The food supply drawn upon must be sharply investigated lest it contain deleterious substances or be denuded of nourishing quality.
The ready-made clothing must be bought with knowledge and constant vigilance against cheating in material or in construction or in sins of fashion against health and beauty.

The labor-saving devices of every sort must be put to intelligent test and require specific training for most efficient use.

The family budget must be more carefully planned and more heroically maintained at prudent levels.
The public service of markets, transportation facilities and functions of "middlemen" must be understood and controlled as never before.
Above all, the pressure of uniformity must be resisted if the offered supply of the essentials of life prove inadequate to the deepest needs, or the scale of living be too ambitiously set by the housing facilities adjusted to the ideas and claims of landlords rather than to the needs of family life.
Hence we may say that the old forms of effort by which mothers fed and clothed and sheltered their children led directly to absorption of interest, energy and conscientious labor within the house.

The new forms of effort by which these essentials of healthful and comfortable living are secured lead directly to all manner of cooeperative social adjustments of supply to demand.

The standard of demand, however, let it never be forgotten, is made and maintained within the intimate family circle itself, and the personal intelligence and ethical maturity of the housemothers, who form the major purchasing class of every civilized community, determine that standard.