Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson,
Speaker 1: and I'm Holly Fry. A few weeks ago, I spent
Speaker 1: some time on the MIT campus for the MIT Mystery Hunt,
Speaker 1: and while I was walking down the hall, I saw
Speaker 1: like labeling that was kind of partially blocked by just
Speaker 1: the architecture of where I was, so all I could
Speaker 1: see were the words Ellen and Lobby, And I was like,
Speaker 1: is that a lobby named for Ellen Swallow Richards? And
Speaker 1: I just kept walking a little farther to see what
Speaker 1: it was. It indeed was the Ellen Swallow Richards Lobby.
Speaker 1: And then my brain like started fishing around trying to
Speaker 1: connect to, like, of all the people that I know
Speaker 1: from history, which one was this one. So Ellen Swallow
Speaker 1: rich has come up briefly on our show before, in
Speaker 1: our twenty twenty episode on the Bureau of Home Economics.
Speaker 1: She was a big part of the establishment of home
Speaker 1: economics as a field. Among other things, she convened a
Speaker 1: series of conferences known as the Lake Placid Conferences, and
Speaker 1: that's where the term home economics was chosen to signify
Speaker 1: this field. This work is probably what she is best
Speaker 1: known for today, but it happened actually pretty late in
Speaker 1: her life and career, and before she even got to
Speaker 1: that point, she broke a lot of ground and in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways was just way ahead of her time.
Speaker 1: Ellen Henrietta Swallow was born on December third, eighteen forty two,
Speaker 1: in Dunstable, Massachusetts, a rural community not far from the
Speaker 1: border with New Hampshire. Her parents were Peter and Fanny G. Swallow,
Speaker 1: both of whom had experienced as school teachers, and as
Speaker 1: school teachers, they had strong opinions about how Ellen should
Speaker 1: be educated. They were worried that the local school would
Speaker 1: not be rigorous enough for her academically, so for the
Speaker 1: first years of her life they taught her at home.
Speaker 1: When she was little, a doctor told Ellen's parents that
Speaker 1: she should be encouraged to play outside and to be
Speaker 1: physically active for the sake of her health, so she
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time exploring the farms and the
Speaker 1: woods of the area. An early twentieth century biography described
Speaker 1: her as quote perilously close to being a tomboy. She
Speaker 1: particularly loved learning about and taking care of plants and flowers,
Speaker 1: and that's something that would bring her a lot of
Speaker 1: joy for her whole life. She didn't spend all of
Speaker 1: her time outdoors, though. She also learned to cook and clean,
Speaker 1: and to do all the other domestic tasks that were
Speaker 1: part of maintaining an efficient and orderly and well kept home.
Speaker 1: In eighteen fifty nine, when Ellen was sixteen, her parents
Speaker 1: moved to Westford so she could attend Westford Academy. It
Speaker 1: had been open to students regardless of their set since
Speaker 1: its founding in seventeen ninety two. Ellen excelled as a student,
Speaker 1: particularly in Latin, which gave her a foundation to also
Speaker 1: learn German and French, and she also started picking up
Speaker 1: new skills outside of school. Her father opened a store,
Speaker 1: and she spent as much time helping with the business
Speaker 1: as she spent helping at home. She also took on
Speaker 1: new responsibilities at home as her mother experienced a series
Speaker 1: of illnesses, so she was really starting to manage their household.
Speaker 1: This was a lot of work beyond her schoolwork. She
Speaker 1: was described as always having a book open beside her
Speaker 1: whatever she was doing. By this point, she was already
Speaker 1: forming some strong opinions about things like sanitation and hygiene,
Speaker 1: and that would go on to be a big focus
Speaker 1: in her life. For example, the family store sold tobacco.
Speaker 1: That's something she didn't really like, but it was necessary
Speaker 1: to keep the business going. It really wasn't unusual for
Speaker 1: men to come in by their tabacco and then sit
Speaker 1: around the stove in the store and just talk while
Speaker 1: smoking their pipes. At one point, Ellen complained about this,
Speaker 1: and one of the men asked why the store sold
Speaker 1: to macco if they didn't want people to use it.
Speaker 1: She said, well, we sell you molasses too, but we
Speaker 1: don't expect you to stay here and cook it up.
Speaker 1: Ellen was at Westford Academy until the spring of eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty two. After that, she planned to start teaching, but
Speaker 1: her plans were temporarily disrupted when she contracted measles. Teaching
Speaker 1: was never her long term goal, though she wanted to
Speaker 1: go to college, she just didn't have the money to
Speaker 1: start right away. It's possible that the Civil War was
Speaker 1: affecting her financial situation that spanned from eighteen sixty one
Speaker 1: to eighteen sixty five, but none of the sources that
Speaker 1: were used in this episode really talk about the war
Speaker 1: at all, so unclear exactly how those two might have
Speaker 1: impacted each other. I found the war to be weirdly
Speaker 1: absent in all the accounts. Saving up enough money for
Speaker 1: college took years, and Ellen worked at a variety of
Speaker 1: jobs to do it. She was a nurse, a housekeeper,
Speaker 1: a teacher, and a language tutor, and she also kept
Speaker 1: on studying on her own, so much so that when
Speaker 1: she finally had enough money to start at Vassar at
Speaker 1: the age of twenty six, her scores on her entrance
Speaker 1: exams placed her as a third year student. Once again,
Speaker 1: she excelled at school. Her best subjects were astronomy with
Speaker 1: Professor Maria Mitchell, and chemistry, which was taught by Charles Farrar.
Speaker 1: Her biggest complaint was, in her words, quote, they won't
Speaker 1: let us study enough. They are so afraid we shall
Speaker 1: break down. And you know, the reputation of the college's
Speaker 1: at stake. For the question is can girls get a
Speaker 1: college degree without injuring their health? Ellen Swallow graduated in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy and once again she planned to teach, but
Speaker 1: this was still meant to be a temporary step. She
Speaker 1: was hoping that a teacher position might open up opportunities
Speaker 1: for advanced scientific work and to that end, she got
Speaker 1: a contract to go to Argentina along with a group
Speaker 1: of other American teachers. President Domingo Sarmiento was campaigning to
Speaker 1: reform Argentina's education system and to open new schools, so
Speaker 1: all of these teachers had been hired for that purpose,
Speaker 1: but he wound up canceling their contracts before they left
Speaker 1: the United States. Sources agree that this was because of
Speaker 1: a war, but they don't say which one, and I'm
Speaker 1: a little fuzzy on the exact timing of when this
Speaker 1: decision was made. The War of the Triple Alliance ended
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy, and an uprising that's generally considered to
Speaker 1: be part of the Argentine Civil Wars started in that
Speaker 1: same year. After the contract in Argentina fell through, she
Speaker 1: tried to find an apprenticeship as a chemist. While she
Speaker 1: loved astronomy, she thought chemistry had more practical, day to
Speaker 1: day applications, especially ones that could help make the world better,
Speaker 1: which was what she really wanted to do with her life.
Speaker 1: But she wasn't considered suitable as an apprentice because she
Speaker 1: was a woman. Finally, one of the chemical companies that
Speaker 1: she had applied to suggested that she might continue her
Speaker 1: studies at the newly opened Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT
Speaker 1: had started holding classes in a building on Boylston Street
Speaker 1: in Boston's Back Bay in eighteen sixty five. Aside from
Speaker 1: the money that she needed for tuition, though, there was
Speaker 1: just one problem. The institute had not admitted any women
Speaker 1: as students, and it wasn't sure that it wanted to.
Speaker 1: The Committee of the School of Industrial Science discussed Ellen
Speaker 1: Swallow's application and ultimately decided to allow her to enroll
Speaker 1: as a special student, quote, it being understood that her
Speaker 1: admission did not establish a precedent for the general admission
Speaker 1: of females. The faculty was also quote of the opinion
Speaker 1: that the admission of women as special students is as
Speaker 1: yet in the nature of an experiment, that each application
Speaker 1: should be acted on upon its own merits, and that
Speaker 1: no general action or change of the former policy of
Speaker 1: the Institute is at present expedient. As a special student,
Speaker 1: Ellen didn't have to pay tuition, and at first she
Speaker 1: actually thought her designation as a special student was solely
Speaker 1: about her economic situation, but really it meant that the
Speaker 1: university could allow her to attend classes without having to
Speaker 1: list her on the student roster or otherwise formally acknowledged
Speaker 1: that a woman was attending the school home. Economist Caroline
Speaker 1: Louisa Hunt, who published a biography of Ellen Swaller Richards
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighteen, summed it up as quote, so it
Speaker 1: came about that the answer to her question our women
Speaker 1: admitted was not they are, but you are. Ellen wrote
Speaker 1: this in a letter to her friend after being accepted. Quote,
Speaker 1: you will know that one of my delights is to
Speaker 1: do something that no one else ever did. I have
Speaker 1: the chance of doing what no woman ever did, to
Speaker 1: be the first woman to enter the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Speaker 1: and so far as I know, any scientific school, and
Speaker 1: to do it by myself alone, unaided to be welcomed
Speaker 1: most cordially. Is this not honor enough for the first
Speaker 1: six months of post collegiate life. She started at MIT
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy one, and we'll talk more about her
Speaker 1: time there after a quick sponsor break. While she was
Speaker 1: still a student at Vassar, one of Ellen Swallow's many
Speaker 1: many letters back home to her parents talked about how
Speaker 1: busy she was, how she was just taking on too
Speaker 1: much in pursuit of training herself for her future. She
Speaker 1: ended this letter with quote, I would like to enjoy
Speaker 1: the quiet with you a little while, but my life
Speaker 1: is to be one of active fighting. She didn't start
Speaker 1: her time at MIT by fighting, though. While she wasn't
Speaker 1: totally aware that her special student designation was away for
Speaker 1: the university to avoid acknowledging that it had admitted a woman,
Speaker 1: she did know that there were plenty of people who
Speaker 1: did not think she should be there, so she tried
Speaker 1: to make herself as unthreatening as possible and to continually
Speaker 1: demonstrate that while she was doing something considered to be
Speaker 1: unwomanly by attending the university, she still had a lot
Speaker 1: of the traits and skills that were expected of a woman,
Speaker 1: and a letter dated February eleventh, eighteen seventy one, she
Speaker 1: wrote quote, I try to keep all sorts of such
Speaker 1: things as needles, thread pens, scissors, et cetera, rounds, and
Speaker 1: they are getting to come to me for everything they want.
Speaker 1: They leave messages with me and come to expect me
Speaker 1: to know where everything and everybody is. So you see,
Speaker 1: I am useful in a decidedly general way, so they
Speaker 1: can't say study spoils me for anything else. It may
Speaker 1: feel disheartening to think that she was having to act
Speaker 1: out feminine stereotypes to smooth her way at the university,
Speaker 1: but she also saw this as a means to an end.
Speaker 1: In that same letter, she also said, quote, I hope
Speaker 1: that I am winning away which others will keep open.
Speaker 1: Perhaps the fact that I am not a radical and
Speaker 1: that I do not score womanly duties but deem it
Speaker 1: a privilege to clean up and supervise the room and
Speaker 1: so things, etc. Is winning me stronger allies. She also
Speaker 1: faced some personal hardship during her first year at MIT.
Speaker 1: In March of eighteen seventy one, her father died four
Speaker 1: days after being struck by a train. She had to
Speaker 1: travel back and forth between Boston and her family home
Speaker 1: in Worcester every day to care for her father in
Speaker 1: the last days of his life, to see to his
Speaker 1: affairs after his death, and to care for her mother,
Speaker 1: who was chronically ill. And although there were certainly people
Speaker 1: who tried to make her feel welcome at MIT, almost
Speaker 1: none of them were women, which felt lonely. There were
Speaker 1: literally almost no other women there. She did become friends
Speaker 1: with Margaret Stenson, who was MIT's first and at this
Speaker 1: point possibly still the only woman employee, Margaret Stenson, managed
Speaker 1: the supplies for the chemistry department. Ellen once again excelled
Speaker 1: as a student in In eighteen seventy three, a committee
Speaker 1: voted to allow her to present herself as a candidate
Speaker 1: for a degree and to take the exams required to
Speaker 1: earn that degree. She graduated in eighteen seventy three with
Speaker 1: a bachelor's degree in chemistry, making her the first woman
Speaker 1: to graduate from MT. Based on the content of her thesis,
Speaker 1: Vassar also awarded her a Master of Arts degree, and
Speaker 1: she really wanted to go on to pursue a PhD.
Speaker 1: Various sources suggest that MIT balked at the idea of
Speaker 1: possibly awarding its first PhD in chemistry to a woman,
Speaker 1: but she also just didn't have the money to continue
Speaker 1: to pursue her education. While studying an MIT, Ellen had
Speaker 1: met doctor Robert H. Richards, head of the Department of
Speaker 1: Mining Engineering. Again. In the words of biographer Caroline Louisa Hunt, quote,
Speaker 1: Miss Swallow and Professor Richards, differing widely in temperament, she
Speaker 1: being quick to see, to move, and to act, he slow,
Speaker 1: deliberate and judicial in his mental attitude, had met upon
Speaker 1: the common ground of interest in scientific pursuits and had
Speaker 1: fallen in love with each other. Robert proposed to Ellen
Speaker 1: in the lab in eighteen seventy three, but she did
Speaker 1: not give him an answer. He was not her first suitor,
Speaker 1: and she had seen a lot of women's lives completely
Speaker 1: changed after getting married because at that point they were
Speaker 1: expected to start focusing exclusively on their homes and families.
Speaker 1: She wanted to be sure that a marriage to Robert
Speaker 1: Richards would not put an end to her educational and
Speaker 1: scientific pursuits. In the interim, she established a private practice
Speaker 1: in sanitary chemistry, doing things like testing food for adulterance,
Speaker 1: checking wallpaper and fabric for arsenic and measuring air and
Speaker 1: water quality. Although she did this to earn a living,
Speaker 1: she also worked for free for people and organizations that
Speaker 1: were struggling. In eighteen seventy five, Ellen agreed to marry
Speaker 1: Robert Richards, and they made it pretty clear pretty much
Speaker 1: immediately that their marriage would not derail her work. Ellen
Speaker 1: and Robert worked together often throughout their marriage, and their
Speaker 1: honeymoon was a working trip to Nova Scotia with his
Speaker 1: mining students. They were touring a bunch of mines and
Speaker 1: taking samples and purse supervising all these college kids, isn't
Speaker 1: it romantic? Ellen and Robert moved into a home in Jamaica,
Speaker 1: plane and until Ellen's schedule got to the point that
Speaker 1: she needed full time help around the house, she allowed
Speaker 1: women students to board with them in exchange for helping
Speaker 1: with housekeeping. She also wanted their home to be comfortable, sanitary,
Speaker 1: and welcoming. As we said earlier, she loved plants, and
Speaker 1: she turned their dining room into a conservatory space that
Speaker 1: had potted plants on seemingly every surface. She was also
Speaker 1: focused on cleanliness and air quality, switching from a coal
Speaker 1: stove to a gas stove, and installing skylights, vents, and
Speaker 1: screened windows for ventilation. People talked about her immense hospitality.
Speaker 1: Sometimes she would welcome so many guests into their home
Speaker 1: that she had to give up her own bed, and
Speaker 1: she would sneak out to stay in a hotel after
Speaker 1: everyone else had gone to sleep. I have a fine note.
Speaker 1: Her focus on ventilation was huge. At one point, she
Speaker 1: wrote quote once breathed air is as much a waste
Speaker 1: as once used water and should be allowed to escape.
Speaker 1: Sewers are built for draining away used water. Flues are
Speaker 1: just as important to serve as sewers for used air.
Speaker 1: Since Robert was a department head, he earned enough money
Speaker 1: to support them both, but Ellen had no intention of
Speaker 1: stopping working. In conjunction with the Woman's Education Association of Boston,
Speaker 1: she launched the MIT Women's Laboratory, a facility specifically for
Speaker 1: women to study science, which opened in eighteen seventy six.
Speaker 1: Many of the students at the Women's Laboratory were teachers
Speaker 1: who wanted to improve their knowledge of the sciences, although
Speaker 1: some were studying out of personal interest and others were
Speaker 1: hoping to pursue a career in science or medicine. Richards
Speaker 1: was on the faculty, making her MIT's first woman faculty member,
Speaker 1: although she did not draw a salary and even contributed
Speaker 1: about a thousand dollars a year to the lab's operation.
Speaker 1: Helen Swallow Richards didn't just want to open up opportunities
Speaker 1: for women to study science at MIT. She also wanted
Speaker 1: to make scientific study accessible to women who couldn't go
Speaker 1: to college, So also in eighteen seventy six, she started
Speaker 1: working with the Society to encourage studies at home, eventually
Speaker 1: becoming head of its science section. She developed science curricula
Speaker 1: that people could pursue at home. By correspondence, this society
Speaker 1: had been founded in eighteen seventy three, following the example
Speaker 1: of Britain's Society for the Encouragement of Home Study. But
Speaker 1: while the British Society was primarily focused on the education
Speaker 1: of upper class women, it's American counterpart wanted to make
Speaker 1: education accessible to women of any class. Ultimately, all kinds
Speaker 1: of people were taking these classes at home, older people
Speaker 1: who were looking for something to enrich their time, disabled people,
Speaker 1: people with chronic illnesses, children whose local schools didn't have
Speaker 1: the resources to teach particular subs. In detail, black women
Speaker 1: and girls who were shut out of whites only schools,
Speaker 1: and women and girls who faced discrimination at school because
Speaker 1: of their gender. Also, in eighteen seventy six, Ellen accompanied
Speaker 1: her husband on a work trip to Germany, and there
Speaker 1: she learned about naturalist zoologists and physician Ernst Heckel's ideas
Speaker 1: around ecology, which he spelled oekology. He described this as
Speaker 1: the study of organisms in their own environment. After getting
Speaker 1: back to the United States, Richards built on this to
Speaker 1: formulate her own ideas of ecology, which she described as
Speaker 1: quote the science of the conditions of the health and
Speaker 1: well being of everyday human life. Her ideas on this
Speaker 1: had connections to later movements for environmental activism and conservation.
Speaker 1: She thought humans were interacting with, rather than acting on,
Speaker 1: the world around us, and her ideas of ecology encompassed
Speaker 1: the home and the built world, not just what we
Speaker 1: would think of as nature. Although the word ecology still
Speaker 1: carries this sense today in terms like urban ecology, it
Speaker 1: pretty quickly became more widely used in a sense that's
Speaker 1: more about the natural environment than the built environment. But
Speaker 1: for the rest of her career, Richard's ideas on things
Speaker 1: like sanitation and conservation were more holistic, including not just
Speaker 1: household cleanliness, but also clean air, clean water, and clean
Speaker 1: streets in public spaces. As just a glimpse of how
Speaker 1: she talked about these ideas, here is something she had
Speaker 1: to say about water. Quote. Water is held to be
Speaker 1: a gift of nature to man for use by all,
Speaker 1: and therefore not to be diverted from its natural channels
Speaker 1: for the pleasure of or profit of anyone, to the
Speaker 1: exclusion of the rest. Neither has won the right to
Speaker 1: return to the channel water unfit for the use of
Speaker 1: his neighbor farther down the stream in eighteen se seventy eight.
Speaker 1: In eighteen seventy nine, Richards studied the quality and purity
Speaker 1: of food at the request of the Massachusetts Board of Health,
Speaker 1: which had been founded in eighteen sixty nine. Her results
Speaker 1: were published in the first annual report of what was
Speaker 1: then known as the State Board of Health, Lunacy, and
Speaker 1: Charity under the title the Adulterations of Some Staple Groceries.
Speaker 1: Her work suggested that when food was adulterated, the adulteration
Speaker 1: happened during manufacturing, not at the grocer's who sold the
Speaker 1: product to consumers. She outlined various adulterants that she had
Speaker 1: found in staples like flour, sugar, and baking powder, as
Speaker 1: well as her conclusion that supposedly better equality products were
Speaker 1: often chemically identical to cheaper ones, so people were paying
Speaker 1: more for something that they thought was more pure but
Speaker 1: really wasn't. Richards later studies of food adulteration would uncover
Speaker 1: some dramatic examples, like mahogany sawdust used in place of cinnamon.
Speaker 1: Richard's work in this area is often cited as a
Speaker 1: reason that Massachusetts passed a Food and Drug Act in
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty two, more than twenty years before the Federal
Speaker 1: Pure Food and Drug Act of nineteen oh six. In
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty one, Ellen Swallow Richards, Alice Freeman Palmer, and
Speaker 1: others came together to establish the Association of Collegiate Alumna
Speaker 1: which later became the American Association of University Women. A
Speaker 1: year later, with the help of the Women's Education Association,
Speaker 1: she established the Summer Seaside Laboratory on Cape Ann in Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: and that was one of the marine research laboratories that
Speaker 1: eventually became part of Woods Whole Oceanographic Institution. In eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty two, Richards also published her first book, The Chemistry
Speaker 1: of Cooking and Cleaning, a manual for Housekeepers, which described cooking, cleaning,
Speaker 1: and sanitation in terms of applied science. It had four
Speaker 1: chapters Starch, sugar and Fat as Food, Nitrogenous Food, and
Speaker 1: the Chemistry of Nutrition, The Chemistry of cleaning, and Chemicals
Speaker 1: for household use. She also published a pamphlet called First
Speaker 1: Lessons in Minerals, which was a guide for teachers that
Speaker 1: she had developed by working with classes of elementary school
Speaker 1: children in Boston. Not long after this, the women's lab
Speaker 1: at MIT closed, which we will get to after another
Speaker 1: sponsor break. In eighteen eighty three, MT started enrolling women
Speaker 1: as regular students, and the women's laboratory closed. Since women
Speaker 1: were being enrolled as part of the regular student body,
Speaker 1: there was no longer a separate laboratory needed. Richards said
Speaker 1: of this quote, I feel like a woman whose children
Speaker 1: are all about to be married and leave her alone
Speaker 1: so that she is to move into a smaller house
Speaker 1: than a new neighborhood. You see it as quite a
Speaker 1: change for me, and though I knew it was coming,
Speaker 1: I cannot at once fit all the corners. My work
Speaker 1: is done and happily done, but the energy will have
Speaker 1: to be used somehow, And that is the question. That
Speaker 1: question was because at first it seemed like the lab's
Speaker 1: closure meant that Richards wouldn't have a job at MT anymore.
Speaker 1: But in April of eighteen eighty four, a committee voted
Speaker 1: to appoint her as an assistant under chemistry Professor William
Speaker 1: Ripley Nichols, where she would teach a course in sanitary
Speaker 1: chemistry at a salary of six hundred dollars per year.
Speaker 1: A month later, the committee revised that amount to one
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, and once again described MIT's relationship with her
Speaker 1: as an experiment which quote in no way commits itself
Speaker 1: to the continuance of this instruction in sanitary chemistry unless
Speaker 1: encouraged by the results of this year of trial. She
Speaker 1: also acted as the Dean of Women, although she was
Speaker 1: not formally given that title. This experiment was a success.
Speaker 1: Richards taught at MIT for the rest of her life.
Speaker 1: She had previously worked as a chemist for the Massachusetts
Speaker 1: Sport of Health, and in eighteen eighty seven she was
Speaker 1: asked to undertake a comprehensive study of drinking water quality
Speaker 1: in Massachusetts. This built on work that she had done
Speaker 1: assisting Professor Nichols at MIT while she was a student,
Speaker 1: although that had been on a much smaller scale. At
Speaker 1: the Sanitary Chemistry Lab at MIT, she examined roughly twenty
Speaker 1: thousand water samples from all over the state. One thing
Speaker 1: she was looking at was chlorine, which was an indicator
Speaker 1: of both industrial and household water pollution. To that end,
Speaker 1: she created a normal chlorine map, which showed how much
Speaker 1: chlorine should be in a water supply based on things
Speaker 1: like how far it was from the ocean, if a
Speaker 1: water supply had more chlorine than it should, that suggested
Speaker 1: the presence of other pollutants. This was the first known
Speaker 1: study of drinking water quality of this scale, and it
Speaker 1: is also credited with both water quality laws and the
Speaker 1: establishment of a municipal sewage treatment plant in Lowell, northwest
Speaker 1: of Boston. She continued to work for the Board of
Speaker 1: Health as a water analyst for the next ten years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we haven't explained specifically what sanitary chemistry means, but it
Speaker 1: includes all of this kind of stuff like examining air
Speaker 1: quality and water quality and waste disposal, and it also
Speaker 1: extends into things like cleanliness and hygiene. It's a pretty
Speaker 1: broad field that touches on all of those things. In
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety, Richards helped establish the New England Kitchen, which
Speaker 1: we talked about in our previous episode on the Bureau
Speaker 1: of Home Economics. This kitchen was meant to serve multiple purposes.
Speaker 1: It would provide inexpensive, nourishing foods to supplement the diets
Speaker 1: of Boston's poor and working class residence, and it would
Speaker 1: also demonstrate cooking and sanitation techniques. One of the tools
Speaker 1: that it used was the Aladdin oven invented by Edward Atkinson,
Speaker 1: which burned kerosene rather than coal and was a lot
Speaker 1: more efficient. It was estimated that a pound of kerosene
Speaker 1: burned and an Aladdin oven could replace as much as
Speaker 1: seventy pounds of coal in a traditional oven. The Aladdin
Speaker 1: oven was used for slow cooking, so that allowed the
Speaker 1: staff at the kitchen to slow cook cheap cuts of
Speaker 1: meat until they were tender and at least in the
Speaker 1: minds of the staff, delicious. However, the New England kitchen
Speaker 1: was also preparing what was described as Yankee cuisine, foods
Speaker 1: that often had British roots, sometimes influenced by cuisine from
Speaker 1: indigenous nations living in the northeastern US, as in quote
Speaker 1: beef broth, vegetable soup, pea soup, cornmeal, mush boiled hominy, oatmeal,
Speaker 1: mush pressed beef, beef stew, fish chowder, tomato soup, Indian pudding,
Speaker 1: rice pudding, and oatmeal cakes. Case you don't know, what's
Speaker 1: called Indian pudding is a baked zert made with cormeal
Speaker 1: and molasses. But most of the people the kitchen was
Speaker 1: trying to feed were immigrants from other parts of Europe
Speaker 1: who just had very different tastes. Many found the menu
Speaker 1: at the New England Kitchen to be unappealing based on
Speaker 1: what they could make at home. Although the New England
Speaker 1: Kitchen did not become popular as just a go to
Speaker 1: source of food for local workers, it did have an
Speaker 1: impact in other ways. It was eventually taken over by
Speaker 1: the Women's Educational and Industrial Union, and it was under
Speaker 1: contract to provide school lunches to the Boston School Committee
Speaker 1: for years. It also informed the Rumford Kitchen, which was
Speaker 1: named for Sir Benjamin Thompson, count Rumford, which was a
Speaker 1: display kitchen that was set up at the Massachusetts State
Speaker 1: Fair and then at the eighteen ninety three World's Fair
Speaker 1: in Chicago that both fairs, this kitchen offered food to
Speaker 1: visitors and also conducted demonstrations of things like cooking and
Speaker 1: sanitation techniques. Research into nutrition was also conducted at the
Speaker 1: New England Kitchen, the Rumford Kitchen, and at MIT. This
Speaker 1: was very early in the establishment of nutrition as a science.
Speaker 1: The term vitamin had not been coined yet, and although
Speaker 1: various minerals like iron and potassium had been isolated, vitamins
Speaker 1: had not. Research into nutrition was critically important, For example,
Speaker 1: today we know that vitamin C deficiency causes scurvy, vitamin
Speaker 1: D deficiency causes rickets, and niacin deficiency causes pelagra, all
Speaker 1: of which can be life threatening. But at this point
Speaker 1: people only knew that these diseases existed, not what was
Speaker 1: causing them or how to treat or prevent them. But
Speaker 1: this also paved the way for things like government dietary guidelines,
Speaker 1: which have a very complicated history. Yeah, I feel like
Speaker 1: that's the whole other digression. In eighteen ninety four, Richards
Speaker 1: was elected to be an alumna trustee at vass One
Speaker 1: of her first tasks as part of that body involved
Speaker 1: dealing with a sewage crisis at the college. Vassard's sewage
Speaker 1: system had been put in place in eighteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: and after converting a lot of solid waste into fertilizer,
Speaker 1: it then discharged the remaining liquid into nearby creeks. Local
Speaker 1: residents were tired of the sewer water in their creeks.
Speaker 1: They were demanding some other solution, and a proposal had
Speaker 1: been made to build a pipeline to instead carry the
Speaker 1: waste runoff to the Hudson River just dump in another
Speaker 1: body of water it's fine, Dad was the plan. Richards
Speaker 1: convinced the trustees to instead implement a plan that involved
Speaker 1: creating a drain field that would be less expensive and
Speaker 1: less destructive. In her words, quote, this is a valuable
Speaker 1: record of the possibility of sewage utilization without offense, and
Speaker 1: of the right principle in taking care of the wastes
Speaker 1: of an establishment by itself, instead of fouling a stream
Speaker 1: to become a menace to the health of others and
Speaker 1: an expense to helpless dwellers further down. It is thus
Speaker 1: in the line of modern economic and sociological investigation, a
Speaker 1: line which must be followed up if the land is
Speaker 1: to remain safely habitable. Yeah, she was very frustrated that
Speaker 1: there was even a plan being discussed to build this
Speaker 1: pipeline to the Hudson River. She was like, as a university,
Speaker 1: we should be taking a leadership role in disposing of
Speaker 1: this waste in like a sanitary, non polluting way as
Speaker 1: much as possible. It was also around this same time
Speaker 1: that two overlapping fields were evolving that would be a
Speaker 1: big part of Richard's career for the last fifteen years
Speaker 1: of her life. One was home economics, as we set
Speaker 1: up at the top of the show. Richards convene the
Speaker 1: conference in Lake Placid, New York, in eighteen ninety nine.
Speaker 1: That is where the name home economics was coined and
Speaker 1: agreed upon to represent this field. Annual conferences followed, and
Speaker 1: in nineteen o two, delegates the conference agreed on this definition.
Speaker 1: Quote one, home economics, in its most comprehensive sense, is
Speaker 1: the study of laws, conditions, principles, and ideals which are
Speaker 1: concerned on the one hand, with man's immediate physical environment
Speaker 1: and on the other hand, with his nature as a
Speaker 1: social being. And is the study specifically of the relation
Speaker 1: between these two factors. Two. In a narrow sense, the
Speaker 1: term is given to the study of the empirical sciences,
Speaker 1: with special reference to the practical problems of housework, cooking, etc.
Speaker 1: As was the case with the term ecology, Richard's ideas
Speaker 1: about home economics were really broader than this. She had
Speaker 1: envisioned a field that was focused on applied science in
Speaker 1: the context of people's everyday lives. She had hoped that
Speaker 1: the field would encompass things like sanitation, air quality, water
Speaker 1: quality conservation, and preserving the natural world through science. This
Speaker 1: would certainly involve the home, something that she hoped would
Speaker 1: both make women's lives easier and more efficient, and would
Speaker 1: offer mental stimulation and enrichment through the learning of science.
Speaker 1: But it wouldn't just be about housework or things that
Speaker 1: were considered women's work. That brings us to the other field,
Speaker 1: which was euthenics, which she coined to mean quote the
Speaker 1: science of controllable environment. Euthenics incorporated sanitary science, education, and
Speaker 1: practical applications of sciences to everyday life, all folded together
Speaker 1: with progressive social reform. She hoped that euthenics would similarly
Speaker 1: lead to laws that would prevent disease by preventing contamination
Speaker 1: to the soil, water, and food by requiring things like
Speaker 1: waste removal and ventilation and buildings, and she hoped that
Speaker 1: this would bring an efficiency to those same goals conserving
Speaker 1: resources and preserving the natural environment. One of the reasons
Speaker 1: that Richards was involved in the home economics movement was
Speaker 1: that she thought it might help bring euthenics into a
Speaker 1: wider use. You can see where there's like some overlap
Speaker 1: in them. Both of the home economics movement and euthenics
Speaker 1: were connected to the idea of racial improvement. This was
Speaker 1: during the eugenics movement in the United States, which was
Speaker 1: a movement that was racist, classist, and ablest, but also
Speaker 1: incredibly widely accepted and normalized. This was rooted in the
Speaker 1: idea that humanity could improve itself through so called good breeding,
Speaker 1: which ultimately involved everything from encouraging the so called right
Speaker 1: people to have more children to forcibly sterilizing disabled people,
Speaker 1: people of color, and others perceived as undesirable. Although this
Speaker 1: basic concept was applied across races, it was also threaded
Speaker 1: through with the idea that the white race was superior
Speaker 1: and needed to be kept pure. So we've talked about
Speaker 1: this we've met a number of times on the show before,
Speaker 1: including in our episode The Calcax and the Eugenicists, which
Speaker 1: we are actually rerunning as an upcoming Saturday Classic. The
Speaker 1: eugenics movement in the United States went on to influence
Speaker 1: the Nazi Party's ideas on race science, and that led
Speaker 1: to hundreds of thousands of forced sterilizations as well as murders.
Speaker 1: Most of the most horrific outcomes of the eugenics movement
Speaker 1: took place after Ellen Swallow Richard's death, but its core
Speaker 1: ideas of better breeding and racial purity were part of
Speaker 1: her work in both home economics and euthenics. She saw
Speaker 1: euthenics as a more efficient way to reach the same
Speaker 1: outcomes as the eugenics movement was proposing. In particular, she
Speaker 1: thought it would take many generations to improve humanity through
Speaker 1: better breeding, but that euthenics could have a more immediate impact.
Speaker 1: Steps like removing pollutants from the soil, water, and air,
Speaker 1: requiring building to be well ventilated, removing garbage from streets
Speaker 1: and alleys, and encouraging people to eat nutritious food and
Speaker 1: keep their homes clean and sanitary would all play a
Speaker 1: role in improving the human race. And we should also
Speaker 1: take a moment to note that beyond this connection to
Speaker 1: like racial purity and eugenics, Richard's work was primarily focused
Speaker 1: on white middle class women. Like that menu at the
Speaker 1: New England kitchen that we talked about earlier, she really
Speaker 1: thought that that kind of food was standard and was
Speaker 1: what immigrant families should be encouraged to eat. Sometimes she
Speaker 1: could be disparaging and how she talked about sanitation as
Speaker 1: it applied to immigrants, to poor people, to people of color.
Speaker 1: It was kind of contradictory. Sometimes she would simultaneously recognize
Speaker 1: that people were living in a society that forced them
Speaker 1: to live in substandard housing in neighborhoods that didn't have
Speaker 1: things like running water or proper disposal of garbage, but
Speaker 1: it all most the exact same time. She would kind
Speaker 1: of assume that a lack of sanitation in these people's
Speaker 1: homes was due to their own ignorance if you just
Speaker 1: tried harder, right. Ellen Swallow Richards spent the last decade
Speaker 1: or so of her life traveling extensively doing research work, lecturing,
Speaker 1: attending scientific meetings, and connecting with faculty members from other
Speaker 1: universities and other figures within the home economics movement. She
Speaker 1: continued to advocate for euthenics and to incorporate it in
Speaker 1: other areas of her work. For example, it was incorporated
Speaker 1: into her nineteen oh five book The Cost of Shelter,
Speaker 1: which was an exploration of the idea of home, the
Speaker 1: role that home plays in society, and the cost per
Speaker 1: person of various types of shelter. She also published Euthenics,
Speaker 1: The Science of Controllable Environment in nineteen ten. That same year,
Speaker 1: she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Smith College. She
Speaker 1: also spoke at MIT's convocation year, saying, in part quote,
Speaker 1: the quality of life depends on the ability of society
Speaker 1: to teach its members how to live in harmony with
Speaker 1: their environment, defined first as the family, then with the community,
Speaker 1: then with the world and its resources. In the last
Speaker 1: few months of her life, Ellen Swallow Richards started to
Speaker 1: show signs of heart disease, and her friends noticed her
Speaker 1: struggling to do things that she had been able to
Speaker 1: do before. She died on March thirtieth, nineteen eleven. Her husband, Robert,
Speaker 1: later remarried. He died in nineteen forty five. Although the
Speaker 1: field of euthenics did continue after Ellen Swallow Richard's death,
Speaker 1: it was largely overshadowed by home economics. There were many
Speaker 1: reasons for this, including the decline of public support for
Speaker 1: eugenics after the horrors of the Nazi eugenics program. Eugenics
Speaker 1: and euthenics just sounded so similar that it was really
Speaker 1: not possible to separate the two of them in people's mind.
Speaker 1: The home economics field also continued to diverge from the
Speaker 1: more broad science based scope that Richards had envisioned for it,
Speaker 1: and gradually it became mostly focused on homemaking. I think
Speaker 1: those of us have an age to remember homemet classes
Speaker 1: in high school. Remember that it was like a practical
Speaker 1: class about cooking and cleaning and sewing. Although things like
Speaker 1: those home economic classes have really declined in recent decades,
Speaker 1: a lot of the fields that were originally considered to
Speaker 1: be part of home economics, like food science and textile
Speaker 1: science and child development, like those individual fields are still
Speaker 1: thriving to some extent. The field of family and consumer
Speaker 1: sciences is like the successor to home economics as a field,
Speaker 1: and of course a lot of Richard's work on things
Speaker 1: like ventilation and water pollution are just still incredibly relevant today.
Speaker 1: Over the course of her career, Ellen Swallow Richards wrote
Speaker 1: or co wrote eighteen books in addition to the ones
Speaker 1: we've already mentioned. Some others were The Cost of Living,
Speaker 1: Industrial Water Analysis, and Conservation by Sanitation. MIT established the
Speaker 1: Ellen Swallow Richards Professorship to recognize distinguished women faculty members
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy three. I love a whole lot of
Speaker 1: things about her life and career, and I wish there
Speaker 1: had not been eugenics. Yeah, which is the case with
Speaker 1: just a lot of nineteenth and early twentieth century people
Speaker 1: and movements. Yes, I also have some listener mail. Our
Speaker 1: listener mail is from Kristen, and Kristen wrote, Dear Holly
Speaker 1: and Tracy, I recently acquired several boxes of early twentieth
Speaker 1: century sheet music. I happened to be in the middle
Speaker 1: of going through it right when Irving Berlin came up?
Speaker 1: Is your subject? What a fun coincidence. Beer discussion of
Speaker 1: sheet music, both during the episode and in the behind
Speaker 1: the scenes mirrored some of my own discoveries of the
Speaker 1: trends of the time. Bright colored covers, the love of
Speaker 1: the quote, exotic, sexual innu window, and sometimes racially problematic
Speaker 1: lyrics are all fairly common. Most have advertisements for music
Speaker 1: from the publisher on the inside front cover. Some have
Speaker 1: a full page sample. I've also found that many have
Speaker 1: an introduction that's meant to repeat until your performers are ready.
Speaker 1: The most charming trend that I've run across is the
Speaker 1: common inclusion of a ukulele part. Maybe that'll be the
Speaker 1: next instrument I shall learn. Of course, the box of
Speaker 1: sheet music contained an Irving Berlin, which I've pictured below
Speaker 1: with some other examples from my box of Treasures one
Speaker 1: more thing being of that same certain age as you
Speaker 1: find Ladies. I immediately had to pause the episode to
Speaker 1: watch Fozzy Bear sing simple Melody with Gene Stapleton. A
Speaker 1: Muppet break is always welcome if you notice Fozzy is
Speaker 1: playing a ukulele. I find all of your episodes enjoyable,
Speaker 1: but this one felt like a study guide for my
Speaker 1: latest musical project. Thank you so much for all you do.
Speaker 1: I've attached my pet pick of zach our one ear up,
Speaker 1: one ear down, German Shepherd sharp a mix. This is favorite,
Speaker 1: yet not so convenient spot to sit and people watch
Speaker 1: Best Wishes Kristen. So Zach is sitting on the stairs
Speaker 1: kind of looking out through the banister, which my cats
Speaker 1: also do, except they also stick their heads out of
Speaker 1: the banister sometimes, which is occasionally cute and also sometimes alarming,
Speaker 1: because there are spots on the banister that are just,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, too high up for them to be
Speaker 1: potentially jumping down off of. Also, one of the many
Speaker 1: things in that episode that wound up being cut out
Speaker 1: for sake of time was that a lot of music
Speaker 1: out of tenpenn Alley had a very similar structure, and
Speaker 1: I don't want to call it a formula because I
Speaker 1: feel like that has negative connotations. But there was a
Speaker 1: pattern that was recognizable, and it was an introduction, a
Speaker 1: short vamp that drew from the melody and the rhythm
Speaker 1: of the rest of the song at least two verses,
Speaker 1: and then a chorus with two different endings, one that
Speaker 1: was going to be used if you were repeating the
Speaker 1: chorus and another if you were instead looping back to
Speaker 1: the introduction or the vamp. So like that is a
Speaker 1: you see that same pattern over and over. Also, if
Speaker 1: I had to speculate, there's probably a lot of ukulele
Speaker 1: parts because the ukulele is a very inexpensive instrument, which
Speaker 1: made it a lot easier for folks to get their
Speaker 1: hands on than something that might cost a little bit
Speaker 1: more or money, like a violin or a guitar as
Speaker 1: examples of things that I feel like are a little
Speaker 1: more expensive than the Ukuleleas So, anyway, that's my conjecture.
Speaker 1: Don't cite that as like historical fact. If you'd like
Speaker 1: to write to us about this or any other podcast
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