The plan for carrying on the dining association using the Memorial Hall of Harvard University is essentially one of co-operation, and contains some points that could be tried with advantage elsewhere. The steward receives a fixed salary and in addition a small sum each week for every person who boarded that week at the hall; but this “head money” is proportionately diminished as the average weekly price of board exceeds the amount agreed upon. At Placid Club, a social club established in the Adirondacks, all fees are prohibited, and the rule is strictly enforced; but the past season (1896) a dividend of ten per cent on the wages received was declared out of the profits of the club, and this was given to all house employees who had remained throughout the season and whose services had been satisfactory to the manager. The financial success of the club depended largely on the efficiency, good-will, and ready co-operation of its employees, and the dividend declared was in recognition of this fact. Beginnings in a small way have been made elsewhere.[326] They are indeed but beginnings, but they seem to indicate one direction in which progress is possible. CHAPTER XV POSSIBLE REMEDIES—EDUCATION IN HOUSEHOLD AFFAIRS One of the greatest obstacles in the way of improving domestic service has been the prevailing lack of information in regard to household affairs and of careful, systematic education of housekeepers. Information and education are often used as synonymous terms, but the two words carry with them entirely different ideas. Information concerning household affairs includes a ready knowledge of the history of all household employments and household service, of the economic basis on which the household rests, and of the economic principles on which it is conducted. Much of this information it is now difficult to obtain. Many houses are found in Southern Germany without windows looking towards the public highway. Light and air are admitted through openings in the rear or on a court, but no chance passer-by is permitted to look within. The household has always been constructed on the same plan. No outsider has been permitted to know the percentage of the family income that goes for service, fuel, gas and water-tax, groceries, meats, fruits, and vegetables. In the great majority of households not only is there no disposition to give others the benefit of such information, but the information itself does not exist. Each new generation of housekeepers practically begins its work where the previous generation began. Its only heritage is recipes for desserts, rules for making furniture polish, methods of dealing with moth and mildew, which are handed down like family property from one generation to another in a way as primitive as that in which books were preserved before writing was known. Advance is not thus made, as is evident from the course followed in other occupations that have shown greatest progress. A vast accumulation of