HOUSEHOLD UNREST.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 3640, 28 September 1912, Page 4

HOUSEHOLD UNREST.

CAN WE ABOLISH DOMESTIC DRUDGERY?

It is the female rebels who have made tho phrase “Domestic Drudgery” a stock term of the language. Whether it is tho rebels who have rebelled against the drudgery, or the drudgery which created the rebel, is a question which all will not answer alike, remarks a writer in the “Daily Chronicle.”

Well, let us see. What is drudgery? It is the recurrent, unending round of toil upon material which is incapable of lending itself to creative effort or even development. Is domestic labor, labor of this nature? Before I can answer this query .I must make a distinction. This distinction is that between the gradual encouragement of the unfolding of human souls which is engaged in by workers in tho homo iq common with those who work in tho sphere of School and Church, on the one hand, and on the other, the work in which the concern is the supplying of physical human needs and the removal of tho dirt which is the usual concomitant of human habitation.

Of the work implied in the sphere marked'off by the first distinction, 't is clear that drudgery is an unthinkable term to apply to it. To do i., and" to do it effectively, is one of . lie highest human Labors. It is the highest art. In the sphere indicated by Jho second distinction I have included two terms, and it is clear they do not respond to my definition of drudgery in anything like an equal degree. The first term is covered by tho comprehensive term of cookery. All who have known the joys of well-cooked food and the pains of tho other will realise that cookery is an art. Drudgery would appear to be unthinkable in connection With it. Yet, far from it being unthinkable, the weariest work of the weary drudge is connected with cookery. The reason for this seeming contradiction is clear. The drudge cannot rise to tho opportunity of art even when the path is wide open to her. Xor can the nonartistic person, who may not- be a. drudge, rise to the opportunity.

Th 3 Everlasting Round.

Xow with regard to the second half of tho second distinction, i. 0., the dirt-lifting, the ordering of disorder, the everlasting round wlii.-h comes to ordinary houseworlvors with the regularity, the inevitability of tlio coming of each separate day. Dirt removal is real drudgery—drudgery in essence, so to speak, and superadded to this true drudgery, there is the drudgery which is born of artistic work lore eel upon those without not merely apti tude for it-, but in most cases without even the ghost of a training. Xo wonder, therefore, the home is a muddle and a mess, disappointing alike t;> those who work in it and to those who go out to toil for the wherewithal to maintain it.

My subject, however, is the abolition of domestic drudgery; abolition that is, according to definition of tinround of duties connected with dirt removal, also abolition of cookery mi dertaken by those who are neither born nor made for cookery; abolition also of child-training by those who are ineffective and unhappy’ as childtrainers. Can it be done? Let me consider the dirt removal. In the first place a social conscience regarding the creation of dirt must be developed; a natural repulsion against the placing or the toleration of “matter in tlio wrong place.” We are really a very dirty, unfastidious, murky people. For a householder or a manufacturer tolerating a smoking chimney, therefore (even though tho smoke streak he “but a little one”), tho punishment of placing in the stocks might be revived.

Domestic drudgery, therefore, begins outside the home—in the atmosphere.

!.”o Smoke Abatement Society will do more to overcome domestic drudgery than all the efforts of all the silly, over-loaded schemes of domestic science (sic), which are being imposed upon elementary, secondary, nnu university educational curricula. But to get to the house; the first thing to abolish is the ideas of the present-day architect. He builds houses with the notion that there exists a half of the human species finding its joy in satisfying the exigencies of crazily conceived tenements. If lie could grasp the idea that houses arc not built to provide indoor occupation, but merely for shelter, comfort, and some satisfaction of beauty, we should have "gone far. In simplicity and sincerity of form, in adaptation of means to ends. w;ith a little imagination regarding the'uses to .which houses are put architects might produce the first fruits of the salvation of drudges. . What Builders Could Do. Next builders! Theirs is no mean service. With plaster and oak they could oust the paperlianger and the furniture dealer. Cupboards, shelves, settees built into tho fabric, truer lines and fewer fancy touches, slabs and benches, electric installation for heatingj- lighting, and vacuum cleaning, these are a few' of the services the builder might lend in effecting tho passing of the drudge. Further, if those persons who have the control of our national stores of energy, the coal owners, would transmute this into electric energy, .power would bo available for all the uses to which men’s inventive genius—or women’s, if they manage to evade the efforts which are being made to sidetrack them into schemes of elaborated,

decked but drudgery—can put it in our houses. I have tried to prove that the problem of dirt removal is to be approached in two days, first by curtailing the amount of dirt produced, secondly by introducing mechanical inventions into houses to deal with the [ irreducible minimum. Such mess and ! dirt as cannot bo dealt with swiftly and easily in the home should, because I ot this very characteristic, be remov- , ed for cleansing away from the home. The instinct of even the most un- ' thinkable home-dwellers has proved tin's to be the right way. Already, for instance, tho family washing lias left tho home. Where the soiled "garments and materials are not sent to a laundry, common wash-houses rescue the poorer "houseworkem from their ctouds of steam and its pervasive misery. As with laundering, so with cooking. Cookery is not a job for novices. !Itis an art. In its relation to food j values, it is a science also. It is not ’to be attempted by anyone. It is j work for tho perfect craftsman, with every mechanical invention at his disposal. It is obvious that perfect craftsmen cannot be found in every individual home, or can the necessary machinery be set up. Therefore, the problem to be solved by the imaginative inventor in regard to cookery is, v.-itii duo regard to cost, to find a means of transit from a distributive kitchen to the private houso diningtables without any lowering of temperature. Woman’s Former Worksliop. The only homo drudgery which re- ; mains is that of tho training of chilI ilrpn by those who have no liking and | gift for it. This cannot be gone into iin the space at my disposal. It will 1 bo sufficient to point out that solu- ; tions have been not only promulgated, -but actually carried out with striking success The instance which will rise in the mind cf every educationalist will be that of Dr. Maria TvLontessori, successfully carried out in Romo.

_ To answer, then, tlio question mooted at the beginning of this article, i.e., whether.it is drudgery or the rebellious female which is responsible for “Household Unrest.” Productive work, work which aforetime kept the woman content in the home, is now no longer in tho home. It lias gone outside. Gone are the baking, brewing, spinning, weaving, salting and curing, tailoring, butter, cheese, jam, wine and pickle-making, tlio medicine and salve-making, the knitting and cobbling, tlio washing, the windowcleaning, and the mending. V hat is leiu is the dirt-lifting, tho drudgery, and this, I believe, is following suit; and when this last- and most monotonous, nerve-vexing, and fruitless work is gone, the home will be what it should be. a place of rest, beauty, harmony, and companionable intercourse.

Perhaps the rebel against domestic drudgery has eomo prescience of tins better way, and is at one and the same time speeding its going and preparing for herself a place among the productive workers which at one time was hers, but which now a century and a half of industrial change has wrested from woman’s former workshop—the home.