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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
We know what has been taught in the domestic department of Pratt Institute, and will be in Chicago in the Armour Institute.
Those of us who remember all the opposition when training schools for nurses were started take heart, and ask why not do for domestic service what has been done for the sick ?
We must stand by our own convictions, and ask women to come forward and furnish the money for the dormitories, where the girls can live while receiving instruction.
When we recognize the fact that the girls in domestic service need the same thoughtful consideration as the girls in shops and offices, then shall be found college settlements springing up to help the servant girls, by establishing clubs and study classes.
It will not break up cur homes to have our cooks and our maids come at regular hours to do their work and depart. But it will occasion a more systematic arrangement of all housework, and will ultimately end in establishing a system of co-operation differing from those plans of co-operation which have been tried and found wanting; because, in this new era of co-operation, skilled labor will be demanded in each department, and the work will be done by those who really like the work. Each department will be filled by the workers choosing the work.
Women, as a rule, do not object to housework, but to its many complications; and to be mistress of one occupation demands a long training, while in every home the woman at the head must know how to do fifty things equally well. In point of fact, she does not, and becomes discouraged. She cannot do the things she likes to do, and has to waste her time and strength in doing those things for which she has no aptitude.
It is my conviction that two-thirds of the trouble in having housework done is because the majority will not make a study of the dainty ways of doing the work. There is always a great enthusiasm to receive lessons in cooking; but few or any are willing to learn to wash the dishes and cooking utensils in the most skillful and artistic way.
Artistic way of washing dishes I know T will cause a smile; but still, it can be done, and if the methods are carried out it is not drudgery, but a delightful occupation. The simple rules embodied in the kitchen garden manuals, if put in practice in our kitchens, w r ould establish a new r order of things, and housework would be done with the least possible friction.
When business methods shall have been established in the kitchen as in the shop, none will be selected for any line of labor save those educated in that line.
A bookkeeper in accepting a situation in a store takes no thought of the duties of a porter, and as little should a person employed as cook those of a chambermaid.