Euthenics, the science of controllable environment: A plea for better living conditions as a first step toward higher human efficiencyRichards, Ellen H. (Ellen Henrietta)
Science
Euthenics, the science of controllable environment: A plea for better living conditions as a first step toward higher human efficiency
Richards, Ellen H. (Ellen Henrietta)
Euthenics
Tomorrow, if not today, the woman who is to be really mistress of her
house must be an engineer, so far as to be able to understand the use
of machines and to believe what she is told. Your ham-and-eggs woman
was of the old type, now gone by in the fight for the right to think.
The emergence from the primitive condition was slow because the few of
us who did show our heads were beaten down and told we did not know.
It has required many college women (from some 50,000 college women
graduates) to build and run houses and families successfully, here one
and there another, until the barrel of flour has been leavened.
Society _is_ being reorganized, not in sudden, explosive ways, but
underneath all the froth and foam the yeast has been working. The
world is going to the bad only if one believes that material progress
is bad. If we can see the new heaven and the new earth in it, then we
may have faith in the future.
The human elements of love and sacrifice, of foresight and of faith,
are going to persist, and any apparent upheaval is only because of
settling down into a more solid condition, a readjustment to
circumstances. As Caroline Hunt has said[17]: “We may disregard the
popular fear that the home will finally take upon itself the
characteristics of a public institution.... Human intelligence, which
suits means to ends, and which is ever coming to the aid of human
affection, will prevent that. So long as affection lasts it will seek
satisfactory expression in home life, and so long as intelligence
endures it will stand in the way of the extension of the borders of
the home beyond the possibilities of the mutual helpfulness to its
members.”
[17] Home Problems from a New Standpoint, p. 140.
The persistent efforts of the farsighted to secure a place in
education for the subjects fundamental to the modern home are now
respectfully listened to.
It is, perhaps, not strange that the first successes in modern
housekeeping were gained in public institutions, for there accounts
were kept and saving told. When one hospital saved $12,000 in one year
by an expenditure of $2,000 for a trained woman, trustees began to
take notice. When large state institutions were reorganized and made
over from unsavory scandals into reputable and life-saving
establishments, even legislators took notice. The trained woman
superintendent proved not only more competent but less affected by
perquisites.
(I do not vouch for the universal maintenance of this high standard
when women managers have had longer experience; but so far conscience
and sterling integrity have been attributes of all my expert women,
even if they have now and then disappointed me in endurance or in
ability. Is not this a fact of great social significance?)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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