HOME AND EDUCATION
HOME AND EDUCATION The home is the real Beat of government, and the Wlae Men of all nations bring their gifts to the cradle. Conducted by BELLE CASE LA FOLLETTE and CAROLINE L. HUNT Housework and...
...Women of the Hour Mary Hinman Abel MARY HINMAN ABEL is editor of the Journal of Home Economics, the organ of the American Home Economics Association...
...One rather novel idea, I think, has been to serve a warm lunch on the evening of election day to those who were awaiting the news of the returns...
...Last year, with the cooperation of the school children, we organized in the lower grades of our school what is called the Junior Naturalists' Society...
...Is the Journal of Home Economics in your library or does your club subscribe for it...
...Many had often expressed the wish that this land might be converted into a park, but it would probably never have been accomplished, neither, indeed, would the local Village Improvement Society have been organized, if lightning had not struck the church and demolished it, so that extensive repairs were necessary in order to put it in decent condition...
...The housewife possessed of the most convenient kitchen is in this regard at a disadvantage with the Italian peasant woman who beats the family linen on a flat stone in the brook or the Mexican girl who grinds her corn outside the door, both of them in sight of waving trees and flight of birds and with abundant human companionship...
...We have given all kinds of entertainments, even including a ladies' minstrel show...
...They knew on whom they could depend and when the question of the editorship of the Journal came up there was no difference of opinion...
...When those who had been members of the older society met in Washington during the Christmas holidays of 1908 to form the new organization, it was with a clear understanding, born of long acquaintance, of each others' gifts and talents...
...Newell Dwight Hillis...
...Its editorial board contains many of the best-known teachers of domestic science...
...Whenever we hear or read of something new or novel we try it, generally with considerable success...
...In accepting this manuscript we would gratefully acknowledge our indebtedness to the league for unfailing inspiration and assistance...
...She has done many good and helpful things in her life, but probably nothing which has reached so large a number of people as this last work to which she has given herself...
...Conducted by BELLE CASE LA FOLLETTE and CAROLINE L. HUNT Housework and Fresh Air WHILE in the mountains last summer, I made a careful comparison of the fatigue following mountain climbing and that attendant upon the doing of ordinary housework, such as cooking and general cleaning...
...Several years ago we became members of the State Federation of Women's Clubs, and in that way we have received many helpful ideas...
...Our regular work each year consists of the care of the park, which is our special pet, as it was through our work that it was gained as a breathing spot in the center of the village...
...The open porch, preferably screened, which is more and more a feature of even the most modest homes, should contain a table on which the meals may be served, at which vegetables and fruit may be prepared, and where the laundry work may be done by the help of a portable stove...
...It is this organization that maintains The Town Room at S Joy Street, Boston, where there has been brought together for the use of the members and others interested a very extensive collection of literature on civic improvement—books, periodicals, pamphlets and manuscripts...
...In the first five years of our existence as a society we earned $6,084, which, in a village of between nine hundred and one thousand inhabitants, means that a great deal of hard work was put into the task...
...There are difficulties in the way, but the chief difficulty has been lack of thought and invention, due to a failure to realize the importance of the matter...
...What the Women of a Vermont Town Accomplished By MRS...
...One has only to make a trip about the streets of our town to realize how true this is...
...Two objections have been considered insurmountable, the pest of insect life and the cooling of our too-elaborate hot meals...
...I found that eight hours of housework wearied me more than eight hours of walking in which I covered easily from fourteen to sixteen miles of hilly country, including some 1,000 feet of ascent, or ten miles of mountain work, including a rise of some 3,000 feet...
...It ought to have the very widest circulation among all those who believe that it is worth while to work together to improve conditions of living...
...E. F. GREENWOOD note:—The following story of what the women of a svutll Vermont town have done for its improvement was sent to La Follette's Weekly by Mr...
...One year the proceeds were given to the Public Library, and for several years we have undertaken the work of providing the library with magazines...
...With every advance in civilization housework seems to have retreated farther indoors...
...We own a tent and dishes...
...Conwell and Dr...
...For several years we have maintained a lecture course, bringing to our village such men as Dr...
...The Home Economics Association is new, and yet old...
...At first, we were few in number, but the society grew to have seventy members and, in the eleven years since its organization, we have raised and expended, in beautifying and improving the village, the sum of $10,600...
...It has much of interest not only to teachers but also to housekeepers, and best of all perhaps, it keeps those who are interested in Home Economics in touch with each other and with the progress of the work...
...ULabor makes thought healthy and thought makes labor happy.—John Ruskin...
...Our dues are nominal, as they are only fifty cents and so we are obliged to raise most of our money by other means...
...But modern interest in healthful living should be able to show us the way back, carrying with us, perhaps, some of these adored conveniences...
...We paid for surveying and grading, hired a landscape-gardener to set out trees, flowers and shrubbery...
...OUR little society claims the honor of being the first Ladies' Village Improvement Society in this part of Vermont, although there are now many towns near us in which the women have organized and begun to do excellent work...
...The unanimous choice was Mrs...
...A few women took up the matter of buying the site and in three days raised the sum of $1,325 by subscription...
...We offer it to our readers as an example of what may be accomplished by public spirited women in small communities...
...Abel's bulletins published by the United States Department of Agriculture on the subjects of "Sugar as Food," "Beans, Peas and Lentils as Food," and "The Care of Food in the Home," are recognized as showing an unusual talent—that of being able to present scientific material in popular and interesting form without giving incorrect impressions...
...MORE and more we are coming to realize that a great deal can be done for village improvement by awakening the interest of the children...
...At our expense, he also cares for the grounds around the railroad station, evens the turf on every street in the village, and keeps the streets raked clean throughout the business section...
...The field of progress is best ploughed by driving many teams abreast.—From "The Crisis of Liberalism," by J. A. Hobson...
...There are very few dirty or ill-kept backyards or corners...
...Our ways of doing this have been many and varied...
...Mrs...
...Abel, wife of Professor J. J. Abel of John Hopkins University...
...Even the humblest places have a neat and tidy appearance, and a lawnmower is considered not a luxury, but a necessity...
...A $30,000 school building is now in process of construction, and our Village Improvement Society is planning to do something substantial in the way of furnishing this building and helping to make it attractive...
...When there is much hard work to be done we hire extra help...
...A little tent in the yard has been known to shelter all summer the sewing machine and the chest of drawers containing all other requisites for sewing...
...Many a family after a, sojourn in Europe, where the merest scrap of a garden or a tiny balcony is utilized for the afternoon tea or coffee table, returns full of plans for the al fresco breakfast or lunch, plans that are never realized...
...Of course, one of the first things which we looked out for was to place receptacles for waste paper and other rubbish in conspicuous places about the village...
...We also purchased comfortable seats and paid for the laying of concrete walks...
...But fatigue, we are told by the physiologist, is a complex and as yet a puzzling question...
...In the ease of a walk we must give due heed to those "imponderable" agents that stim-late the nervous energies, the delight in beautiful scenery, the constant change and variety in one's surroundings and the happy rivalry that attends good comradeship...
...Edward T. Hartman, secretary of the Massachusetts Civic League...
...The screened porch solves the first, and shall we say that there is no way of meeting the second?—Maky Hinman Abel...
...For three successive years we held a fair or bazaar just before the holidays...
...Can ways be devised by which more of housework can be done in the open air, thus doubling endurance, increasing pleasure and lessening weariness...
...This statement will be received with incredulity by those who have not made the actual test and still more if they reflect on the fact that a person weighing 150 pounds in making an ascent of 3,000 feet does 450,000 foot-pounds of work and that this amount of work is enough to lift 22% tons of coal 10 feet...
...We have served meals in a tent at the County Fair, which is held some seven miles from our village...
...This we now look out for, hiring a man by the season to care for the grounds and to keep them trim and tidy...
...Or measured in the work of going upstairs, which the housekeeper is more likely to do in the course of a day's work than she is to shovel coal, It is equivalent to the work done in going up 300 flights of stairs of average length...
...A society was organized and at once began the work of transforming the land into a park...
...There is also a smaller park, which was formerly cared for in a spasmodic sort of way by the nearby residents...
...To show the way in which we have kept our organization intact,' I might say that we have had the same president for ten years...
...IN THE village of Enosburg Falls, Vermont, there was, up to the year 1896, a piece of land in the very center of the village, in the best business section, upon which stood an old brick church...
...It has existed under this name for less than a year and a half but it is the direct outcome of the Lake Placid Conference on Home Economics which changed its name only because it had outgrown its meeting place...
...But there is one factor less elusive and it may constitute the chief difference in the degree of weariness that follows the two occupations, the quality of the air breathed...
...UIs it the "odor of sanctity" that pervades the unventilaUd church?_Bulletin of the Kansas State Board of Health...
...In this way we are able to give our local residents lectures which perhaps they could not hear in any other way...
...These are by no means the only things we have undertaken in this way...
...It has been the custom to place flowers in the parks and in the grounds near the railroad station, but we are gradually replacing these by hardy bulbs...
...These young people consider themselves members of the Improvement Society, and are thus taught at an early age an excellent lesson in neatness and in good taste...
...Our experience has been that the village-improvement idea is very contagious...
...And I am new to walking and a practiced hand at housework...
...Abel was for a long time a member of the Board of Health in Baltimore and is a recognized authority on public health...
...The tramper is obliged to breathe deeply and he thus nils the lungs with the purest air...
Vol. 2 • May 1910 • No. 18
