VALUE OF HOUSEWORK.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 1070, 16 July 1912, Page 4

VALUE OF HOUSEWORK.

AMERICAN DOCTORS’ ADVICE. Health and beauty are twin sisters, and to atttain both American women are recommended to work hard. Dr Dudley Sargent, physical director of Harvard University, and Dr Charles Greene, his collaborator are lecturing this topic to cultured Boston audiences, and their conclusions are practically unanimous. According to these specialists, there is no short cut to beautiful complexions, agile limbs and Juno-like proportions unless women work conscientiously and definitely towards the goal. The doctors’ advice to women everywhere is: “Don’t talk so much and work bard.” Housework, they say, is not menial, but almost as beneficial as golf, riding, or walking for developing the human form divine, provided that the aspirants labour with intelligent intent and contented minds. Professor Sargent says:- “ When woman does her own housework, with its manifold varieties of physical requirements, nearly every muscle ot her body may be brought into action daily. Nothing is better lor the development of large muscles in the legs or for the reduction of fat than running up and down stairs. No better method has been devised for strengthening the chest and straightening the spine than scrubbing floors on one’s hands and knees, especially if the left arm as well as the right be used. Sweeping with a large-handled broom, if the broom be used on both side so that both arms are used iu the same way, furnishes an admirable means for developing the chest and shoulders. If a carpet-sweeper

Is used Instead of a broom, the abdominal muscles as well as the muscles of the back ar« brought into action, and the extensor and flexor muscles of the arms are much used. Working a lawnmower brings the same group of muscles into still more powerful action, and is almost indispensable. Kneading bread is a specific tor a finely-shaped forearm, and an hour’s work with the washboard is equal to similar efforts with chest weights as a developer of the upper arms, the back, and the shoulders.”

All this is very gratifying to American women yearning for beauty, because there, more than anywhere else, domestic servants are ruinously expensive. Above all, women must not talk so much, and here the advice applies equally to men- Nervousness, amounting often to neurasthenia, seems almost as common in America as dyspepsia in England, and may be largely avoided, it seems, if we all work more and talk less. The vast store of energy often recklessly wasted in mere talk has not yet been realised by American or European civilisations, but it daily becomes more evident, to physiological experts. Women’s clubs, soci il teas, and society functions are good enough in their way, but hecausa of the irresistible danger to talk overmuch they have become a positive danger. Asiatics, who devote a regular period of every day to silence, self-examination, and contemplation, according to Harvard, America’s foremost university, are on the right track, and we must emulate them.

America’s leading newspapers reproduce the professor’s advice, and prim editorials based thereon, emphasising the dignity, value, and beauty of washing, sweeping, and scrubbing.