In every one of these, the home element is the main idea. Thus the Northwestern University Settlement reports, "The character of the work has been to exalt the home and increase the pleasures of the home makers." The New York Settlement reports in connection with its kindergarten work, "The second year of the kindergarten work has made us realize more deeply than ever how natural and vital is this way of reaching the homes and the confidences of our neighbors." The Mothers' Club of the Boston Settlement has had instruction concerning the sanitary conditions of the neighboring homes, while Dr. Mary Hobart talked to it of proper food for babies, and Mrs. Alice P. Norton has directed the mothers in cutting and making various garments.
The work of college women for the settlements, and through them for better home making, is not confined to settlement residents, as large financial aid has been given all the college settlements by the undergraduates and alumnæ of the twelve or more important colleges for women in the East.
The undergraduates of Smith, Swarthmore, the Woman's College of Baltimore, and Bryn Mawr have assisted the residents of the Philadelphia Settlement in many ways; while Barnard, Elmira, and Packer students consider the New York Settlement as their care, and Wellesley and Radcliffe girls are very helpful at the Boston Settlement.
That the value of a knowledge and practical application of the principles of domestic science as a great factor in the leavening of the community about them is never lost sight of is shown in the establishment by the Philadelphia Settlement of a kitchen and coffee house in the fall of 1895 at the southwest corner of Seventh and Lombard Streets. This was started upon much the same lines as the New England Kitchen, and with the same primary objects—"to furnish to our neighborhood, through the kitchen, nutritious food, properly cooked, at the lowest price consistent with a narrow margin of profit, and to offer, through the coffee house, a clean, cheerful place, free from all objectionable features, where a comfortable lunch or meal might be had at reasonable rates." The expectations in regard to the success of this project have been fully realized, it having been found, as in the case of the New England kitchens in Boston and New York, that "where food can be as easily obtained as drink, many a man will take the food in preference." The number of penny lunches sold during the first year was 21,332, and the number of meals served during June alone was 2,928.
In the Boston Settlement domestic science is used as a means to its ends in the support of mothers' clubs, a kitchen garden for girls
