Domestic sciences at Bradley Polytechnic Institute and The University of Chicago

Much of the work of the Lake Placid Conferences downplayed any practical approaches to the collegiate work such as had been adopted by many western colleges. Instead, they focused on a social or economic approach such as had been adopted by The University of Chicago and the University of Illinois. When Nellie Kedzie became the founding head of Domestic Economy at Bradley Polytechnic Institute in 1897, Bradley was considered a "feeder school" for The University of Chicago. Bradley and The University of Chicago shared the same president, Harper, until his death. In fact, William Rainey Harper was instrumental in the founding of Bradley Polytechnic Institute. Thus, theoretically Nellie Kedzie and Marion Talbot were co-laborers; but their philosophies could not have been further from each other.

In 1896 Helen Stuart Campbell wrote Household Economics, called a course of lectures in the School of Economics of the University of Wisconsin. In her preface Campbell discussed the status of "household economy" in the country: "I have before me a series of letters from college presidents, all inquiring as to possibilities and expressing keen interest in the matter (of household economics). Cornell is one of these; but the feeling is much stronger in the West than in the East; Nebraska, Iowa State University and Iowa College at Grinnell, with many others, expressing not only interest, but full intention to get to work themselves as soon as money can be appropriated to this end."36 Thus writers acknowledged Domestic Sciences or Economy or Household Economics as a respected discipline and considered it to have a strong foothold in several western colleges.

From many sources, then, we find that household economics, domestic economy, or domestic science existed quite some years before the Lake Placid Conferences ever began. Why, then, do we ascribe the founding of a discipline that had existed in college curricula and some high schools several years before the so-called founding of a discipline?

Influence of Ellen Richards in the Founding of Home Economics

Ellen Richards was not only very talented, but she was also a very likeable person. Her childhood was somewhat unremarkable for someone from the middle class of the middle of the century. Her family valued education as well as achievement. Although there may be a hint she was "tomboyish," she was raised with some typical feminine skills. For example, when she was thirteen, her bread and embroidery won two grand prizes at the county fair. However, academic achievement and independence were among her most important goals.37

She was determined not to be swayed from her academic focus. From Worcester, where she had gone to study and support herself by tutoring, she wrote a friend that "the young or old gentleman has not yet made his appearance who can entice me away from my free and independent life."38 And yet we know she married Professor Robert Richards, head of the department of mining engineering in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1875, after she was the first woman to have graduated from that Institute. Conditions for her entry into MIT were unusual; Ehrenreich and English liken it to "... a group of surgeons ... invit[ing] Typhoid Mary to join them in the operating room."39 She could only be a special student; she had to study separately from male students and work in a segregated laboratory; she could not earn a graduate degree regardless of what she accomplished. The professors even asked her to sort their papers and mend their suspenders.