HOME AND EDUCATION
Follette, Belle Case La & Hunt, Caroline L.
HOME AND EDUCATION The home is the real ieat ot government, and the Wise Men of all nations bring their glfte to the cradle. Conducted by BELLE CASE LA FOLLETTE and CAROLINE L. HUNT Mrs. Bishop's...
...Where Sympathies are Broadened ''M OTHERS with shawls over their heads and workdistorted hands sit beside mothers in Parisian costumes," (during the commencement exercises at the Normal College and other institutions in the New York Public School system where higher instruction is given) "and the silk-clad woman is generally clever enough to appreciate and admire the spirit which strengthened her weary neighbor through all the years of self-denial, labor, poverty and often hunger, which were necessary to pay for the leisure and the education of son or daughter...
...It will also utterly do away with many of her prejudices against the foreigner and it will make the 'Let them eat cake' attitude impossible...
...La Follette could countenance such a travesty, and why Mrs...
...Bishop's Reading HOWEVER absurdly false a story the newspapers may publish concerning Mr...
...But we often recognize the wisdom of a philosophy that we find it difficult to accept...
...S. H. Clark and Mrs...
...I want to tell you, my friends, the truth about Mrs...
...The fact is that the old New England kitchen was not a kitchen at all, in the sense in which we use the term, but a composite room including not only kitchen but also dining-room and living-room...
...Pondering on these things, I have been wondering if there could not be devised for those who want to do the real work of the house, a Twentieth Century modification of the New England kitchen...
...note:—Outlines of the lessons in Domestic Science and a list of reference books can be obtained without cost by addressing The Home and Education Department of La Follette's Weekly, Madison, Wisconsin...
...EMILY M. BISHOP has, for twenty years, been a teacher at Chautauqua, New York, and since its organization has been co-principaj of the school of expression...
...To begin with, for the sake of comfort, there would have to be some sort of a ventilator to take the place of the draft which used to go up the broad chimney...
...And our mail is full of clippings, showing that similar coarse inventions were wired from Washington and printed in newspapers throughout the country...
...La FolJette, he makes no public denial, because, he says, it is easy to draw attention away from the main issue by personal controversy, and if a man's enemies can keep him busy parrying petty attacks he will have no time left for the work he has set out to do...
...And this from the Chicago Tribune: "All of the guests enjoyed themselves hugely, and Senator La Follette had such a good time and laughed so heartily that at one point during the entertainment, while the Senator was interesting himself in a milk stew and a take off on Senator Aldrich at the same time, a large Lynnhaven flew across the room and landed on an original oil painting of "Rebekah at the Well" which hung on the opposite wall...
...Yet, is it not a stenographic report of a drama, that often crowds the galleries and fills the corridors for hours and even days,—a drama that keeps hundreds of the ablest newspaper men here in Washington supplying their papers each day with news of what they see and hear from the House and Senate press galleries...
...ln Denmark, the National Woman Suffrage Association has grown during the past year from 4,000 members to 10,000...
...Strangers must have wondered how Mr...
...There ought to be in every community good public kitchens, laundries, and pneumatic-cleaning establishments, with ideals determined and standards set by experienced housekeepers and not by men in search of profits...
...She is a gifted, purposeful woman, whose influence as a reader and teacher of reading has all been for natural interpretative dramatic reading, as opposed to the old elecutionary methods of rant and impossible impersonation...
...Bishop believed it would be helpful to her to have present an audience of friends whose opinions we valued, to criticize her work, and suggest where it might be improved for platform use...
...The Twentieth Century New England kitchen would have to be carefully planned and would need to be perfected by use...
...Taking up then the speeches of Dolliver and La Follette on the cotton schedules and of Bris-tow on the sugar tax, and concluding with the humorous denunciation of the whole purpose and accomplishment of the bill by Johnson, of Alabama, a Democrat, Mrs...
...The idea once conceived, Mrs...
...For instance, this from the New York World: "Aided by make up, Mrs...
...And so, instead of planning their houses with a view to doing the active labor themselves, they build big kitchens and bigger dining-rooms, and between the two they put long passage-ways which they call "butler's" pantries, in the hope, perhaps, that they will be able to catch butlers in them and put them to work— more care and anxiety to the woman, of course, but think of the glory of it...
...Selma Lagerlof, who has just been awarded the $40,000 Nobel prize for literature, is a suffragist.—The Woman's Jouriial...
...The greatest need of our democracy today is direct interest of the people in what their national legislature is doing...
...It is really amazing...
...They are intended for the use of individuals and of clubs...
...When she came to Washington to try out her idea, Mrs...
...And this from the New York Herald: "It is understood that much difficulty was experienced in obtaining a replica of the trimly cropped whiskers of Senator Carter, and Depew's gray burnsides cost the wig-maker many a hard hour...
...Bishop took off the big bosses of the Senate in a way that would have made them hop, if present...
...To reproduce with accuracy the upward flowing locks of Senator La Follette himself, was impossible...
...Bishop's readings signify and is the message they carry...
...The truth is, we have fallen upon evil days, when in all departments of life, in the shop, in the office and in the home, superintendence is considered more honorable than manual labor and executive ability more important than skill...
...and then too, he says, what is the use wasting time in contradiction of a false report that is played up sensationally to attract millions of readers, while the denial is hid away in some obscure corner of a newspaper where it is read only by chance, if at all...
...In these compartments the kitchen stoves might be located...
...MRS...
...The three leading insurgents—La Follette, Bristow and Dolliver—were quoted and personated in a manner that made exceptionally clear the meaning and purpose of the progressive and insurgent fight...
...She had an assortment of wigs and moustaches by means of which she could make lightning changes, and depict Senators Aldrich, Hale,, Penrose, Cullom, Gallinger, and others...
...It will certainly deprive her conversation of sweeping criticisms on lives and conditions unknown to her...
...The idea of it was what the Germans call "genial," and the execution and effectiveness of it are important...
...Imagine our surprise on the following morning to find Mrs...
...Nor should the question of beauty be overlooked...
...While listening to the heated debate on the Naval Appropriation Bill last winter, Mrs, Bishop was inspired with the idea that the Congressional Record could be made the subject of dramatic reading...
...a composite room where all the interesting household processes could be performed, where the dining-table could be set and where the family could gather for all kinds of work and activities except those kinds which must be carried on in quiet places...
...She vitalizes the proceedings of Congress in the same spirit that her co-workers at Chautauqua, Mr...
...There is such a thing, of course, as having too much manual labor to perform, though its effects are not nearly so disastrous as those of too much superintendence...
...Perhaps when women get rid of the distracting work of looking after servants they will be in better shape to cooperate with each other than they are at present, and by their united efforts will be able to secure some of these very desirable aids to private housekeeping...
...Bishop says she will make the readings do more than enough good to counteract the evil of their misrepresentation...
...La Follette should open her house to so undignified a performan«e, and what Mrs...
...In many instances the latter alternative, which would involve getting rid of household servants, might offer a most desirable change, for it would mean for the housewife less of the nerve-racking supervision of the work of other people and a greater amount of health-giving manual labor...
...Emily M. Bishop's reading from the Congressional Record at our house in Washington on Friday, January 21, which was so sensationally exploited in the press of the country the following Saturday and Sunday...
...It certainly taxes the imagination to invest with human interest the Congressional Record as it appears when printed...
...Bishop's evening's entertainment exploited in the papers as a burlesque on the Senate...
...Starting out with the preliminary one-man insurgent movement led by and composed of Elkins, of West Virginia, she makes Elkins arraign the Senate machine and the Aldrich leadership as a mere combination of manufacturing and financial interests planning to control the tariff revision and prevent the Senate frcm obtaining information...
...In thinking of this point, it has always seemed to me that there might be invented for the kitchen, compartments like the ventilated hoods under which chemists brew all sorts of vile-smelling compounds without disturbing their neighbors...
...It was a laborious task to cut a long story short, and put into the compass of an hour's presentation, the gist of extended discussion, taking no liberties with the text making the exact words of the Record constitute the text of her drama...
...A keen observer, who heard Mrs...
...The result is bad workmanship and a long train of nervous disorders attendant upon the anxiety and worry involved in getting other people to work...
...Bishop's reading really was: "Mrs...
...Think of it when you are inclined to blame the lonely alien in your isolated kitchen for dreaming of going to work in a factory...
...From The American Public School as a Factor in International Conciliation, by Myra Kelly, published by the American Association for International Conciliation, New York City...
...In order to make this room worthy to find a place, as its Eighteenth Century prototype did, in the hearts of painters and poets, we should be obliged to reform manufacturers and dealers and to convince them that even the commonest and most useful things can be beautiful, that garbage pails can be as lovely to look upon as vases, and tea-kettles and dish-pans as attractive as samovars and chafing-dishes...
...Its proportions would be absolutely impractical for the modern kitchen, which has come to be a work-room exclusively...
...The above is not wholly theoretical, for I once experimented, and hope to do so again, with a combined kitchen and dining-room for a family of one and the only shopping I ever really enjoyed was done for that room...
...That means imitators...
...For Mrs...
...Bishop introduced in her portrayal of Senate schemes a number of incidents and colloquies which brought out in remarkable and almost startling manner the facts as to the making of the tariff...
...And she did not rest until she had prepared a series of condensed debates on subjects of great national importance...
...We must either have small kitchens or else we must change our mode of life, and go back to the conditions under which household industries were carried on by the housekeeper herself...
...HERMAN WALKER, the Washington correspondent of the Newark News who was present, gave this fair and just analysis of what Mrs...
...That's the word for t: im portant...
...And that, and the whole idea of reading the Record, may get the Record read'' Large Kitchens or Small ? A Han for Kitchen and Dining-Room in One (A Reading Course in Domestic Science.—Lesson XIV...
...Following out the idea, she took out and put together portions of the debate on the schedules and general purpose of the bill, and, without adding anything to the actual record, has produced a strikingly graphic picture of the manner in which the tariff was made, and of the attitude and motives of the Senators who lined up on opposing sides of the question...
...Evidently others have made like experiments, for Good Housekeeping pictures a quaint and beautiful Living-room-Kitchen in its August number...
...This is what Mrs...
...Bishop read, wrote in a letter to me this conclusion: "The best thing I have experienced lately is the reading from the Record by Mrs...
...The feeling of inferiority, of uselessness, which this realization entails may humiliate the idle woman but it is bound to do her good...
...In many households the necessary work could not be done by the family unless plenty of outside assistance were available...
...Of course he is right...
...Think how sociable it must have been in the days of old when the mother baked, brewed, spun, dyed and wove under the eyes and in the society of her family...
...Bishop did this vaudeville act...
...Bishop is likely to succeed with her readings from the Record...
...Bishop got her idea for the new form of entertainment while sitting in the Senate gallery last spring and summer listening to the tariff debate...
...Bishop was convinced that readings from the Congressional Record could be made entertaining, dramatic, and educational...
...Bertha Kunz Baker interpret a literary drama...
...Then, of course, we must not forget that the fireless cooker is doing much to free the kitchen from heat and odors...
...Some women, to be sure, do their own work, and a few want to do it, but most of them live in expectation of the time when they will be able to pass it over to servants...
...THERE was a time not very long- ago—there is in fact no "very long ago" with La Follette's Weekly—when this department published a plea for the small kitchen...
...what the speeches, remarks, debates, and votes of senators and representatives really mean...
...It knew at the time that it was in danger of bringing upon itself the denunciations of those ladies who sit in their parlors and dream of the beauties of the old New England kitchen, with its broad hearth and its wide expanse of sanded floor, and of all those who, never having done any work themselves, know nothing of the conditions under which it can be most comfortably and conveniently performed...
...And as this page is mine to write for in a personal way, without regard to political effect, I confess it gives me a certain satisfaction, although I know it will reach only a comparatively few people, to use the space this week to make denial of a gross misrepresentation...
...And I know she will...
Vol. 2 • February 1910 • No. 5
