Home Economics
a broad term covering all the sciences and arts pertaining taining to the home, formerly known as household economics, domestic economy, domestic science, etc. Like agriculture, it is a complex science, including such subjects as the chemistry of cooking, dietetics, hygiene, house decoration, clothing, sewing, etc., all subject to desultory instruction in all kinds of schools.
Cooking, sewing and housekeeping were taught in the public schools of the United States as far back as 1876, and later were taken up more scientifically by a few western universities, notably in Illinois, Iowa, and Kansas. The object was especially to educate the wives or daughters of the farmers to become more proficient as homemakers by giving them a fundamental knowledge of the sciences pertaining to the home. As an instance, a knowledge of physiology soon taught the farmers that hot biscuits, cooked with a large quantity of saleratus, was the cause of much of the dyspepsia which was so prevalent among them in those days, and that proper cooking, rather than pills or drugs, was the real cure.
Hygiene, teaching them that sleeping with closed windows, propagated the tuberculosis germ, gave practical results in a reduction of the number of deaths from this one cause. The advantages of preserving foods according to the recipes of the cooking schools or schools classes soon convinced the more ignorant that wellgrounded theoretical knowledge was superior to household practices handed down from mother to further daughter, and so demand for this class of instruction.
This demand was most distinctly articulated by the farmers' organizations, such as the Patrons of Husbandry, or the Grange, which emphasized instruction in home economics. This demand, in its dem demand, in its turn, brought about a higher specialization among educators and made of the arts of homemaking a distinct department of science by itself. The subject and its various branches is now taught in nearly 150 colleges throughout the country, and in a large number of normal and high schools. Generally it is divided into two distinct phases: cultural and technical. The former includes such branches as house decoration, furniture designing and embroidery; the latter has to do with the chemistry of cooking , drainage, dressmaking of the plainer sort, food preserving, etc. The technical branches of home economics, naturally , created a or HOME RULE are more widely taught, and in many communities in the rural districts classes of adults are taught by special instructors sent out by the Federal and State Departments of Agriculture, by the farmers' lyceums and state granges. Instruction in home economics is now a feature of educational courses in schools and colleges abroad, as well as in this country, as may be judged from the fact that an International Bureau of Home Economics has been established in Fribourg, Switzerland, which acts as a clearing house of literature and general information on the subject in general.