The work that the housewife must do in the care of the house is the maintenance of such standards of cleanliness and order as are to prevail. It includes the daily routine tasks of bedmaking, cooking, sweeping, dusting, dishwashing, disposing of waste, and the heavier work of washing, ironing, and periodic cleanings.

NEW HOUSEKEEPING CONDITIONS

The foreign-born housewife finds this work particularly difficult for many reasons. In the first place, housekeeping in the country from which she came was done under such different conditions that it here becomes almost a new problem in which her experience in the old country may prove of little use. The extent to which this is true varies from group to group. To understand the problems of any particular group, careful study should be made of the living conditions and housekeeping practices in the country from which it came.

Some of the women with whom we have conferred have described housekeeping as they knew it in the old country. These descriptions are suggestive of the character of the change and the difficulties involved. Mrs. P., a Polish woman from Posen, for example, said that:

Houses in the village in which she lived were made of clay, with thatched roofs, clay floors, and about ten feet high. They were made in rows, for four families or two families, with one outer door opening from a hall into which the doors from all the dwellings opened. Each dwelling had one small window, and a fireplace. Water was out of doors. In the four-family house there were two chimneys. The outside door did not open into the road.

The floors were covered with sand, and new sand was put on when the room was cleaned. The fireplace had a hook from which hung the kettle, and in one corner was the oven, a little place set off by a board covered with clay. Walls were whitewashed. Mrs. P. said that the housework is much more difficult in this country, with the cleaning of woodwork, washing windows, care of curtains, carpets, and dishes, and more elaborate cooking. In the old country the family washing was done only once a month, except in cases where there were small children. Then it was done weekly; and if the family lacked sufficient clothing, the washing had to be done oftener. There the meal was one dish, from which the entire family ate; here there is a variety of food and each person has his own plate and eating utensils, so that even the dishwashing is a greater task. In coming to this country many women do not see that the windows need washing or that the woodwork should be cleaned, etc.

The beds were made of boards covered with straw, not as a straw mattress. Sheets were laid over the straw to make it softer. Each person had two pillows, very large and full, so that they sleep in a "half sitting" position. Feather beds are used for warmth, and no quilts or blankets were known in the old country.

Lithuanian women, likewise, have pointed out that at home most of the women worked in the fields, and that what housekeeping was done was of the simplest kind. The peasant house consisted of two rooms, one of which was used only on state occasions, a visit from the priest, a wedding, christening, or a funeral. In summer no one sleeps in the house, but all sleep out of doors in the hay; in winter, women with small children sleep inside, but the others sleep in the granary. Feather beds are, in these circumstances, a real necessity. Thus the bed that is found in this country is unknown in Lithuania, and the women naturally do not know how to care for one. They not only do not realize the need of airing it, turning the mattress, and changing the bedding, but do not even know how to make it up properly.

Other processes of housekeeping—dishwashing, scrubbing, and washing—prove equally difficult, and it is said that most of the women do things in the hardest possible way, chiefly because the processes are different here and they lack the technique to do their work in the easier way. Naturally, too, when work in the fields has occupied most of their time, they lack also habits of order and routine in their household tasks.

The Italian women, especially those from southern Italy and Sicily, have also spoken of their difficulties in housekeeping under new conditions. In Italy the houses, even of the relatively well-to-do peasants, were two-room affairs with earthen floors and little furniture. The women had little time to give to the care of the house, and its comfort and order were not considered important.

The experience in doing the family washing is said to typify the change. In Italy washing is done once a month, or at most, once a fortnight, in the poorer families. Clothes are placed in a great vat or tub of cold water, covered with a cloth on which is sprinkled wood ashes, and allowed to stand overnight. In the morning they are taken to a stream or fountain, and washed in running water. They are dried on trees and bushes in the bright, Italian sunlight. Such methods of laundry work do not teach the women anything about washing in this country, and they are said to make difficult work of it in many cases. They learn that clothes are boiled here, but they do not know which clothes to boil and which to wash without boiling; and as a result they often boil all sorts of clothing, colored and white, together. In Italy washing is a social function; here it is a task for each individual woman.

DEMANDS OF AMERICAN COOKERY

Cooking in this country varies in difficulty in the different national groups. In the case of the Lithuanians and Poles, for example, the old-country cooking is simple and easily done. Among others it is a fine art, requiring much time and skill. The Italian cooking, of course, is well known, as is also the Hungarian. Among the Bohemians and Croatians, too, the housewives are proverbially good cooks and spend long hours over the preparation of food. Croatian women in this country are said to regard American cookery with scorn. They say that Croatian women do not expect to get a meal in less than two or three hours, while here all the emphasis is on foods that can be prepared in twenty or thirty minutes.

It is not always easy to transplant this art of cookery, even if the women had time to practice it here as they did at home. The materials can usually be obtained, although often at a considerable expense, but the equipment with which they cook and the stoves on which they cook are entirely different. The Italian women, for example, cannot bake their bread in the ovens of the stoves that they use here. Tomato paste, for example, is used in great quantities by Italian families, and is made at home by drying the tomatoes in the open air. When an attempt is made to do this in almost any large city the tomatoes get not only the sunshine, but the soot and dirt of the city. The more particular Italians here will not make tomato paste outdoors, but large numbers of Italian families continue to make it, as can be seen by a walk through any Italian district in late August or early September.

In general, in the groups in which cooking was highly developed, a great deal of time was devoted to the preparation of food. If the housewife wishes to reduce her work in this country, she finds that some of the ingredients which make our cooking simpler are unknown to her. The Bohemians, for example, do not know how to use baking powder, and the same is true of the women in Lithuanian, Polish, and Russian groups, where the art of cooking is less developed.

With this lack of experience in housekeeping under comparable conditions, the foreign-born housewife finds the transition to housekeeping in this country difficult at best. As a matter of fact, however, the circumstances under which she must make the change are often of the worst. She is expected to maintain standards of cleanliness and sanitary housekeeping that have developed with modern systems of plumbing and facilities for the disposal of waste that are not always to be found in the districts in which she lives. Even a skillful housewife finds housekeeping difficult in such houses as are usually occupied by recently arrived immigrants.

WATER SUPPLY ESSENTIAL

In the first place, there is the question of water supply. Cleanliness of house, clothing, and even of person is extremely difficult in a modern industrial community, without an adequate supply of hot and cold water within the dwelling. We are, however, very far from realizing this condition. In some cities[13] the law requires that there shall be a sink with running water in every dwelling, but in other cities even this minimum is not required. The United States Immigration Commission, for example, found that 1,413 households out of 8,651 foreign-born households studied in seven large cities, shared their water supply with other families. Conditions have improved in this respect during the last decade, but it is a great handicap to efficient housekeeping if water has to be carried any distance. Further inconvenience results if running hot water is not available, which is too often the case in the homes of the foreign born.

Cleanliness is also dependent, in part, upon the facilities for the disposition of human waste, the convenient and accessible toilet connected with a sewer system. These facilities are lacking in many immigrant neighborhoods, as has been repeatedly shown in various housing investigations. For example, in a Slovak district in the Twentieth Ward, Chicago, 80 per cent of the families were using toilets located in the cellar, yard, or under the sidewalk, and in many cases sharing such toilets with other families. One yard toilet was used by five families, consisting of twenty-eight persons.[14] The danger to health, and the lack of privacy, that such toilet accommodations mean have been often emphasized. In addition, it enormously increases the work of the housewife and makes cleanliness difficult, if not impossible.

There is also the question of heating and lighting the house. Whenever light is provided by the oil lamp, it must be filled and cleaned; and when heat is provided by the coal stove, it means that the housewife must keep the fires going and dispose of the inevitable dirt and ashes. In the old country the provision of fuel was part of the woman's duties; and in this country, as coal is so expensive, many women feel they must continue this function. Here this means picking up fuel wherever it can be found—in dump heaps and along the railroad tracks. A leading Bohemian politician said that he often thought, as he saw women prominent in Bohemian society, "Well, times have changed since you used to pick up coal along the railroad tracks."

OVERCROWDING HAMPERS THE HOUSEWIFE

The influence of overcrowding on the work of the housewife must also be considered in connection with housekeeping in immigrant households. That overcrowding exists has been pointed out again and again. Ordinances have been framed to try to prevent it, but it has persisted. In the studies of Chicago housing a large percentage of the bedrooms have always been found illegally occupied. The per cent of the rooms so occupied varied from 30 in one Italian district to 72 in the Slavic district around the steel mills. The United States Immigration Commission found, for example, that 5,305, or 35.1 per cent, of the families studied in industrial centers used all rooms but one for sleeping, and another 771 families used even the kitchen.

Crowding means denial of opportunity for skillful and artistic performance of tasks. "A place for everything and everything in its place," suggests appropriate assignment of articles of use to their proper niches, corners, and shelves. One room for everything except sleeping—cooking, washing, caring for the children, catching a breath for the moment—means no repose, no calm, no opportunity for planning that order which is the law of the well-governed home. Yet there is abundant evidence that many families have had to live in just such conditions.

The housework for the foreign-born housewife is often complicated by other factors. One is the practice to which reference has been already made of taking lodgers to supplement the father's wages. In discussing this subject from the point of view of the lodger, it has been pointed out that the practice with reference to the taking of boarders and lodgers varies in different places and among different groups. The amounts paid were not noted there, but they become important when considered together with the service asked of the housewife. Usually the boarder or lodger pays a fixed monthly sum—from $2 to $3.50, or, more rarely, $4 a month—for lodging, cleaning, washing, and cooking; his food is secured separately, the account being entered in a grocery book and settled at regular intervals.

Sometimes the lodger does his own buying, but the more common custom is to have the housewife do it. Occasionally he does his own cooking, in which case payment for lodging secures him the right to use the stove. More rarely, as in some of the Mexican families visited in Chicago in 1919, he is a regular boarder, paying a weekly sum for room and board.

Just what keeping lodgers means in adding to the duties of the housewife can be seen from the following description of the work of the Serbo-Croatian women in Johnstown, Pennsylvania:[15]

The wife, without extra charge, makes up the beds, does the washing and ironing, and buys and prepares the food for all the lodgers. Usually she gets everything on credit, and the lodgers pay their respective shares biweekly. These conditions exist to some extent among other foreigners, but are not so prevalent among other nationalities in Johnstown as among the Serbo-Croatians.

In a workingman's family, it is sometimes said, the woman's working day is two hours longer than the man's. But if this statement is correct in general, the augmentation stated is insufficient in these abnormal homes, where the women are required to have many meals and dinner buckets ready at irregular hours to accommodate men working on different shifts.

The Serbo-Croatian women who, more than any of the others, do all this work, are big, handsome, and graceful, proud and reckless of their strength. During the progress of the investigation, in the winter months, they were frequently seen walking about the yards and courts, in bare feet, on the snow and ice-covered ground, hanging up clothes or carrying water into the house from a yard hydrant.

WOMEN WORK OUTSIDE THE HOME

Another factor that renders housekeeping difficult is the necessity of doing wage-paid work outside the home, to which reference has already been made. Women interviewed have repeatedly emphasized the difficulties that this practice creates in connection with the housekeeping.

A recent study of children of working mothers, soon to be published by the United States Children's Bureau, carried on at the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, obtained the testimony of the mothers as to the difficulties involved. This study showed that in many cases the household duties could not be performed at the proper time; 60 women, for example, of the 109 reporting on this question, said that they did not make their beds until night; 105 said their dishes were not washed after each meal, but in 41 cases were washed in the mornings, and in 56 not until night. Three washed them in the morning if they had time, and five left them for the children, after school.

Many women who worked outside the home did their housekeeping without assistance from other members of the family. This meant that they had to get up early in the morning and frequently work late at night at laundry or cleaning; 49 women, for example, washed in the evening; 25 washed either Saturday, Sunday, or evenings.

HOUSING IMPROVEMENT

Enough has probably been said to show that the work of caring for the house under the conditions existing in most immigrant neighborhoods, is unnecessarily difficult for the foreign-born housewife. The most obvious point at which these burdens might be lightened so that the housewife could have time for other duties, would appear to be through improvement of housing. With an awakened realization of this fact, both on the part of the foreign-born woman herself and the community of which she is an inevitable part, will come the solution of these difficulties. A protest, however inarticulate or indirectly expressed by her, will find its response in a growing realization that plans for improvement must be developed.

The several housing projects that have already been offered are suggestive of the problems and possibilities along this line rather than useful as hard-and-fast solutions. They not only meet the needs of the more inadequate immigrant housing conditions, but provide improvement upon most native-born conditions. In this connection interest naturally centers on the war-time housing projects of the United States government, on the experiment of the Massachusetts Homestead Commission at Lowell, and on certain enterprises carried out by so-called limited dividend companies. The first two are especially interesting, in that they recognize that supplying houses to the workers is not a function that can be wholly left to private initiative.

It is not possible to discuss these projects in detail, nor is it necessary.[16] It is sufficient to consider them here with reference to the contributions they might make in helping the immigrant housewife. In the first place, they provide for a toilet and a bath in every house, and a supply of running water that is both adequate and convenient. In the matter of kitchen equipment there is an attempt to provide some of the conveniences. Both provide a sink and set wash-tubs equipped with covers. They must be set at a minimum of thirty-six inches from the floor in the United States plans. Both make provision for gas to be used for cooking, although the coal stove is accepted. The kitchens in the Massachusetts houses are also provided with kitchen cabinets, with shelves under the sink, and with a drain for the refrigerator.

In other ways also consideration for the housewife is evidenced. Electricity is urged for lighting, passages through which furniture would not go are avoided, the size of the living room is adapted to the sizes of the most commonly purchased rugs, etc. Study of the Massachusetts plans reveals other interesting features, such as the care given to the location of the bathroom and the attention to the size of the doors, so that the mother at work in her kitchen can watch the children at play in other rooms.

Both projects are interesting also in that they realize the necessity of a "front room" or parlor, and prescribe a minimum number of bedrooms—three in the Massachusetts, and two in the United States experiment. Both require closets in every bedroom wide enough to receive the men's garments on hangers, and rooms of such size that the bed can stand free of the wall and out of a draught. It is evident that the plans for houses in both projects provide very definite improvements in the matter of the conveniences to which the immigrant is not accustomed in the houses at present available to him.

Some limitations, however, become apparent by comparing them with the recommendations of the Women's Subcommittee of the Ministry of Reconstruction Advisory Council, England. That committee emphasizes the importance of electricity for lighting, and urges "that a cheap supply of electricity for domestic purposes should be made available with the least possible delay." The American plans agree that electricity is the preferred lighting, but gas is accepted by the United States government, although not by the Massachusetts plan. There is no suggestion of developing a cheaper supply of electricity.

The English women also suggest the desirability of a central heating plant as a measure that would lessen the work of the household, afford economies in fuel, and render a hot-water supply readily available. They urge, therefore, further experimentation with central heating. The American plans have no suggestions to make at this point, but accept the coal stove or the separate furnace in the higher-priced houses as the means of heating. While they provide for hot water, no suggestions are made as to how this is to be supplied. It is presumably done by a tank attached to the range, which means that hot water is not available when there is no fire in the range; that is, in summer and during the night. It should also be noted that these plans make no suggestions for co-operative use of any of the equipment of the household.

There is another point at which the architects and builders failed to take sufficient notice of the problem of lightening the women's work—namely, in their attitude toward the separate family home as compared with the multiple family dwelling. The Massachusetts Commission was, by the terms of the Act creating it, limited to the provision of one or two-family houses; the United States government standards were definitely against the building occupied in whole or in part by three or more families.

Tenement and apartment houses are considered generally undesirable, and will be accepted only in cities where, because of high land values, it is clearly demonstrated that single and two-family houses cannot be economically provided, or where there is insistent demand for this type of multiple housing.

This judgment, however, has by no means met with universal approval. Those architects who think in terms of the woman's time and strength consider the merits of the group and of the multiple house. For example, those who planned the Black Rock Apartment House Group in Bridgeport, Connecticut, the open-stairway dwellings, the John Jay dwellings on East Seventy-seventh Street, New York City, and the Erwin, Tennessee, development, maintain that the advantages of the separate house in privacy, independence, and access to land can be secured by the multiple arrangement. Not only can economies in the use of the land be practiced, but protection and assistance for the women and children can be obtained, and there is the possibility of devices for convenient and collective performance of many tasks.

It is unnecessary to review the arguments for the one or for the other. It is evident that the group house, and perhaps the multiple house, offer such inducements in the economy of space and the possibility of assigning areas of land to definite and anticipated uses, that their further adaptation to family needs must be contemplated. It is generally assumed that the family group wants the separate house. The question of interest for this study is one of the desire of the immigrant groups in this respect. Their preference should be an indispensable element in the formulation of housing standards.

There is not, however, a great deal of evidence on this subject. The fact that immigrants live in the city in the congested districts may only indicate that they have had no choice in the matter. Most of the officers of certain immigrant building and loan associations interviewed for this study thought there was a preference for the single-family dwelling when it could be afforded. That also is the belief of the investigators in this study, who think that the use of multiple houses indicates not the immigrants' desires, but their acceptance of what is before them, and that the dream of almost every immigrant family is to have a house of its own, to which is attached a little garden.

How far the desire for the separate house is confused with the desire for the garden would be difficult to say. It is certain, however, that in general the immigrant has known only one way to have the garden, and that was by having a separate house. There is universal agreement that especially the foreign-born family desires access to land for whose cultivation they may be responsible, and whose produce both in food and in flowers they may enjoy. Recently, however, certain architects have been interested in working out plans by which this advantage might be retained for dwellers in group or tenement houses. They have pointed out that one advantage of the group and multiple house is the setting free of spaces to be more skillfully adapted to the size and composition of the family.

Attention may be called to certain devices that are urged by experienced architects in the matter of the use of land. For example, in the Morgan Park, Minnesota, development of the Illinois Steel Company, the architects have developed interesting plans in connection with their low-cost houses. These are all group houses, with a front space opening on an attractively planned street. At the rear of the house is a latticed porch—a small area graveled, but not grassed—and then the alley. Across the alley is the rear garden, which may thus be fenced in and kept separate from the house lot.

Interesting suggestions on this point are to be found in the two articles, to which prizes were given by the American Institute of Architects in the June and July, 1919, numbers of their journal. There is much experimentation yet to be done, as the question of the separate house with its separate plot of ground is by no means a settled one. It is particularly desirable that the interest of the foreign born be enlisted, both that they may contribute to the solution of the question and that they may become acquainted with all the possibilities of access to the land which are being worked out.

In spite of some defects and the need for further experimentation along the lines suggested above, there is no doubt that the projects of Massachusetts and of the Federal government mark a very real advance. The most pressing need is to construct a sufficient number of these houses so that they may be available for immigrant groups. One means of doing this is by the employer's building houses for the workers to buy or to rent. Although this has sometimes been found to help solve the housing situation, factors may enter that limit its usefulness. The industrial relationships between employer and employee may be such that subsidy for housing by employer would hinder rather than help. Where a community is largely comprised of one industry it may be very unwise for the industry to go so far toward the control of community affairs. Labor unrest in the northern iron ranges can be traced in part to such company provision of housing and sanitation.

The limited dividend company, organized not for profit, and operating under the careful supervision of a governmental department, is another solution. This agency has been particularly successful in Massachusetts under the stimulus as well as under the supervision of the Massachusetts Homestead Commission, and is undoubtedly capable of further development.

GOVERNMENT BUILDING LOANS

Another possibility is that the local or state government advance the money and enable the worker to buy his own home. That is the plan adopted by the Massachusetts Homestead Commission in its experiment at Lowell. It is also one of the policies adopted by the Canadian government, which will loan money to provincial governments to be advanced for building houses on land owned (a) by the provincial or municipal government, (b) by the limited dividend company, (c) by the workman himself. This latter plan would probably commend itself most readily to the foreign-speaking groups.

Direct loans by the local government to the worker are advocated in the careful and thorough plan worked out by Mrs. E. E. Wood.[17] One suggestion is a proposed amendment to the Postal Savings Law, authorizing loans from postal savings deposits to workers with annual incomes not in excess of twelve hundred dollars. The investigation of the application is to be in the hands of the nearest local housing board. A suggested amendment to the Farm Loan Act is that housing loans be made by the Farm Loan Board on the same terms on which farm loans are now authorized. It is interesting to note that this plan contemplates the continued activity of the building and loan associations with which the foreign born are already familiar. It suggests that the first loan be given by the government and the association be content with a second mortgage, receiving in return the greater stability that is secured from a transaction carried on under governmental supervision.

According to Mrs. Wood's report, before 1915, 700,000 houses had been built or acquired in the United States through the aid of building and loan associations.[18] She thinks that the moderately paid wage earner, but not the unskilled worker, was benefited. This conclusion is disputed by officers of four building and loan associations in Chicago interviewed in connection with this study. That the associations reach the foreign-speaking groups seems to be evident from the names in the Annual Report of the auditor of the state of Illinois for 1918. The Bohemians had the largest number of societies, and the Poles were second. The Italians alone of the large national groups were unrepresented.

Mrs. Wood's plan also calls for a national housing commission in the Department of Labor, to be created under congressional act, with organization and powers analogous to those exercised by the Federal Board for Vocational Education. For the use of this commission it is proposed that a fund be created by the issue of bonds, from which loans could be made to certain designated agencies for the clearance of congested areas and the increase of housing facilities.

The Federal legislation is to be supplemented according to Mrs. Wood's plan by state legislation, including:

1. A restrictive housing law, a constructive housing law, and a Town Planning Act. This plan contemplates a state commission on housing and town planning through which the Federal aid for the state would be made available; to which should be intrusted the responsibility of investigating and approving or disapproving housing schemes proposed by local agencies and associations.

2. A state fund similar to the Federal fund is proposed, and definite suggestions for its use are worked out. For the local authorities, local housing and town-planning boards, probably with the county as the basis of organization, are proposed.

This housing fund, composed of the Federal fund, the state fund, and in some cases local funds, is to be used to make loans to municipalities, housing organizations that are not organized for profit, limited dividend companies, co-operative associations, or even employers. The plan contemplates that the lowest paid wage earners, among whom are numbered a large per cent of the foreign born, should continue to rent; but the landlord should not be a private individual seeking to make profit from providing the workers with shelter.

The plan also takes note of the plan for co-partnership ownership adopted by the United States Housing Corporation. The main features of this arrangement are:

1. Ownership vested in a local board of trustees bound to operate the property in the interest of the tenants and until the property is fully amortized in the interest of the government.

2. Formation of a tenants' association to which all residents of three months are eligible on payment of small yearly dues. This association to elect a tenants' council to act as directors of the association, to confer with the board of trustees, and to carry out such duties as trustees direct.

3. Any tenant may become a co-partner by applying for bonds to the amount of 25 per cent of the value of his dwelling, and accompanying his application with a cash subscription of one half per cent of this.

4. Tenant co-partners are given a voice in the management by the right to elect trustees, the number increasing with the amount of subscriptions to bonds.

5. Tenant co-partners granted remission of one month's rent a year.

6. Tenant co-partners leaving or desiring to discontinue as co-partners have the right to sell their bonds to trustees at par.

Mr. A. C. Comey, the author of the plan, says of it:[19]

Such a co-partnership scheme as this will present to workmen a unique opportunity for saving, for not only will they get as high a rate of interest as a safe investment justifies, but they will be to a large degree custodians of their own security and will thus be able to protect their investments in much the same way as actual home owners. On the other hand they will avoid most of the pitfalls of home owning, such as loss through deterioration of a neighborhood, forced sales in case of departure, and inability to realize on assets locked up in private homes. Moreover, they will tend to develop a high degree of community spirit, usually so lacking among apartment dwellers, and thus take more interest in public affairs and become better citizens generally.

These are advantages which it would be especially desirable for the foreign-born groups, as many of them have experienced the pitfalls of home ownership. It is a complicated system and would have to be explained in detail to the various groups. The medium for such explanations is at hand in the foreign-language press and in the immigrant societies, and the effort that it would involve is surely worth making. It should also be noted that it is not so complicated a system as the land tenure in many of the countries from which the immigrants come.

INSTRUCTION IN SANITATION

The subject of housing reform as a means of easing the housewife's task was considered first, as it is useless to talk of helping her in her work until she is given some of the conveniences with which to work. It is evident, however, that that is not all that is necessary for the foreign-born housewife. She is not accustomed to the use of a house of the size contemplated by the proposed plans—the Italians, Lithuanians, Poles, Russians, Hungarians, and doubtless others have known only the one and two-room house—and there is always the possibility that, given more rooms, they may be used to take in more lodgers. Such was the case, for example, in the relatively adequate houses provided by the United States Steel Corporation at Gary.

It is not necessary, however, to use the method of that corporation, and turn out of the houses persons who need instruction in the use of the house. Persuasion and instruction in the uses of the special features of the house could have been tried. It might have been possible for the rent collector or a sanitary inspector with a social point of view to establish friendly relations on their regular visits to the families. With confidence gained and tact displayed, much in the way of education could be accomplished. To construct houses so that each room can serve one and only one purpose would in part meet the difficulties. Above all, patience and a realization of the difficulties that the foreign-born housewife meets, are essential.

A point on which some architects lay special stress in the structure of low-cost houses is the devotion of the entire first floor to cooking and living uses—not sleeping. That is, the living room, dining room, and kitchen are either combined or so open into each other that no temptation is offered to close off part for sleeping purposes. The bedrooms are then on the second floor, each room having only one door, and the bathroom and the storage space are slightly elevated above the second and offer no temptation to be used for purposes other than those for which they are designed. If, then, families inexperienced in the use of modern accommodations come into the community, they may perhaps be helped to an understanding of modern devices by the experience of living in houses arranged in this way.

Both the rent collector, if it be a case of tenancy, and the building official, if it be a case of ownership, should not only understand the principles of sanitation and hygiene, but should understand the people they serve. To render the best service to immigrant groups, such officials must speak the language of the group and understand something of its peculiarities. They should, in fact, be public assistant housekeepers, through whose assistance the gradual and voluntary initiation of our foreign-born neighbors into community life can take place. New standards of efficiency and new amenities can be developed. Our community life might, then, be freed from the old physical dangers connected with human adjustment to physical surroundings, and take on new dignities suitable to a democratic and adequate life for the whole people.

There remain the difficulties described at the beginning of the chapter, which come from the fact that the processes of the work of caring for the house are different in this country from those in the country from which the foreign-born housewives came. These difficulties are not so easy to solve as those of housing. They are undoubtedly surmounted as time goes on, but it is a gradual process. Many forces are at work. Necessity is probably the primary one. The foreign-born woman early learns to use American cooking utensils and fuel because they are all she can get. She has to feed her family with the only food the store at the corner furnishes. American furniture and furnishings soon attract her attention, and she is curious as to their purposes and uses.

In part, the foreign-born housewives have learned from one another; that is, from the members of the group who have been here longer; and in part they have learned by going into the more comfortable American homes as domestic servants. Those who have done the latter are, usually, the girls who come alone or the elder daughters of the family. In some communities, such as a Bohemian community near Dallas, Texas, it is said to be well understood that the girl will learn domestic science by a kind of apprenticeship in the home of her employer. When she has learned what she thinks sufficient, she leaves to practice in her own home and to show her family how things should be done. The limitations and difficulties of domestic service for the inexperienced immigrant have been well set forth in the reports of various protective societies.[20] But the foreign-born women with whom we have conferred in this study have repeatedly emphasized the advantages that come from being shown how to do housework under the conditions in this country. Yet women of the "new" immigrant groups enter domestic service much less than those from the "old" ones.

In the end, no doubt, many foreign-born housewives have learned to care for their homes and raise their families as systematically as their American neighbors, who have had fewer difficulties to contend with. It is, however, a wasteful system which leaves the instruction of the immigrant housewife to the chance instruction she can gain from fellow countrywomen who have themselves learned only imperfectly. If the community only realized what the difficulties were for the housewife from a different civilization, it would undoubtedly stretch out a friendly and helping hand to assist her over the first rough path. Whatever form this help takes, it must be offered in the spirit of friendly co-operation, and not of didactic superiority, if the desired result is to be gained.