[Gutenberg 8996] • Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife

What a tribute to the worth of woman are the names by which she is

enshrined in common speech! What tender associations halo the names of

*wife, mother, sister* and *daughter!* It must never be forgotten

that the dearest, most sacred of these names, are, in origin, connected

with the dignity of service. In early speech the wife, or wife-man (woman)

was the "weaver," whose care it was to clothe the family, as it was the

husband's duty to "feed" it, or to provide the materials of sustenance.

The mother or matron was named from the most tender and sacred of human

functions, the nursing of the babe; the daughter from her original duty,

in the pastoral age, of milking the cows. The lady was so-called from the

social obligations entailed on the prosperous woman, of "loaf-giving,"

or dispensing charity to the less fortunate. As dame, madame, madonna,

in the old days of aristocracy, she bore equal rank with the lord and

master, and carried down to our better democratic age the co-partnership

of civic and family rights and duties.

Modern science and invention, civic and economic progress, the growth

of humanitarian ideas, and the approach to Christian unity, are all

combining to give woman and woman's work a central place in the social

order. The vast machinery of government, especially in the new

activities of the Agricultural and Labor Departments applied to

investigations and experiments into the questions of pure food,

household economy and employments suited to woman, is now directed more

than ever before to the uplifting of American homes and the assistance

of the homemakers. These researches are at the call of every housewife.

However, to save her the bewilderment of selection from so many useful

suggestions, and the digesting of voluminous directions, the fundamental

principles of food and household economy as published by the government

departments, are here presented, with the permission of the respective

authorities, together with many other suggestions of utilitarian

character which may assist the mother and housewife to a greater

fulfillment of her office in the uplift of the home.

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