THOUGH it is true that some work, which in the past rested heavily upon the shoulders of women, has been taken into the factory, notably the spinning, weaving and clothes making trades, and on the farm the making of butter, still the bulk of labor of the women of the average household comes in that group of washing, ironing, dusting, sweeping, scrubbing, making beds, cooking and dish-washing. This is woman’s work in the most of our homes, and a servant’s work in the homes of the rich.
Woman’s Work not Specialized.
Industrial progress has not yet applied to this work of women the specialization and labor saving machinery that has sent forward the general work of the world at such a rapid75 pace. Another way of expressing the same idea is to say that in at least nine-tenths of the households, the woman is the household servant. If the work be assigned to outsiders, then the privacy of the family circle is broken up and the dearest ties of earth are disturbed by intruders. At present there are two ways out of the difficulty. The way of the rich is the employment of household servants. To counteract the disturbance of family life an elaborate system of servant etiquette has been established by means of which the servant is made to resemble, as much as possible, the cookstove or the family horse. This satisfies the family, but is disagreeable to the servant, and incidently keeps a worker out of productive effort, raises the cost of living to everybody, and deprives her of the most normal expression of womanhood—that of marrying and coddling her own children.
The second solution is for those too poor to employ servants. It consists in eulogizing the “homely virtues” and writing poems about the duties of women in the home and artfully associating the scouring of a brass kettle with the76 instinct of motherhood. This effort to satisfy the women in the home in playing the personal servant to the rest of the family by enshrining the dish-rag and broom is nothing new in the history of the world. Those who have benefited from the work of others have always been quick to quote scripture to keep the worker on the job, and as long as there is no other way to get the work done, this plastering over of dirty work with beautiful thoughts is indeed a makeshift virtue, but one of which we shall some day be thoroughly ashamed.
In the Roadtown, this problem, old as civilization, will be solved, not by bringing in outside workers to break up family life, but by sending most of the present work out of the home and simplifying that which must remain until the task becomes so light that each member of the family will perform his share of the housekeeping just as he now dresses himself, or walks to catch the trolley car.
No Laundry Work at Home.
The first function, washing and ironing, has long since been made an industrial function by77 the rich everywhere, and also by the middle class in our cities. Farmers’ wives and the wives of the city laborers still do home laundrying. In the Roadtown, with its perfect system of transportation, the trouble of sending soiled clothes to the co?perative laundry will be very simple as compared with the present wasteful method of city collection of laundry. The service will indeed be so cheap that I fancy Roadtowners will vote to add the expense of the laundry to the charge for rent, thus doing away with the cost of accounts and collections. This would put a premium upon cleanliness, to be sure, and might result in a slight increase of the total expense since our clothes would be washed more often.
In connection with the laundry will be a pressing and cleaning establishment which will likewise be run co?peratively. The pressing machine now used by clothing manufacturers will keep people looking spick and span for a mere trifle.
How far the Roadtowners will carry the idea of a blanket rate to cover the cost for all these things depends on traits in human nature78 that are pretty hard to anticipate. We force people to co?perate, to build parks and statues to beautify our cities. Do we want to tax them for a chance to be well groomed, or do we prefer to see the other fellow slouchy so that we will look better by comparison? I for one, believe in allowing civic pride to include live citizens as well as marble statues of the dead.
Dusting and Sweeping.
Dusting and sweeping must be done at home, we cannot send the house out, but we can pipe the house for suction sweeping and discard forever the broom, clothes brush and that arch nuisance, the feather duster, which is used to chase the dust from room to room without getting rid of it. Scrubbing and mopping will be greatly simplified by the cement construction and the convenience of water and sewage. These periodic tasks will be grouped into trades, so that they can, when desirable, be given over to professional cleaners as is window washing in city buildings. 79
Making Beds by Machinery.
The care of the beds is the next item on our list. The Roadtown sleeping-room will in the daytime have the appearance of a sitting-room or library. One essential piece of furniture will be a couch or divan with good springs upholstered with fire proof material. Plush, leather and linen divan and chair covers will be used alternately to suit the seasons and varying requirements. The divan forms the foundation of the bed. The bedding including a light pad or mattress will be made about a foot longer than is customary. At the foot this bedding and pad will be fastened together by a metal clasp, or “bedding hanger” on the order of a trousers-hanger. In the morning instead of making up the bed—that is, carefully folding up all the germs and foul odors, the bed will be suspended by the hanger in an adjoining fresh air closet. By reversing the action of the rod supporting the bedding, which describes an arc over the unfolded divan, the bedding is spread neatly in place—the bed is80 made. This closet in which the bedding hangs freely exposed to the air has one side, or rather edge, against the outside wall of the building. This wall space will be formed of shutters which admit of free circulation of air, thus the bed is aired every day and all day. But there are certain species of “germs,” as every housekeeper can testify, that will survive this fresh air device, for them another provision will be made. This closet will be piped for a certain kind of gas which will be selected by the Roadtown biologist. At stated intervals the outside shutters will be tightly closed as well as door of the closet and the bedding fumigated instead of aired. This method can also be used to disinfect clothing.
There will be few rats or mice in the Roadtown home, for there will be little food left around to attract them, and no places for them to gnaw through or build their nests. In the average city building used for factory purposes, the damage from rats and vermin, I am told, is often over 10 per cent of the gross sales. 81
Co?perative Cooking Practical.
Co?perative cooking, in spite of the first natural antipathy, has gained considerable ground in city life. We find it in two forms, the dining-out habit and the delicatessen habit. The first is expensive of time and money, and destroys the most delightful hours of home life. The second is likewise expensive and results in a diet consisting chiefly of bread, cheese, cold meat and pickles. The weakness in both systems is in the matter of imperfect t............