Domestic sciences at Bradley Polytechnic Institute and The University of Chicago

Caroline Hunt describes Ellen Richards in her classic biography as "loving power."45 In another section Hunt describes how Richards prepared for leading the Lake Placid meetings. "Never before was there such a leader as Mrs. Richards," she wrote. She continued, "Before she came to a meeting of the Lake Placid Conference she had her plans all fully laid in accordance with her idea of what was due to the busy people she was bringing together. ... She could cut off fruitless debate without injuring anyone's feelings, and could bring out all of value that the members had to contribute, and at the same time suppress all that was irrelevant."" According to Brown, "She had a way of ignoring views contrary to her own and of technically 'managing' the conference when her claims to truth, to rightness of norms, or to the clarity of her conceptions were questioned ... Nevertheless, it was authoritarianism with a friendly face because a number of participants admired her leadership ... perhaps because she had a certain charisma among Victorian women."" Certainly Ellen Richards was the key figure of these important conferences. Was she the founder of home economics? Certainly most, if not all textbooks, point to her as the founder. Or rather, was she the most vocal, with great charisma, who was able to "organize" what had been going on for perhaps as long as fifty years?

So, when did Domestic Science, which blended into home economics and now Family and Consumer Sciences, begin? Why? In most history books, Ellen Richards and the Lake Placid Conferences are attributed as being primarily responsible for the founding of the profession of home economics. How might the Lake Placid Conferences have differed in their conclusions had the history up to that point of the field been given fair considerations? What if more land grant institutions from the Midwest, particularly those that practiced "industrials," had been allowed a more vocal voice in those conferences? What if more social sciences had been integrated in the rhetoric that came out of the official positions of the Lake Placid Conferences? Would history of home economics have been written any differently?

The founding departments of Domestic Science or Domestic Economy at Bradley Polytechnic Institute and The University of Chicago shared similar names and a president. Their philosophies, however, were very different as evidenced by their course offerings and founders' influences. Ellen Richards will always be an important person in the professional history of home economics. I would contend that perhaps we should continue to search, along with significant authors such as Marjorie Brown and others who raise at least as many questions as answers. Nellie Kedzie's presence in Illinois, along with Marion Talbot's strong influence at The University of Chicago (as well as Isabel Bevier at the University of Illinois) makes an argument for Illinois to be among the important seats of the beginnings of the profession.