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.

It is now some years since Charlotte Perkins Gilman 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!"

[Illustration: A Blackburn College student mixing bread. There is no
reason why homemade bread may not be the product of science]

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 department of their
household work. Yet the ill-fed family is out of the race for a place
among the efficient. 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.

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-bei