Vocations (Volume 6); Public Service, Ed. by J.R. Garfield

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1911 Excerpt: ... A PUBLIC HOUSEKEEPER1 By SARAH COMSTOCK HE state of Minnesota recently arranged to have its fall housecleaning done, and, that the matter might be thoroughly supervised, it summoned an experienced public housewife to overlook the sweeping and scrubbing and windowcleaning and fresh painting. Mr. Scott Nearing, of the University of Pennsylvania, hinted at some of woman's future activities when he told of one he knew who was such a conscientious housecleaner that she was in the habit of taking a skewer and picking the dust out of the cracks between the floor boards. Imagine, said Mr. Nearing, a skewer dexteriously inserted into the cracks and crannies of our municipal flooring! What would it not reveal? He added that women are famous housecleaners. Woman has already been robbed of many of her ancient pursuits. She no longer weaves her own wide-wale suiting, nor does she grind her own flour to make her Parker House rolls, nor does she kneel beside the gurgling brook to launder her own lingerie waists. But the instinct of housekeeping can not be uprooted by a college education or even the ballot; and if invention won't let her so much as sew on her own shoe-buttons any longer, and so forces her to seek new outlets for her energy, it is likely that she will do a deal of state housekeeping before she gets through. Here and there, the country over, we see women attending to such matters as doing away with a city's smoke, putting in order its back yards, sweeping its streets. As an example of what can be done when a woman sets about it, and a prophecy of what many women are likely to do in the rapid onrush of the feminist movement, we have the work of Mrs. Caroline Bartlett Crane of Kalamazoo, Michigan. 1 By permission of Collier's Weekly. Copyright, 1910....