It is by the slow process of continual suggestion that both women
consumers and distributing agencies will be awakened to the problem.
Evidence of this awakening is already apparent. Schools and colleges,
with their domestic-science and household-budgeting courses, are
raising the question among an ever-widening circle of people. Banks
and brokers with their special woman's department are advising and
suggesting ways of spending that save. Newspapers, magazines, and
clubs are discussing household problems. Organizations, public and
private, have worked out ways and means of helping women budget their
expenditures. So far these varied efforts have reached chiefly the
American women. But no one group is isolated to-day, and as some
awaken they set in motion the waves of thought and action that reach
their foreign-born neighbor. Her institutions of press and bank
respond with information and assistance. Inevitably better
housekeepers will result.
In the meantime, all possible assistance must be given. It is
therefore especially important to establish contacts between agencies
already responsible for developing an art in household management and
the leaders among the various foreign-born groups. Provision should be
made for young women from among those groups to obtain a higher
education than has been commonly thought necessary by them or than has
in many cases been possible from a pecuniary standpoint.
Much could undoubtedly be accomplished by the establishment in
connection with departments of home economics and household arts in
the various colleges of funds making possible the compilation of
material bearing on these particular points. Scholarships and
fellowships can be made especially available to young women from among
these groups who desire to pursue their education in these lines.
The household arts departments of the various universities are
attempting to plan a "standardized dress," the social workers are
developing a list of garments,[40] and an estimate of expenditures for
the use of case-work agencies in the care of dependent families,[41]
the Young Women's Christian Association is carrying on a health
campaign[42] directed particularly at the problem of proper shoes. In
the meantime the Sunday papers carry full-page advertisements
describing in specious and misleading terms the bargains in clothing
to be had the following day, and the merry round continues. The
tragedy works itself out both in the dissipation of the income and in
the friction created between parents and children, to which reference
will be made in another place.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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