HomeMy WebLinkAboutZurich Herald, 1929-08-08, Page 3The Modern
Housewife
By Hlldegarde Kneeland
the tact that a 1araer Share of the.
Worst of the home was formerly done
by other txiembere of the household,.
Not only' were there more farniiies
employing lured help, but mole had
England in 1929.
S.y' Harold J. Laski
We have'reabbed in England a mere
geendmothers, tinxuarrked sisters, critical period than at any epoch since
In meat Masculine eyes -anti even unmarried daughters living and wank. the cerci of the Napoleonic wars. Then,
in some feminine—the average house- ins In the kiante.. as now, classes Confronted one an-
1littch of the gala which the Indust- other' in.•a struggle for suprenacY•
wife to -day is a Cinderella in modern! I vial Revolution has so far brought has Then, as now, a commercial crisis, a
dress, The magic wand a the Indus (gond into reducing the worse of the eurreney .crisis; an industtrial crisis,
trial Revotetioa is supposed to have �lrauselrold to a one worker job. A taxed for a generation the quality of
transformed ner from a household sixth of the homemakers in 1itjecl in her statesmen.
drudge into a lady of leisure. On the bureau study received no help In 1815 it was not less clear to the
•
every hand the opinion Is heard that whatever, either front paid workers or
she has ceased to be a "pioclueer"," from members of the family. And on
that insofar as she still has a job, it the average they received from all
le that ofdirector of consumption. sources only 10 hours a week of help.
Moonlit* to this view, anotherOnly about 5 per cent of the ploy paid
wave or two of tate wand will imperil weorieers, and. there is little reason to
her very existence. Her early dem- expect that tiffs numbe will greatly
ise as an occupational type seems in- increase in the future.
evitable.
In the long run life prediction as to Our great-grandmother's day, this
the housewife's fate will probably much is certain: the primary problem
prove correct. For her fairy god-' of a, large proportion of ho tlemakcers
mother seems to have no intention
of ceasing to lighten her : burdens.
Every yea;, every month, sees a .fur-
ther inerease in the use of ready- not have enough work?. Even to -day
cooked food, ready-made clothing, there are several millions • of theta,
ready -washed laundry, even , ready -
trained children—and this despite our
almost violent prejudice for the home
product.
But we appear to have Overestimat-
ed the speed at which the transform,
arson has been taking' place. We
have been so absorbed in watching
the changes in the home. that our
ideas as to what has already happen-
ed have gotten somewhat ahead of the
event; we gaze into the future and
think w:,+ are viewing the present.
In the days of our great-grand-
children the housewife may be as ex-
tinct as the dodo. But at the pre-
sent time some 26,000,009. hale and
hearty followers of the trade might
arise and announce in the words of
Mark Twain, "The reports of my
death have been greatly exaggerat-
ed."
With the help of the extension and
research staffs of several colleges,
we have induced more than 2,000
homemakers to keep ,;areful daily re-
cords of how they spent their time
for seven days of a typical week.
Most of these records came from
middle-class homes—from farm and
village women with whom the college
extension service is in touch, and in
smaller numbers from club -women in
towns and cities. The results so far
tabulated are s -t rprising to those of us
who by temperament belong to the
historical, eyes -on -the -future school.
Five -sixths of those home -makers
spent over 42 hours a week in their
homemaking, more than half spent
over 48 hours, and one-third spent
over 56 hours. The average for all
is slightly over 51 hours a week. If
this be part-time work, what, one may
ask, would be full-time?
No standard has yet been set for a.
faaregtapnable working Week • for the
honieinaker. But probably we should
all agree that 'more than eight hours
a day for seven days of the week
would exceed a_reasonabie figure, and
that less than the 42 -hour week of the
'white collar worker would be unduly
low. s
If we take this range of 42 to 56
hours as roughly marking the limits
of what might be considers da full-
time job iu homemaking, exactly half
of the . homemakers in the study will
be found within this class, while one-
third will be classed as over-worked
and only the remaining sixth as un-
derworked.
Ridged by this group of housewiv-
es, homeniaicing is still for the maj-
ority a"` full-time job, and too much
work is still a more frequent problem
than too little.
When we turn to the farm records,
and include in our figures the time
spent in the care of poultry and milk,
in gardening and' in other farm work
-which falls to the homemaker's lot as
."naturaily" as does her part-time jobs
fades to a negligible figure, and the
extent of overwork takes on serious
• proportions. The average time spent
in all work by the 950 farm women
whose records have so far been tab-
ulated is over 62 hours a week—al-
most 9 hours a day every day of the
Week.
The, similarity of the urban and
rural records holds even in the dis;
tribubion of the total time among the
'various houseltolcl tasks. The city
homemakers, to. be sure, spent a few
hours more during the week in caro Norse explorers conducted their mor
of children and purchasing, and a few candle interests. Their trade was in
hours less iv. coaling and dieltwas furs, fish, masur wood and agricul-
ing. But this smaller amount o1 time
tural products. This barter prob.
spent in the kitchen is mainly due to,ably extended over a period of 350
the larger number of meals eaten a-1 years,: from 1000 until the last Norse
way from home by members of rite ship put back to Iceland, perhaps
about 1347.
Norumbega Tower was raised be.
cause Professor Hereford believed it
5% for laundering, leis for mending I waa very near by that Leif Ericson
and 41,E for sewing. built his Hoare and the .amphitheater -
But the cooehisiou.seems justified on the borders of the Charles River,
that` even in tete large aides the over Certainly the site, . four miles above
worked,: housewife has by no menus title water on the river, bears mit to
passed rota history, la fact she niay some degree Professor Hor.aford's
still outtitiliiber the housewife with i coutetttioii that here was the cont er
too mach leisure. 1 of Norse trading activities in New
}tow can. we account for this situs England,
tide? In view of the transfer from
Whatever may have been true of
is still how to cut down their hours of
work to a reasonable number.' But
how about those homemakers who do
and we may confidently expect their
ranks to increase. Vl?hat solution
can bd found for their problem of too
couch leisure? -
The.. answer is - usually made, "a job
outside of the`home." But those who
Make' this 'suggestion are clearly not
among the 2,000.000 mailed women
who are trying it.
The greatU majority of jobs avail-
able are full-time jobs; and the home-
maker usually finds that where she
had too stench.leisure when she did
only her household work, she has too
little when she does that and another
job in addition.
The conclusion seems inevitable,
then, that the time spent by married
women in house -keeping must be re-
duced—not only for those who are
over-worked, but reduced as well for
many others to a leisure -job which
can be' done by the homemaker out-
side of regular hours.
From the dune Survey Graphic
discerning mind than 3n' 1929 that the
institutions of ,the state stood in mead
of renovation. Then, ea now, tixe
ability to reform, not less than the
skill to preserve; was the obvious
lesson of great events. •
But England 'einerged from tete
Napoleonic wars with one supreme
advantage slie does not now possess.
Her primacy over other peoples in the
process of industrial transformation
was, broadly speaking, unchallenged
until the eighties, of the last century,
To -day England,. fights in a world
market with rivals at least as well
equipped as herself. She fights, too,
at a period when the unstable equilib-
rium of Europe and of Asia makes the
restoration of markets a matter of
profound difficulty. She competes
witit an America quite obviously
destined to the economic leadership of
the world. England; in a word, has
no longer those ample margins of
economic security within which, at
any period 'snake concessions to the
disinherited.
There are over one million and a
half unemployed persons in England. Honolulu this summer.
The mining industry is at au ebb even
their house in order. In-
evitably,dustrialcontrol, that will mean a wide ex-
tension of government control; in-
evitably, also, it will mean an effort to
give employees a definite place in in-
dustrial governance.
England in 1929, with all its pro•
blems, gives one the sense of being
upon the verge of an intellectual re-
naissance. There is an eagerness for
knowledge abroad, a sense of spirit-
ual
pirit
ual hunger, which gives to the ob
mnho of the plant is all adapted to server a vision of spaciouness not
modern demand. The three conciit- I characteristic of a people that has
ions, of course, hang closely together. passed its zenih. The new mind, in -
English industry is still largely in deed, requires a new body, The new
body involes medicine more drastic
than the patient has been willing to
swallow.
Yet the new England, if it can be
made, will niore than repay the cost
of construction. For the first time,
her liberty will be real since it will be
born of equality. For the first time,
the principles of her life will seek to
express the ideal of justice. And
Norumbega Tower
Norse Site
Real Cherry Blossom
Opis, Dreaming
,
Among Its Ruins,
Toledo, O --Goss, known in Baby-
Ionian,
aby
Ionian 'literature for 1900.years and
an important city Of businesh and art
b+tilt upon the forgotten Veins of
,ancient Akshalc, is to be visited again
this, milliliter •by 'Leroy Water+tuan,
profaner of Semiblcs at the 'Univer-
sity of Michigan, wire, witl-. his .aides,
will direct the third annual expedi-
tion jointly fostered' by the Toledo
Museum of Art and tire' university.
On the previous journey Melt finds
rewarded the explorers. The worts -
Men dug into the home of a gentle
man and among its 20 rooms found
his oflace. There were 4C0 tablets
there and further' investigation un-
covered more than 4000 doeumenta,
There was evidence that his library
had been burned in a great fire, but
aince the writings were traced on
brick, Professor Waterman explains
that the flames only blackened them
aticl in a way helped to preserve
them.
Evidence that the same site was
later the city oa Ctesipitan of
Grecian origin, and still later Saleu-
kia, the capital of a province, given
to one of his generals by Alexander
the Great, has also' been uncovered
at this point. In fact, the leaders
feel they have found indications of
lye Hellenistic cities above the Baby-
lonian.and Sumerian cultures.
Location of - the site was the re-
sult of years Of study by Professor
'Waterman. Through literature he
had traced and retraced the ebb and
floe{ of commerce, art, and arms, the
effect of geographical and climatic
changes, and when he arrived on the
spot to do some digging he found
conclusive proof that he had located
the ancient cities he sought.
The area of exploration comprises
860 acres in the far-off valley of the
Tigris and Euphrates, giving testi-
mony of seven great cities piled one
on top of another through more lthan
5000 years.
JAPANESE MERMAIDS 114 INTERNATIONAL MEET
These Japanese girls are the first of their race to go aboard for interna
tional competition. They Will represent Nippon In the swimming meet at
coal fields has reached proportions so of the historic notions of English for -
vast that in South Wales and the ,eigu . policy. What does all this
Tyneside there are whole villages imply?
where not a single wage-earner enjoys Anyone who analyzes the charac-
the security of continuous employ- ter of English industrial organization
meat. and compares. it with that of America
The iron and steel trades are in a will be struck by a number of small
condition so bad that the employers but significant facts. Compared with
have demanded a protective tariff, America, the size of the industrial
while the trade unions are asking for unit in England is small, the age of
a thorough governmental Inquiry into the average director is high, and
every nook and cranny of the indus-
try. The textile trades have never
known worse markets; and the work-
ers have been either completely idle
or on short time for so long that they the personal stage. Father and son
have wholly forgotten the brief gust still tend to be associated together in
of prosperity eight years ago. business; and the tendency is to make
The shipbuilding industry tells a a finished product of high quality for
similar tale; pictures might be drawn a small market.
of unemployment in Glasgow, on the The price, too, is high, for the busin-
Mersey, and on the Tyne, which seem ess inau in England seeks a high re-
in their grimness to outstrip even the turn on a small capital rather than a
legends of the hungry forties. These low return on a high one. He does
are the staple industries of England. not show much anxiety to experiment,
The result as the elections show, is either with the commodity he pro -
having thus saved herself by her ex -
that the Liberal party is less able duces or with the market he explores. ertions, England, once more, map
effectively to attract the .voter to its. In the result, he is too often unable hope to have saved Europe by her ex -
side. Its disappearance into the to compete with rivals mach more ample.
From. the Spring Yale Review
major. parties is inevitably a question alert than he to new market demands°
of time. Yet, clearly, the future of industry I -----
The Labor party is undergoing so is with the big unit and with mass
rapid a transformation that descrip- Methods of production. The future, I Two
:Palaces of '700 B.C.
tion of Its place is by no means easy. too, is with the younger iu industrial
It is a socialistic party, committed by direction, men who are still specula -
Capt. •John Snaith called New Eng-
land Naruiubega when he gave an
account of his travels thither to
Charles I. But it was Prof. Ebert N.
Horsford, Rumford professor of
chemistry at Harvard University,
who in 1859 ,uilt Norumbega Tower
near the Waltham -Weston boundary
Iine to mark what he believed was
the site. of a Norse settlement dating
neck to tbe year 1000. The settle-
ment, it will be recalled, is spoken
of in the Saga of Eric the Red. -
It .is probably true that, in those
early. days, the explorers oe the, North
American coast, on th%'`east gave the
name "Norumbega'to various sites,
as well as to a river and to a myths
cal Indian city. In 1539 the name
was applied to the whole coast from
Cape Breton to Florida. Mercator's
map, published in 1541, locates an
"Anorunibega" near the Hudson
River.
The origin of the word has been
attributed to many languages; as an
Indian word meaning "still waters,"
and a Spanish word meaning "fields"
and as a Norse word, taken from
"Norvegr" meaning Norway.
Professor Horsford was not only a
professor of chemistry, he was a dis-
coverer; he put a new face on the
Christian missionary achievement by
revealing the once unknown Chris-
tian continent of faith ad thought.
In Wellesley College, where he
taught, he devoted one room to a col-
lection of literature from the peo-
ples that had no literature, that is to
say, until Christianity came. He
made a collection of languages re-
duced to writing, of alphabets made,
of grammars and dictionaries printed
and, front the translated Bible, the
nucleus 'of literature; all this was in
addition to his work as an antiquarian
In historical and geographical fields.
Professor Horsford did not believe
that the French or English discover-
ers in the fifteenth, sixteenth and
oven the seventeenth centuries were
responsible for the evidences of oc-
cupancy in New England before the
Pilgrims, but that they went back
direct to the Norsemen' The sagas
tell that mainly its Vineland the
its cbaracter to the inception of vast
changes.
Most of its leaders realize that,
tive enough to adapt themselves to
new ways.
The way out seems to lie in a de -
given the utmost gocd will, system liberate policy of rationalization, con -
overnight; and it has followers to ducted in co-operation with the trade
whom the ideal is deliberately re. unions. Conferences with the unions
volutionary actioxs by constitutional may well, if they go forward, mark
means. As a result, it is still over -an epoch in English history. For
whelmingly a working-class party. English trade unionism is marked by
England in 1929 is, therefore, at a a new spirit. It has realized that a
halting place. The force of circum-
stances has, oyer a century, made it
into a political demacrasy; its pro-
blem is now that of transformation
into a social democracy as well.
It is no easy task to uproot the
tradition• of aristocratic control in a
country as old as England. It is no
easy task, either, because it has to
city routing tasks the figures are al-
most identical—about 7% hours a
-week; on the average, for cleaning,
Disappearing 1 s 1 e
of Falcon, Near
Tonga, Decreasing
Auckland, N.Z.—From time to tirne
news reaches New Zealand of the
activity of o_i.i of the most curious
volcanoes in. the world, the disappear-
ing island known as Falcon, near
Tonga.
This island has had a most check-
ered history. It was first seen as a
breaking reef by H.M.S. Falcon in
1865. Twelve years afterward another
warship saw smoke issuing from the
sea where tin reef had been. In the
'eighties it was found that an island
over a mile long and 150 feet high had •
been thrown up, a mass of ashes with
deep water all round. It sank again
and later rose longer than before, and
so on. Last year two American na-
tural scientists landed on the island.
accompanied by the Prime Minister
of Tonga, who claimed the spot for
his tiny country.
There are signs that Tonga's new
possession will shortly disappear
again. On a recent round trip of the
steamer Tofua, whose home port is
Auckland, the captain took the ship
slighly off her course so that the pas-
sengers could get a close view of Fal-
con Island, and it was seen to be de-
creasing in size.
According to an account published
in the New Zealand Herald, the island
is without life. The Prime Minister
of Tonga planted a cocoanut palm
there, but no signs of a tree were seen.
The sland is a mass of cinders and
lava, with a burst of steam coming
every now and then from the crater,
The Pacific swell is eating into the
sides and the heavy tropical rains are
taking their toll.
"Equal Partners" -
Christchurch, N.Z., Press: As long
as our own Dominion dcpuds on the
British Navy for protection and upon
British markets for the'disposal oY
its products, we cannot—as of course
w do riot—pretend to be an enal part-
ner with Great Britain, and the same
is true, though in some cases to a
lesser extent, of the other Dominions,
No New Zealander will mind being
told that the peace and welfare of his
country depend "on the maintenance
of stable governmen tand wise states-
manship in Britain," and neither will
a Canadian or a South African if he
takes his stand on realities rather
thn on consi.it.utional formulas.
Are Uncovered in Irak
Chicago—Palaces of two Assyrian
kings whose conquests are recorded
in the Old Testament, magnificent
buildings long buried and forgotten,
have been discovered, the University
of Chicago announces.
Prof. Edward Chiere, directing the
Assyrian expedition of the univer-
sity's Oriental Institute, has just re-
turned from Irak with a romantic
story about the finding of the royal
mere policy of negation will carry it abodes of Sargon II and Sennacherib.
nowhere. It is anxious for efficiency The expedition was "blessed with
and reorganization as a condition of
porsperity for its own members.
The next years, accordingly, will
see either voluntary or forcible re-
organization in 'the indistrali field;
and if it is the second, a Labor gov-
ernment will be the active agent in
he accomplished in the midst of an the process. It will, Indeed, have no
economic world revolution, in dustrial alternative.
supremacy has gone. To accomplish No party representing the working Government museum, the Govern-
it, there is need for the revision not class can do other than compel the meut having assisted tbe Chicagoans
only of the accepted notions of in- ( examination of the basic industries generously.
almost too many results," said Dr.
Chiera. Crating and moving tbe mas-
sive fragments was little short of an
engineering feat. One item now en
route to Chicago is a great stone bull
which weighs 40 tons. In 'all, 125
tons of Assyrian art are on their
way here while another 125 tons
have been turned over to the Irak
the home of the spinning and weaving
and sewing the butchering, baking
and candlestick -making of our great-
grandmother's clay, in view of the de•,ada in repass at an annual cost o
crease In the size of the faintly and of over $16,000,000.
the smaller aid more convenient --..,•,.._...._. ---
homes to which we now live, why Is CHARAC'I ER
it that so many ltomemalzers aro still) •
The happiness of woman, as of
o'verwarkecl7 i man, depends 1n a greater measure �4_ _ ......_
A partial au regrettable
is undoubtedly to upon 'the individual 'completeness of
ne rowed In the regrettable fart that
Patrolling Our Highways
Patrols acid work gangs maintain
nearly 45,000 miles of roads in Can -
The Latest in City Street Transportation
NON SKID COMPOSITION COVERS FLOORING IN ALU
characters
r•,k• when she has t s swing for it"
v
Interior view of first .all ahtminnm built street car aver, const
mare ovetvvorned i The pen is mightier than the sword;
M
MINI)
rutted In world, which leas a 'non-skid. flooring "A woman bar sunk pretty low•
STREET
our gi eat sefounnot iers were even _
and, form tftttng soaks,
e-esi,4' MO re. i up7rt at, Perhaps, is but is does just SA many foolish things