s in Boston and
Teachers College in New York. In fact, the conclusion of the epoch of
pioneer domestic-science-and-art agitation might perhaps be said to
have been announced to the country when Teachers College, in 1909,
erected a new building at a cost of $500,000 and dedicated it, in its
entirety, to Household Arts.

What does it all mean?

"Fellow citizens," said the colored orator, reported by Dr. Paul
Monroe of Columbia, "what am education? Education am the palladium of
our liberties and the grand pandemonium of civilization."

But it does mean something, this Home Economics disturbance. _And
something very different from what it seems to._

* * * * *

Mr. Edward T. Devine, of the New York Charity Organization Society,
has distinguished himself in the field of economic thought as well as
in the field of active social reform. Among his works is a minute but
momentous treatise on "The Economic Function of Women." It is really a
plea for the proposition that to-day the art of consuming wealth is
just as important a study as the art of producing it.

"If acquisition," says Mr. Devine, "has been the idea which in the
past history of economics has been unduly emphasized, expenditure is
the idea which the future history of the science will place beside
it."

We have used our brains while getting hold of money. We are going to
use our brains while getting rid of it. We have studied banking,
engineering, shop practice, cost systems, salesmanship. We are going
to study food values, the hygiene of clothing, the sanitary
construction and operation of living quarters, the mental reaction of
amusements, the distribution of income, the art of making choices,
according to our means, from among the millions of things, harmful and
helpful, ugly and beautiful, offered to us by the producing world.

Mr. Devine ventures to hope that "we may look for a radical
improvement in general economic conditions from a wiser use of the
wealth which we have chosen to produce."

This enlarged view of the economic importance of consumption brings
with it a correspondingly enlarged view of the economic importance of
the Home. "If the factory," says Mr. Devine, "has been the center of
the economics which has had to do with Production, the home will
displace the factory as the center of interest in a system which gives
due prominence to Enjoyment and Use."

"There will result," continues Mr. Devine, "an incre