Home economics

“ Later civilisations have let them out to play—but not to work. The parasitic female of the upper classes is allowed the empty freedom of association with her useless kind; but the housewife is still confined to the house.
We are now giving great attention to this matter of home industry. We are founding chairs of Household Science, we are writing books on Domestic Economics; we are striving mightily to elevate the standard of home industry—and we omit to notice that it is just because it is home industry that all this trouble is necessary. ”

“ Civics also gives to the pupils a knowledge of the existing laws under which they will work, by whom these laws are made, and the possible means for improving them. In the discussion of such subjects as Tenement House Laws, Child Labor Laws, and Trade-Unions, there is opportunity for the introduction of home and business economics which have been found to be valuable. Economics is further taught by the detailed discussion of the apportionment of an income of $6 a week for fifty working weeks, considering car fare, lunches, savings, a portion toward family support, and an allowance for clothes. ”

“ It affects in one of its two branches every human being except those who board; every home, without exception. Perhaps some impression may be made on the blank spaces of our untouched minds by exhibiting the economic status of home industry.
We Americans are credited with acuteness and good business sense. How can we reconcile ourselves to the continuance of a system not only so shamefully inadequate, but so ruinously expensive? ”

“ Take away from the home consumers the means to consume—that is, the high and artificial value of their labour, or rate of wages produced by the working of the Corn Laws—and you stop this home market. You cut off the spring from which it is fed. You sacrifice a certain home market for an uncertain foreign market. ”

“ If a man be uncertain as to his means for hiring service, or if he have a feeble wife, and be where properly-qualified domestics are scarce, it is very [Pg 259] poor economy to build a large house, or to live in a style which demands much labor. Every room in a house adds to the expense involved in finishing and furnishing it, and to the amount of labor spent in sweeping, dusting, cleaning floors, paint, and windows, and taking care of, and repairing, its furniture. Double the size of a house, and you double the labor of taking care of it, and so, vice versa. ”

“ The industrial changes which have taken from the producer a large part of his pleasure in work have not, of course, been without their compensating advantages. Of these the chief, perhaps, has come to the housewife, and consists in the opportunity to buy, ready made and at low cost, most of the articles which it used to be necessary for her to make at home. This advantage, with its corollary, increased leisure, comes to her, however, in her capacity as consumer and not in that of producer. ”

“ By grouping several families, one above the other, on the land, it conserves land together with the cost of the municipal services and of the public utilities outside the house itself, which, as explained in the previous chapter, have so heavily increased the cost of a wage-earner's home. ”

“ New times bring new problems and housing is one of these. In the picture of industrial expansion, as it exists in the minds of most people, housing does not figure prominently. The need of the wage-earner for a home is assumed to care for itself in the market furnished by the local real estate interests. ”

“ But important as are these well-known factors of land, municipal and site improvements, building construction and house furnishings, it is a striking fact that they do not influence housing costs to nearly the same extent as does the cost of finance. What makes a workingman's home almost prohibitive to-day is the price paid for the capital employed in building the house. More capital is required to-day than formerly, and is paid for at a higher rate. Since the capital is usually employed in a small-scale speculative venture, the investor naturally requires a high return on his money. ”

“ Second, that under the operation of the American system, the products of our agriculture command a higher price than they would do without it, by the creation of a home market, and by the augmentation of wealth produced by manufacturing industry, which enlarges our powers of consumption both of domestic and foreign articles. The importance of the home market is among the established maxims which are universally recognized by all writers and all men. ”

“ The enormous and unnecessary expense of our domestic processes constitutes so excessive a drain on man's energy that it would be cruel, as well as useless, to expect him to do more.
With the reduction in expense which we have shown to be possible, lessening the cost of living by two-thirds and adding to productive labour by nearly half, the home, instead of being an unconscionable burden and ceaseless care, would become what it should be: an easily attained place of complete rest, comfort, peace, and invigoration. ”

“ The spontaneous efforts of each individual to increase and to secure the product of his labor would turn the current of production away from the monopolists and toward the producers. With a lot in the public domain, a wage-worker might soon live in his own cottage. As the settler often did in the West, to acquire a home he might first build two or four rooms as the rear, and, living in it, with later savings put up the front. A house and a vegetable garden, with the increased consequent thrift rarely in such situation lacking, would add a large fraction to his year's earnings. ”

“ Moreover, the price of the home-made article is also enhanced by the many restrictions which we place, and rightly place, on home manufacture in the interests of the workers—restrictions as to hours, methods of working, sanitary conditions, and so forth—all excellent, all laudable, but expensive, and from which the foreign maker is often absolutely, and always comparatively, free. ”

“ The American worker enjoys his present high standard of living because modern business methods have been introduced into the manufacture of his food, his clothes, his household goods, his education, his recreation, even of his luxuries, and there is every reason why the same efficiency should apply in housing, which, next to food, is the largest item in the wage-earner's budget. ”

“ What we produce beyond our domestic consumption must have a vent abroad. The excess must be relieved through a foreign outlet, and we should sell everything we can and buy wherever the buying will enlarge our sales and productions, and thereby make a greater demand for home labor. ”

“ Thus our people might have an opportunity of extending their sales beyond the limits of home consumption—saving them from the depression, interruption in business, and loss caused by a glutted domestic market, and affording their employes more certain and steady labor, with its resulting quiet and contentment. ”

“ Besides all this, and what seems stranger than anything else, whereas in the earlier time the American home was a free home, unencumbered, not one case in a thousand where a home was mortgaged to secure the payment of borrowed money, and whereas but a small amount of money was then needed for actual use in conducting the business of farming, there was always enough of it among the farmers to supply the demand. ”

“ By means of it, the narrowness of the home market does not hinder the division of labour in any particular branch of art or manufacture from being carried to the highest perfection. By opening a more extensive market for whatever part of the produce of their labour may exceed the home consumption, it encourages them to improve its productive power, and to augment its annual produce to the utmost, and thereby to increase the real revenue and wealth of the society. ”

“ The subject is taken up in detail in the chapter on home industries; here the mere statement is made, that the domestic system of feeding, clothing, and cleaning humanity costs more time, more strength, and more money than it could cost in any other way except absolute individual isolation. The most effort and the least result are found where each individual does all things for himself. The least effort and the most result are found in the largest specialisation and exchange. ”

“ Optimism about housing values also led to a boom in home construction. Eventually the number of new houses exceeded the number of people willing to buy them. And with supply exceeding demand, housing prices fell. ”

“ MAKING HOME PROFITABLE A PROFITABLE HOME It is just sixteen years since misfortune brought about our emancipation. A disastrous business venture made it necessary to curtail expenses. Rent being an especially heavy item, the hunt for a cheaper habitation commenced. ”

“ These conditions did not exist during the early days of America, and we know that while there was little commercial exchange of home commodities, many of the arts which are used to such profitable purpose abroad existed in this country and served greatly to modify home expenses and increase home comforts. ”

“ I am one of those who believe that a home market is necessarily the best market for the producer, as it measurably emancipates him in proportion to its nearness from the exactions of the transportation companies. If the farmer could deliver his surplus produce to the consumer out of his farm-wagon his independence and his profits would be larger and surer. ”

“ To found and maintain a home, therefore, with these rising standards of living, and also within the last decade or two with the rising cost of living, requires such a large income that an increasingly smaller proportion of the population are able to do this satisfactorily. ”

“ Labor is an important item in the running of the house. The close connection of selecting and operating a home will be seen. Should the administrator divide the family income in such a way that little is left for operating, the little things of everyday life become a constant source of worry.
The questions of the number of rooms, and their care,326 relative expense of heating by furnace, steam, or hot water, the cost of regular service in wages per week in order to attain one’s ideals, the cost of extra service, the lighting by gas, oil, or electricity are all problems of operating. ”

“ The kind of work that needs to be done to keep a modern home healthy, comfortable, and refined, cannot be done—can never be done—by this office-boy grade of labour. Because home industry is home industry, because it has been left aborted in the darkness of private life while other industries have grown so broad and high in the light of public life, we have utterly failed to recognise its true value.
These industries, so long neglected and misused, are of supreme importance. The two main ones—the preparation of food and the care of children—can hardly be over-estimated in value to the race. ”

“ This achievement brings within the reach of the higher-paid wage-earner an ideal home of the American standard of living. By thus demonstrating that the better-paid wage-earner can be ideally housed, the ultimate goal in housing, namely, the lower-paid ranks of the population—is brought nearer realization. ”

“ A comparatively small fraction of the great fortunes of the country is invested in realty, and for the country as a whole real estate is the safeguard of the poor but thrifty. To reduce rents below the average interest on conservative investments is to discourage thrift and home owning. ”

“ The home, by consenting to use factory products and by employing outside help, has involved itself in the great labor problem; by educating its daughters to support themselves in occupations unconnected with its management it has complicated its original problem of household administration ”

“ The effect of our present commercial system is to paralyse the home trade, by decreasing the value of all kinds of domestic produce; by lowering all incomes, and consequently reducing the amount of the internal business of the country. ”

“ All these variations in family budget, in items of housing expenditure, and in the relation of housing expenditure to the family budget, demonstrate the pitfalls which occur in the usual generalizations as to rentals and wages. But they should not be allowed to obscure the truth. The one essential fact which stands out clearly in the situation is this, that the traditional methods of housing production have for several decades at least failed to house acceptably all but the more prosperous wage-earners' families in most industrial districts of the United States. ”

“ To understand the problem of the home-maker, in her capacity as consumer and buyer, we must remember that there are “two distinct responsibilities. One is the responsibility for the conditions under which things are made, the other is the responsibility for their being made at all.” The first is for waste of life and productive power through child labor, underpay, and unsanitary places for work. ”

“ In every country in the world that has been a sine qua non of prosperity. Suppose that English labourers had built out of their own money and by their own hands the factories, docks, and railways in which they worked, and that the resulting profits, wages deducted, went solely to ground landlords. ”

“ So far as home industry has progressed, it is through contact with the moving world outside; so far as it remains undeveloped, it is through the inexorable limitations of the home in itself.
There is one more limitation to be considered—the number of occupations practised. Though man has taken out and developed all the great trades, and, indeed, all trades beyond a certain grade, he has left the roots of quite a number at home. ”