Many women now doubtless spend less time on cooking than when Mrs. Gilman wrote; perhaps her scorn has borne fruit.  But the implication that being a cook is unworthy loses all its force unless it can be shown that “his mother was nothing but a cook.”  Even so, there are worse things one might be.  It is true that women should not spend six hours out of the working day on merely one department of their household work.  Yet the ill-fed family is out of the race for a place among the efficient.  Let us then teach the coming woman to use less time, more science, and all the labor-savers there are available, and still accomplish the same, or perhaps better, results.

That the question of clothing is equally fundamental, perhaps few of us will acknowledge.  Yet we must not underrate its importance.  Food furnishes the fuel with which to support the fires of life.  Clothes, however, contribute not only to comfort and health, but to mental well-being and self-respect.  So long as we mingle with our fellow men in civilized communities, raiment will continue to require “taking thought.”  That much of the feminine part of the population devotes an undue amount of thought to certain aspects of the clothing question we cannot deny.  It is equally certain that many women, if not most women, devote too little thought to other phases of the problem.

Present conditions seem to indicate that the average woman, of any class of society, places the “prevailing mode” first in her personal clothing problems.  How to be “in style” absorbs much attention and time.  Surely it is overshadowing other very important considerations relating to dress.  When American women have awakened to the real importance of these considerations, we shall observe a better proportion in studying the clothes question.

As a scientific foundation upon which to build her practical knowledge of how to clothe herself and her family, the girl of the future must be trained to an understanding of (1) the hygiene of clothes, (2) art expressed in clothes, (3) the psychology of clothes, (4) ethics as affected by clothes, (5) personality as expressed by clothes.

There is no stage of life in which hygiene, art, psychology, and ethics do not apply to clothes.  The practical knowledge built upon these as a foundation will guide the girl in choosing clothes which are suitable to the occasion for which they are designed, are not extravagant in either price or style, give good value for the money expended, express the individuality of the wearer, and exert an influence uplifting rather than the reverse upon the community at large.

[Illustration:  Class in dressmaking at Blackburn College.  With women scientifically trained in the matter of clothing, we shall do away with much of the absurdity of dress]