Clergyman Declares 'The Flat and Rooming House is a Curse'
Dr. M.A. Matthews criticizes modern housing and argues that a woman's sphere is strictly within the domestic home.
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"Woman, politics is not your sphere; your sphere is the home," said Dr. M. A. Matthews of Seattle at the First Methodist church here last night in a popular lecture in the Puget Sound university course on "The Four-Square Girl." "The flat and rooming house is a curse to domestic life," said the speaker. Girls should be taught the true destiny of women, which is to be home builders and mothers, he said, and when this is done and men are ostracised for their impurity the same as women, he declared the domestic problem would be largely solved.
“The flat and rooming house is a curse to domestic life.”
Matthews' critique of 'rooming houses' reflects a era of moral panic over shifting living arrangements in growing cities. His views on 'domestic destiny' capture the intense social pressure placed on women during the suffrage era, a sentiment that would be aggressively challenged in the following decade.
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