Part 3 (2/2)
That women are already awaking to these responsibilities is shown by the increasing number who choose the labor-saving devices in place of the flesh-and-blood machine. Many of these women will tell you that they make this choice to avoid the personal responsibility involved in having a resident worker in the house. There _is_ comfort in not having to consider ”whether or not the vacuum cleaner likes to live in the country,” or the bread mixer ”has a backache,” or the electric flatiron desires ”an afternoon off to visit its aunt.” It is the same satisfaction we feel in urging the automobile to greater speed regardless of the melting heat, the pouring rain, or the number of miles it has already traveled to-day. Perhaps the future will see machines for household work so improved and multiplied that we can escape altogether this perplexing personal problem of ”the woman who works for us.”
Whether or not we escape this problem when we patronize the laundry, the bakeshop, the underwear factory, is a matter for further thought.
To many it seems a simpler matter to face the problem of one cook, one laundress, than to investigate conditions in factory, bakery, and laundry, to agitate, to ”use our influence,” to urge legislation, to follow up inspectors and their reports, to boycott the bakery, to be driven into the establishment of a cooperative laundry whether we will or no, in order to fulfill our obligations to the ”women who work for us” in these various places. True, our duty to womankind requires that we do all these things to a certain extent so long as the public utilities exist, but with the multiplication of utilities to a number sufficient to do a large portion of our work, it would seem that women would be left little time for anything else than their supervision and regulation.
Problems relating to the establis.h.i.+ng of a home would once have been considered far from the province of the teacher in the public school.
Formerly we taught our children a little of everything except how to live. Now we are realizing that the teacher should be a constructive social force. Living is a more complicated thing than it once was, and the school must do its share in fitting the children for their task.
All these matters we have been considering--the selection of a home site, building, decorating, furnis.h.i.+ng, sanitation, and all the rest--represent constructive social work the teacher may do, which, if she pa.s.ses it by, may not be done at all. College courses should prepare the teacher for such work, but even the girl who is not college-trained will find, if she seeks it, help sufficient for her training. And the work awaits her on every hand.
CHAPTER IV
RUNNING THE DOMESTIC MACHINERY
With a home established, the problems confronting the homemaker become those of administration. The ”place for making citizens” is built and ready. The making of citizens must begin.
One of the fundamental requisites for the efficient operation of the home plant is that the homemaker shall have a firm grasp upon the financial part of the business. To estimate the number of homes wrecked every year by lack of this economic knowledge is of course impossible; but you can call up without effort many cases in which this lack was at least a contributing element to the wreck.
Keeping expenditures within the income is only the _ABC_ of the financial knowledge required, although, like other _ABC_'s, it is essential to the acquirement of deeper knowledge. It is not enough that the housekeeper merely succeeds in keeping out of debt. She must know what to expect in return for the money that she spends, and she must know whether or not she gets it. She must have definitely in mind the results she expects, and she must know why she spends for certain objects rather than for others.
In the days of famine and fear, the individual was fortunate who had food, shelter, and a skin to wrap about his s.h.i.+vering shoulders. In these days it is not enough to have merely these things. Certain standards of civilized life must be met, and we shall find that it requires judgment and skill to apportion our funds properly.
The common needs of civilized mankind are usually roughly cla.s.sified as follows: food; shelter; clothing; operating expenses, including service, heat, light, water, repairs, refurnis.h.i.+ng, and the general upkeep of the plant; advancement, including education, recreation, travel, charity, church, doctor, dentist, savings.
The exact proportion of any income devoted to each of these is of course a matter conditioned by the needs of the particular family as well as by its tastes and desires. Figures are obtainable which throw light upon proportions found advisable in what are considered typical cases. We may learn the minimum amount of money which will feed a man in New York or in various other cities and towns. We may find estimates as to the prices of a ”decent living” in various parts of the country. Home-economics experts will furnish us with figures which may be used as a basis for apportioning this amount among departments of household expenses. That the figures offered by these experts differ more or less widely need not disturb us. It is perhaps too early in such work for final authoritative estimates.
The following apportionment is taken from Chapin's _The Standard of Living among Workingmen's Families in New York City_ and has to do with the minimum income required for normal living for a family of father, mother, and three children on Manhattan Island:
Food $359.00 Housing 168.00 Fuel and light 41.00 Clothing 113.00 Carfare 16.00 Health 22.00 Insurance 18.00 Sundry items 74.00 ------- $811.00
”Families having from $900 to $1,000 a year,” concludes Dr. Chapin, ”are able, in general, to get food enough to keep body and soul together, and clothing and shelter enough to meet the most urgent demands of decency.” Regarding incomes below $900, he says, ”Whether an income between $800 and $900 can be made to suffice is a question to which our data do not warrant a dogmatic answer.”
The two apportionments given below have been made by the federal government and concern the maintenance of a normal standard in two industrial sections of the country. In each case the family is a.s.sumed to be, as in Dr. Chapin's estimate,[1] made up of father, mother, and three children.
Fall River, Georgia and Ma.s.s. North Carolina Food $312.00 $286.67 Housing 132.00 44.81 Clothing 136.80 113.00 Fuel and light 42.75 49.16 Health 11.65 16.40 Insurance 18.40 18.20 Sundry items 78.00 72.60 ------- ------- $731.90 $600.74
These estimates do no more than suggest the minimum upon which the various items of living expense can be met and the proportion to each account. People who can do more upon their incomes than merely live must look farther for help.
Mrs. Bruere in her _Increasing Home Efficiency_ offers the following as a minimum schedule[3] for efficient living:
Food $ 344.93 Shelter 144.00 Clothing 100.00 Operation 150.00 Advancement 312.00 Incidentals 46.85 ------- $1,097.78
”When the income is over $1,200,” Mrs. Bruere adds, ”the family has pa.s.sed the line of mere decency in living and entered the realm of choice. Their budget need not show how the entire income _must_ be spent, but how it may be spent to gain whatever special end the family has in view.”
That any estimated schedule for any income will fit exactly the needs of any family of father, mother, and three children in any given town in the United States no one supposes, but it is at least a basis upon which to work. And perhaps the main point from an educational standpoint is that it is a schedule at all.
The happy-go-lucky, spend-as-you-go style of housekeeping does not const.i.tute efficiency. The homemaking expert we are training will have a better plan. She will have been long familiar with the idea of apportioning incomes. She will have applied the tests of efficient decision to her personal income before she has to attack the problem of spending for a family. The ideal homemaker of the future will be a woman who has had a personal income, and preferably one that she has earned herself and learned how to spend before she enters upon matrimony and motherhood.
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