Trade of Home-making. Something similar, established before this or since, exists in the States of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Wisconsin, and State-aided vocational schools or classes for girls now exist in nearly every State in the Union, giving instruction in subjects relating to the care of the home. The National Society for Vocational Education has done much to promote this movement. To that Society, and especially to a memorandum sent to me at my request by Mrs. W. A. O'Leary, of the Department of Public Instruction at Trenton, New Jersey, my readers are indebted for the information in this article.

The movement for this development of training for the profession of homemaking is still in its infancy; but the infant, though small, is healthy and is increasing in strength and in public favor. Interest among educational leaders is becoming an enthusiasm. Money is provided by both State and Federal Governments, in sums that are as yet pitifully inadequate, but serve as a basis for beginning and an inspiration to hope.

But it is always difficult to break into an established routine, and our public school work is naturally, perhaps necessarily, an established routine. It is always difficult to create an interest in a new phase of human development, and home-building is a radically new development in education. Where there's a will, there's a way; but to create a will where no will exists is always difficult. Educational reformers find it easier to get the money, the enactment of necessary legislation, and the support of the people collectively than it is to get the girls. The obstacles Mrs. O'Leary thus admirably summarizes:

The Teacher. The regular grade teacher does not, as a rule, attempt to guide her girls to home economics classes. The measure of her success as a teacher is commonly evaluated by the number of pupils she heads toward college by way of preparatory courses in the high school. Too often she regards this as a girl's intellectual salvation; anything less is a fall from grace and not to be countenanced.

The Girl's Mother. However much the girl's mother may have been handicapped by ignorance of household matters, she gives only passive support to any plan which provides this training for her daughter. Present the subject of home economics instruction to a women's club and you will get an enthusiastic response, but press the matter individually to the same women and you will find that each one believes it is highly desirable for some one else's daughter. She has very fluent reasons why her own cannot take this instruction.

The Girl's Attitude. Household work of all kinds appeals to the average girl as drudgery of the crudest and most unattractive sort. She wants no part in it. Again, she knows that skill in domestic

pursuits is absolutely no asset in securing the masculine attention which she craves. As proof of this lack of interest on the part of the average man it may be stated that it is difficult to find any number of husbands who made a definite inquiry as to their fiancées' ability to cook or who even suggested that marriage be postponed while their prospective housekeepers secured some training for their job.

The Public. In addition to the lack of interest on the part of these three parties there is no well-defined public sentiment requiring that a girl be trained for her share in the domestic partnership. While a man who is not trained to support his household is looked at askance, the girl hopes to "hire some one to do her work." This lack of definite demand for instruction on the part of those most concerned is the chief obstacle in the way of home economics instruction.

Housekeeping may be regarded as a trade for which pupils can be prepared by vocational training. But homemaking is more than housekeeping. The school can give courses in household arts, home economics, domestic science-that is, in the scientific knowledge of materials and their wise use in providing the physical basis of life. They can do something in child psychology and in sociology to equip for the care of children and servants. But these are not enough to make a home. Can the school give love for husband, children, home, without which the home-maker is poorly equipped for her profession? To do this without the co-operation of the homes from which the pupils come is difficult; to do this despite the passive resistance of the homes is almost impossible. the vocational school the girls may receive training, but it is in the present homes that the builders of our future homes must receive their inspiration. A fundamental change in the popular conception of home-making as a profession is essential, and this demands the cooperation of the school and the home and aid from the pulpit and the press.

In

For women have lacked respect for their job. Regarding household work of all kinds as of the crudest and most unattractive sort is not confined to schoolgirls. This distaste, perhaps contempt, for household industry they learn from their mothers. They do not know-how should they?-that all professions involve drudgery; the artisan drudges at his bench, the lawyer in his office, the author at his desk, the minister in his pastorate. The joy of work is in the achievement, not in the achieving; whatever joy there is in the achieving is chiefly in anticipating the achievement. From the groom who spends half an hour in rubbing down his horse and delights in the sleek coat when the job is done, or the gardener who while he is putting the apparently lifeless seed into the brown earth foresees the future

flower, to the surgeon who calls his operation a "beautiful operation" because it has accomplished his purpose, and to the minister who harasses his brain in the endeavor to so shape his sermon that he shall "get across" to his congregation, the joy of work is in the anticipated accomplishment, and success always comes at the end as a rest, if not as a relief.

And what achievement is comparable with that of the successful homebuilder? For she is a builder of men. Surely it is a greater achievement to make a man than to make a statue of a man; to make a Phillips Brooks than to make the sermon which Phillips Brooks preaches. A country is not rich because it has coal and iron mines and fertile prairies. Honest, industrious, unselfish men make it rich. And to make these men is a more difficult task than to make the tools they use or the laws they enact. A country of many happy homes is a far better country than one of many hovels and a few palaces; a country of many loving and devout homes is better than one of a few great cathedrals.

Are not boys also to be trained to be home-builders? Are they not to share in the responsibilities of the profession and in its great rewards? Surely. From the notion current in Jane Austen's time that home-making was the only profession open to girls we have reacted to the folly that it is no profession at all, and we imagine that by living in hotels and boarding-houses and hiring some one else to do our work for us we can be rid of the cares of housekeeping and retain the joys of home-building.

Home-building is impossible without a partnership; and the partnership is impossible without sharing in the responsibilities and cares as well as in the joys of the home. Boys and girls should be taught by their fathers and mothers concerning the mysteries of birth and life and death and prepared by example, as well as by teaching, to do their share in the greatest work God has given men to do. Marriage should be something more than a ceremonial entrance into a long honeymoon of mutual pleasure. It should be a partnership of love for love's creative work. And love, which does not inspire to service, which shuns self-sacrifice, and finds no reward in the welfare and happiness of others is not love but selfishness, and too often only sensual self-indulgence.

The home is the foundation of all social order, the brooding-place for industry, patriotism, and religion; and the school, the church, and the home should unite in inspiring our boys and girls to see in the profession of home-building its God-given glory.

LYMAN ABBOTT.

CAN AMERICA CONTINUE TO EXPORT MANUFACTURED GOODS?

If Germany can maintain her present labor advantage, it will be hard to prevent her from climbing again into commercial pre-eminence and military power. She pays her machinists about 14 cents an hour. Can England compete paying 45 cents or America 60 cents?

German taxes and charges on business are less than in America and England. I will agree that more taxes are assessed there, but, as one man there said, "Not one German is paying the full tax."

England and the United States were stupid in 1914. They could not see the real Germany. The United States obstinately refused to see until 1917. Are these two countries to be equally stupid in 1921?

Will our wages to machinists conie down to German prices, or will German prices come up to ours? On the answer depends the future of our manufacturing trade in South America.

We have sometimes been afraid of China. Are we overlooking Germany, the Chinaman of Europe, industrious, cunning, and trained to the minute? The German has one great advantage

54

I consider the present political confusion in Germany only temporary and condoned or welcomed by the Germans themselves because it helps, like the cry of starving children, to create divisions among her enemies, her business rivals.

I am here considering the raising of German labor prices rather than the reduction of ours, which, no doubt, must also be accomplished. The cost of living in Germany and Austria is one-half the cost of living in the United States. The price of German labor is one-fourth, Austrian one-seventh of what we pay our workmen. Germany for several months has been underselling us in South America and elsewhere by forty per cent. No such cutthroat prices are necessary to get her fair share of trade. She has margin enough to pay higher wages and also export taxes to the Allies for reparations.

Every dollar Germany pays in increased wages to her workmen and to France and Belgium for her wanton destruction insures our workmen just so much more wages and work. There are too many smoking factory chimneys in Germany and too few in America.

Suppose we help to reverse this situation. Will any man in the United States object? If he does, just pull up his indignation by the roots and examine it. You will find a seed of selfishness or disloyalty at the bottom.

I see no objection to the Allies placing

Photograph by W. C. Gregg

a fifteen per cent export tax on all German exports. I think it would be accepted by the world with a minimum of grumbling. I agree that the purchasers would pay this tax. And the Allies would get some indemnity. A fifteen per cent export tax would not kill German business. It would pay Germany's war obligations.

Germany will not pay one mark unless compelled to. The sooner she starts to paying, the sooner Europe will settle down. Some occupation and control will be necessary to accomplish these ends. General acceptance of this situation will speed the desired result.

Germany can be forced to pay her workmen more money by being compelled to retire and cancel part of her enormous issues of paper money. She is still increasing it by unnecessary governmental expenditures and failure to collect taxes. The deficit is made up by printing more paper marks. No wonder the purchasing power of the mark is small, and labor gets the worst of it.

The process must be reversed-government expenditures held down to income and some of this almost worthless paper money canceled. The mark will then go up and its power in the hands of the German workman to buy food will increase.

Somebody says, "That's all fine, but food will cost more too."

Not so much, because food is now much more on the gold basis than labor is in Germany.

"But," says another, "you can't do such things to a nation not at war."

Not at war? Well, she is not at peace, that's certain!

If I have received any impression from my studies in seven countries in Europe, it is that the Great War is not

over.

The present state is an armistice which the Central Powers are using for the purpose of evasion, causing the Allies to threaten invasion.

The interest of the United States in the outcome should be just as keen today as in 1917. There is absolutely no reason for us to shift our sympathy or criticise our old associates.

CENTRAL POWERS STILL UNITED

I found myself several times behind the lines of the Central Powers.

I noticed Turkish bootblacks in Vienna and asked why Austria allowed them to take that kind of work away from the Viennese. The answer was, "They are our allies, you know; they are welcome here." Again, when funeral services were recently held at Berlin over the remains of that Turkish butcher Talaat Pasha (who ordered the massacre of the Armenians, and was not able to escape a revenger's bullet, though he hid himself in the German capital) the German Foreign Office placed a wreath on his coffin with this touching tribute: "To a great statesman and a true friend."

A dozen times in Vienna I heard men say that their hope depended on Germany. Some wanted to see "Germany control Russia and again become the greatest power in Europe." Some said, "Germany is the backbone of Europe." I suggested that if they meant the central force for justice and order, I thought France, not Germany, filled the rôle.

THE WORLD DELIRIUM OF EXTRAVAGANCE Extravagance is the heritage of the war-personal, corporate, municipal, and national.

People are eating more, drinking more, wearing better clothes, seeing more theaters, movies, and cabarets. In the tragic average many are poor who once were rich, but they too spend what they can lay their hands on.

Municipalities are borrowing to make up deficits. All nations spend more than their income. The difference is met by printing paper promises. Every nation is paying interest on its bonds, but also in paper. It is paper, paper, paper everywhere, smeared with a little ink. We laugh at the poor heathen who puts his confidence in a stone image. Should we have more respect for a paper image?

Neither treasuries nor banks can keep adequate metal reserves. International exchange indicates whether or not they are worth trying. There are over ninety billion paper Austrian crowns in existence. They have practically no metallic money behind them. Yet the wording of the promise, printed rather handsomely on each bill, is "One crown, payable on demand in metal currency."

Photograph by

W.C. Gregg

FRANCE, BURDENED, PERPLEXED, AND WAR WORN, IS CARRYING ON
A French woman in the Argonne

I wish I could write cheerfully of Europe. I have spent nearly three months digging under the surface sixteen hours a day in England, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Austria, and Hungary, uncovering the cost of living, wages, taxes, governmental expenditures, incomes, debts, and gold reserves; and I have noted the agricultural equipment and activity, the political sanity and otherwise, the honesty of peoples and their intelligence. And I am coming home to America with a heavy heart. I criticise every country in Europe, as I do my own beloved land. I excuse only France.

French intrigue is as active to-day as ever. Each move, each hope, of the Central Powers hangs on crippling France. France bears the brunt of guaranteeing European order, and is recompensed by a world of suspicion or hatred. does not deserve criticism from her former associates; she does need their advice and their firm support in her plan to settle the war.

She

What would happen if France were to economize by disbanding the bulk of her army? Germany would change her tone immediately. Not one mark more would she pay and her own army would rapidly take form. In one year she would again be the principal military power of Europe, with greater resources than any two other nations. There would then be no doubt as to who won the war.

A HORIZONTAL REDUCTION OF HATRED AND EXTRAVAGANCE

No one knows the absolute motive of Germany in trying so many Socialistic experiments and depreciating her currency while negotiating a war settlement, but her tax laws are enforced only in a half-hearted way. In addition to income taxes poorly collected she has a tax on capital beginning at 10 per cent on, say, $5,000 worth of property, 20 per cent on $15,000, 30 per cent on $30,000 and so on up to 60 per cent of the capital every German had in 1920. Any

one can see that such a tax would have raised enough funds theoretically to pay off war indemnities at one stroke. But there has been no real effort to collect this tax, because there is no way known to political economy by which so large a proportion of property in land and buildings can be converted into cash.

The net results of all these experiments in Government Socialism is debt,

depreciated currency, and harder living conditions for the very ones intended to be benefited. It is generally the way.

Europe needs a horizontal reduction of hatred. It will do little good, perhaps much harm, for one nation to do all the forgiving. A general reduction in extravagance and inflated currency is also imperative, and in the necessary reorganization labor must undergo a certain amount of equalization also.

America and England must reduce or their competitors increase wages. Some of both is the best for all concerned.

American labor has long been the most prosperous in the world. If the tendency in America to condone leniency toward Germany in the show-down settlement results in closing our shops and destroying America's foreign trade, we can well fear for the sanity hereabouts. WILLIAM C. GREGG.

A

STURDY?

COLD north wind is blowing little whirls of dust across the sandy plain as we pass through the double gate in the east wall of Tanghsien. A stronger gust than usual whipsthe sand into our faces. It stings and reminds us of the unusual dryness of the soil even for the dry season. A mirage a mile or two away between two groves mocks us with the appearance of a lake reflecting on its smooth surface the trees and shrubs. We might easily be deceived if we did not realize that this is a common phenomenon on these flat plains of Chihli Province, where the bright sunshine warms the surface of the soil in spite of the cold north winds. We pass two or three dust-colored villages which look from a distance like a series of mud walls and gates amid the trees. They have already been visited by our investigators. We come at last to the Fang Village. The cloth peddler, who says he knows the place well, directs us to the home of the head man. Before we have gone very far a boy offers to lead us and we are followed by an excited crowd of men and children who have already guessed what we have come for. Only yesterday they came to the famine relief headquarters in the city to remind us that we had missed their hurible village, and that they had received nothing from us in the first distribution. We told them that we could not give out anything, not even a ticket, until we had investigated, but that we would come to their honorable village as soon as possible. It was in fulfillment of this promise that we were coming to-day, although we still do not know when we shall receive any more grain for distribution from the Peking Committee. After meeting the head man and being invited to come into his house and sit down, we request that the crowd be kept outside, as we wish to talk over some business with him privately. knew that in the presence of the crowd he would find it inadvisable to distinguish the very poorest from the next poorest, and we can help only the neediest.

We

"How many 'family doors' are there in your honorable village?" is our first question. It is the family, not the individual, which is counted in China.

"Let me think a thought," he answers. "About one hundred and ten or twelve."

"Are any of them poor?"

"Oh, all are poor. We had no harvest at all. Early in the summer the grasshoppers came and ate our winter wheat before it was ripe. As we were driving a swarm of them off in one direction other swarms came from the other direction. It was no use. Grasshoppers attacked some of our later crops too, and in addition there was no rain. In spite of all our prayers to the Dragon King, the Old Man of the Sky sent down no rain. So we are all poor, very poor indeed."

"Yes," we answer, "but so are they in all the other villages in this hsien [county] and in several provinces, and we cannot help all. Please choose out of your village the twenty or thirty of the very poorest, that we may go and see them. If they are really in the very poorest class as compared with other villages we can help them, perhaps, when more grain comes to us."

We write down the names which he gives us, noting the number of "mouths" in each family. They do not "count noses," but "mouths," in China. The list grows to thirty, forty, fifty, yet the head man insists that they are all the very poorest, who really have not enough to eat. Only our strict insistence that we have enough for only the very poorest prevails upon him to revise the list by omitting all who have over five mu of land (one mu equals one-sixth acre). This is on the assumption that a person who had more land may have had some grain left over from previous prosperous years, or he may have had something to sell, or at least he might borrow a little money by a mortgage on his land wherewith to buy food even at famine prices.

When we have pressed the list to its smallest possible limits by striking off all the names about which there seems to be a moment's uncertainty in the head man's decision, we ask to be taken to see the homes that are named on the list.

The first home which we see seems fairly well off. In the big iron kettle

which sits over the fire there are signs that the family had a little millet for breakfast. Cabbage in one of the bowls on a side-table tells us that this family is not of the poorest. Several deep crocks stand at one side of the room, which we find empty except one on the bottom row, which is half full of millet, and in the adjoining storeroom is a pile of seven or eight cabbages. A few handfuls of white flour show that they had something better at the Chinese New Year holidays. My companion calls out that he has found a donkey in one of the outbuildings. Evidently a family which can keep a donkey is not starving, and we scratch the name from our list without bothering to search the cupboards further.

The next house is closed and locked. We are informed by the crowd that follows us that the occupant has moved away, gone up beyond the Great Wall to find food. Scratch him off. We cannot give to one who is not here to receive it, though he may be back to-morrow or next week and ask us to reconsider, when he have not time. Occasionally they lift the door of the house off its hinges, lock and all, insisting that the family have just gone out to the hills for the day to find grass to burn and will be back at night. The warm stove proves that they have not been gone long, and the absolute emptiness of the cupboards, jars, granaries, and cooking utensils persuades us that this family needs help, and needs it soon. And that is one feature of the homes that grows on one-the large empty willow grain baskets, the great quantities of empty jars which speak of plenty and abundance in normal years but which ring with deathly hollowness to the stroke of our stick.

Yet after all our investigation we realize that four-fifths of the names on the list are genuine cases of honest poverty. They have not enough to keep them alive till the wheat harvest. They are eating now the immature millet grains with the rusks on them or the millet bran of years before. In many houses the jars are half full of leaves put down in water-elm, willow, and even thistle leaves. Elm bark is ground to a powder

and mixed with the millet bran. This may fill the stomach, but it cannot sustain life as a regular diet for four months yet. Any one who views the inside of these homes can see for himself that without help the people will starve before wheat harvest, and the only reason more of them have not starved already is that the Government and some benevolent societies in China gave out some grain, money, and clothing just before the Chinese New Year, which came this year on February 8.

It does not seem at all probable that either in China itself or in foreign countries enough money will be contributed

to save all. The question, a very real practical question, that confronts the investigator who gives out the precious grain tickets is, Which shall he save? Shall it be the poorest of the poor who would make a precarious living even in normal years, the landless laborer who has sold his house over his head with the stipulation that he and his family may live in it till spring? Shall we save the widower who has pulled down two-thirds of his house to sell the timber and is trying to keep a fire and find food enough for his two babies who live in the remaining end? Shall we give a ticket to the weak, old, white-haired

beggar woman who lives alone in the little single room of the village shrine? Or shall we save it for the sturdy middle-aged farmer who after he has been helped over this hard winter may be able to support his family and in a reasonable amount of comfort, and whose labor is needed to produce next year's crops?

For the good of the country it is necessary to keep alive the strongest. Yet we cannot deny food to the aged or clothing to the shivering babes. There is not enough for all. Whom shall we let die? CARROLL B. MALONE. Tsing Wha College, Peking.

A

FARM

S chairman of the Labor Committee for the lower house of the Wisconsin Legislature, I have had to wrestle with the farm labor problem for many weeks. There is a political group in the Legislature which marches under he Farmer-Labor banner. The leaders of this group are firm in the belief that the farmer and organized labor can get together, and between them solve the labor situation of the commonwealth.

Now let us see how this political alliance works out in practice. The labor groups vote solidly and persistently for all of the legislation demanded by the farmers, and many of the farmers vote for the bills fostered by organized labor. But always there are a few farmers who cannot swallow the eight-hour day, with the result that one member of our Committee put it this way:

"Labor will not get one comma changed in the labor laws of Wisconsin."

Farmers are opposing the eight-hour day because they themselves are unable to keep to an eight-hour schedule. Farm work is seasonal, and crops have to be harvested while the getting is good, regardless of hours. Even admitting that labor were plentiful enough so that farmers could operate two shifts of help, and that every farmer could house and feed a double quota of hired men, he has no guaranty that he could get one cent more for his crops. Under the present organization of society, the farmer is compelled to accept what he is offered for his crops, and, while it may be possible to anticipate that the spread of the co-operative marketing movement will improve this situation, the sad fact remains that for the present, and for a long time to come, the farmer is up against it.

Labor leaders in the industrial centers have shown a surprising inability to see the farmers' side of the question. They look upon the hired man in the light of a peasant, a man who has no future, who leaves all hope behind when he engages in farm labor. These same labor leaders also forget that the average farmer is an employer as well as a worker, that he suffers much and not

always patiently from lazy, shiftless, and incompetent help. During those happy days of the war it was almost impossible to get help on the farm at all, and such men as could be had were independent and insolent to an extreme. The farmer cannot altogether be blamed for being a little independent himself, now that men are begging for work.

One of the main objections which the farmer has to the eight-hour day in industries, established by law, is that it will attract even more men from the farms, and make it harder to get men from the cities to go back to the farm. There is some ground for this contention of course, but the fact remains that even to-day, when thousands of men are idle in the cities and we are not on an eight-hour basis, farmers cannot get all the help they need. Men would rather remain in the cities without work, and starve, than to go to the farm, where the food and keep are pretty well, thank you.

I, for one, do not believe that labor conditions on the farm can be improved by keeping conditions in the city down. The best thing that the farmer can do is to help the man in the city get the best possible working conditions, and then to solve his own peculiar problem on the farm. This is subject to solution from a twofold angle.

First, the farm wife is beginning to rebel over the task of boarding and washing the hired man." She wants more conveniences in her own home and a little more privacy, so as to enjoy some of the blessings of family life, which many farmers deny themselves and their families. Because the good wife will have none of the hired man the farmer is compelled to build small tenant houses and hire married help. This helps to secure steady men, because the man who has a comfortable, even if small home, a garden, and wage enough to be able to save a little will be more content, and not so likely to roam from place to place.

Second, the war showed the farmer how completely he could depend upon machinery. Iron and steel must more and

more replace human muscle, and gasoline and kerosene horse power. This utilization of machinery will mean one of two things: either larger farm units, so that machinery will be economical, or else small units which can be operated by the owner without any hired help at all. The large farms of course will need from one to many extra men.

I have been much interested in listening to the labor leaders in the committee rooms. They have just one cry: that the rich are preying upon the poor, and that the interests of the common people are constantly being betrayed. Even if we would grant, for the sake of argument, that one class of society has gained at the expense of another, we cannot get away from the fact that the man who is willing to work hard and who is thrifty in his habits and foresighted enough to study his business or trade at every opportunity will always get ahead. It is well enough that we should warn captains of industry that labor must not be exploited, but we must also teach labor that it cannot eat its cake and have it too. If we give workers an eighthour day, they must expect to give their best efforts to their employer for those eight hours, and not ask for eight hours' pay for six hours of work. Labor must also learn that after a certain reasonable sum is reached a proper standard of living is the spending of less than is earned. If society is organized so that the laboring man can expect an average wage of, say, six dollars for an eighthour day, the laboring man should save at least one dollar of the six, so that when hard times do come he will not be caught adrift.

Every man who is able-bodied and willing to do an honest day's work, of as many hours as intelligent society deems best, should be paid a minimum wage which will give him most of the comforts and some of the luxuries of life.

But no member of society, except the physical or mental defectives or unfortunate, should expect anything from society which he has not conscientiously strived for. W. A. FREEHOFF. Assembly Chamber, Madison, Wisconsin.