This is an actual list from the early 1900s of some of the inventions that readers of Today’s Magazine, a magazine dedicated to housewives, made them the most thankful. Baby’s own bathtub— a miniature bathtub was much more manageable for frequent bathing and saved mothers from having to haul water to the full-sized household bathtub.…
We All Have Reasons to Be Thankful
A housewife in 1930 writes: “Thanksgiving Day approaches again, but how can we be thankful in our community where hail and drouth and other ills of agriculture have given us a lean year and empty purses. I am not irreverent when I say that it is not easy for me to lift my voice in…
Measuring Your Quality of Life by Your Paycheck, part 2
A couple of months after “Unknown’s” letter first appeared, a response was written by a woman from Ohio, who signed her letter “Well-known.” She disagreed with the perspective of “Unknown”, the beet farmer’s wife, writing, “I think Unknown and her men do not realize how far a clean, comfortable, pleasant home goes toward getting that…
Measuring your Quality of Life by your Paycheck
I can’t say I’ve ever heard a woman say she chose housewifery as a career for the usual reasons one goes into a particular line of work–the earning potential, the incredible opportunities for advancement, or even the prestige and glamour of it all. In these oh, so enlightened times, when we’re all told to listen…