The windows in the schoolroom are washed after school hours (and at that only once or twice a year) by the janitor, the floors are swept by men, swept badly, and always after school. And if this pupil happens to be one of the twenty thousand who leave school each year before reaching the seventh grade, she goes into business not knowing that there is such a thing as scientific knowledge regarding food and air and sun and cleanliness. And yet this girl is going to marry, bear children and rear them, and you and I are going to hold her responsible if those children are not good citizens. Surely this is not a fair placing of responsibility. Eleven years ago I started the first housekeeping center in New York. These centers are ordinary tenement flats which find their motive power and are successful by means of the universal love in every little girl to play at keeping house, and the universal desire in every one to copy that which is just above her. A girl wants her kitchen messes, her dishes, her make-believe baby and her tiny bed or broom just as every boy wants his bat and ball. A housekeeping center takes these natural desires and cultivates them. It is furnished as a home should be furnished, and such questions are answered there as: What shall be done with the floors to insure health and save labor; what with the walls? What curtains are the best to admit light, give beauty to the room and wash easily? What proportion of the sum laid aside for furnishing should go into the buying of pots and pans, what part into mattresses, and is there any reason to spend money for ruffles? What are the proper and necessary tools to work with? In the housekeeping center the neighbors and the scientifically trained teacher work out these problems together. The teacher’s training in chemistry has taught her that a certain quality of water and a certain kind of soap are necessary for perfect laundry work. The tenement house woman adds what she has learned from bitter experience; that it is hard to heat enough of any kind of water on the stove with coal at ten cents a pail and the stove crowded with pots and pans. [Illustration: A LESSON IN BED-MAKING ] Regular lessons are given in these housekeeping centers morning, afternoon and evening, and as the flat is like the home from which the pupils come (only perfected) its lesson is not dissociated with the daily home duties but is performed under home conditions and, therefore, easy of imitation. Do the pupils want this instruction? The answer is that every class is full and there is a waiting list, and every girl pays for the lessons.