WEBVTT - What We Lost When We Lost Home Ec 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:07.680 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.119 --> 0:00:13.640 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's 0:00:13.760 --> 0:00:16.520 Chuck and it's us today. We've got our aprons on, 0:00:16.800 --> 0:00:19.239 we have our spectulism in hand. We've been spanking each 0:00:19.239 --> 0:00:21.919 other with them, and it's time to go to class 0:00:22.280 --> 0:00:23.200 the stuff you should know. 0:00:24.079 --> 0:00:27.160 Hey, everybody, just so you know, there was construction happening 0:00:27.240 --> 0:00:30.120 next door. So if you hear a saw or a 0:00:30.120 --> 0:00:31.680 hammer banging, it's not me. 0:00:32.680 --> 0:00:33.760 No, it's not Chuck. 0:00:34.280 --> 0:00:36.680 Sometimes you just got to live with the sounds of life. 0:00:37.360 --> 0:00:41.240 Yeah. I mean we recorded for a while and every 0:00:41.280 --> 0:00:44.199 time we recorded, a fire truck would go by, like 0:00:44.440 --> 0:00:45.960 soccer do you remember. 0:00:45.720 --> 0:00:47.720 Yeah, Yeah, in the old Buckhead office it was I 0:00:47.720 --> 0:00:48.880 think we were near a fire station. 0:00:49.960 --> 0:00:52.519 Yeah, but it was like the exact same time. It 0:00:52.600 --> 0:00:53.640 was really bizarre. 0:00:54.480 --> 0:00:56.880 It was the radio lab, guys pulling fire alarms all 0:00:56.920 --> 0:00:57.480 over it. Leaf. 0:00:59.280 --> 0:01:01.920 So, Chuck, we're talking about homec today. Did you ever 0:01:02.000 --> 0:01:03.160 take a home mech class? 0:01:03.360 --> 0:01:04.920 I sure did, buddy, how about you? 0:01:05.880 --> 0:01:08.920 I did. I have very vague recollections of it. I 0:01:08.959 --> 0:01:11.199 remember the room and everything, but I don't remember anything 0:01:11.240 --> 0:01:14.720 I did. It's also possible I'm conflating it with an 0:01:14.760 --> 0:01:16.160 episode of Saved by the Bell. 0:01:16.400 --> 0:01:19.360 Yeah, yeah, I took it. You know, we had the 0:01:19.400 --> 0:01:24.000 full kitchen situation in our high school back then, and 0:01:24.520 --> 0:01:27.600 I took it because I don't know, I think I 0:01:27.680 --> 0:01:31.520 needed an elective and you know, I knew their beekot 0:01:31.560 --> 0:01:34.360 girls in there. And yeah, maybe I had a friend 0:01:34.440 --> 0:01:36.240 or two that took it. Was probably my reasoning. 0:01:36.640 --> 0:01:38.480 I could see that. I think both of us are 0:01:38.520 --> 0:01:41.280 the types of dudes who would not have been like, OK, 0:01:41.400 --> 0:01:41.959 I'm a boy. 0:01:42.160 --> 0:01:43.800 Yeah, no, of course not there. And there were plenty 0:01:43.800 --> 0:01:44.720 of dudes in the class. 0:01:45.120 --> 0:01:50.720 Yeah yeah, because gen X is enlightened, that's right. The 0:01:50.800 --> 0:01:54.240 thing is, we were really in the minority, though all 0:01:54.280 --> 0:01:56.120 the dudes in your class were in the minority. That 0:01:56.160 --> 0:01:59.000 from what I read, that was pretty uncommon, even even 0:01:59.040 --> 0:02:01.720 at that time. And we were among like the last 0:02:01.760 --> 0:02:05.840 age group who could elect for homech. Yeah, pretty much 0:02:05.880 --> 0:02:08.200 across the country like this was a time. This was 0:02:08.240 --> 0:02:10.160 about the end of the time where you could find 0:02:10.160 --> 0:02:13.800 a home MECH classroom and most high schools are middle schools. 0:02:13.840 --> 0:02:17.040 But that is not the case anymore. Although it's still around, 0:02:17.400 --> 0:02:19.560 it's just not everywhere like it used to be. 0:02:20.000 --> 0:02:22.280 Yeah, and in fact, I can confirm when I went 0:02:22.400 --> 0:02:24.720 back to my high school a couple of years ago, 0:02:24.760 --> 0:02:26.919 when they had me back to talk to students as 0:02:26.960 --> 0:02:30.480 a you know, interesting professional, I remember that. Yeah, it 0:02:30.520 --> 0:02:32.919 was fun. I took a walk around and I even 0:02:33.000 --> 0:02:36.480 remember going by where the homech room was and it 0:02:36.520 --> 0:02:38.280 was definitely not the kitchen anymore. 0:02:38.680 --> 0:02:40.600 No, I remember you told me they filled in all 0:02:40.600 --> 0:02:41.560 the sinks with cement. 0:02:42.040 --> 0:02:44.280 Yeah, it's called the cement class. 0:02:45.080 --> 0:02:48.960 So classic get really boring, really fast. 0:02:49.080 --> 0:02:52.040 Yeah, we should probably say homechis stands for home economics, 0:02:51.919 --> 0:02:54.320 and just in case that's foreign to your tongue. 0:02:54.200 --> 0:02:57.760 True, true, I understand that it's called homechir home economics 0:02:57.760 --> 0:03:00.160 in Australia, and I think maybe Canada and in the 0:03:00.280 --> 0:03:03.320 UK they call it food sciences. I think, yeah, it's 0:03:03.360 --> 0:03:05.360 all the same thing. And essentially what it is for 0:03:05.360 --> 0:03:07.560 those of you who don't know, it was a class 0:03:08.360 --> 0:03:12.640 in high school where you would learn basic life skills 0:03:12.680 --> 0:03:14.880 that had a lot to do with being at home. 0:03:15.639 --> 0:03:18.120 You would learn sewing, you would learn to bake a cake. 0:03:19.320 --> 0:03:21.280 As time wore on, you would learn to take care 0:03:21.320 --> 0:03:25.720 of a child, maybe learned to balance a checkbook, just 0:03:25.880 --> 0:03:29.720 basic life skills as a class in high school or 0:03:29.760 --> 0:03:32.880 middle school. And that is it turns out I didn't 0:03:32.960 --> 0:03:37.200 quite realize the extent of home ec one little slice 0:03:37.240 --> 0:03:41.400 of the whole home ec pie, which is delicious because 0:03:41.440 --> 0:03:45.720 it was made by home economists and there's a whole 0:03:45.760 --> 0:03:48.920 history to it and it's actually pretty feminists in nature too. 0:03:49.640 --> 0:03:51.680 Yeah, you know, as we'll see, there was a bit 0:03:51.680 --> 0:03:55.120 of a push pull at a certain time and which 0:03:55.120 --> 0:03:57.000 way both feminism would that have. 0:03:57.000 --> 0:03:58.200 Been the dose? 0:03:58.880 --> 0:04:01.640 The dose? Yeah, where you know, there were certain people 0:04:01.680 --> 0:04:04.680 saying like, no, this is you know, you shouldn't be 0:04:04.760 --> 0:04:07.280 teaching women to stay at home and stay in the kitchen, 0:04:07.320 --> 0:04:10.840 and other people were like, we're not teaching them, saying 0:04:11.080 --> 0:04:13.560 you have to do that, but we're saying, you know, 0:04:13.600 --> 0:04:17.440 there are viable careers that you can gain in you know, 0:04:18.000 --> 0:04:21.719 industrial engineering and statistics. And as we'll see, you know, 0:04:21.800 --> 0:04:25.320 plenty of science careers came out of home economics and 0:04:25.360 --> 0:04:27.520 food science because it is a science. 0:04:27.440 --> 0:04:29.440 Right, and that was actually one of the initial points 0:04:29.520 --> 0:04:32.400 of it. But if you were a homech proponent and 0:04:32.480 --> 0:04:36.200 you were arguing with a feminist, you might start by saying, 0:04:36.400 --> 0:04:38.880 let me give you a little picture of what life 0:04:39.000 --> 0:04:41.240 used to be like for the average woman in the 0:04:41.360 --> 0:04:45.400 United States before we came along, and you would start 0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:48.560 in about the nineteenth century, they run the turn of it, 0:04:48.920 --> 0:04:51.080 so they're still wearing tri cornered hats, but they were 0:04:51.080 --> 0:04:55.520 looking forward to trains. And if you were a farm 0:04:55.520 --> 0:04:59.200 woman at this time, you worked yourself to the bone. 0:05:00.600 --> 0:05:03.640 Yeah. I mean what we know as homeck was not 0:05:03.800 --> 0:05:06.640 early homech because early homech was like you might have 0:05:07.360 --> 0:05:09.599 seven or eight kids that all worked on the farm, 0:05:10.240 --> 0:05:12.440 and you might have farm hands that you also have 0:05:12.520 --> 0:05:15.360 to kind of care for and feed. So you're feeding 0:05:15.400 --> 0:05:19.560 these huge families from stuff that you're growing probably on 0:05:19.600 --> 0:05:23.640 your land and processing and canning and churning butter, and 0:05:24.120 --> 0:05:27.920 you're handmaking clothes and doing laundry by hand, and it's 0:05:27.960 --> 0:05:28.640 a lot. 0:05:29.000 --> 0:05:32.640 Yeah, And like you would say, that's not even home economics, 0:05:32.640 --> 0:05:34.320 that's just home terribleness, right. 0:05:34.560 --> 0:05:34.800 Yeah. 0:05:34.800 --> 0:05:37.080 When home economics came along, it was based on this 0:05:37.160 --> 0:05:40.560 idea that, Okay, all of these people are working really hard. 0:05:40.600 --> 0:05:43.840 There has to be ways to improve this to make 0:05:43.880 --> 0:05:44.680 it more efficient. 0:05:45.000 --> 0:05:45.200 Yeah. 0:05:45.400 --> 0:05:47.440 I suspect it. I'm pretty sure we talked about it 0:05:47.480 --> 0:05:50.919 that this all grew out of tailorism, that obsession with 0:05:51.080 --> 0:05:54.960 getting things as efficient as possible. And I think that 0:05:54.960 --> 0:05:57.800 that kind of grew out of that same vein. And 0:05:57.960 --> 0:06:00.479 there were actually a few things that and it came 0:06:00.520 --> 0:06:05.160 together to make the fertile soil that home grew from. 0:06:05.400 --> 0:06:08.560 One of them, the big one was literacy started to 0:06:08.560 --> 0:06:13.240 spread in the mid nineteenth century. And so when literacy spreads, 0:06:13.240 --> 0:06:16.640 you got more books and home like domestic tips and 0:06:16.760 --> 0:06:20.560 householding was a whole genre of books, so were cookbooks. 0:06:21.040 --> 0:06:23.040 And then part and parcel of that was this kind 0:06:23.080 --> 0:06:26.719 of the very beginnings of this idea that maybe women 0:06:26.839 --> 0:06:29.560 can be educated too, but just in women. 0:06:29.400 --> 0:06:32.520 Stuff, Yeah, for sure. And you know, the books were 0:06:32.520 --> 0:06:35.640 important because previous to that, it was everything was sort 0:06:35.680 --> 0:06:39.560 of handed down from you know, parent to child as 0:06:39.560 --> 0:06:42.080 far as any kind of wisdom goes about how to 0:06:42.080 --> 0:06:44.960 do anything right. So if you had books and you 0:06:44.960 --> 0:06:49.400 had classes, you didn't depend on like your grandmother necessarily 0:06:49.440 --> 0:06:52.839 being good at, you know, baking a cake or something 0:06:52.920 --> 0:06:53.240 like that. 0:06:53.600 --> 0:06:57.560 Like but if your grandmother was a dipstick, right, yeah, exactly, 0:06:57.680 --> 0:07:01.359 So cooking schools also emerged, and this was important because 0:07:01.839 --> 0:07:04.479 your grandmother might also in addition to being a dipstick 0:07:04.600 --> 0:07:06.160 might not have been that great of a cook. Now 0:07:06.160 --> 0:07:07.960 there's a place you can go to learn to cook 0:07:08.240 --> 0:07:11.840 well and nutritiously. That was a big one too. And 0:07:11.880 --> 0:07:15.000 then also this was a new career path that a 0:07:15.040 --> 0:07:17.560 woman could take to become a cook and like say, 0:07:17.560 --> 0:07:20.560 a wealthy household, so they were training now people to 0:07:20.680 --> 0:07:23.320 work outside of the house doing domestic. 0:07:22.880 --> 0:07:25.720 Stuff, yeah, for sure. And then one of the biggest 0:07:25.760 --> 0:07:29.120 ones was the Morile Act of eighteen sixty two, and 0:07:29.160 --> 0:07:33.320 that's when land grant colleges were established, and all of 0:07:33.320 --> 0:07:36.600 a sudden there were schools that said, hey, maybe we 0:07:36.600 --> 0:07:39.640 should offer you know, it was kind of the beginnings 0:07:39.680 --> 0:07:42.040 of trade schools, like, you know, teach people how to 0:07:42.040 --> 0:07:45.520 work in agriculture and industry and things like that and 0:07:45.920 --> 0:07:48.840 not necessarily just sit around with your nose in the 0:07:48.880 --> 0:07:51.640 air of reading the classics exactly. 0:07:52.120 --> 0:07:55.040 And women were open or these colleges were open to 0:07:55.080 --> 0:07:58.000 women as well too. So these three things come together. 0:07:58.600 --> 0:08:02.720 And one of the other reasons that really made homemech 0:08:03.320 --> 0:08:06.679 kind of come to life start sprouting from that fertile 0:08:06.720 --> 0:08:10.520 soil was the transition that America was going through with industrialization. 0:08:11.000 --> 0:08:13.160 All of a sudden, you weren't on the farm with 0:08:13.200 --> 0:08:15.520 your mother and grandmother who were telling you how to 0:08:15.560 --> 0:08:18.760 do things, like you were in the city now surrounded 0:08:18.760 --> 0:08:21.560 by people you've not really ever met before, with a 0:08:21.640 --> 0:08:24.000 husband who now works in the factory rather than a farm, 0:08:24.320 --> 0:08:26.560 and you're like, I have no idea what I'm doing. 0:08:26.960 --> 0:08:29.280 And so Homech kind of came in to fill that 0:08:29.920 --> 0:08:33.960 break that had happened, that intergenerational passage of knowledge from 0:08:34.320 --> 0:08:38.920 mother to daughter. Homech said, Hey, forget mothers. We're going 0:08:38.960 --> 0:08:40.200 to tell you how to do this, and we're going 0:08:40.240 --> 0:08:42.040 to tell you how to do it better. They didn't 0:08:42.040 --> 0:08:44.480 really say forget mothers. That wasn't the sentiment. That was 0:08:44.559 --> 0:08:45.720 me being a smart alec. 0:08:46.440 --> 0:08:48.920 Yeah, and you know, initially it was not in high school. 0:08:48.920 --> 0:08:52.040 It was a college level thing. And there's a PhD 0:08:52.160 --> 0:08:55.400 named Nancy Darling who kind of backs up this idea 0:08:55.400 --> 0:08:58.160 that it was a feminist movement to begin with with 0:08:58.200 --> 0:09:02.280 this quote she said, it developed that is from something radical, 0:09:02.360 --> 0:09:05.440 the idea that the traditional work of women is important, meaningful, 0:09:05.960 --> 0:09:10.679 and here's the key for me, economically significant. And it 0:09:10.760 --> 0:09:13.040 was economics. They didn't just call it that to make 0:09:13.080 --> 0:09:17.920 it seem fancy. The running of a household is big 0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:20.800 time economics, and if you're not good at that, as 0:09:20.840 --> 0:09:26.520 we'll see with younger generations, it can spell trouble for sure. 0:09:26.720 --> 0:09:30.440 Yeah yeah, yeah, there's a whole wash out that's happened 0:09:30.440 --> 0:09:32.880 that will cover for sure. But one of the people 0:09:32.880 --> 0:09:34.680 that you have to tip your top hat to is 0:09:34.679 --> 0:09:37.760 Ellen Swallow Richards, who's probably the most important person in 0:09:37.800 --> 0:09:41.080 the history or the early history at least of home economics. 0:09:41.240 --> 0:09:44.280 Now let's just say it, the entire history of home economics. 0:09:44.880 --> 0:09:48.880 She was a pretty impressive sort. She studied chemistry. She 0:09:49.040 --> 0:09:52.120 got a bachelor's and a master's from Vassar and then 0:09:52.200 --> 0:09:54.640 became the first woman to get a degree from MIT, 0:09:55.160 --> 0:09:58.200 and then became the first woman instructor at MIT and 0:09:58.240 --> 0:10:02.199 set up a sanitary chemistry lab that was for women only. 0:10:02.960 --> 0:10:06.959 And this was not really domestic work. It was figuring 0:10:07.040 --> 0:10:10.880 out water quality and air quality tests like essentially the 0:10:11.320 --> 0:10:16.760 foundations of environmental protection and consumer protection too. That's what 0:10:16.840 --> 0:10:19.719 this lab was doing. And the reason why you associated 0:10:19.760 --> 0:10:23.120 with homec is because one of the reasons homech existed. Also, 0:10:23.200 --> 0:10:25.720 you said that it started at the college level was 0:10:25.960 --> 0:10:28.960 as a way for women, almost a back door a 0:10:29.000 --> 0:10:33.840 workaround a loophole for women to become scientists. It was 0:10:33.920 --> 0:10:36.840 okay as long as there was enough of a whiff 0:10:36.880 --> 0:10:40.959 of women's work like clean water, that's woman's work that 0:10:41.760 --> 0:10:44.280 academia could put up with it. That was one of 0:10:44.280 --> 0:10:48.200 the big ways homech started funneling women into education and 0:10:48.280 --> 0:10:49.359 into the sciences. 0:10:49.840 --> 0:10:54.000 Yeah. I mean she was trying to improve the United States, 0:10:54.559 --> 0:10:57.160 and she thought, and she was right on the money. 0:10:57.240 --> 0:10:59.120 She was like, if I'm going to try to improve 0:10:59.640 --> 0:11:03.280 you know, the United States and civilization, then I have 0:11:03.360 --> 0:11:05.800 to start at what she considered. And you know, I 0:11:05.800 --> 0:11:08.559 think most people agree is the basic unit, which is 0:11:08.600 --> 0:11:11.800 a family, the family unit. And if I can each 0:11:12.040 --> 0:11:14.120 if I can get each household one at a time 0:11:14.679 --> 0:11:18.479 to practice you know, more efficient practices, more sanitary practices, 0:11:19.040 --> 0:11:21.319 safer practices, you know where you're not, you know, burning 0:11:21.400 --> 0:11:24.240 kitchens down and things like that, then it'll you know, 0:11:24.320 --> 0:11:28.000 all boats will rise. And it started to become a movement. 0:11:28.040 --> 0:11:30.959 And you know, this is like the late eighteen hundreds, 0:11:30.960 --> 0:11:32.120 early nineteen hundreds. 0:11:32.360 --> 0:11:34.520 Yeah, and remember also there was a big emphasis on 0:11:34.840 --> 0:11:37.880 this work is important, Like this is unpaid labor, but 0:11:38.000 --> 0:11:42.319 it produces a lot of dividends. For any family, and 0:11:42.520 --> 0:11:47.560 hence building upward for civilization, for a nation, civilization all that. So, 0:11:47.679 --> 0:11:49.520 like you said, this is starting to become a movement. 0:11:49.559 --> 0:11:51.800 And they had a series of conferences called the Lake 0:11:51.840 --> 0:11:54.560 Plastid Conferences starting right at the turn of the century, 0:11:55.080 --> 0:11:57.400 and at one of these meetings they chose the term 0:11:57.760 --> 0:12:01.040 home economics, like you said, to basically point out not 0:12:01.160 --> 0:12:04.160 to kind of latch their field on economics, to point 0:12:04.200 --> 0:12:08.439 out that domestic work was a huge part of economics, 0:12:08.840 --> 0:12:13.160 and up to this point economists had basically just been 0:12:13.200 --> 0:12:16.800 looking at production, they weren't looking at the demand side. 0:12:17.360 --> 0:12:20.520 And one of the things HOMECH introduced was the idea 0:12:20.559 --> 0:12:24.160 of consumer sciences, like studying consumption as well as part 0:12:24.160 --> 0:12:27.720 of the larger economy, which is you can't do economics 0:12:27.720 --> 0:12:30.679 without that now, but that's what one of the things 0:12:30.679 --> 0:12:31.720 HOMECH introduced. 0:12:32.440 --> 0:12:35.280 Yeah, and they came up with the name homek at 0:12:35.280 --> 0:12:39.560 one of those conferences after debating domestic science and they said, 0:12:39.559 --> 0:12:44.079 now that that doesn't sound like it's studying consumerism. That's 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:46.840 a big part of this. I think household arts was 0:12:46.880 --> 0:12:50.120 put forward and they said, no, that sounds too artsy, 0:12:50.120 --> 0:12:53.480 fartsy and not academic. Enough, so they landed on home 0:12:53.520 --> 0:12:58.160 economics and an ironic twist that kind of takes it 0:12:58.200 --> 0:13:02.520 back home because the words or economics comes from I 0:13:02.559 --> 0:13:08.520 love this word oiknoymia oikonomia. I inserted an extra either, 0:13:09.360 --> 0:13:11.920 which is ancient Greek for household management. So there you 0:13:11.960 --> 0:13:12.200 have it. 0:13:12.960 --> 0:13:16.360 Yeah, they dropped the old timing mike at this point. 0:13:16.920 --> 0:13:19.439 Yeah, for sure. And then in nineteen oh eight, at 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:23.440 that same conference, the Lake Placid Conference, they founded the 0:13:23.480 --> 0:13:27.880 American Home Economics Association. Really got the ball rolling, and 0:13:27.920 --> 0:13:31.280 then shortly after, in nineteen seventeen, the Hughes Act started 0:13:31.320 --> 0:13:35.520 funding vocational education like shop class and homech and it 0:13:35.640 --> 0:13:36.680 was off to the races. 0:13:36.960 --> 0:13:40.480 Yep. So you want to take a break and come 0:13:40.520 --> 0:13:43.360 back and talk about how, like you said, home X 0:13:43.440 --> 0:13:44.440 starts to take off. 0:13:44.840 --> 0:13:45.400 Let's do it. 0:13:57.120 --> 0:13:59.160 Want to learn about a terrors sort and college arridactyl, 0:13:59.240 --> 0:14:01.800 how to take a perfect is gone? 0:14:01.880 --> 0:14:03.880 That's a little hunt the Lizzie Borderer. 0:14:11.200 --> 0:14:15.680 Word up, Jerry. Okay. So when we left off, homech 0:14:15.800 --> 0:14:17.960 was starting to take off, and by the nineteen twenties, 0:14:18.480 --> 0:14:22.240 the USDA, the Department of Agriculture, had created the Bureau 0:14:22.280 --> 0:14:27.280 of Home economics, and when you create a bureau dedicated 0:14:27.320 --> 0:14:29.960 to a new field, that's that's when the field has arrived. 0:14:30.400 --> 0:14:32.920 If you're a band and weird Al has done a 0:14:32.920 --> 0:14:35.360 cover of your song, that's how you know you've arrived. 0:14:35.840 --> 0:14:38.840 If you're a field of study and someone opens a 0:14:38.880 --> 0:14:42.120 bureau dedicated to it, that's how you know your field arrived. 0:14:42.440 --> 0:14:45.680 But it became the country's biggest employer of women's scientists, 0:14:45.800 --> 0:14:47.800 which is pretty significant at the time. 0:14:48.040 --> 0:14:52.040 That's right. Their mission, of course, was education, and it 0:14:52.080 --> 0:14:54.640 wasn't just you know, how to cook obviously, it was 0:14:54.760 --> 0:14:57.560 meal planning, it was budgeting. There was a lot of 0:14:57.600 --> 0:15:01.640 science behind it because they got into you know, nutritional 0:15:01.720 --> 0:15:07.120 values like in any you know, nutritional tag that you read, 0:15:07.840 --> 0:15:10.000 and in fact, any like clothing tag that you read. 0:15:10.040 --> 0:15:12.040 I'll go ahead and get ahead of that one. That 0:15:12.160 --> 0:15:15.600 all was born out of the science of this new 0:15:15.640 --> 0:15:19.320 bureau that was founded. They were testing mildew proofing for fabrics. 0:15:19.360 --> 0:15:23.320 They were servicing military service members, like you know, trying 0:15:23.320 --> 0:15:26.040 to come up with better things for the US military 0:15:26.080 --> 0:15:29.120 to eat, and of course school lunch programs all over 0:15:29.120 --> 0:15:30.840 the country were dependent on the science. 0:15:31.280 --> 0:15:34.000 Yeah, this is where the square pizza was invented. 0:15:34.080 --> 0:15:37.320 I suspect they should have a monument to that. 0:15:37.680 --> 0:15:39.600 Well, one of the I agree one of the other 0:15:39.680 --> 0:15:41.880 things about that though, in addition to the square pizza, 0:15:41.880 --> 0:15:45.800 the square pizza is actually an excellent example of this pizza. 0:15:45.920 --> 0:15:47.640 It comes from Italy, and if you've ever seen an 0:15:47.680 --> 0:15:51.800 actual like Neapolitan pizza, it does not resemble the square pizza. 0:15:52.200 --> 0:15:56.560 The square pizza at lunch is the Midwestern americanized, much 0:15:56.600 --> 0:15:59.040 blander version of it, although I agree with you it's 0:15:59.120 --> 0:16:03.320 quite good. And this is where American food as we 0:16:03.400 --> 0:16:06.480 think of it today was founded. All the ethnic food 0:16:06.480 --> 0:16:09.160 got pushed out as the immigrants were kind of brought 0:16:09.160 --> 0:16:13.160 into the home ech world, and that bland Midwestern American 0:16:13.200 --> 0:16:15.360 food took over. That's where that came from. 0:16:15.680 --> 0:16:18.080 And this also coincided with the birth of radio that 0:16:18.120 --> 0:16:20.200 we seems like we've talked a lot about that lately. 0:16:20.240 --> 0:16:22.880 But because of that, of course you're going to have 0:16:23.040 --> 0:16:25.520 shows on the radio about this kind of thing. The 0:16:25.560 --> 0:16:28.440 Bureau of Home Economics in the twenties had a show 0:16:28.480 --> 0:16:32.040 called Housekeeper's Chat that ran for a couple of decades. 0:16:32.120 --> 0:16:35.520 Started in nineteen twenty six. Not Uncle Sam, but Aunt 0:16:35.560 --> 0:16:37.640 Sammy was the host of that one, or I guess 0:16:37.640 --> 0:16:40.120 not the host, but it featured her and she would 0:16:40.120 --> 0:16:42.440 have like household tips and recipes and stuff like that. 0:16:43.280 --> 0:16:46.560 A lot of the brands got in the game, General 0:16:46.600 --> 0:16:50.600 Mills and Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air. You know, 0:16:50.640 --> 0:16:55.000 it's another radio show sponsored by General Mills. And again 0:16:55.440 --> 0:16:57.760 the Bureau was like helping to get all of these 0:16:57.800 --> 0:16:59.200 things launched on the airwaves. 0:17:00.000 --> 0:17:02.240 One of the other examples of what the Bureau of 0:17:02.240 --> 0:17:04.960 Home Economics was doing that had a huge sweeping impact 0:17:04.960 --> 0:17:11.160 in addition to founding like the mass produced food movement, 0:17:12.200 --> 0:17:14.200 was they came up with the poverty line. In fact, 0:17:14.240 --> 0:17:18.240 Molly or Shansky did. She was a statistician who studied 0:17:18.640 --> 0:17:21.560 how much a house spent to come up with a 0:17:21.680 --> 0:17:26.399 basic nutritious diet that could keep you alive. They multiplied 0:17:26.400 --> 0:17:28.119 that by three and they came up with the federal 0:17:28.119 --> 0:17:29.919 poverty line that's still in use today. 0:17:30.600 --> 0:17:33.760 Yeah, and if you've ever seen, you know, astronauts eating 0:17:34.080 --> 0:17:37.680 lasagna out of a what looks like a toothpaste tube 0:17:37.760 --> 0:17:40.840 or something like that, you can thank Home Economics and 0:17:40.880 --> 0:17:44.680 Science for that. Because a woman named Bee Finkelstein, great name, 0:17:45.600 --> 0:17:48.280 she was getting food together for the very first astronauts 0:17:48.280 --> 0:17:51.920 in the Mercury Project, which is pretty great, that's right. 0:17:52.560 --> 0:17:54.719 And then one of the other things that struck me 0:17:54.760 --> 0:17:56.919 too that I didn't realize was that a lot of 0:17:56.960 --> 0:18:00.000 those recipes that you find on like a food label. 0:18:00.359 --> 0:18:03.200 One of the most famous ones is Campbell's Cream and 0:18:03.280 --> 0:18:09.040 Mushroom soup labels have a cream bean casserole recipe, and 0:18:09.320 --> 0:18:12.560 that was created by a home economist who worked for Campbell's, 0:18:12.560 --> 0:18:16.960 Dorcas Riley, And she's a good example of what was 0:18:16.960 --> 0:18:19.360 happening at this time. Starting in the twenties thirty four 0:18:19.400 --> 0:18:23.160 and continuing on, these companies like General Mills and Campbell's 0:18:23.160 --> 0:18:26.480 were setting up home economics departments, and one of the 0:18:26.520 --> 0:18:29.439 things that these home economists were being paid to do 0:18:29.880 --> 0:18:34.400 was to figure out new uses for the products made 0:18:34.400 --> 0:18:36.560 by the companies they worked for so that people would 0:18:36.560 --> 0:18:38.440 buy more of that stuff. And then they put those 0:18:38.440 --> 0:18:40.160 recipes on the label. 0:18:40.359 --> 0:18:43.439 Yeah. I mean, if you love rice Krispy Treats, you 0:18:43.440 --> 0:18:47.600 can thank the home economics program and Matilligens and Mildred 0:18:47.680 --> 0:18:51.240 Day at Kellogg's there for that and Chex Mix. This 0:18:51.359 --> 0:18:55.760 wasn't a sort of an internal team. But chex Mix 0:18:55.840 --> 0:18:59.000 was actually a contest and it was in I believe 0:18:59.040 --> 0:19:02.240 the nineteen fifty when they just had a contest like 0:19:02.280 --> 0:19:06.440 what can you do with check Cereal? And someone submitted 0:19:06.520 --> 0:19:10.320 chex Mix, and like it's the same recipe basically that 0:19:10.400 --> 0:19:12.560 everyone enjoys today, Like all of these. 0:19:12.359 --> 0:19:15.679 Are did your family make chex mix around the holidays? 0:19:16.040 --> 0:19:18.720 But not a time that Emily's family really did though, 0:19:18.800 --> 0:19:21.159 so she still makes you know, that same recipe, that 0:19:21.240 --> 0:19:22.280 chex mix recipe. 0:19:22.400 --> 0:19:24.439 It must be so high. Oh then because my family 0:19:24.440 --> 0:19:27.320 did as well. Yeah, but that's a good example of 0:19:27.359 --> 0:19:30.240 how like these companies farmed out the task of coming 0:19:30.320 --> 0:19:34.000 up with stuff because homech had become so widespread, the 0:19:34.119 --> 0:19:37.479 average homemaker out there could do the same thing in 0:19:37.520 --> 0:19:40.320 a lot of ways that some of the homech workers 0:19:40.640 --> 0:19:43.360 working for the company could do too. I think that's 0:19:43.359 --> 0:19:44.120 pretty neat. 0:19:44.280 --> 0:19:48.200 Talk about efficiencies, like if you're baking a cake from scratch, 0:19:48.800 --> 0:19:51.280 or making pancakes or something like that, or a gravy 0:19:51.320 --> 0:19:55.800 from scratch. There were women in homech's homeck departments at 0:19:55.840 --> 0:19:58.359 companies saying like, hey, we can make this. You know, 0:19:58.400 --> 0:20:00.239 there's a lot to do, so what if it if 0:20:00.240 --> 0:20:02.199 this stuff was all kind of pre mixed in a 0:20:02.240 --> 0:20:05.199 box and you could sell them like well, I was 0:20:05.200 --> 0:20:08.399 about to say, like hotcakes, and they did. And you 0:20:08.440 --> 0:20:10.880 know that these were things that were real time savers 0:20:10.880 --> 0:20:11.800 in the kitchen. 0:20:11.920 --> 0:20:14.600 For sure, And that was the point remember of homech 0:20:14.680 --> 0:20:17.680 is saving time, being more efficient. And then as food 0:20:17.720 --> 0:20:20.720 companies were concerned making tons of money off of this 0:20:20.800 --> 0:20:24.879 stuff too, So that's kind of going on in the 0:20:24.920 --> 0:20:29.760 corporate world the government world. Simultaneously, there's that whole thread 0:20:29.880 --> 0:20:33.120 of homech being taught in high school in middle school, 0:20:33.800 --> 0:20:37.439 and there was a time in the twentieth century up 0:20:37.520 --> 0:20:40.960 into the eighties and nineties, and I'm sure beyond again. 0:20:41.080 --> 0:20:43.960 These these classes are still out there, but nothing like 0:20:44.000 --> 0:20:46.280 they used to be, where you could go into a 0:20:46.320 --> 0:20:48.399 high school or middle school and there was a simulated 0:20:48.480 --> 0:20:50.600 kitchen in one of the rooms with a bunch of 0:20:50.600 --> 0:20:53.919 different stoves and ovens and refrigerators, and people would be 0:20:53.960 --> 0:20:56.560 in there cooking and learning to sew, and maybe taking 0:20:56.560 --> 0:21:00.920 care of a fake baby and in some cases taking 0:21:00.920 --> 0:21:03.840 care of a real baby too, because this stuff got 0:21:03.880 --> 0:21:05.200 intense sometimes. 0:21:05.480 --> 0:21:09.440 Yeah, the baby thing. I don't remember our high school 0:21:09.440 --> 0:21:14.880