Take the one question of the “installment plan.”  Where, if not in the public school, can we fight the menace offered to the inexperienced young people of the land by this method of doing business?  And where in the public school if not in the arithmetic class?  Consider the possibility of lives spent in paying for shoes and hats already worn out, of furniture double-priced because payment is to be on the “easy plan,” of families always in debt, with wages mortgaged for months in advance.  The pure science of mathematics will be of little avail in fighting this possibility, but “applied arithmetic” can be a most effective weapon.

In our geography classes we may find time for the study of food and clothing products, of their sources, their comparative usefulness, and their cost.  We may learn whether it is best to buy American-made macaroni or the imported variety; whether French silks and gloves are superior to those made in America; what “shoddy” is, what we may expect from it if we buy it, how much it is worth in comparison with long-wool fabrics, how to know whether shoddy is being offered us when we buy.  Countless other matters concerning the markets and products of the world will repay the same sort of treatment.

[Illustration:  One of the class exercises in the model school home shown on page 115]

[Illustration:  The correct serving of meals forms part of the class work in this same home]

Food questions are opened up by study of our meat, vegetable, and fruit supply.  Every town may make this a personal and immediate problem.  From whom did Mr. Blank, the local grocer, obtain his canned tomatoes?  It is sometimes possible to follow up those canned tomatoes to their source.  In one investigation of this sort they were found to have passed through six hands.  The arithmetic class may pass upon the question of profits and comparative cost between this and the “producer-to-consumer” method.

The art work of the schools may also contribute generously to the body of homemaking knowledge.  For the average girl the designing and making of Christmas cards and book covers, or even the prolonged study of great paintings, is a less productive use of time than the designing of cushion covers, curtains, bureau scarfs, or candle shades.  In a certain town in New England considerable effort was expended in bringing about the introduction of art work in the schools a few years ago.  A normal-school art graduate took charge of the work.  It has now been abandoned because “the children took so little interest.”  And really, if you knew the conditions, you could not blame them They studied art and copied art and tried to cultivate an artistic sense in ways as remote from their daily lives as could apparently be contrived.  And the pity of it all is that here were girls whose homes, whose personal dress, were crying out for the application of art; whose artistic sense was growing of failing to grow according as their individual conditions would allow; and the public school has passed its opportunity by.