Home Problems from a New StandpointHunt, Caroline Louisa
General
Home Problems from a New Standpoint
Hunt, Caroline Louisa
Home
Encouragement lies not so much in what has already been accomplished as
in certain conditions and circumstances which provide that ever happy
and hopeful combination, the will and the way. The will is shown in the
growing disposition of the home-maker, who of all consumers exercises
greatest control over the producer, to assume responsibility not only
for the one who labors in her kitchen or sewing room, but also for the
one who works for her in the far-off factory. The way has already
appeared in the rough in the form of leisure, and it is interesting to
note that certain changes which are taking place in society are
smoothing out the path and giving the home-maker a fair chance of
accomplishing something when she chooses to devote her leisure to the
effort to restore sympathetic relations between the makers and the users
of household stuff.
The first condition of sympathy is knowledge. The housekeeper used to
get acquainted with the one who made the articles in use in her home
naturally and in the course of her ordinary daily occupations. Now she
can get acquainted only by an effort independent of her regular work.
This effort must usually take the form of reading and study. Here, of
course, is where the advantage of her new-found leisure appears, but
even the desire to learn and the time in which to learn would avail
little if it were not for the fact that the means of securing
information are continually improving. The student of social conditions
has come out of his library and is living among men as well as among
books. He is going down where the industrial war is being waged most
fiercely, and is gaining at first hand knowledge concerning the toiling
masses. The information thus secured he is giving to the public partly
through his college class work. There was a time, even after colleges
were opened to girls, when knowledge so given would have been
unavailable for the housekeeper. Now no one is ever too old to go to
school, and no one feels out of place in school. But the woman who
cannot take systematic courses in economics and sociology still has a
chance to learn. She can get information by residence in settlements,
from books and periodicals, and through summer assemblies and university
extension lectures. Thus the will which is manifested in a quickened
social conscience is finding the way in improved methods of spreading
information.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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