Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 April 1911 — Woman’s Wc. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Woman’s Wc.

Senator La Follette’s Wife Investigates Servant Giris.

Mrs. Robert M. La Follette, wife of Senator La Follette of Wisconsin, is vice president of the Housekeepers' Alliance of Washington. This organization for the last two years has been conducting an investigation into do mestic problems, and Mrs. La Follette has reached some definite conclusions as to how these problems can be best solved. She says: “When housekeepers cooperate to elevate household standards. systematize housework and put it on a scientific basis vast good can be accomplished. The servant girl problem is a great economic question, caused by the complexity of our American life. “The housekeeper who has learned the dignity of household labor has more sympathy with all those who .perform it, and she can teach them the best methods based on science. “In training young women for domestic labor and elevating it to a profession, thereby making it attractive and profitable to them, lies much of the solution of the problem. “The American girl cannot bear to be looked down upon, and the American woman is at fault in allowing domestic labor to fall under the ban of social stigma.’’ Mrs: La Follette believes housekeepers should see to it that laundries, bakeries and other commercial concerns which do part of the work of the present day household should be held up to the highest standards of cleanliness and efficiency. There must be plenty of sunshine, soap and rinsing with the family washing. Few of us know anything of the conditions in the laundry to which we send our clothes.

“We may want bread of the sort grandmother made,” she says, “but we think little of the handling it gets in the bakery. As a concession to our ideas of cleanliness the baker may wrap it before he bands it in our door, hot through how many pairs of grimy hands has it passed before the paper is put around it? “Much of the housework of the future must be done by these commercial concerns outside of the family, and it behooves each of us to see that it is done as nearly as possible with the same cleanliness that it is done in our homes.’’

Mrs. ROBERT M. LA FOLLETTE.