Homemaking Home Furnishing And Information Services PDF Download

Excerpt from Homemaking, Home Furnishing and Information Services: Reports of the Committees on Homemaking Housing and Family Life Housing as we know it is the product of thousands of years of slow adaptation to the settled abodes made possible by tilling the soil. Through all those centuries of adjustment the changes brought about by experience molded the simplest forms of dwell ings into homes with reasonable protection against the weather and sufficient to be centers for family life. The process was to a degree similar to that which led to the evolution of the beehive the stimuli of unchanging conditions leading to a gradual perice tion of adjustment. Certainly, the process was almost equally unconscious. Society did not sit down like a scientist to determine its needs in housing and then methodically supply them. Instead, numberless happy accidents occurring independently through the centuries piled up to form the common tradition of housing. This unconsciousness and this natural evolution were well enough so long as conditions remained unchanged or changed slowly, so long as society continued under a predominantly agri cultural economy. With the conditions changed, however, as civi lization became more urban, the price paid for mistakes was a heavy one. The Black Death of the 14th Century illustrates the penalties man has paid for bringing together rurally developed houses to form a city. But it has been left to modern times to reveal the full danger of blindness on housing needs under chang ing conditions. The steam engine, the dynamo, the automobile, the subway, the skyscraper, the cinema, the radio, have one after another created new worlds for man. But through all these Changes he has clung persistently to the housing developed for a pastoral civilization. He has made little conscious attempt to create new housing suitable to the new conditions. His adaptations have been makeshifts, largely the products of chance. N O wonder that the home has lost some of its hold on its members. The Committee on Homemaking shows that we cannot have good housing in any reasonable time so long as we leave its development to the processes of natural evolution. The adapta tions Of nature require generations; our modern environment may change several times in a single generation. Passive acceptance of homes as we find them must be replaced by consciously molding them to our needs. The scientific method must be brought to bear on housing and homemaking. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.