sit down before his own
problems and say, "What am I going to do about it?"
What if the apparent motion is toward cells to sleep in, and clubs to
play bridge in, and amusements for evenings, and a strenuous business
life, run on piratical principles, into which the women are drawn as
decoy ducks? Because this _is_, is it going to be, as soon as a good
proportion of the thinking people stand face to face with the
problem? I believe it is possible to solve the problem, but only if
the aid of scientifically trained women is brought into service to
work in harmony with the engineer who has already accomplished so
much.
Household engineering is the great need for material welfare, and
social engineering for moral and ethical well-being. What else does
this persistent forcing of scientific training to the front mean? If
the State is to have good citizens, productive human beings, it must
provide for the teaching of the essentials to those who are to become
the parents of the next generation. No state can thrive while its
citizens waste their resources of health, bodily energy, time and
brain power, any more than a nation may prosper that wastes its
natural resources.
The teaching of domestic economy in the elementary school and home
economics in the higher is intended to give the people a sense of
_control_ over their _environment_ and to avert a panic as to the
future.
The economics of consumption, including as it does the ethics of
spending, must have a place in our higher education, preceded in
earlier grades by manual dexterity and scientific information, which
will lead to true economy in the use of time, energy, and money in the
home life of the land. Education is obliged to take cognizance of the
need, because the ideal American homestead, that place of busy
industry, with occupation for the dozen children, no longer exists.
Gone out of it are the industries, gone out of it are ten of the
children, gone out of it in large measure is that sense of moral and
religious responsibility which was the keystone of the whole.
The methods of work imposed by housing conditions are wasteful of
time, energy, and money, and the people are restive, they know not
why. As was said earlier, shelter was found by early students of
social conditions to be most in need of remedy, so we see that
"In the first place the state is beginning to offer positive aid to
secure a suitable home for each family. A communistic habitation
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