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The Home Beautiful Exposition was written about in the Cambridge Tribune on April 28, 1923. Below is a copy of the text of that article. It sounds like it is primarily for women, but I suppose men also got something out of it.
HOME BEAUTIFUL SHOW AT MECHANICS HALL
Continuing next week, it will be possible to acquire information at the Home Beautiful Exposition in Mechanics Building on home making—and keeping. All halls are taken, and though exhibitions are enough to incite wishes about where one’s money could go, especially if one had more of it, interest is keen about a feature of the exposition which is not to do at all with seeing and admiring, but hearing. There are non-trade lectures every afternoon and evening. Of course instruction is the dominant note of the home beautiful exposition. Great pains have been taken, however, to make instruction better than it ever has been before. One enters the exposition through aisles of concentrated luxury appealing to many tastes and with advantages of the objects carefully pointed out. There is a pleasing atmosphere created by skilled artists, who have draped delicate colored silks and used flowers and design to lovely effect. Huge inverted parasols decked with flowers hang half open secreting the direct lights of the main hall. One may compare the values of coal shovels or one may successfully hunt for a treasure trunk lucked away in the attic. The garden, the use of lake or river, the furnishing of a home, care of the furnishings, and how people in the homes may live happily ever after is carefully considered by the exposition. Exhibitors who have novelties to show, exhibitors whose things would not be directly applicable to home have been denied space. And exhibitors who have space are instructive. The public generally doesn’t know the difference between reed, rattan and willow. Then the public has a chance to find out. That is only one instance of instruction in the show itself. What for many persons makes the show itself incidental is the programme for homemakers which gives a list of lectures every day. Monday was a fair sample. Beginning at 1:30 there was a motion picture showing coffee from plantation to cup, a lecture which told how to cut a grapefruit in three halves and how husbands should prepare fruit for the breakfast while his wife sleeps, on to first steps in home owning, how to choose land, points on the deal, views of attractive homes and a musicale. The speakers are the best. Most of the time they are not trades people. They have been appointed to lecture .or the benefit of men, women and children. The doctor has his say. The dietitian has hers. The woman who knows how best to use color tells what she knows. A round table for engaged girls and a round table for brides are expected to attract eager attention. Eleanor J. Sutherland, director of home makers’ meetings and herself a bride of six months, will lead the round table discussion. Always Mr. Campbell has beauty, the ideal in home life. The programme is comprehensive. It remembers even lather's relation to an ideal home, the relation of the teacher, the vacationing treat. Women, by far and away, formed the larger part of the attendance although, especially in the evening, many a young man has been dragged along by a young woman with the determined light of housewifery in her eyes. Among the several addresses was that delivered by James D. Henderson, of Henderson & Ross. His topic was "First Steps in Home Owning." He urged every young couple by all means to own their own homes and said that it is not a very difficult thing to do, despite the slender incomes of youth. "When you rent you buy the landlord’s house for him," he said. “Your money pays his taxes and takes care of the depreciation of the property. If you move, there is never a refund on all the money you have paid him. “If you own your own home, and have to sell it for any reason, you can get hack your initial payment with enough more to pay a profit on every penny you have put into it." On Friday, John Clair Minot, literary editor of the Boston Herald, will talk at a round table discussion on "What’s What Among the New Books." The New England Farm and Garden Association will have lectures each morning from 10 to 12.
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