institutions, for there accounts
were kept and saving told. When one hospital saved $12,000 in one year
by an expenditure of $2,000 for a trained woman, trustees began to
take notice. When large state institutions were reorganized and made
over from unsavory scandals into reputable and life-saving
establishments, even legislators took notice. The trained woman
superintendent proved not only more competent but less affected by
perquisites.

(I do not vouch for the universal maintenance of this high standard
when women managers have had longer experience; but so far conscience
and sterling integrity have been attributes of all my expert women,
even if they have now and then disappointed me in endurance or in
ability. Is not this a fact of great social significance?)

It is universally conceded today, only a few willfully blind or
croaking pessimists dissenting, that home-keeping under modern
conditions requires a knowledge of conditions and a power of control
of persons and machines obtained only through education or through
bitter experience, and that education is the less costly.

When social conditions become adjusted to the new order, it will be
seen how much gain in power the community has made, how much better
worth the people are. Have faith in the working out of the destiny of
the race; be ready to accept the unaccustomed, to use the radium of
social progress to cure the ulcers of the old friction. What if a few
mistakes are made? How else shall the truth be learned? Try all things
and hold fast that which is good.

The Home Economics Movement is an endeavor to hold the home and the
welfare of children from slipping over the cliff by a knowledge which
will bring courage to combat the destructive tendencies. Is not one of
the distinctive features of our age a forcible overcoming of the
natural trend of things? If a river is by natural law wearing away
its bank in a place we wish to keep, do we sit down and moan and say
it is sad, but we cannot help it? No, that attitude belonged to the
Middle Ages. We say, Hold fast, we cannot have that; and we cement the
sides and confine or turn the river.

The ancient cities whose ruins are now being explored in Asia seem to
have been abandoned because of failure of the water supply as the
earth became desiccated; so was the home of our own Zunis. Does such a
possibility stop us? No, we bring water from hundreds of miles. Will
man, who has gained such control over nature,