that they may turn to her in those times that try their souls. But she will always respect the personal liberty of either child or husband to live his own life. The Ideal Home 23 She will interest herself in the interests of husband and children, that she may remain a vital factor in their lives; and she will make the home so delightful as to reduce to a minimum the scattering influences that tend to destroy home life. She will weave intangible but indestructible ties of affection, holding all together and to herself. She will keep her interest in the outside world, so that she may better prepare her children to live in it and may resist the narrowing influence of her enforced temporary withdrawal. She will take some part in civic work and social uplift, and, when her years of child rearing are ended, in the leisure of middle age she will return to the less circumscribed life of her youth, bending her matured energies to the world's work. The father of this ideal family will be first of all a man happy in his work. The plodding, weary slave to distasteful labor can be ideal neither as husband nor as father. Overworked fathers are quite as impossible in our scheme as overburdened mothers. In ideal condi- tions the father will have time, strength, and willingness to be more of a factor in the home life than he sometimes is at the present time. More than that, his early educa- tion will have included definite preparation for home- making, so that his cooperation will be intelligent and therefore helpful. He will know more than he does now about the cost of living and he will assist in making a preliminary division of the year's income upon an intelligent basis. He will recognize the necessity for equipment for the homemaking business and will con- tribute his share of thought and labor to improving the home plant. He will be a companion as well as adviser to his boys and girls and will retain their respect and love by his sympathetic understanding and his remembrance of the 3 24 Vocational Guidance for Girls boy's point of view. In all his" dealings with his children he will be careful that interference with his comfort and convenience or the wounding of his pride by their short- comings does not obscure his sense of justice. He will be a student of child nature and will keep in view the ultimate good and usefulness of his child. He will regard his fatherhood as his greatest service to the state. The children reared by this ideal father and mother in their ideal home will grow as naturally as plants in a well- cared-for garden. With examples of courtesy and kind- ness, of cheerful work and health-producing play, ever Pals. The wise father will be companion as well as adviser to his children before them in the lives of their parents, they may be led along the same paths to similar usefulness. Their edu- cational problems will be met by the combined effort The Ideal Home 2 5 of teachers and parents, and natural aptitude as well as community needs will dictate the choice of their life work. That this ideal family is far removed from many families of our acquaintance merely proves the necessity of training for more efficient homemaking, and indeed for a better conception of homemaking ideals and prob- lems. If we are to teach our girls and our boys to be homemakers, we must consider carefully what they need to know. If we are to counteract the tendencies of the past two or three decades away from homemaking as a vocation, we must show the true value of the homemaker to the community, and the opportunities which domestic life presents to the scientifically trained mind. Education for homemaking necessarily implies teachers who are trained for homemaking instruction ; and we may pause here to notice that no homemaking course in normal school or college can be sufficient to give the teacher true knowledge of ideal homes. She must have seen such homes, or those which approximate the ideal. Perhaps she has grown up in such a home. More probably she has not. If not, it must then necessarily follow that the lower have been the ideals in the home where the teacher had her training, the more she should see of other homes, and especially of good homes. Her whole outlook may be changed by such contact; and with her outlook, her teaching; and with her teaching, her influence. If all girls grew up in ideal homes, it seems probable that homemaking would appeal to them quite naturally as the ultimate vocation. Indeed, we know that many girls feel this natural drawing, in spite of most unlovely conditions in their childhood homes. The task of mother, teacher, and vocational counselor (who may be either) in this matter is a complicated one. Some girls are not 2 6 Vocational Guidance for Girls fitted by nature to be homemakers. Some may with careful training overcome inherent defects which stand in the way of their success. Some have the natural endowment, but have their eyes fixed on other careers. Some have unhappy ideals to overcome. The fact, however, confronts us that at some time in their lives a very large majority of these girls will be homemakers. It is the part of those who have charge of them in their formative years to do two things for them: first, to train them so that they may understand the tasks of the home- maker and perform them creditably if they are called upon; second, to teach all those girls who seem fitted for this high vocation to desire it, and to choose it for at least part of their mature lives. CHAPTER III ESTABLISHING A HOME CERTAIN very definite attempts are being made in these days to meet the evident lack of home- making knowledge in the rising generation. And since definiteness of plan lends power to accomplishment, we cannot do better than to analyze as carefully as possible the various lines of knowledge required by the prospective homemaker in entering upon her life work. What are the problems of homemaking ? And how far can we provide the girl with the necessary equipment to make her an efficient worker in her chosen vocation? Country life and city life are apparently so far removed from each other as to present totally different problems to the homemaker and to the vocational educator of girls. And yet underlying the successful management of both urban and rural homes are the same principles of domestic economy and of social efficiency. The principles are there, however widely their application may differ. While we may wisely train country girls for country living, and city girls to face the problems of urban life, we must not lose sight of the fact that country girls often become homemakers in the city and that city girls are often found establishing homes in the country. Nor should we over- look the truth that some study of home conditions in other than familiar surroundings will broaden the girl's knowledge and fit her in later life to make conditions subservient to that knowledge. Both rural and urban homemakers must be taught to appreciate their advantages and to make the most of 27 28 Vocational Guidance for Girls them. They must also learn to face their disadvantages and to work intelligently toward overcoming them. The country homemaker has no immediate need of studying the problems of congestion in population which menace the millions of city-dwellers. The country home has plenty of room and an abundance of pure air. Yet it is often true that country homes are poorly ventilated and that much avoidable sickness results from this fact. The country home is often set in the midst of great natural beauty, yet misses its opportunity to satisfy the eye in an artistic sense. Its very isolation is sometimes a cause of the lack of attention to its appearance to the passerby. The farmer's wife has an advantage in the matter of fresh vegetables, eggs, and poultry, but the city house- keeper has the near-by market and finds the question of sanitation, the preservation of food, and the disposal of waste far easier of solution. The city housewife is often troubled in regard to the source of her milk supply; the country-dweller has plenty of fresh milk, but frequently finds it difficult to be sure of pure water. The country homemaker often lacks the conveniences which make housekeeping easier; the city woman is often misled, by the ease of obtaining the ready-made article, into buying inferior products in order to avoid the labor of producing. The family in the farming community often has meager social life and lack of proper recreations ; the city-dweller is made restless and improvident by an excess of oppor- tunities for certain sorts of amusement. Thus each type of community has its own problems. But practically all of these problems fall under certain general heads which both city and country homemakers Establishing a Home 29 Photograph by Brown Bros. A country home which, though set in the midst of natural beauty, yet fails to satisfy the eye in an artistic sense Courtesy of Mrs. Joseph E. Wing In contrast to the illustration above, this home shows what a few artistic touches may do to enhance the natural beauty of the surroundings 30 Vocational Guidance for Girls should consider as part of their 'education. The present turning of thought toward training in these directions is most promising for the homes of the future. It is one of the misfortunes of existing conditions that the city and the country are not better acquainted with each other. Scorn frequently takes the place of under- standing. The town or village girl goes out to teach in the country school, knowing little of country living and less of country homes. It is difficult, if not impossible, for such a teacher to be an influence for good. Espe- cially as she approaches the homemaking problem is she without the knowledge which must underlie successful work. It is important that the city girl under such con- ditions should make a special effort to study country life and country homes in a sympathetic, helpful spirit. Perhaps our analysis of homemaking problems can take no more practical form than to follow from its hypothetical beginning the making of an actual home. No more inspiring moment comes in the lives of most men and women than that in which the first step is taken toward making their first home. There is an instinctive recognition of the greatness of the occasion. But igno- rance will dull the glow of inspiration and wrong standards will lead to wreck of highest hopes. Let us, therefore, be practical and definite and face the facts. A home is to be established. The first question is: Where? To a certain extent circumstances must answer this question. The character and place of employment of the breadwinner, the income, social relations already established, school, church, library, market, water and sanitary conditions, must all be considered. Yet even these regulating conditions must receive intelligent treat- ment. How many young homemakers have any definite idea as to what proportion of the income may safely be Establishing a Home 3 1 expended for shelter? How many can tell the relative advantages of renting and owning? Probably the first consideration in selection is likely to be whether the home is to be permanent or merely tem- porary. When the occupation is likely to be permanent, the greatest comfort and well-being will usually result Copyi by Keystone View Co. A tenement district. One of the greatest disadvantages in urban life is the overcrowding in tenement houses from establishing early a permanent home; and this involves a long look ahead to justify the selection of a site. Not only must health and convenience be considered, but 32 Vocational Guidance for Girls future questions relative to the expanding requirements of the homemakers and to the education and proper upbringing of a family as well. Then, too, young people must usually begin modestly from a financial stand- point, and they are therefore cut off from certain loca- tions which they may perhaps desire and which they might hope to attain in later years. In the country, where the livelihood is often gained directly from the land, a new element enters into selection and must to some extent take precedence over others. Soil considerations aside, however, we have health, beauty, social environ- ment, educational advantages, and expense to consider; and we should establish certain standards in these directions for our young people to measure by. Considerations of health must include not only climatic conditions, but questions of drainage, water supply, time and comfort of transportation to work, and the sanitary condition of the neighborhood. Prospective homemakers must learn, too, the value of reposeful surroundings and of some degree of natural beauty. They must recognize the value also of desirable social environment that is, of such moral and intel- lectual surroundings as will be uplifting for the home- makers and safe for the future family. They will, it is hoped, learn that a merely fashionable neighborhood is not necessarily a desirable environment. The church, the school, the library, and proper recreation centers are also to be considered in one's social outlook. They are all distinctly worth paying for, as also is a good road. With the site selected, the great problem of building next confronts the homemaker. Here again the prin- ciples of selection should be sufficiently known to young people, boys and girls alike, to save them from the mis- takes so commonly made and frequently so regretted. Establishing a Home 33 The people who can afford to employ an architect to design their homes are in a decided minority, and the only way to insure good houses for the less well-to-do majority is to see that the less well-to-do do not grow up without instruction as to what good houses are. The great tendency of the day in building is fortunately toward increased simplicity and toward a quality which we may call "livableness." This tendency we shall do well to fix in our teaching. In general, the good house is plain, substantial, con- venient, and suited to its surroundings. Efficient house- keeping is largely conditioned by such very practical details as closets and pantries, the relative positions of sink and stove, the height of work tables and shelves, the distance from range to dining table, the ease or difficulty of cleaning woodwork, laundry facilities, and the like. Housekeeping is made up of accumulated details of work, and adequate preparation for comfort in working can be made only when the house is in process of construction. Not less are the higher and more abstract duties of the homemaker served by the kind of house she lives and works in. In a hundred details the homemaker should be able to increase the efficiency of the "place to make citizens in." A common mistake in building produces a house which adds to, rather than lessens, the burdens of its inmates. More often than not this is the result of a misapprehension of what houses are for. There are many large mansions in our villages and cities built for show and display of wealth in which no one will live today. These houses are being torn down and sold for junk. The modern home is built for one purpose only, a home. We must therefore teach our boys and girls that houses are for shelter, work, comfort, and rest, and to satisfy 34 Vocational Guidance for Girls our sense of beauty, not to serve as show places nor to establish for us a standing in the community proportionate to the size of our buildings. We must teach them to measure their house needs and to avoid the uselessly ornate as well as the hopelessly ugly. We must teach them to consider ease of upkeep a distinctly valuable factor in building. But most of all must the homemaker be taught that the comfort and well-being of the family come first in the making of plans. Few persons possess sufficient originality to think out new and valuable arrangements for houses; therefore we must see that their minds are rendered alert to discover successful arrangements in the houses they are constantly seeing and to adapt these arrangements to their own needs. Unless their minds are awakened in this direction, the majority will merely see the house problem in large units, overlooking the finer points of detail which mean comfort or the opposite. I recall spending a considerable number of drawing periods in my grammar-school days upon copying drawings of houses. I recall that we became sufficiently conver- sant with such terms as front elevation, side elevation, and floor plan to feel that we were deep in technical knowledge. But I do not recall that anyone suggested any question as to the suitability of these houses for homes, or opened our minds to consideration of the fact that house building was a proper concern for our minds. It was merely a case in which educative processes failed to function. They do things better now in many schools. But we should not rest until all of our prospective home- makers have opportunity to obtain practical instruction in home planning and building. Matters pertaining to heating, ventilating, and plumbing are easily taught as resting upon certain definite, well- Establishing a Home 3 5 understood principles. Here the personal element is less to be considered, and scientific knowledge may be passed on with some degree of authority. Our courses in physics, chemistry, and hygiene can be made thor- oughly practical without losing any of their scientific value.. Especially in our rural schools should matters of this sort receive careful and adequate treatment. In times past it was considered inevitable that the country- dweller should lack the advantages, found in most city houses, of a plentiful supply of water, radiated heat for the whole house, proper disposal of waste,' and arrange- ments for cold storage. We know now that these things are obtainable at less cost than we had supposed; and we know also that it is not lack of means, but lack of knowl- edge, which forces many to do without them. In many a farm home the doctor's bills for one or two winters would pay for installing proper systems of heat and ventilation. Everything that tends to increase the com- fort and safety of home life must be taught, as well as everything that tends to lessen the labor of keeping a family clean, warm, and properly fed. Accurate figures should be obtained to set before the boys and girls who will be homemakers, showing the cost, in time, labor, and money, of running a heating plant for the house as compared with several stoves scattered about in the dwelling. To accompany these we must have more figures, showing the comparative time spent in doing the necessary work incidental to the operation of each type of apparatus. We must consider the com- parative cleanliness of both types of heating plants, with their effect, first, upon the health of the family, and secondly, upon the amount of cleaning necessary to keep the house in proper condition. We must compare types of stoves with one other, hot-air, steam, and hot-water Vocational Guidance for Girls plants with one another, and various kinds of fuels, both as to cost and as to efficacy. The water question is one of real interest to both city- and country-dweller, although the chances are that the country- dweller knows less about his source of supply than the city-dweller can know if he chooses to in- vestigate. The city-dweller should know whence and by what means the water flows from his faucet , if for no other reason than that he may do his part in seeing that the money spent by his city or town brings adequate return to the the Photograph by Brown Bros. A dangerous well. The rural homemaker must make sure that his water supply is at a safe distance from contaminating impurities taxpayer. For the rural homemaker, of course, problem usually becomes an individual one. Is the water supply adequate? Is the water free from harmful bacteria? Is the source a safe distance from contaminating impurities? Are we obtaining the water for household and farm purposes without more labor than is compatible with good management? Is not running Establishing a Home 37 water as important for the house as for the barn? How much water does an ordinary family need for all purposes in a day? How much time does it take to pump and carry this quantity by hand or to draw it from a well? How much strength and nerve force are thus expended that might be j. saved for more im- portant work? Does lack of time or strength cause the homekeeper to "get along" with less water in the house than is really needed? Is there any natural means at hand for pump- ing the water any "brook that may be put to work," any grav- ity system that may be installed ? If not, are there mechanical means available that would really pay for themSelveS in j increased water, time, and comfort for all the family? From a consideration of water supply we pass naturally to questions of the disposal of waste, and here again is found a subject too often neglected both in town Photograph by Brown Bros. Where water must be pumped and carried by hand much strength and nerve force are expended which might be kept for more importanl work 38 Vocational Guidance for Girls and in rural communities. In the city the problems are not individual ones in the main, but rather questions of the best management and use of the public utilities concerned. Does the average city householder know what becomes of the waste removed from his door by the convenient Photograph by Brown Bros. A "brook put to work" may be utilized in supplying water to a farmhouse arrival of the ash man, the garbage man, the rubbish man? Does he know whether this waste is disposed of in the most sanitary way? Does he consider whether it is removed in such a way as to be inoffensive and without danger to the people through whose streets it is carried? Does he know anything of the cost to the city of waste disposal? Is it merely an expense, and a heavy one, for him in common with other taxpayers to bear? Or is the business made to pay for itself? If not, is it possible to Establishing a Home 39 Photograph by Br An objectionable garbage wagon. Disposal of waste is a subject too often neglected both in urban and in rural communities make it pay? Does any community make the waste account balance itself at the end of the year? In the country, once more we face the individual problem rather than that of the community. Here proper provision for the disposal of waste often necessitates more knowledge of the subject than is pos- sessed by the homemaker, or sometimes it requires the installation of apparatus whose cost seems prohibitive. A careful consideration of these matters will possi- bly disclose the fact that a smaller expenditure may accomplish the de- sired purpose. Or, if this is not true, it may be found that the end ac- complished is worth the expend- itUre Of What Photograph by Brown Bros. seemed a prohibi- This new covered garbage wagon subjects the , . public to no danger tive sum. A water closet, for instance, has not only a sanitary but a moral value. "We must somehow educate people to understand 40 Vocational Guidance for Girls and to believe that the basis of family health and useful- ness is proper living conditions, and that some system of sewage and garbage disposal is a necessary step toward proper living conditions. With the urban population these matters are removed from personal and immediate consideration, but every rural homemaker must face his own problems, with the knowledge that since his conditions are individual his solution must be equally his own. In the matters pertaining to decoration within the house as well as beautifying its surroundings, the country- and the city-dweller meet on equal terms. Their prob- lems may differ in detail, but the principles to be studied are the same. Here our art courses must be made to contribute their share to the homemaker's training. We must strike the keynote of simplicity, both within and without, and must teach girls especially the value of carefully thought-out color schemes and decorating plans, to be carried out by different people in the materials and workmanship suited to their purses. They must learn that expense is not necessarily a synonym for beauty; they must know the characteristics of fabrics and other decorative materials; and they must be trained to recog- nize the qualities for which expenditure of money and effort are worth while. In the designing of school buildings nowadays close attention is paid to beauty of architecture, symmetry of form, convenience of arrangement, and durable but artistic furnishings. All unwittingly the child receives an aesthetic training through his daily life in the midst of attractive surroundings. Many of our rural schools are doing excellent work in teaching children to beautify the school grounds. Some of them go farther and interest their pupils in attacking the problem of improving outside conditions at home. Establishing a Home 41 Every child whose mind is thus turned in the direction of attractive home grounds has unconsciously taken a step toward one branch of efficient homemaking. If it were possible to give pupils the foundation principles of land- scape gardening, they might learn to see with a trained eye the problems they will otherwise attack blindly. An example of the newer architecture. An artistic approach to a school has a daily effect on the mind of the child I r ocational Guidance for Girls With the house built and ready for its furniture, the selection of the latter becomes both part of the scheme Photograph by Brown Bros. Rural school with flower bed. Many of the rural schools are doing excellent work in teaching children to beautify the school grounds of decoration and part also of the domestic plans for securing comfort and inspiring surroundings. The same principles of beauty and utility, restfulness, comfort, and suitability, are called into requisition. The trained housewife will have an eye toward future dusting and will choose the less ornate articles. The same person, in her capacity as the mother of citizens, will see that chairs are comfortable to sit in, that tables and desks are the right height for work, that book cases and cabinets are sufficient in number and size to take care of the family treasures. She will use pictures sparingly and choose them to inspire. Perhaps, most of all, the woman with Establishing a Home 43 the trained mind will know how to avoid a superfluity of furniture in her rooms. She will be educated to the beauty of well-planned spaces and will not feel obliged to fill every nook and corner with chairs or tables or sofas or other pieces of furniture which merely "fill the space." Before furnishing is considered complete, the house- keeper must take into account the matter of operating apparatus. Perhaps a large part of this important department of house equipment has been built into the house. The water system, the sewer connection or its substitute, and the lighting apparatus are already in- stalled, so that the turn of a switch or a faucet, the pull Photograph by Brown Bros. An artistic living room. The principles of beauty and utility, restfulness, comfort, and suitability, must all be considered in the furnishing of a home of a chain, sets one or all to work for us. We are now to consider whether we shall buy a vacuum cleaner or a broom and dustpan; a washing machine and electric 44 Vocational Guidance for Girls flatiron or the services of a washerwoman, or shall tele- phone the laundry to call for the wash. Shall we invest in a "home steam-canning outfit" at ten dollars, or make up a list for the retailer of the products of the canning factory? Shall we have a sewing machine, or plan to buy our clothing from "the store"? Once upon a time practically the only labor-saving device possible to the housekeeping woman was another woman. To-day many devices are offered to take her place. Our homemaker must know about them, and must compare their value with the older piece of operating machinery, the domestic servant. She must know what it costs to keep a servant, in money, in responsibility, and in all the various ways which cannot be reduced to figures. Already the pros and cons of the "servant question" have caused much and long-continued agitation. The woman of the future should be taught to approach the matter with a scientific summing up of the facts and with a readiness to lift domestic service to a standardized vocation or to abandon it altogether in favor of the "labor-saving devices" and the "public utilities." Certain of our home-efficiency experts assure us that all "industries in the home are doomed." If this is true, the domestic servant must of necessity cease to exist. Most persons, however, cannot yet see how "public utilities" will be able to do all of our work. We may send the washing out, but we cannot send out the beds to be made, the eggs to be boiled, or the pictures, chairs, and window sills to be dusted. The table must be set at home, and the dishes washed there, until we approach the day of communal eating places, which, as we all know, will be difficult to utilize for infants and the aged, for invalids, and for the vast army of those who are Establishing a Home 45 averse to faring forth three times daily in search of food. For a long time yet the domestic servant, or her substi- tute, will be with us, doing the work that even so great a power as "public utilities" cannot remove from the home. Photograph by Brown Bros. Contrast the bad taste displayed in the furnishing of this hopelessly inartistic room with the simplicity shown in that on page 43 At present there is much to indicate that the servant's substitute, in the form of various labor-saving devices, 46 Vocational Guidance for Girls will eventually fill the place of the already vanishing domestic worker. Whether this proves to be the case will rest largely with these girls whom we are educating to-day. The pendulum is swinging rather wildly now, but by their day of deciding things it may have settled down to a steady motion so that their push will send it defi- nitely in one direction or the other. There is no inherent reason why making cake should be a less honorable occupation than making undenvear or shoes ; why a well-kept kitchen should be a less desirable workroom than a crowded, noisy factory. But under existing conditions the comparison from the point of view of the worker is largely in favor of the factory. Among the facts to be faced by the homemaker who wishes to intercept the flight of the housemaid and the cook are these : 1. Hours for the domestic worker must be definite, as they are in shop or factory work. 2 . The working day must be shortened. 3. Time outside of working hours must be absolutely the worker's own. 4. The worker must either live outside the home in which she works, or must have privacy, convenience, comfort, and the opportunity to receive her friends, as she would at home. In short, the houseworker must have definite work, definite hours, and outside these must be free to live her own life, in her own way, and among her own friends, as the factory girl lives hers when her day's work is done. That women are already awaking to these responsi- bilities is shown by the increasing number who choose the labor-saving devices in place of the flesh-and-blood machine. Many of these women will tell you that they Establishing a Home 47 make this choice to avoid the personal responsibility involved in having a resident worker in the house. There is comfort in not having to consider "whether or not the vacuum cleaner likes to live in the country," or the bread mixer "has a backache," or the electric flatiron desires "an afternoon off to visit its aunt." It is the same satisfaction we feel in urging the automobile to greater speed regardless of the melting heat, the pouring rain, or the number of miles it has already traveled to-day. Perhaps the future will see machines for household work so improved and multiplied that we can escape altogether this perplexing personal problem of "the woman who works for us." Whether or not we escape this problem when we patronize the laundry, the bakeshop, the underwear factory, is a matter for further thought. To many it seems a simpler matter to face the problem of one cook, one laundress, than to investigate conditions in factory, bakery, and laundry, to agitate, to "use our influence," to urge legislation, to follow up inspectors and their reports, to boycott the bakery, to be driven into the establishment of a cooperative laundry whether we will or no, in order to fulfill our obligations to the "women who work for us " in these various places. True, our duty to womankind requires that we do all these things to a certain extent so long as the public utilities exist, but with the multiplication of utilities to a number sufficient to do a large portion of our work, it would seem that women would be left little time for anything else than their supervision and regulation. Problems relating to the establishing of a home would once have been considered far from the province of the teacher in the public school. Formerly we taught our children a little of everything except how to live. Now 48 T 'ocational Guidance for Girls we are realizing that the teacher should be a constructive social force. Living is a more complicated thing than it once was, and the school must do its share in fitting the children for their task. All these matters we have been considering the selection of a home site, building, decorating, furnishing, sanitation, and all the rest represent constructive social work the teacher may do, which, if she passes it by, may not be done at all. College courses should prepare the teacher for such work, but even the girl who is not college-trained will find, if she seeks it, help sufficient for her training. And the work awaits her on every hand. CHAPTER IV RUNNING THE DOMESTIC MACHINERY WITH a home established, the problems confronting the homemaker become those of administration. The ' 'place for making citizens" is built and ready. The making of citizens must begin. One of the fundamental requisites for the efficient operation of the home plant is that the homemaker shall have a firm grasp upon the financial part of the business. To estimate the number of homes wrecked every year by lack of this economic knowledge is of course impossible; but you can call up without effort many cases in which this lack was at least a contributing element to the wreck. Keeping expenditures within the income is only the ABC of the financial knowledge required, although, like other ABC's, it is essential to the acquirement of deeper knowledge. It is not enough that the housekeeper merely succeeds in keeping out of debt. She must know what to expect in return for the money that she spends, and she must know whether or not she gets it. She must have definitely in mind the results she expects, and she must know why she spends for certain objects rather than for others. In the days of famine and fear, the individual was fortunate who had food, shelter, and a skin to wrap about his shivering shoulders. In these days it is not enough to have merely these things. Certain standards of civi- lized life must be met, and we shall find that it requires judgment and skill to apportion our funds properly. The common needs of civilized mankind are usually roughly classified as follows: food; shelter; clothing; 49 50 I 'ocational Guidance for Girls operating expenses, including service, heat, light, water, repairs, refurnishing, and the general upkeep of the plant; advancement, including education, recreation, travel, charity, church, doctor, dentist, savings. The exact proportion of any income devoted to each of these is of course a matter conditioned by the needs of the particular family as well as by its tastes and desires. Figures are obtainable which throw light upon proportions found advisable in what are considered typical cases. We may learn the minimum amount of money which will feed a man in New York or in various other cities and towns. We may find estimates as to the prices of a "decent living" in various parts of the country. Home- economics experts will furnish us with figures which may be used as a basis for apportioning this amount among departments of household expenses. That the figures offered by these experts differ more or less widely need not disturb us. It is perhaps too early in such work for final authoritative estimates. The following apportionment is taken from Chapin's The Standard of Living among Workingmens Families in New York City and has to do with the minimum income required for normal living for a family of father, mother, and three children on Manhattan Island : Food $359.00 Housing 168.00 Fuel and light 41 .00 Clothing 1 13.00 Carfare 16.00 Health 22.00 Insurance 18.00 Sundry items 74.00 $8 1 1. oo "Families having from $900 to $1,000 a year," con- cludes Dr. Chapin, "are able, in general, to get food Running the Domestic Machinery 5 1 enough to keep body and soul together, and clothing and shelter enough to meet the most urgent demands of decency." Regarding incomes below $900, he says, "Whether an income between $800 and $900 can be made to suffice is a question to which our data do not warrant a dogmatic answer." The two apportionments given below have been made by the federal government and concern the maintenance of a normal standard in two industrial sections of the country. In each case the family is assumed to be, as in Dr. Chapin's estimate, 1 made up of father, mother, and three children. Fall River, Georgia and Mass. North Carolina Food $312.00 $286.67 Housing 132.00 44.81 Clothing 136.80 113.00 Fuel and light .. . 42.75 49.16 Health 11.65 16.40 Insurance. . : . . . 18.40 18.20 Sundry items. ... 78.00 72.60 $731.90 $600.74 These estimates do no more than suggest the minimum upon which the various items of living expense can be met and the proportion to each account. People who can do more upon their incomes than merely live must look farther for help. Mrs. Bruere in her Increasing Home Efficiency offers the following as a minimum schedule 1 for efficient living: Food $ 344-93 Shelter 144.00 Clothing 100.00 Operation 1 50.00 Advancement 31 2.00 Incidentals 46.85 $1,097.78 iNo studies of present-day conditions are available. The proportion spent for food, clothing, etc., will remain nearly the same. It is safe to multiply the above estimates by two to obtain the actual cost of living in the year 1919. 52 Vocational Guidance for Girls "When the income is over $1,200," Mrs. Brue"re adds, "the family has passed the line of mere decency in living and entered the realm of choice. Their budget need not show how the entire income must be spent, but how it may be spent to gain whatever special end the family has in view." That any estimated schedule for any income will fit exactly the needs of any family of father, mother, and three children in any given town in the United States no one supposes, but it is at least a basis upon which to work. And perhaps the main point from an educational stand- point is that it is a schedule at all. The happy-go-lucky, spend-as-you-go style of house- keeping does not constitute efficiency. The homemaking expert we are training will have a better plan. She will have been long familiar with the idea of apportioning incomes. She will have applied the tests of efficient decision to her personal income before she has to attack the problem of spending for a family. The ideal home- maker of the future will be a woman who has had a personal income, and preferably one that she has earned herself and learned how to spend before she enters upon matrimony and motherhood. By the less scientific plan of merely recording what one has spent, when the spending is over, it is more than likely that some departments of home expenditure will gain at the expense of others. If we can afford only $150 for rent, and we pay $200, it is evident that we must go without some portion of the food or clothing or advancement that we need. If we dress extravagantly, we must pay for our extravagance by sacrificing efficient living in some other direction. The budget is not entirely or even in large measure for the sake of saving, but rather foi the sake of spending wisely. When women Running the Domestic Machinery 53 become as businesslike in the administration of home finances as they must be to succeed in business life, or as men usually are in their business relations, home admin- istration will be placed upon a secure financial footing and will gain immeasurably in dignity thereby. Feeding and clothing a family are perhaps the funda- mentals of the homemaker's daily tasks. And upon Photograph by Brown Bros. Teaching housewives food values. No housewife in these days need lack the knowledge of dietetics which will fit her for her task neither of them will the application of scientific principles be wasted. It is not enough that we merely set food before our families in sufficient quantity to appease the clamoring appetite. Children and adults may suffer from malnutrition even though their consumption of food is normal in quantity three times a day. No house- wife is properly fitted for her task unless she has some knowledge of dietetics. Many a notable housewife who has perhaps never even heard of dietetics has nevertheless a practical 54 Vocational Guidance for Girls working knowledge of some or many of its principles. There are traditions among housewives that we should serve certain foods at the same meal or should cook certain foods together. Often these time-honored com- binations rest upon the soundest of dietetic principles. Blackburn College students preparing dinner. Fortunately girls may study dietetics in the school that teaches them the law of gravity and the rules for forming French plurals On the other hand, many cooks feed their families by a hit-or-miss method which as often as not violates all the laws of scientific feeding, and which farmers long ago discarded in the feeding of their cows. Fortunately the girl who so desires may now learn something of these feeding laws in the same school that teaches her the law of gravitation or the rules for forming French plurals. Fortunately, also, the girls of to-day seem inclined to undertake such study. It is not too much to expect that the girl of the future will be able to set before her family meals scientifically planned or food Running the Domestic Machinery 55 wisely and economically purchased, well cooked, and attractively served. Nor is it too much to expect that teachers will be able to do these things and to instruct others how to do them. That this ideal requires con- siderable and varied knowledge is clear at the outset. The serving of a single meal involves: (i) knowledge of food values, (2) skill in making a " balanced ration," (3) knowledge of market conditions, (4) skill in buying, with special reference to personal tastes and financial conditions, (5) knowledge of the chemistry of cooking, (6) skill in applying chemical knowledge, (7) skill in adapting knowledge of cooking to existing conditions, (8) knowledge of serving a meal and practice in service. The fact that a large proportion of deaths is directly due to digestive troubles is certainly food for thought. Such a statement alone would warrant action of some sort looking toward increased knowledge of food values and food preparation. It is not necessarily because people live upon homemade food that their digestions are impaired, as we so often hear stated nowadays, but because we have taken it for granted that, given a stove, a saucepan, and a spoon, any woman could instinctively combine flour, water, and yeast into food. There is little dependence upon instinct in producing the bread of commerce. Bakers' bread is scientifically made, no doubt; but there is no reason why the homemade article may not also be a product of science. And there will always be this difference between the baker and the housewife: the baker's profit must be expressed in dollars and cents, while that of the housewife will be represented in increased force and efficiency in the family that she feeds. With such differing ends in view, the processes and results of each must continue to differ as widely as we know they do at present. 5 Vocational Guidance for Girls It is now some years since Charlotte Perkins Oilman wrote of woman's work: Six hours a day the woman spends on food, Six mortal hours! Till the slow finger of heredity Writes on the forehead of each living man, Strive as he may: "His mother was a cook!" Many women now doubtless spend less time on cooking than when Mrs. Gilman wrote; perhaps her scorn has borne fruit. But the implication that being a cook is unworthy loses all its force unless it can be shown that "his mother was nothing but a cook. ' ' Even so, there are worse things one might be. It is true that women should not spend six hours out of the working day on merely one depart- ment of their household work. Yet the ill-fed fam- ily is out of the race for a place among the effi- cient. Let us then teach the coming woman to use less time, more science, and all the labor-savers there are available, and still accomplish the same, or perhaps better, results. A Blackburn College student mixing bread. There is no reason why homemade bread may not be the product of science Running the Domestic Machinery 5 7 That the question of clothing is equally fundamental, perhaps few of us will acknowledge. Yet we must not underrate its importance. Food furnishes the fuel with which to support the fires of life. Clothes, however, contribute not only to comfort and health, but to mental well-being and self-respect. So long as we mingle with our fellow men in civilized communities, raiment will continue to require ''taking thought." That much of the feminine part of the population devotes an undue amount of thought to certain aspects of the clothing question we cannot deny. It is equally certain that many women, if not most women, devote too little thought to other phases of the problem. Present conditions seem to indicate that the average woman, of any class of society, places the " prevailing mode" first in her personal clothing problems. How to be "in style" absorbs much attention and time. Surely it is overshadowing other very important considerations relating to dress. When American women have awak- ened to the real importance of these considerations, we shall observe a better proportion in studying the clothes question. As a scientific foundation upon which to build her practical knowledge of how to clothe herself and her family, the girl of the future must be trained to an understanding of (i) the hygiene of clothes, (2) art expressed in clothes, (3) the psychology of clothes, (4) ethics as affected by clothes, (5) personality as expressed by clothes. There is no stage of life in which hygiene, art, psychol- ogy, and ethics do not apply to clothes. The practical knowledge built upon these as a foundation will guide the girl in choosing clothes which are suitable to the occasion for which they are designed, are not extravagant 58 Vocational Guidance for Girls in either price or style, give good value for the money expended, express the individuality of the wearer, and exert an influence uplifting rather than the reverse upon the community at large. With such a girl, the fact that "they" are wearing this or that will be always a minor consideration. With women trained in matters of clothing, we shall no longer be Class in dressmaking at Blackburn College. With women scien- tifically trained in the matter of clothing, we shall do away with much of the absurdity of dress confronted by the absurdity of identical styles for thick and thin, short and tall, middle-aged and young, rich and poor. We shall no longer see dress dominating, as it does to-day, the entire lives of thousands of women. From the woman of wealth who spends a fortune every season upon her wardrobe, all the way down the money scale to the young girl who strains every nerve and spends every cent she can earn to buy and wear "the latest style," slavery to fashion is an evil gigantic in its proportions and far-reaching in its results. Running the Domestic Machinery 59 We have no right to interfere with the woman's instinct to make herself beautiful. Rather we should encourage it, and should carefully instruct her in her impressionable years as to what real beauty is. It is almost safe to say that at present the principle by which the modern woman is guided in deciding the great questions of feminine attire is imitation. Incidentally, we may remark that nobody profits by such a mistaken foundation except the manufacturer, who moves the women of the world about like pawns on a chessboard merely to benefit his business. The society woman brings the latest thing "from Paris." The large New York establishments sell to their patrons copies of " Paris models." The middle-class shops and the middle-class women copy the copies. The cheap shops and the poor women copy the copy of the copy. Every copy is made of less worthy material than its model, of gaudier colors, with cheaper trimmings, until we have the pitiful spectacle of girls who earn barely enough to keep body and soul together spending their money for garments neither suitable nor durable sleazy, shabby after a single wearing, short-lived yet for a few ephemeral minutes "up to date." How far this heartbreaking habit of imitation extends in the poor girl's life we can hardly say. She marries, and buys furniture, crockery, and lace curtains cheap and unsuitable, like her clothes, always imitations and soon gone, to be superseded by more of the same sort. What thoughtful woman desires to feel herself part of an influence which leads to so much that is insincere, uneco- nomical, wasteful both of raw material and of the infi- nitely more important material which makes women's souls? What teacher of young girls has a right to hold back from setting her hand against the formation of habits so undesirable ? 60 Vocational Guidance for Girls And what of the vast output of the factories which turn -out cheap cloth, cheaper trimmings, imitations of silk, imitations of velvet, ribbons which will scarcely survive one tying, shoes with pasteboard soles, and all the other intrinsically worthless products which now find ready sale? When women have been educated to a standard of taste, of suitability, of quality, which will forbid the use of cheap imitations of elegant and costly articles, will not the world gain in bringing such factories to the making of products of real worth instead of their present output? The mother of the future will bring to bear upon the clothing question not only more knowledge, but more serious thought, than she does to-day. For the children she must provide comfortable, serviceable play clothes in generous quantity, that they may pursue their develop- ment unhampered in either body or mind. She must know the hygiene of childhood and the psychology of children's clothes. For the growing girls there must be a proper recognition of the growing interest in adorn- ment, avoiding the Scylla of vanity on one hand and the Charybdis of unhappy consciousness of being "different from the other girls" on the other. For the sons there must be careful provision for the athletic life so dear to the boy, together with due recognition of the approach- ing dignities of manhood, with special care for the small details which mark the well-groomed man. As in the matter of the food supply, there must be knowledge of markets and skill in buying. And, as in that case, there should be knowledge of the process of transforming materials into the finished product. Pro- cesses involving a great degree of technical skill, such as the tailor's art, the average woman will not attempt; but the simpler forms of garment making present no Running the Domestic Machinery 61 special difficulty to those who wish to try them or who find it expedient to do so. A wholesale assumption that it is only a question of a short time before all garment making will be done in the factory is probably without warrant. We read again and Photograph by Brown Bros. Buying clothing ready made. The question of buying clothing ready made or of making it will find individual solution according to means, inclination, and ability again of late, "The day of buying instead of making is here! We may like it or not like it, but the fact remains, it is here! " And then we look all about us, and find that the day is apparently not here for at least several thou- sands of people of whom we have personal knowledge. That discovery gives us courage to look farther. We find paper-pattern companies flourishing; dress goods selling in the retail departments as they have always sold; seamstresses fully occupied; and we conclude that for some time yet the question of buying or making will find individual solution, according to means, inclination, and 62 Vocational Guidance for Girls ability. What we wish to guard against in the upbringing of our future mothers is the necessity of buying because Photograph by Bro\ In a community preserving kitchen questions of food supply may sometimes be solved and community interests unified of a lack of the ability to make. The woman trained to a knowledge of the making of garments is the only woman who can intelligently decide the question for her own household. The others are forced to a decision by their own limitations. Passing from the elemental needs, shelter, warmth, food, and clothing, we enter upon the most complex of woman's duties adjustment of her home to community conditions and provision for her family's share in com- munity life. That these more abstract problems fre- quently overlap the concrete ones already enumerated need not be said. It is impossible, even if we so desire, to live "to ourselves alone." We shall undoubtedly stand for something in the community, whether consciously Running the Domestic Machinery 63 or otherwise. If it were given us to know the extent of our influence, we should probably be appalled at the crossing and recrossing of the lines emanating from our daily lives. In some households there are definite aims in the direc- tion of community life. These differ widely. In many the question seems to be entirely, "What can I get from the community?" in some, "What can I give?" in a few, "What can I share?" Of the three, the last is without doubt the one which contributes most to community well-being. The ordryina family of necessity touches community life at one time or another at certain well-defined points. Photograph by Brown Bros. A community Christmas tree. Even the younger children may be given the opportunity to take part in community work The efficient homemaker must therefore make intelligent provision for these points of contact with the community. 64 Vocational Guidance for Girls Church and charity organizations have always been recognized in American life as community matters and have provided community meeting places and community work. Through them, especially in earlier days, women often found their only common activities. The school furnished the same common ground for the children. In the present time of multiplied activity these organi- zations still stand in the foreground. In them, both young and old find perhaps their best opportunity for "team work." A parish in which all pull together is perhaps as rare as a school in which every child truly desires to learn. Yet neither is beyond the possibilities. To keep each family in a proper attitude toward these community institutions is part of the homemaker's work and a delicate task it often is. It is not enough for a mother to adopt a cast-iron policy of indiscriminate approval of pastor or teacher, although that is often recommended. Do you remember your resentment as a child of the inflex- ible judgment "The teacher must be right"? Really there is no "must" about it, and the child knows that as well as we. The mother, therefore, who is able to review the matter in dispute calmly, justly, and withal sym- pathetically, and who indorses the teacher's action after such review, is a better conserver of the public peace than the prejudging mother. Or suppose she fails to indorse the teacher's course. We have always been led to expect that this failure ruins forever the teacher's influence with the child. There are some of us, however, who doubt the immediate destruction of a wise influence, even if we should say, "No, I do not think I should have punished you in just that way. But perhaps you have not told me all that occurred. Or perhaps you overlook the fact that you had Running the Domestic Machinery 65 annoyed Miss until, being human like the rest of us, she lost her temper. Is it fair for you to treat your teacher in such a way that you cause her to lose her self- control?" It is usually possible for the wise mother to turn her fire upon the child's own error without outraging the childish sense of justice by indorsing something which does not really deserve indorsement. There is, perhaps, no way in which the mother of a family can do so much for the community institutions as by keeping up her own interest in them and thus stimu- lating the other members of the family to a willingness to do their part in the work of uplift. Where everybody is really interested and working, the first great stumbling block in the way of public enterprises has already been surmounted. In the case of the school, however, the well-trained mother will find additional work to do. We who have been teachers know how vainly we have sought for inti- mate acquaintance on the part of parents with the school. And we who have been mothers know something of the difficulties in the way of gaining such intimate acquaint- ance. In spite of, or perhaps because of, my long years of schoolroom experience, I am quite unable to conquer my reluctance to knock at a classroom door. There is an aloofness about being a school visitor which most mothers feel and few enjoy. However, it is possible to gain so much of sympathetic understanding by persistent visiting that I have found it worth while to disregard my reluctance. So often we hear mothers say, "I try to visit school at least once each year." I wonder if they ever think of that one visit as an injustice to the teacher? Suppose that, as is quite probable, the visitor arrives at an inop- portune moment, finding the children in the midst of 66 Vocational Guidance for Girls work which won't "show off," or the air heavy with the echoes of a disciplinary encounter, or the children restless as the session draws to a close, or dull and listless from the heat of an unusually hot dav. What the visitor needs Mothers visiting a school garden. Mothers need to visit tht schools often in order to know something of the problems to be met and solved by the teachers to do is not to visit once a year, but to get acquainted with the school as she does with her next-door neighbor or her mother-in-law. Having done this, she may attend the meetings of the parent-teacher association with a consciousness of knowing something of the problems to be met and solved. Until she has formed such acquaint- ance she deals with unknown quantities and is therefore in danger of erroneous conclusions. It is interesting to see how completely both teacher and pupils take to their hearts the mother who really does get acquainted them. How easy it is to appeal to her for Running the Domestic Machinery 67 advice and help; and what a sense of familiar ownership she comes to have in the school. It is no longer merely "what my child is learning" or whether "my children are getting what they ought to get in school," but rather "what we are doing in our school." The activities of women in the church usually follow along well-worn paths. The women help as they have always helped by their attendance at service, by their ladies' aid society or guild, by their missionary society, and by their aid to the poor of the town. Many strug- gling churches depend almost solely upon their women's work for support. That the woman whose problems we are studying should enter upon her church duties armed with wisdom is quite as necessary as that she should be earnest and enthusiastic. The church is not primarily a neighborhood social center. It is first of all a means for spiritual uplift. It must not, in a multiplicity of humanitarian activities, lose its character of spiritual guide. Its women will therefore be animated by a spirit- ual conception of the church and will base their activities in church work upon such a conception. The church built upon such a foundation will be foremost among local forces devoted to community service and will be a true force in the individual lives of its people. The women of the church need to use the church as an effec- tive instrument for community betterment not merely material welfare, but actual increase in spiritual worth. Perfunctory church attendance has little part in such a program. It calls rather for intelligent understanding of church problems and an application of spiritual ideals to everyday life. Outside the organizations common to all communities the homekeeper finds that she must keep in touch with her particular neighborhood through its social life. It 68 Vocational Guidance for Girls is here that her children are growing up, here that they find their friends, here that they give and take knowledge of themselves, of people, of ways to enjoy life and to meet its problems. Here perhaps they will find their life mates and will start out to be homemakers them- selves. The mother of a family must know her com- munity thoroughly. She must do her share toward making it a safe place and a pleasant place in which her children and other children may grow up, and in which she and her husband, other women and their husbands, may spend their lives. The mother who knows her children's friends, who makes them welcome at her house, who "gets acquainted" with their qualities good and bad, who is a "big sister" to them all, will not find herself shut out from her children's social life. If all the mothers were "big sisters" and all the fathers were "big brothers," neighborhood society would be a safer thing than it sometimes is. Nor should all the social life center about the young people. The woman's club, the village improvement society, the men's civic league, all have their places. Club life will menace neither the man nor the woman whose first interest is the home; and every man and woman needs the stimulus of contact with other minds. Sometimes it will happen that the homemaker finds work to be done in the line of community reform. Per- haps the roads are out of repair, or the cemetery is neg- lected, or the school building insanitary. Perhaps the water supply is not properly guarded, or milk inspection not thoroughly looked after. Perhaps industrial condi- tions in the town are not what they should be. Perhaps laws are not being enforced. New conditions require new laws. There may be loafing places on streets and in stores which are dangerous. The billiard halls may need Running the Domestic Machinery Photograph by Brown Bros. A road in DeKalb, Illinois, before improvements were made. Through the agency of improvement societies, homemakers may often bring about community reforms Photograph by Brown Bros. The same road after repairs were made through the efforts of members of the community 70 Vocational Guidance for Girls a thorough moral cleaning and a moral man placed in charge. The public dance halls may need proper chaper- onage. The moving pictures need state and national censorship to eliminate the careless suggestions leading toward both vice and crime. The homemaker must know under such circumstances how to stir public opin- ion, how to make use of her existing organizations, how to set on foot the various movements necessary for reform. In connection with the subject of the homemaker 's place in the community we must return to the thought of woman as the buyer for the home and of her consequent influence upon the economic standards of the community. It is not unusual in these days to read or hear such state- ments as the following: "The woman was no longer producer and consumer She became the con- sumer and her entire economic function changed The housewife is the buying agent for the home." Like many statements in regard to woman and her function, this seems overdrawn, since woman in her capacity as homemaker is still a producer as well as a consumer in thousands of cases. That she will become, economically, merely a buying agent, some of us not only doubt, but should consider a certain misfortune, should it occur. The fact remains, however, that as buyer of both raw materials and finished products the woman spends a very large percentage (some say nine-tenths) of the money taken in by the retail merchants of the country. This gives, or should give her, a commanding position in the producing world. If the women of America should definitely decide to-day that they would buy no more corn flakes, or mercerized crochet cotton, or silk elastic, the factories now so busy turning out these products would be shut down to-morrow until they could be converted to other uses. Women often fail to realize their Running the Domestic Machinery 7 1 power in this direction. When they do realize it, they are able to accomplish quietly all sorts of reforms in the mercantile and industrial worlds. There need be no crusade against adulterated foods other than real educa- tion and the refusal of homemakers to buy from mer- chants who carry them in stock. The same remedy will apply to overworked and underpaid workers, to insanitary shops and factories. That it is the woman's duty to control these matters is a necessary conclusion when we consider her power as the " spender of the family income." Who else has this power as she has it? We have already noted how this power might be used to regulate not only the quality but the character of prod- ucts in the factories. If women merely passed by the outlandish hats, the high heels, the hobble skirts, of fashion, their stay would necessarily be short. The woman, therefore, if she choose, is absolutely the con- troller of production along most lines of food and raiment. That she shall use this controlling power wisely is one of her obligations. And to meet the obligation she must be wisely trained. It would seem that the homemaker, as we have con- ceived her, has a part in most of the concerns of the com- munity. We speak of "woman and citizenship." To many this means, perhaps, "woman and suffrage." Woman in politics is already an accomplished fact in fourteen western states. Suffrage has been granted her in the state of New York. That her political influence will widen seems a foregone conclusion. She must therefore be prepared for real service in civic concerns. Women have already applied their housecleaning knowl- edge and skill to the smaller near-by problems of civic life. As time goes on they must render the same service to state and nation. 72 Vocational Guidance for Girls We shall soon see nation-wide "votes for women," in our own country, at least. But whether we do or not, or until we do, woman and citizenship are, as they have always been, closely linked together. In every community relation the homemaker is the good, or indifferent, or bad citizen; and in every home relation she is the citizen still, and, more than that, the mother of future citizens. In spite of the "uneasy women" who feel that the home offers insufficient scope for their intellectual powers, the executive a"bility required to run a home smoothly and well is of no mean order. "This being a mother is a complicated business," as one mother of my acquaintance expresses it. Can we afford to have homemaking under- rated as a vocation, to be avoided or entered into lightly, often with neither natural aptitude nor training to serve as guide to the "complications"? It would seem not. We must then consider "guidance toward homemaking" as a necessary part of a girl's education and as a possible solution of the home problems on every hand. We have thus far in this book concerned ourselves with making plain our ideal of girlhood and womanhood and with considering the problems which our girl and woman, when we have done our best to prepare her, will have to meet. We have thus far not concerned ourselves with the questions of how, when, and where the work of preparation is to be done. A clear vision of the end to be attained, not obscured by thought of the means used in reaching it, seems a necessity. From this we may pass on to careful, detailed consideration of agencies and methods. Knowing what we desire our girls to be, we may enlist all the forces which react upon girls to make them into what we desire. PART II GUIDING GIRLS TOWARD THE IDEAL ".4 -vocational guide is one who helps other people to find themselves. Vocational guidance is the science of this self -discovery.'' CHAPTER V THE EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES INVOLVED THE three agencies most vitally concerned in this problem of "woman making" are necessarily the home, the church, and the school the home and the church, because of their vital interest in the personal result; the school, because, whatever public opinion has demanded, schools have never been able to turn out merely educated human beings, but always boys and girls, prospective men and women. And so they must continue to do. Nature reasserts itself with every coming generation. This being so, we must continue to "make women." If we desire to make homemaking women, the most economical way to accomplish this is to use the already existing machinery for making women of some sort. We cannot begin too soon, nor continue our efforts too faithfully. The school cannot leave the whole matter to the home, nor can the home safely assume that the "domestic science" course or courses will do all that is needed for the girl. Being a woman is a com- plex, many-sided business for which training must be broad and long- continued. The teacher has perhaps scarcely realized her respon- sibilities or her opportunities in this matter. For years, and in fact until very recently, the whole tendency in education for girls has been toward a training which ignores sex and ultimate destiny. The teachers them- selves were so trained and are therefore the less prepared to see the necessity for any special teaching 75 7 6 Vocational Guidance for Girls along these lines. They may 'even resent any demand for specialized instruction for girls. Yet we are confronted by the fact that the majority of girls do marry, and that many of this majority are woefully lacking in the knowledge and training they should have. Nor are these girls exclusively from the poor and ignorant classes. There is no question about the responsibility of the school in the matter. The state which "trains for citizenship" cannot logically ignore the necessity for training the mothers of future citizens. "While I sympathize profoundly with the claim of woman for every opportunity which she can fill," says G. Stanley Hall in Adolescence, "and yield to none in appreciation of her ability, I insist that the cardinal defect in the woman's college is that it is based upon the assumption, implied and often expressed, if not almost universally acknowledged, that girls should primarily be trained to independence and self-support; and matri- mony and motherhood, if it come, will take care of itself, or, as some even urge, is thus best provided for." This criticism of existing educational conditions is quite as applicable to schools for younger girls as to those which Dr. Hall has in mind. There is no reason why both school and college may not fit girls for a broad and general usefulness, for "independence and self-support," and at the same time give them the training for that which, with the majority already mentioned, comes to be the great work of their lives. Through all the lower grades of school life, and to a certain extent through the whole course, the methods of instruction used will be largely indirect. The child will seldom be told, "This is to teach you how to keep house." I can think of no field in which this indirect method will produce greater results than the one we are considering. The Educational Agencies Involved 77 Montavilla School garden, Portland, Oregon, where boys and girls raise vegetables for serving in the lunchroom. Here the science of growing things is taught as part of the " training for citizenship 11 Lunchroom where vegetables grown in the Montavilla School garden are prepared and eaten 7 8 Vocational Guidance for Girls The teacher, in most cases, must begin her home- making training by realizing that her own example is by the very nature of things opposed to the homemaking principle, the unmarried teacher being the rule in most of our schools. Her first care, then, must be to counter- act her own example. Her references to home life must be always of the most appreciative and even reverent tosraph by Brown Bros. A model school home. One way of teaching children how to "keep house" is by means of the model home where they are given instruction in all the duties of the homemaker sort. If, as is quite possible, she comes from unsatis- factory conditions in her own home, she must be doubly careful lest her prejudices be passed on to her pupils. She will find ways in which to let it be understood that her ideals of home life are not wanting, although she has not as yet perhaps for some reason never will become a homemaker. I have sometimes thought that teachers, in their effort to impress children in more direct ways, lose sight of the great effect of their unconscious influence. The Educational Agencies Involved 79 Canning tomatoes at the Montavilla School. In such a class the mothers of future citizens are given training in one of the fundamental needs of the home scientific cooking Lunchroom where children benefit by the scientific cooking of the vegetables they grow 8o Vocational Guidance for Girls After all, it is what the teacher does, rather than what she says, that impresses; and what she is, regulates what she does. The teacher must, therefore, have the right attitude toward homemaking and domestic life. It may be of the greatest value in determining the force of her influence in this direction for the children to catch intimate little glimpses of her domestic accomplishments, of her sewing, or of her cooking, or of her quick knowledge and deft handling of emergency cases. The teacher whose influence is felt most and lasts longest is the one whose "motherliness" supplements her academic acquirements and supplies a sympathetic understanding of the child. With innate motherliness as a basis, the teacher must build up a careful understanding not only of child nature, but of man and woman nature as the developed product of child growth. She must be a student of the "woman question" as a vital problem, always recognizing that the whole social structure inevitably depends upon the status of woman in the world. She must face without flinching her responsibilities in sex matters. She may, or may not, be called upon to furnish sex instruction to the girls under her care, but no rules can free her from her moral responsibility in striving to keep the sex atmosphere clean and invigorating. The "conspiracy of silence" on these subjects is broken, and we must accept the fact that modesty does not require an assumed or a real igno- rance of the most wonderful of nature's laws. "The idea that celibacy is the ' aristocracy of the future ' is soundly based if the Business of Being a Woman rests on a mys- tery so questionable that it cannot be frankly and truth- fully explained by a girl's mother the moment her interest and curiosity seek satisfaction." 1 And what the mother should tell, the teacher must know. 1 Ida M. Tarbell, The Business of Being a Woman. The Educational Agencies Involved 81 Practical use of the teacher's carefully worked- out theories will be made all along the line of the girl's, and to a certain degree the boy's, education. The indirect teaching of the primary grades will give place in the higher grades to more direct dealing with the science, or, Photograph by Brown Bros. Mothers' and daughters 1 meeting on sewing day. Cooperation between the home and the school makes for the best teaching of domestic science better, sciences, upon which homemaking rests. The classroom becomes a "school of theory." The home stands in the equally vital position of a laboratory in which the girl sees the theory worked out and in time performs her own experiments. The finest teaching presupposes perfect cooperation between school and home. The first duty of the mother, like that of the teacher, is to preserve always a right attitude toward home life. The girl who grows up in an ideal home will be likely to loo'k forward to making such a home some day. Or, if 82 Vocational Guidance for Girls the home is not in all respects ideal, the father or mother who nevertheless recognizes ideal homes as possible may show the girl directly or otherwise how to avoid the mischance of a less than perfect home. The prevalence of divorce places before young men and women sad examples of mismating, of incompetent home- makers, of wrecked homes. We can scarcely estimate the blow struck at ideals of marriage in the minds of girls and boys by these flaunted failures. Nor can we even guess how many boys and girls are led to a cynical attitude toward all marriage by their daily suffering in families where parents have missed the real meaning of "home." However practical we may become, therefore and we must be practical in this matter we must never overlook the need for parents to give home life an atmosphere of charm. No one else can take their place in doing this. Hence it is their first duty to make homemaking seem worth while. The home must take the lead also in giving the idea of homemaking as a definite and scientific profession. The school may teach the science, but unless the home shows practical application of the scientific principles, it would be much like teaching agriculture without show- ing results upon real soil. Skillful teachers recognize the home as a valuable adjunct to their school equipment and are able by wise cooperation to use it to its full value. The home, in its character of laboratory for the school of domestic theory, must possess certain qualifications. Like all laboratories, it should be well equipped. This does not mean necessarily with expensive outfit, but with at least the best that means will allow. It implies that the home shall be recognized as a teaching institution quite as much as the school. Like other laboratories, it must be a place of experiment, not merely a preserver The Educational Agencies Invoked Courtesy of L. A. Alderman First crop of radishes and lettuce at the Alameda Park School, Portland, Oregon, June, 1016. Even in the primary grades children may learn much about the science of growing things Bringing exhibits to a school fair in Tacoma, Washington. Skillful teachers who recognize the home as a valuable adjunct to the school equipment encourage the children to make gardens at home 84 Vocational Guidance for Girls of tradition. The efficient laboratory presupposes an informed and open-minded presiding genius. The greatest service that the home can render in the cause of training girls for homemaking is probably close, painstaking study of its own individual girl her likes, dislikes, aptitudes, and limitations. Home-mindedness shows itself nowhere so much as in the home; lack of home-mindedness shows there quite as much. The results of such study should throw great light upon the problem of the girl's future. Combined with the observa- tions recorded by her teacher during year after year of the girl's school life, this study offers the strongest argu- ments for or against this or that career. Frequent and sympathetic conferences between parent and teacher become a necessity. There is then less likelihood of opposing counsel when the girl seeks guidance toward her life work. It is quite probable that, while the school undertakes to lay a general foundation for homemaking efficiency, the home, when it reaches the full measure of its power and responsibility, will be best fitted to help the girl to specialize in the direction most suited to her individual power. It can, if it will, give the girl individual oppor- tunities such as the mere fact of numbers forbids the school to give. The special work of the church in training the girl is necessarily that which has to do with her spiritual concept of life, the strengthening of her moral fiber. Here school, home, and church must each contribute its share. None of them can undertake alone so important and delicate a task. Any attempt to make arbitrary divisions in the work of these three agencies is bound to be at least a partial failure. Conditions differ so widely that we can only say of much of the work, "at school or church or in The Educational Agencies Involved 85 the home," or, better, "at school and church and home in cooperation." Each must supplement the efforts of the other, and where one fails, the other must take up the task. It really matters little where the work is done, provided that it is done. The ensuing chapters of this book are written in the hope that they may bring the vital problems of girl training and girl guidance home to both teacher and parent ; and especially that they may convince both of the value of cooperation in the inspiring work of helping our daughters to make the most of their lives. CHAPTER VI TRAINING THE LITTLE CHILD " CHILDREN are the home's highest product." vy That means at the outset that we have children because we believe in them, and that we train them, as the skilled workman shapes his wood and clay, to achieve the greatest result of which the human material is capable. A factory's output can be standardized. An engine's power can be measured. But he who trains a child can never fully know the mind he works with nor the result he attains. We do know, however, that if it is subject to certain influences, trained by certain laws, the chances are that this mind which we cannot fully know will react in a certain way. To attempt in a chapter to outline a system of training for children would be an attempt doomed to certain failure. Books are written on this subject, and the shelves of the child-study and child-training department in the libraries are rapidly filling. What I have in mind here is rather a single line of the child's development that which leads toward making him a useful factor in the home life of which he forms a part. The boy or girl who fills successfully a place in the home of his childhood will be in a fair way to undertake successfully the greater task of founding a home of his own. In the days of infancy and early childhood, training for boys and girls may be more nearly identical than in later life. A large part of the differentiation in the work and play of little boys and girls would seem to be quite 86 Training the Little Child artificial. We give dolls to girls and drums to boys, but only because of some preconceived notion of our own. The girls will drum as loudly and the boys care for the baby quite as tenderly, until some one ridicules them and they learn to simulate a scorn for "boys' things" and "girls' things" which they do not really feel. Throughout this chapter, therefore, it is to be assumed that the training suggested is quite as applicable and quite as necessary for one sex as for the other. Young mothers sometimes ask the family doctor, "When shall I be- gin to train the baby to eat at reg- ular intervals, to go to sleep without rocking, in general to accept the plan of life we outline for him?" The answer seldom varies: "Before he is twenty-four hours old." It is therefore evident that all the basic principles of living, whether physical or mental, must have their foundations far back in the child's young life. As a basis for 'all the rest, we must work for health. Photograph by Brown Bros. Helping with the housework. The boy or girl who successfully fills a place in the home of his childhood will be in a fair way to under- take successfully the greater task of founding a home of his or her own 88 Vocational Guidance for Girls A truly successful life, rounded and full, presupposes health. Regular habits, nourishing food, plenty of sleep, are axiomatic in writings treating of the care of young children, yet it is surprising how often these rules are violated. "It is easier" to give the child what he wants or what the others are having; easier to let him sit up than to put him to bed ; easier to regard the moment than the years ahead. Aside from the physical foundation, the training that we are to give our little children will prob- ably be based upon our conception of what they need to make them good sons and daughters, good brothers and sisters, good friends, good husbands and wives, and good fathers and mothers. In other words, it is the social aspect of life that we have in mind, and our social ideals. What- ever the boy "wants to be when he grows up," he is sure' to have social relations with his kind. Whether the girl marries or remains single, she cannot entirely escape these relations. Indeed they are thrust upon both boy and girl already. What then do they Already well started on his education Training the Little Child 89 need to enable them to be successful in the human relations of living? We might enumerate here a long list of virtues that will help, but, since long lists shatter concentration, let us narrow them to four: (i) sympathy, (2) self-control, (3) unselfishness, (4) industry. I do not mean to say that, with these four qualities only, a man will make a successful merchant or farmer, or that a woman will become a good housekeeper or a skillful teacher. But I do mean that in family relations these four qualities are worth more than intellectual attainments or any sort of manual skill. It is really astonishing to see how much these four will cover. We desire thrift what is thrift but self-control? Tolerance what but sympathy the "put yourself in his place" feeling? Courtesy what but unselfishness? Let us, then, in the child's early years concentrate upon sympathy, self-control, unselfishness, and industry. You will doubtless remember Cabot's summary of the four requirements of man 1 work, play, love, and worship. Suppose we could write on the wall of every nursery in the land: Sympathy Self-control Unselfishness Industry in Work Play Love Worship Would not this writing on the wall be a fruitful reminder to the mothers ? The period of early childhood is the one in which the home may act with least interference as the child's teacher. Later, whether she will or no, the mother must share the work of training with the school, the church, and that indefinite influence we class vaguely as society. During 1 Cabot, What Men Live By. go Vocational Guidance for Girls these few early years, then, the mother must use her opportunity well. It will soon be gone. How shall she teach such abstract virtues as sympathy, unselfishness, self-control? Recognizing the fact that the little child acts merely as his instinct and feelings prompt, she must make all training at this stage of his life take the form of developing the instincts. Probably the strongest of these at this time is imitation. Consequently most of the teaching must take advantage of the imitative instinct. The first care should be to surround the child with the qualities we desire him to possess. The mother who scolds, gives way to temper, or is unwilling or unable to control her own emotions and acts can hope for little self- control in her child. In the same way the father who kicks the dog or lashes his horse or is hard and cold in his dealings with his family may expect only that his child will begin life by imitating his undesirable qualities. This necessary supervision of the child's environment is a strong argument for direct oversight of little children by the mother. It is often difficult even for her to keep an ideal example before the child; and if she leaves it to hired caretakers, they seldom realize its necessity or are willing to take the pains she would herself. Especially is this true of the young and ignorant girls who are often seen in sole charge of little children. This first step being merely passive education, it is not enough. We must not only set an example; we must go farther and strive to get from the child acts or attitudes of mind based upon these examples. Let us take first the quality of sympathy, which is closely allied to reflex imitation. It is difficult to say just when the child merely reflects the emotions of those about him and when he consciously thinks of others as having feelings like his own. This conscious thought is, Training the Little Child 9 1 of course, the foundation of real sympathy, and it comes early in the child's life probably before the fourth year. A little girl of three was greatly interested and pleased at the appearance of a roast chicken upon the family dinner table. She chattered about the "birdie" as she Copyright by Underwood & Underwood Stories that broaden the child's conception of the lives and feelings of others are of value in training for sympathy had done before on similar occasions. But when the carving knife was lifted over it, she astonished everyone by her terrified cry of ''Don't cut the birdie. Hurt the birdie." No explanation or excuse satisfied her, and it was finally necessary to remove the platter and have the carving done out of her sight. Most children are naturally sympathetic when they have experienced or can imagine the feelings of others. The cruelty of children is usually due to their absorption in their own feelings without a realiza- tion of the pain they inflict. 92 Vocational Guidance for Girls Training for sympathy then must consist of enlarge- ment of experience and cultivation of imagination. Some mothers do not talk enough with their children. They talk to them that is, they reprimand or direct them, but do not carry on conversations, as they might do greatly to the child's advantage. Telling stories is one of the most fruitful methods of training at this age. Even "this little pig went to market" has possibilities in the hands of a skillful mother. The bedtime story is a definite institution in many families. It deserves to be so in all. Beginning with the nursery rimes, the stories will gradually broaden in theme, and if their dramatic possi- bilities are at all realized by the story-teller, the children will broaden in their conception of the lives and feelings of others. Sympathy will thus in most cases be a plant of natural and easy growth. Intercourse with other children and with the older members of the child's family will also furnish constant, material for the thoughtful mother. The baby bumps its head, and the mother soothes it with gentle, loving words. It is more than likely that the three- or four-year-old will express his sympathy also. Surely he will if the mother says, "Poor baby. See the great bump. How it must hurt!" Or perhaps "big sister" is happy on her birth- day. Again, the three-year-old is likely to show happiness also, and the wise mother will help the child by a timely word to take the step from reflex imitation of happiness to true sympathy. Nor must we overlook the occasions when some one in the nursery has been "naughty" and must be punished. "Poor Bobby! He is sad because he cannot play with us this morning. He feels the way you did when you were naughty and had to sit so still in your little chair. I am sorry for Bobby aren't you? We hope he will be good next time, don't we?" Training the Little Child 93 Teaching self-control is quite a different matter from the foregoing, and one which requires infinitely more work and patience. The first step is, however, the same. If you would have sympathy, show sympathy. If you would have self-control in a child, control yourself. Remember the strength of the imitative instinct. Next, Photograph by Brown Bros. .rnotograpn oy x>rown j: Kindergarten games afford the intercourse with other children necessary to the child's development strive to obtain control in the young child in some small matter where control is easy. Any normal child will learn that control pays if you make it pay. Encourage the hungry child to stop crying while you prepare his food, but prepare it quickly, or he will begin to cry again to make you hurry. Mothers usually work hard to teach control of bodily functions, but often far less to obtain control of mental and moral conditions. Obedience, con- sidered from time immemorial the chief virtue of child- hood, is really only of value as it conduces to self-control 94 Vocational Guidance for Girls in later life. The wise parent^ therefore, while requir- ing obedience for the convenience of the family and the safety of the child, will lay far more stress upon teaching the child to control himself. The work must be done almost entirely by indirect methods during the early years. Offering artificial rewards and dealing out artificial Courtesy of the United Charities of Chicago A group of children at the Mary Crane Nursery, Chicago. Children acquire self-control by learning to help themselves punishments are the crudest forms of encouraging effort. The natural reward and the inevitable natural punish- ment are far better when they can be employed. The child who overcomes his tendency to play before or during his dressing may be rewarded by some special morning privilege which will automatically regulate itself. In our family it is the joyful tasl of bringing in and dis- tributing the morning mail. The child not dressed "on time" necessarily loses the privilege. We are not punish- ing, but "we can't wait." Lack of control of temper Training the Little Child 95 presupposes solitude. "People can't have cross children about." Quarrels inevitably bring cessation of group play or work solitude again. The child's love of appro- bation may also be made of great assistance. Always we must remember that doing what we tell him to do is not after all the main thing. It is doing the right thing, being willing to do the right thing, and being able to hold back the impulse to do the wrong thing, that count. We are working "to train self-directed agents, not to make soldiers." Unselfishness is a plant of slow growth. Indeed it is properly not a childish trait at all, and the most we can probably get is its outward seeming. But it is important that we at least acquaint the child with ideals of unselfish- ness. We must find much in the child to appeal to, even though altruistic motives do not appear until much later than this. The love of approbation will prove a strong help again, also the sense of justice with which children seem endowed from the beginning. "Help him because he helped you," or "Give her some because she always gives you part of hers," is often effective. Just as in the case of self-control, the child will learn to over- come his innate selfishness "if it pays" to do so. It may seem wrong to encourage any but the highest motive, but a habit of unselfish acts, resting upon a desire to win the approbation of others, is a better foundation upon which to build than no foundation at all. Purely disinterested or altruistic motives do not appear in the normal child much before the age of adolescence, and by that time selfishness, which accords so well with the individualistic instincts of the child, will have hardened into a fixed habit if not vigorously checked. Care must be taken to lead the child toward unselfish acts, but not to force them upon him. The common 9 6 Vocational Guidance for Girls courtesies of life we may require, but, beyond that, example, tactful suggestion, wisely chosen stories, and judicious praise will do far more than force. The idea of kindness may be grasped by young children and, together with the great ideal of service, should be emphasized in their home life and in their intercourse with other children. The "only child" suffers most from lack of opportunity to learn these two great needs of his best self kindness and service. Occasions should be sys- tematically made for such a child (indeed for all children) to meet other children on some common ground. Play- things should be shared, help given and received, and the idea of interdependence brought out. "We must help each other" should be emphasized from early childhood. Much must be made of the little helps the child is able to give in the home bringing slippers for father, going on little errands about the house for mother, picking up his own playthings, hanging up his coat and hat, caring for the welfare of the family pets. Careful provision should be made for the child's convenience in performing these little services. There must be places for the toys, low hooks for the wraps, and constant encouragement and recognition of the small helper. Some day he may help you because he loves to help. Now he loves to be praised for helping. Activity is a natural and absorbing part of a child's life. He is always doing something. It remains for the parent to direct this restless movement and to transform some of it into useful labor. Work, in the sense of accomplishing results for the satisfaction and benefit of the parent, is quite foreign to our plan for training the young child. But work for the child's own satisfaction and for the formation of the habit of industry must occupy our attention in large measure. The child's playthings Training the Little Child 97 Photograph by Brown Bros. Helping the little sister. Children will learn unselfishness and kindness if they are early taught to help one another 9 8 Vocational Guidance for Girls should from his earliest days be chosen in recognition of his desire to do things and make things. The shops are filled with showy toys, mechanical and otherwise, and children find the toyshop a veritable fairyland. But once satiated with the sight of any particular toy, however cunningly devised and satiety comes soon the child forsakes the gorgeous plaything for his blocks, or paper and a pair of scissors, or even his mother's clothespins. He can do something with these. The Montessori materials are perhaps the most thought- fully planned in this direction of anything now obtainable ; and no one having the care of young children should be without some knowledge of this now famous method. All the materials have this advantage : they offer definite problems and consequently afford the child the joy of accomplishment. A few of the occupations of life afford us unending enjoyment at every stage of the doing, but not many. It is rather the achievement of our end, the "lust of finishing," which carries us through the tiresome details of our work. The child must therefore be early introduced to the joy of accomplishment. Instead of unending toys, give him something to work with. He will appreciate your thoughtfulness, and he will find not only joy but real development in their use. At first the child's work will consist of fragmentary efforts, but at a remarkably early age he will show evidence of a power of concentration and persistence which will make possible the accomplishment of finished undertak- ings. He begins to know what he wants to do and to exhibit considerable ingenuity in finding and combining materials. Most of all, he wants to imitate the activities he sees around him. In the strain of modern life a widespread restlessness seems to have seized mankind. Whatever people do, Training the Little Child 99 they want to be doing something else, and the pathway of the average individual is strewn with crude beginnings, half-finished jobs, abandoned work. The child very easily falls into line with this tendency of his elders. Hence he needs definite encouragement to see clearly Photograph by Brown Bro.s. Helping in the home tasks. Wisely directed activity will teach the child both unselfishness and industry what he has in hand and to bring his industrial attempts to a worth-while conclusion. Avoid, even with a little child, that inconsiderate habit of " grown-ups" of calling the little worker away whenever you desire his attention or help, quite regardless of the damage you may do to his work by your untimely interruption. Keep the child, as far as possible, too, from undertaking tasks too difficult or requiring too much time for completion. Discourage aimless handling of tools. A cheerful "What are you making? " sometimes crystallizes hitherto rambling desires. A timely suggestion often meets with enthusiastic response. ioo Vocational Guidance for Girls The working outfit of a child under school age may or may not include kindergarten or Montessori material. Balls, blocks, pencils and paper, paste, colored crayons, scissors, a blackboard, a cart, a wheelbarrow, stout little garden tools, a sand tray or, better, in summer an outdoor sandpile, will furnish endless work and endless delight to a child or group of children. It is not so much what sort of material we use as the way in which we use it. Even at this age the child longs to be a producer, to "make things"; and his best development requires that we train this inclination. There is a prevalent notion that women especially are no longer required to be pro- ducers and that all our energies should be bent toward the sole task of making them intelligent consumers. There is, however, a joy in producing without which no life is really complete. And no scheme of education can be a true success which ignores or neglects the necessity of producing. The joy of work, the delight in achieve- ment, should be the keynote of all industrial training. This should be kept constantly in view. To most people there is something wonderfully appeal- ing about the innocence of the little child. We watch with delight the marvelous development of the little mind keeping pace with the growth of bodily strength and dexterity. We are reluctant to see the day drawing near when the child must begin his long course of training in school. Sometimes we fail to recognize the fact that before school days come the child has already received a considerable part of his education ; that the habits which will make or mar his future are often firmly implanted and in a fair way to become masters of the young life. An elaborate plan for the little child's training would probably be abandoned even if undertaken, since elaborate plans involve endless work. If, however, we Training the Littk Child. - , , , - 101 attempt no more than I have outlined in this chapter, we have some reasonable chance of success. Given good health, with regular bodily habits, as a physical founda- tion, the child will have had much done for him if we have begun to build the habits of sympathy, self-control, industry, and service which will purify and sweeten the family relations of later years and make the one-time child worthy himself to undertake the important task of home building. It is naturally a matter for regret that the teacher into whose hands the child comes first at school usually knows so little of the home training he has had or failed to have. Children whose parents have made little or no attempt to teach these fundamental qualities which we have had under discussion are sometimes forever handicapped unless the teacher can supply the deficiency. Children who have made a good beginning may lose much of what they have been taught unless the teacher recog- nizes and holds them to the ideal. The kindergarten or primary teacher needs to know the homes of her pupils; and the time is not far distant when the school will recognize the home as after all the first grade in school life. Then mothers will receive the inspiration of contact with the teachers and their ideals, not alone when their children reach school age, but from the time the first child arrives in the home. The Sunday school has its "cradle roll." The day school may emulate its example. CHAPTER VII TEACHING THE MECHANICS OF HOUSEKEEPING GOING to school marks an epoch in every child's life. Hitherto, however wide or narrow the child's contact with the world has been, the mother has been, at least nominally and in most cases actually, the controlling power. Now she gives her child over for an increasingly large part of every day to outside influence. More and more we are coming to see that the evolution of a successful homemaker requires that the school as well as the home keep the homemaking ideal before it. And so the best schools of the country are doing. The greatest needs of the little girl's early school days would seem to be a definite understanding between teacher and mother of the share each should assume in the home- making training. This necessitates personal conferences or mothers' meetings, or both. The little girl of primary-school age points the way for both teacher and mother by her adaptation and imitation of home activities in her play. In primary grades girls are approaching the height of the doll interest, which Hall and others place at eight or nine years. A doll's house, therefore, may be made the source of almost infinite enjoyment and profit in these grades. Indeed it is hardly too much to say that no primary room is complete without one. Nor is there any reason why any school should remain without one, since its making is the simplest of processes. Four wooden boxes, of the same size, obtained probably from the grocer, the dry- goods merchant, or the local shoe dealer, will make a 102 Teaching the Mechanics of Housekeeping 103 most satisfactory house if placed in two tiers of two each, with the open sides toward the front. This gives four rooms, which may be furnished as kitchen, dining room, living room, and bedroom. Windows may be cut in the ends or back, if the boys of the school are sufficiently expert with tools or if outside assistance can be secured for an hour or so. The best results with the doll's house are obtained if the children are allowed to furnish it themselves, with the teacher's ad- vice and help, rather than to find it completely equipp e d and therefore merely a "plaything" of the sort that children have less use for because they can do little with it. An empty house presents exciting possibilities, and per- haps for the first time these little girls look with seeing eyes at the home furnishings, for they have wall paper to select, curtains and rugs to make, and indeed no end of things to do. It is perhaps scarcely necessary to call to mind the educational advantages possible in the planning and making of bedding, draperies, table linen, towels, couches and pillows, window seats, and other furnishings, as well as in the ingenuity brought into play in evolving kitchen The little girl adapts and imitates home activities in play IO4 Vocational Guidance for Girls utensils and in stocking the cupboards with the necessities for housekeeping. The free interchange of ideas should be encouraged, and the spirit of seeking the best fostered. The conspicuous results in this work are two: we secure the child's attention to details of housekeeping, Making furniture for a doll's house affords educational advantages in emphasizing the details of housekeeping and we build up a foundation ideal of what housekeep- ing equipment should be. Children in poorly equipped homes may find the most practical of training in this way. My experience has been that teachers have only to begin this work in order to arouse enthusiasm in any class of little girls. Once begun, it carries itself along. There should be no compulsion in this work. Choice and not necessity must be the rule in all our training for homemaking. To compel a child's attention to that which she will later do voluntarily, if at all, will at the very outset defeat our purpose. The finest sort of cooperation arises in this work when parents are led to provide the little girl at home with a Teaching the Mechanics of Housekeeping 105 doll's house fashioned like the one at school. Perhaps they may go a step farther and find space for a larger scheme of housekeeping, in the attic or elsewhere. Cooperation among the children means interchange of ideas, materials, and labor, most helpful to social ideals. From the furnishing of the doll's house it is easy to pass to plays involving the activities of home life. Chil- dren delight in sweeping, dusting, washing dishes, arrang- ing cupboards and pantries, and making beds in their miniature houses, and if their efforts are wisely directed, orderly habits easily begin to form. In all these varieties of work the children must be led to feel that there is a right way, and that only that way is good enough, even for play. The great result of all play housekeeping is the forma- tion of ideals. It is just as easy to learn at seven or eight the most efficient way of washing dishes as it is to defer that knowledge until years of inefficient work harden into inefficient habits. The teacher will find abundant and interesting studies in household efficiency in recently published books to inspire her guidance of the children's activity. The step from washing play dishes at school to washing real dishes at home is easily taken, and children are delighted to take it. Here again the school and home may indeed must, for best results work together. Some schools are giving school credit for home work along domestic lines. That there are complex elements entering into the successful working out of such a plan one must admit. A school giving credit for work it does not see may put a premium upon quantity rather than quality. The teacher who asks her little pupils to wash the home dishes according to school methods may encounter adverse comment from certain parents who are io6 Vocational Guidance for Girls quick to resent outside "management." Nevertheless, home practice in accordance with school theory is the ideal of any cooperative education in the mechanics of housekeeping; therefore some scheme must be worked out whereby the girls will practice at home, and, having learned to do by doing, will continue to do in the families where their doing will be a help. Let us consider for a moment the present condition of the school-credit-for-home-work idea. Schemes are being worked out in various places, under one or the other of the following plans. Plan I (often known as the Massachusetts plan). Each pupil, with the advice of his teacher and the consent of his parents, selects some one definite piece of work to do at home regularly, under direction of the school and with some study at school of the practical problems involved. School credit depends upon approval by the teacher on the occasion of a visit of inspection to the home. Plan II (sometimes called the Oregon plan). This is more directly concerned with the cultivation of a helpful spirit than w4th perfect technique or broad knowledge. No attempt is made to correlate home and school work. Credit is given merely for the fact that the dishes were washed, the table set, or the baby bathed, the fact being properly certified by the parent. Whether the work was acceptably done or not rests entirely with the parent. In the carrying out of the latter plan blanks are usually issued to be filled out and handed in once a week or once a month. Each task carries a certain value in school credit. That either of these plans possesses certain weaknesses doubtless even their makers would admit. But they are at least opening wedges. A plan might be worked out whereby little girls are taught one household task at a Teaching the Mechanics of Housekeeping 107 time, through their play housekeeping, after which credit may be given for satisfactory performance of the task at home. Later another household duty may be taught, and put into practice, with credit, at home, thus building up a body of known duties for which the little house- helper has been duly trained. For its highest efficiency such a plan would require more than consent on the part of mothers. Its success would depend upon coopera- tive leadership and its value upon the acceptance, for school credit, of only that work done in conformity with school ideals. But at all events, whether school credit be given or not, the stimulus of interest in home tasks may be given strength by the teacher's wise suggestion, and thoughtful consideration of the matter in teachers' and mothers' meetings will insure cooperation of the most helpful sort. The tactful teacher will find ways to suggest to mothers that children be held up at home to the ideals of efficiency she has been at pains to put before them at school. The suggestion has been recently made by several thoughtful educators that the noon hour, in schools where children do not go home for dinner, be made use of for the simplest of cooking lessons. The children who at seven are quite content to play house soon pass into the stage where they wish to see results from their work. They want to "make things," real things, that they or some one can use. Children of nine or ten can learn to cook cereals and eggs in various ways, to make cocoa, and to prepare other simple dishes. Their pride and delight in these accomplishments are intense. These activities are equally suited to the small rural school and to the consolidated schools which are happily taking the place of the one-room buildings. In both, the teacher may find the lunch hour a real educational force if it is used aright. If. the teacher io8 Vocational Guidance for Girls allows and guides these efforts in the schoolroom, she must keep in mind her "ideal of efficiency." Accurate measurements, logical processes, elimination of awkward and unnecessary movements, care in following directions, neatness, and precision are the real lessons to be learned. Photograph by Brown Bros. A school garden. The possibilities for good through school-garden work are numberless School gardens are perhaps already too familiar to require more than a word. Their possibilities for good are numberless. In them many children get their first insight into the joys of making things grow and are led by this joy to undertake the care of a home garden and to beautify the home surroundings as they had never thought of doing before. School-garden work leads to beautify- ing the school grounds, with resulting pride and interest in the school. Accompanying the activities we have suggested, teachers will find a wide field in attractive stories of help- ful cooperative home life. Extracts from many of Miss Teaching the Mechanics of Housekeeping 109 Alcott's stories, the Cratchits' Christmas dinner from Dickens' Christmas Carol, and many other delightful glimpses of home life can be read, or, better, dramatized, with little effort and with good results. It may seem that the homemaking training here suggested for younger children is too desultory, too slight, in fact, to affect the situation much. But let us consider. Homemaking is an art, coming more and more to be based on a foundation of science. For it is undoubtedly true that, while the pessimists are telling us that the home is doomed, we who are optimists see coming toward us a great wave of homemaking knowledge which if seized upon will put the homemaker's art upon a surer foundation than it has ever been. The elements of housekeeping are the ABC of home- making. We shall do well to teach them early, incidentally, and with no undue exaggeration of their place in the scheme of living. We simply familiarize the girl, by long and quiet contact, with the tools of the homemaker, for future scientific use, just as we teach the multiplication facts for later use in the science of mathematics. A definite list of the simple homemaking tasks suitable for little girls to undertake may not be out of place here : 1. Setting the table. (A card list of table necessities is useful. Such a list may be given each little girl when she undertakes home practice work.) 2. Clearing the table. 3. Washing the dishes. 4. Sweeping the kitchen. Sweeping the piazza. 5. Dusting. 6. Making beds and caring for bedrooms. 7. Arranging her own bureau drawers and closets. 8. Simple cooking. 9. Hemming towels and table linen. 10. Ironing handkerchiefs and napkins. no Vocational Guidance for Girls . As the child grows older, methods of teaching grow increasingly direct. Even here we shall perhaps not talk a great deal about "preparing for homemaking." But we shall see that the tools grow increasingly familiar, and that ideals once taught are retained and added to. We shall see that our science, our mathematics, our art, all contribute to the acquirement of homemaking knowledge. We shall give a practical turn to these more or less abstract subjects. Sewing and cooking classes are by this time a recognized part of grammar-school courses in many city schools. That they are not so firmly intrenched in the country schools is due usually to difficulties in the way of securing equipment and to the already crowded condition of the school program. The ideal remedy is the substitution of the consolidated school with its domestic science room and its specially trained teacher for the scattered one-room buildings. Wherever the consolidated school has come, it has been enthusiastically received and supported. No one wishes to go back to the old way. But in many localities the consolidated school has not come and cannot be immediately looked for; and in these places the need of the homemaking work is just as great. The teacher must find the way to give these girls what they need. If no other way presents itself, the teacher will do well to ask the help of the mothers of the neighborhood. Perhaps one who is an expert needlewoman will give an hour or two a week in the school or at her own home to carrying out the sewing course which the teacher cannot crowd into her own already overcrowded program. Perhaps another will do the same for the cooking, making her own kitchen for one afternoon a week an annex of the school. It is important, however, when such arrangements are made that they be recognized as school work, and if Teaching the Mechanics of Housekeeping 1 1 1 possible the courses followed should be planned and supervised by the regular teacher of the school. Thus only can they be held to standardized accomplishment. The inadequacy of the "one-portion" method of teaching girls to cook has aroused serious thought, and remedies of various sorts have been applied. You know, perhaps, the story of the Chicago cooking-school student who "had to make seven omelets in succession at home last night" because one egg would not make enough omelet for the family. The first remedy tried was cooking for the school lunch room. This was, however, usually going from one extreme to the other, since the lunch room is as a rule maintained only in large schools. "Institutional cooking," some one calls it. Instead of one egg-cooking, it became one-hundred-egg cooking, and the difficulty of the average student in adapting school methods to family use was not by any means at an end. The Central High School of Newark, New Jersey, has solved its problem by putting its girls to work, not at the task of providing the sandwiches, soups, and other luncheon dishes for its large lunch room, but at providing "family dinners" at twenty-five cents a plate for the faculty of the school. Other schools follow similar plans. The grammar-school girls of Leominster, Massachusetts, serve luncheon to a limited number every day at their domestic science house. Here the girls do the marketing, cook and serve the meal, and keep the various rooms of the house in order. In Montclair, New Jersey, work of this same sort is done. In each of these cases the cooking is done as it would have to be in the home, not for one person, nor for hundreds, but for approximately a family- sized group. Sewing courses also grow more and more practical. In some schools the girls make their own graduating 112 Vocational Guidance for Girls dresses as a final test of their ability. Courses are definite, and girls completing them will have definite knowledge of Teachers 1 luncheon cooked and served by pupils at the Clinton Kelly School, Portland, Oregon. Other schools have adopted similar plans for teaching girls how to cook everyday processes of hand sewing. The schools which add to their hand-sewing courses well-planned practice in the use of the sewing machine are further adding to the accomplishment of their girls. Those which go farther still and teach garment planning and making may consider their sewing courses fairly complete. The formation of ideals must go hand in hand with practice in manual processes. The girl must learn to know good work when she sees it, to know a properly constructed garment from one carelessly put together, and to value good work and construction. Time was when domestic science meant sewing and cooking, and these alone. That time, however, is past. Teaching the Mechanics of Housekeeping 113 The care of a house is practically taught in many schools throughout the country by the maintenance of a model apartment in or near the school building. In Public School No. 7, New York City, grammar-school girls, many of whom are of foreign parentage and tradition, are thus introduced to the American ideal of living. The school is thus establishing standards of equipment, of food, of service, of comfortable living, that tend to Americanize quite as much as the establishment of standards of speech, of business methods, or of civic duties. The work done in this school is typical of that prevailing in hundreds of towns and cities. The question arises: How much 'of her housekeeping training should a girl receive before entering upon her high-school course? After careful consideration it seems A girls 1 sewing class. Work in sewing offers unlimited possibilities wise to urge that the greater part of the practical house- hold work be taught during the period from eleven to ii4 Vocational Guidance for Girls fourteen. This does not imply that homemaking training should cease at fourteen, but rather that after that age attention shall be centered upon the more difficult aspects of the subject upon "household economics" rather than the skillful doing of household tasks. In view, however, of the fact that the majority of girls never reach the high school, every bit of household science which they can grasp should be given them in the elemen- tary school. Knowing how to do is only part of the housekeeper's work. Knowing what and when to do is quite as important. Elementary study of food values is quite as comprehensible as elementary algebra. Home sanitation and decoration are no harder to understand than commercial geography. The principles of infant feeding and care may be grasped by any girl who can successfully study civil government or grammar. Shall we then crowd out commercial geography or government or grammar to make room for these home- making studies? Not necessarily, although, if it came to a choice, much might be said for the practical studies in learning to live. Fortunately it need not come to a choice. There is room for both. We must, however, learn to adapt existing courses to the requirements of girls. There is arithmetic, for instance. Most of us have already learned to skip judiciously the pages in the text- book which deal with compound proportion, averaging pay- ments, partial payments, and cube root. Now we must learn to insert the keeping of household accounts; the study of apportioning incomes; the scientific spending of a dollar in food or clothing value; the relative advantage of cash or credit systems of paying the running expenses of a home; the dangers of the "easy-payment plan"; the cost of running an automobile; comparison with the upkeep of a horse and wagon; comparison of the two from Teaching the Mechanics of Housekeeping 115 Courtesy of L. A. Alderman A model school home where all the practical details of house- keeping are taught A domestic science class at work in the model school home shown above n6 Vocational Guidance for Girls the point of view of their usefulness to a family ; mortgag- ing homes, what it means, and what it costs to borrow; when borrowing is justified; the accumulation of interest in a savings account ; the comparative financial advantage of renting and owning a home ; the cost of building houses of various sorts; the cost of securing, under varying con- ditions, a water supply in the country home; and other locally important problems. We already have "applied science" in our courses, and we are making a strenuous effort to apply arithmetic; but we have not usually tried to apply it to the education of the prospective homemaker. Take the one question of the "installment plan." Where, if not in the public school, can we fight the menace offered to the inexperienced young people of the land by this method of doing business? And where in the public school if not in the arithmetic class? Consider the possibility of lives spent in paying for shoes and hats already worn out, of furniture double-priced because payment is to be on the "easy plan," of families always in debt, with wages mortgaged for months in advance. The pure science of mathematics will be of little avail in fighting this possibility, but "applied arithmetic" can be a most effective weapon. In our geography classes we may find time for the study of food and clothing products, of their sources, their comparative usefulness, and their cost. We may learn whether it is best to buy American-made macaroni or the imported variety ; whether French silks and gloves are superior to those made in America ; what ' ' shoddy "is, what we may expect from it if we buy it, how much it is worth in comparison with long-wool fabrics, how to know whether shoddy is being offered us when we buy. Count- less other matters concerning the markets and products of the world will repay the same sort of treatment. Teaching the Mechanics of Housekeeping 117 One of the class exercises in the model school home shown on page 115 The correct serving of meals forms part of the class work in this same home 1 1 8 Vocational Guidance for Girls Food questions are opened up by study of our meat, vegetable, and fruit supply. Every town may make this a personal and immediate problem. From whom did Mr. Blank, the local grocer, obtain his canned toma- toes? It is sometimes possible to follow up those canned tomatoes to their source. In one investigation of this sort they were found to have passed through six hands. The arithmetic class may pass upon the question of profits and comparative cost between this and the "producer- to-consumer" method. The art work of the schools may also contribute gener- ously to the body of homemaking knowledge. For tae average girl the designing and making of Christmas cards and book covers, or even the prolonged study of great paintings, is a less productive use of time than the design- ing of cushion covers, curtains, bureau scarfs, or candle shades. In a certain town in New England considerable effort was expended in bringing about the introduction of art work in the schools a few years ago. A normal- school art graduate took charge of the work. It has now been abandoned because ' ' the children took so little interest." And really, if you knew the conditions, you- could not blame them. They studied art and copied art and tried to cultivate an artistic sense in ways as remote from their daily lives as could apparently be con- trived. And the pity of it all is that here were girls whose homes, whose personal dress, were crying out for the application of art; whose artistic sense was growing or failing to grow according as their individual condi- tions would allow; and the public school has passed its opportunity by. Art, as applied to school work, is divided usually into appreciative and creative work. We place before chil- dren the best in picture and sculpture and music. Why Teaching the Mechanics of Housekeeping 119 do we not teach them also the foundation principles of good taste in matters less remote from the lives of many of them? Why not teach the girl something of artistic color combination? Why not apply the test of art to the lines of woman's attire ? Why not study the contour of heads and styles of hairdressing? Happily, in these days, these things also are being done. We have "manual arts" rooms and teachers by whose aid girls are taught to use the principles of design they study in their everyday planning of everyday things. A visitor to the Central School of Auburn, Washington, imports interesting work going on in such a room. On the blackboard was written: The general aim of design work order and beauty. The three principles governing design are: B alance Harmony Rhythm. Balance: opposition of equal forms. Rhythm: movement in direction joint action motion. Harmony: similarity. In the room were girls doing various sorts of work coloring designs on fabrics for curtains and pillow covers ; making original designs for crocheted lace; hemstitching draperies; preparing color material for a primary room; while on a table in the center of the room were many finished articles, made by the girls and carrying out their principles of design "not one of which," says the visi- tor, "but would serve a useful purpose in home or office." House building, interior decorating, and furnishing are all worthy of serious attention in the art course. Sim- plicity, harmony, and suitability may well be taught as the principles of good taste. Girls must learn these principles somewhere to make the most of their homes by and by. And again the public school, and probably the elementary school, must do the work. 120 I 'ocational Guidance for Girls Physiology and hygiene are already contributing to the knowledge which makes for human betterment, but they also can be made to contribute much more than they have sometimes done. The physiology of infancy must be widely and insistently taught. With proper education she [the young mother] would know the meaning of the words food and sleep; she would know something of their overwhelming importance upon the future being and career of her child, who in his turn is to be one of the world's citizens with full capacity for good or evil. Know- ing what were normal functions, she would be able to recognize and guard against deviations from them. No day would pass in which she would not find opportunity to exercise self-restraint, keen observation and sensible knowledge in furthering the normal and healthful evolution of her child. 1 The "little mother" classes in settlement houses, in community social centers, and in some public schools are doing excellent work in beginning this knowledge of infancy. No elementary school can really afford to miss the opportunity such work holds out. Have we any right to let a girl approach the care of her child with less than the best that modern science can offer in this most important and exacting work of her life? If not, it is again the public school which alone can be depended upon to do the work, and we must get at least the begin- ning of it done before the girl escapes us at the close of her elementary-school course. If you are impatient with a program which presupposes that practically all women will be homemakers and mothers, either trained or otherwise, let me remind you that the majority of women do marry, that most of these and many of the unmarried do become homemakers, and that it will be far safer for society to train the few 1 Oppenheim. Teaching the Mechanics of Housekeeping 121 less than 10 per cent who never enter the career than to pursue the economically wasteful plan of assuming educationally that no women will be homemakers, or that if they are they can successfully undertake the most complicated, difficult, and most important profession open to women with no preparation at all, or with only what they have unconsciously absorbed at home in the brief pauses of the education which did not educate them for life. The education for homemaking will never lose sight of the fact that girls must really be prepared for a double vocation, since it is a question whether or not they will become homemakers, and they must at all events be prepared for the years intervening between school and home. On the contrary, the education which prepares the homemaker will exercise special care in training for those intervening years, or for life work if it should prove to be such. Of all distinctly vocational training, it is only fair, however, that the homemaking training should come first, as a foundation for all later work. Whether the girl thus trained ever presides over a home of her own or not, the training will have made her a broader woman and a better worker, with a finer understanding of the universal business of her sex. CHAPTER VIII THE GIRL'S INNER LIFE WHILE we are occupied in teaching the girl the "ways and means" by which she is later to carry on the business of homemaking, we must not overlook the fact that, although ways and means are vitally necessary, it is after all the spirit of the girl which will supply the motive power to make the home machinery run. With this in view we must so plan the girl's train- ing as to secure not only the concrete knowledge of doing things, but also the more abstract qualities which will equip her for her work. False ideals and ignorance of housekeeping processes are responsible for thousands of homekeeping failures; but lack of fairness, of good temper, patience, humor, courage, courtesy, stability, perseverance, and initiative must be held accountable for thousands more. For these qualities, then, the girl must be definitely and pains- takingly trained. In other words, we must work for the highest type of woman, spiritually as well as industrially. It may seem that definite instruction in such abstract qualities as good temper or stability or fairness is difficult or perhaps impossible to secure. Since, however, all the girl's intercourse with her kind affords daily opportunity for practice of these qualities, instruction may easily accompany and become a part of her daily life. The lack of these qualities handicaps the girl even in her school life and shows there plainly the handicap that, unless help is given her, she will suffer for life. Her school work offers ample opportunity for the cultivation of patience and perseverance. Teachers must The Girl's Inner Life 123 combat vigorously the "give-up" spirit, and the trouble- some "changing her mind" which leads the girl along a straight path from "trying another" essay subject or embroidery stitch as soon as difficulties present themselves to trying another husband when the first domestic cloud Photograph by Brown Bros. Play hours as well as work hours are invaluable in teaching the girl the difficult art of getting on with the world arises. Play hours as well as work hours are invaluable in teaching the girl the difficult art of getting along with the world. The educational value of games is largely found in their social training. Experience teaches that children require long and patient instruction to enable them to play games. They have to learn fairness, courtesy, good temper; honesty, kindness, sympathy. They have to learn to be good losers and to consider the fun of playing a better end than winning the game. Games must be carefully distinguished from the more general term play. All play not solitary has recognized 124 Vocational Guidance for Girls social value; games, because the idea of contest is involved, have a special value of their own. Close obser- vation of young children in their games, especially when Copyright by Underwood