It has always been assumed, and asserted without fear of contradiction, that the best place to learn everything pertaining to the household is the home. But the same change must come here as has already come in the profession of medicine and in nearly every other department of knowledge. The period is not remote when every housekeeper made, as well as administered, the family tonics, bitters, pills, salves, and liniments, and every household contained a copy of _Every Man his Own Practitioner_. Happily that day has passed and the era of scientific investigation and practice of medicine has dawned. It was once assumed that an adequate knowledge of law could be obtained by any young man who spent six months in reading law in any lawyer’s office. But the leading members of the bar to-day have been trained in less haphazard ways. It was formerly believed that any person could be fitted for a librarian by doing the routine work of librarian’s assistant in a small country library. Such training has been supplanted by library schools open only to college graduates and offering a two years’ course of study. Less than a hundred years ago boys and girls of sixteen or seventeen years of age began teaching without even a high school education, while the tendency to-day is everywhere to insist not only on advanced academic but also on professional training. The system of apprenticeship is everywhere being supplanted by systematic, technical training given by experts. There is evidence that this same spirit is slowly invading the household. Cooking schools are springing up that teach all the intricacies of the science “in ten easy lessons,” while the lecturer on cooking with her demonstration lessons has found her way into nearly every town. Sewing is taught in the public schools, and the free kitchen garden is following fast in the train of the free kindergarten. All this is good in its way, but it is superficial work. No permanent advance will be made as long as only those schools are found that teach simply the mechanical parts of housekeeping. New recipes for salads and puddings, new ways of cleaning brass and silver, new methods of caring for hard-wood floors—all these may be helpful in a sense, but the knowledge of these and a thousand other mechanical contrivances will never put the household on a scientific basis and turn its face towards progress.