HOME PROBLEMS
from
A NEW STANDPOINT

By CAROLINE L. HUNT



WHITCOMB & BARROWS
BOSTON 1908

Copyright 1908
BY
CAROLINE L. HUNT


PRESS WORK BY ALFRED MUDGE & SON INC.
COMPOSITION AND ELECTROTYPING BY
THOMAS TODD
14 BEACON STREET, BOSTON, MASS.

INTRODUCTORY

“GIVEN a number of human beings, with a certain development of physicaland mental faculties and of social resources, how can they best utilizethese powers for the attainment of the most complete satisfaction?” ThusJ. A. Hobson states what he calls The Social Problem, adding that if“complete satisfaction” seems too indefinite, owing to the variousinterpretations of which it is capable, we may adopt Ruskin’s words andsay that the end to be sought is “the largest number of healthy andhappy human beings.” It is as a factor in the Social Problem, thusbroadly stated in terms of human life, that this series of papers willconsider The Home.

There was a time when the home could hardly have been said to be afactor in the Social Problem. It had a problem of its own, to be sure,that of the proper management of its internal affairs, and upon thewisdom of that management the welfare of society was largely dependent.This problem, however, was not greatly affected by conditions in theworld at large. The home was independent industrially and in no wayinvolved in the general labor problem. Its women members were nottempted to prepare themselves for and to enter upon occupationsunconnected with its administration and welfare; the question whether awoman could have a career and a home had not then arisen. The home wasat that time independent also of public work, looking to city or villageboards for assistance neither in maintaining cleanliness nor in wardingoff disease.

Now all has changed. The home, by consenting to use factory products andby employing outside help, has involved itself in the great laborproblem; by educating its daughters to support themselves in occupationsunconnected with its management it has complicated its original problemof household administration; by entrusting the education of its littlechildren to schools, the care of its sick to hospitals, the protectionof its water supply, and other important interests, to town councils orto village boards, it has entered into public affairs. It has brought toitself new problems and to women and to men new responsibilities, newopportunities, and new privileges. These new responsibilities,opportunities, and privileges will be considered in the pages thatfollow.

CONTENTS