Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 168, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 July 1915 — Who Keeps Your House? [ARTICLE]

Who Keeps Your House?

By Mrs. S. L. Jordan.

Housekeeping is the ancient occupation of woman. It waa the beginning of civilized life. We still find tribes in central Austrlia or central Africa which are so benighted that they practice polygamy. In these tribes the men go off on long hunting expeditions or they are engaged in war. These men are home only a small part of the time. When they have been disappointed in the hunt, they return to live off of the garden that is kept by the women. These women have the widest range of activities of any women in the world. They must provide food, clothing, house and care of the children without the aid of a single outside hand. They have a place in the history of the race that is correspondingly important. These women are the only family bond. Men count family relationship through the female line, instead of the male. AH of the social life of the tribe organizes itself around the huts in which the women dwell. In such an order of society, if women worked hard, they were independent The man had h’s place in the family circle by sufferance. He could easily lose it If he was more important than the drone bee of the hive, his was not the proud place of the man of a later day.* When the race increased in numbers men found game scarce. At last they were compelled to abandon the chase and join the woman in the hard labor of agriculture. This must have been a great hardship to primitiA man, as he loved excitement and hated monotonous toil. When he was compelled to compete with women in agriculture, he had the strength, however, and was able to produce bigger crops than the women. Competition drove women out of their ancient occupation of farming to a large extent. The women of the tribe now left the healthy life of the fields for the life within doors. This new life for women did two things. It made still more difference in the physical strength of the. sexes. Men became stronger. Women became weaker. Women, however, were not to be defeated in the game of life by these odds. They began the study of masculine psychology. The big unreflective brute of primitive man often found himself wrapped around the finger of a frail woman whom he might have demolished with a single blow. Though school education came later to women than to men, natural interest in our mental and sentimental life found its origin in women.

In the history of womanhood, when the woman lias seemed best off, they have been the most unfortunate. Women had to be reduced to idleness before they could be shut up in harems. Wherever women have been workers, they have been independent. Whereever they have been drones they have been reduced to slavery and have even been bought and sold as slaves. Olive Schreiner is right when she insists that there is a more fundamental right of woman than the ballot. Though a vote has its place in the interest of womanhood, the right to labor at something congenial to her talents is the most fundamental of all. Miss Balch in her book “Our Slavic Fellow Citizens,” says: “A very interesting question, and one that is hard to answer, is that of the personal position of the women (of the immigrants). My own impression is that the real, not nominal, balance of power in the household adjusts itself in any country to the relative personal force of the individuals in each case; that common sense, business acumen, temper and quiet force of will, all have their effect, regardless of sex, regardless of theory, and I should confidently look for henpecked husbands in harems and for unfranchised women tyrannized over by men with not one tittle of legal advantage.” The personal equation is a strong one as Miss Balch says, but Olive Schreiner has gone deeper to the root of the question when she makes productive labor in the social order the measure of dignity or power for either man or woman. This makes all the more important a consideration of the trend in American life the last fifty years. Our grandmothers were very important women. They not only prepared the food, but. they also had to provide clothing for their entire household. The wool from the backs of the sheep was spun into coarse yarn and knitted through the long winter evenings into socks for the entire family. The woman was a weaver and a tailor. How different is the position of a young married woman in the city apartment today. The cooking has been done in large measure in great factories. A can of com, or beans or salmon often furnishes the chief item of the family meal. A corporation furnishes thejfuel through pipes and the light through wires. A laundry takes care of the family wash. As for making clothing, that would be an absurd idea. The factory produces underwear and shirts at a much cheaper price and made better than the fingers of the inexperienced housewife can produce. Factories and corporations have taken away most of the drudgery that was the life of our grandmothers. This modern tendency has left the hands of many a city woman idle and her heart empty. We have seen that in the history of the race, an idle woman has always been reduced in rank. Her only re-

maining function when she does not have children is to please a man. To this end she dresses in all the latest styles; she learns to sing and dance; she cultivates all the arts that,make up what we call society. With it all, are these unemployed women of the upper classes to be envied? How unhappy they are is revealed in the divorce court every day. The reason for a majority of divorces in the city is “temperament.” It is the abnormal living of both men and women that turns a model apartment into a hell from which more than one women has gladly escaped to stand behind a counter and handle her own pay develope again as in the days of her youth. What shall women do, now that we have factories and machines that are rapidly changing the whole aspect of household life? They might refuse to marry and keep house. By one supreme act of the will they might become permanent- competitors of men in offices and factories. In many of the duties of modern industry they might hope to excell and they do excell. It is no accident that women have largely driven men out of the teaching profession in grade schools, out of nursing, cut of typewriting. The deft fingers of women can always excell the more clumsy ones of men, just as men will always excell in feats of strength like setting steel beams in place in a sky-scraper. But woman has a long road to travel to compete successfully with men in the business world. Men began organizing before women did. They organized for the hunt and for battle in primitive days. They can follow the “leader.” They know how to give and obey commands. Woman’s training has been more individualistic. Women’s labor unions are usually bossed by men. Women are in most of the industries, but few of them are superintendents. At this stage of civilization, the better health of men, their greater skill in organization, their system, makes them most dangerous competitors for women. If they abandon the household, it will probably be to work under a man boss. This is not the. independence, the opportunity for self-expres-sion that the soul of the woman hungers for. The factory and office as the Utopia has left women with empty hearts and disillusionized lives.

Furthermore, it is clear that the race cannot commit suicide. It is saying too much to say that motherhood is the only absolutely indispensible occupation? Nature has been selecting women with mother hearts for all the ages. These maternal have perpetuated their life in the race. The non-maternal woman has been the “unfit woman” in the struggle of the ages. The modern woman is the daughter of her mother and grandmother and great-grandmother, all of whom bore children. The mother instinct is so strong that it mothers dolls. Even in the childless apartment it mothers cats and dogs. It is quite as much to the point to talk of women developing feathers on their skins as to talk of them renouncing the deep racial joy of motherhood. Nature has set bounds to the life of woman. From these bounds there is no escape. Shall women then fight the factories and corporations that have modified domestic life so unfavorably? Shall they take up again the discarded kn. 'ng needles of their grandmothers ? Shall they make the pants for their Fttle boys and the dresses for their little girls, even though their time is thrown away? Some labor unions fought the introduction of machinery. Typesetting machines caused riots among printers. Many of them were reduced from the ranks of an ancient trade to tramps who set small jobs for a meal of victuals. Women who would fight the factories and refuse to accept the benefits of our modem inventive skill.

What then is the future status of the woman housekeeper She will be a superintendent. It will be her task to guard all her flock from the curse of shoddy labor which has brought the fair name of America into the dirt In this way, women may take the advantage of modern industry and at the same time establish themselves firmly in a place of dignity in the home and in the social order. In the matter of the food that goes on the family table, how much precaution and wisdom is necessary! The food and drug act of the federal government may have abolished sand in s ll and cement in flour. It has compelled correct declarations as to weights and measures. It has shown the true composition of many an article of common diet. In spite of all this many a family in this era of unparalleled prosperity is ill-fed. The mother-superintendent of the household is beginning to learn what a balanced ration is. She is learning to discriminate between superior and inferior brands of food. The woman who does not do this lets a grocer or a butcher keep her house. She abdicates the superintendency of her kitchen either to an outsider or to her cook. For this reason more than one woman is really the slave of her servant, intimidated by threats of leaving. Again, how much we need a wise mother-superintendent of our clothing. Every girl running around in the winter with bare chest, ankles dad only in transparent hose, and feet in pumps, proclaims a household with no supervising head. The economic aspect of the clothing question becomes every year more important

in the dimestic economy. In these days when dressing serves not only to keep us warm, but to express our artistic feelings, dress that is both pretty and economical is a problem that deserves greater study than has been given it. Some public schools have taught their girls to make their own graduating gowns that these may be at the same time uniform, cheap and becoming. When these girls have no other place to learn these things, we have evidence again that the mother-superintendent has resigned, in this case in favor of the public school teacher. How the housekeeper needs to learn the simple laws of sanitation, most of us are aware. It is not that the domestic superintendent need bring changes to pass with her own hands. Our houses have but poor devices for ventilation. Thfe water supply, the disposal of waste products, the war against the fly and the m<> squito are all affairs which must have the intelligent attention of the housewife of anyone. Housekeeping involves the training of the children. The years that mean most to a child are those spent in the home before the school age. It is in these years that habits become fixed and the beginnings of a character are acquired. To abdicate the task of training her own child is something that no true mother would readily consent to. Yet for some children the street is the only education. The over-worked mother of the poor and the under-worked butterfly of society alike have tended to failure in the most fundamental privilege of their sex.

There, is a less well-defined thing about the home which we call atmosphere. It is nothing and yet it is everything. It is the mood which falls upon us in the privacy of our family life. Some homes are quarrelsome. Some are sad. In other households a coarseness befouls the finer things. There are families where peace and joy dwell together as twin sisters, presided over by love. These are the homes we love to visit. Who does more to create this atmosphere than the mother? She may abdicate her leadership, it is true, but the normal woman makes her home a place the children never want to leave, or a spot accursed which they flee from as from the plague. The woman who reads, who gets wisdom from outside her hu® ll6 ? is best able to build up right character in the family group. No home is complete without religion. Once every father was a priest. The Scotch mother loved to dedicate her strongest and ablest son to the service of the church. How important the religious life of the home is every mission worker will testify. The boy who has sacred memories of a praying mother may be called back from the paths of sin, but the prodigal who came up like “Topsy”, without any sense of family relationship, has no foundation upon which to build. When this kind of man falls into the mire, he has no strength or disposition to grasp the rope that a friendly hand may throw to him. These days fathers have abdicated much of their old time spiritual leadership. It is good housekeeping for the woman who presides in the home to become both father and mother to the souls of her children if need be, until the good day when men shall be driven back from their materialism to a consideration of fundamental things. There have been women poets and reformers and settlement workers. .To these let us give due share of praise. But these are not the typical women. Were all women as these, the race would perish. We all reserve in our hearts the place of highest honor to the home makers, the women who hand on the race to a succeeding generation enriched and blessed. Civilization waits on the makers of good homes. Though this holy calling lacks the excitement of a business life, for the woman with a soul it gives her the opportunity of extending her personality fartherest into the oncoming centuries of God.