gency of his not
becoming a civil engineer at all, would hardly deserve to be called
practical. Yet, in the name of practical education, we are sometimes
asked to tolerate a correspondingly complete preparation for wifehood
and motherhood at an age when both of those estates are mere
prospects, distant and indefinite. We cannot believe that so extreme a
demand will ever be acceded to by educators who have fully considered
the modern postponement of marriage. Home economics, in schools and
colleges, except for girls who are going to become teachers of it or
who in other ways are going to make it their immediate money-earning
work, must stop with its broad applications to daily human living. So
will it be useful, in different degrees, to both sexes and clash
neither with general academic preparation nor with the preparation for
self-support.

There will remain, unlearned, a great deal that modern science and
modern sociology have to offer to the wife and mother. Let that great
deal, in its more technical teachings, be learned when it can be
carried forward into action.

The machinery of home economics instruction for adults is even now
being erected, is even now being operated.

The Chicago School of Domestic Arts and Science, after much teaching
of young girls, has established a "Housekeepers' Association." The
members of that association are adult practicing housekeepers. The
same school will soon establish a course in the study of the Care of
Children. The pupils enrolled in that course will be mothers.

The fact is that science and sociology are so constantly amending and
enlarging their teachings that a knowledge of what they taught twenty
years ago is inadequate and a knowledge of the minutiae of what they
taught twenty years ago is futile. The housekeeper of the future will
have to keep on studying while housekeeping.

Several hundred housekeepers come each winter to the University of
Wisconsin to attend the "Women's Course in Home Economics." They hear
Professor Hastings talk about the "Production and Care of Milk." They
hear Dr. Evans talk about the "Prevention of Infant Mortality." They
hear Professor Marlatt talk about "Diets in Disease." In each case
they hear something very different from what they would have heard in
their girlhood. For this reason alone, even if the gap between
girlhood and motherhood did not exist, the machinery of home economics
instruction for adults would have become necessary.