we must learn to insert the keeping of household accounts; the study
of apportioning incomes; the scientific spending of a dollar in food
or clothing value; the relative advantage of cash or credit systems of
paying the running expenses of a home; the dangers of the
"easy-payment plan"; the cost of running an automobile; comparison
with the upkeep of a horse and wagon; comparison of the two from the
point of view of their usefulness to a family; mortgaging homes, what
it means, and what it costs to borrow; when borrowing is justified;
the accumulation of interest in a savings account; the comparative
financial advantage of renting and owning a home; the cost of building
houses of various sorts; the cost of securing, under varying
conditions, a water supply in the country home; and other locally
important problems. We already have "applied science" in our courses,
and we are making a strenuous effort to apply arithmetic; but we have
not usually tried to apply it to the education of the prospective
homemaker.

Take the one question of the "installment plan." Where, if not in the
public school, can we fight the menace offered to the inexperienced
young people of the land by this method of doing business? And where
in the public school if not in the arithmetic class? Consider the
possibility of lives spent in paying for shoes and hats already worn
out, of furniture double-priced because payment is to be on the "easy
plan," of families always in debt, with wages mortgaged for months in
advance. The pure science of mathematics will be of little avail in
fighting this possibility, but "applied arithmetic" can be a most
effective weapon.

In our geography classes we may find time for the study of food and
clothing products, of their sources, their comparative usefulness, and