A WOMAN'S FARM JOURNAL - University of Illinois

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£ : - " Applying the Service of Home-Demonstration Agents to bur Work of Reconstruction
W - ADA MELVILLE SHAW . '
THIS first page-of this issue of THE FARMER'S WIFE, Miss
ON Mamie Bunch, Illinois State Leader in Home Economics Demon*
i* stration, discussed the subject of woman's training for home-making
and citizenship. Miss Bunch closes her article by asking, "Have
you volunteered for training, for the support of this service in your
r community?" This is a question of tremendous importance.
The day is past and almost forgotten
when it was taken for granted that because
a woman was a woman she was
therefore by nature and without further
special preparation, a good mother,
seamstress, cook, laundress, nurse and
so on through the long list.of her takenfor-granted
duties. Gone with that day
is the one when it was also taken for
vgrantedfthat being born of the feminine
sex automatically disqualified her for
and debarred her from the duties of citizenship.
Those "good old-days," peace
to their ashes! had begun to pass before
the Kaiser's 'madness set the world on
?fire, and the war-period has ushered in
;the dawn of the new- and better days.
Miss Bunch calls bur attention to the
Summons of the period just before us—
a summons equal to any call we heard
during the war and a summons to which
women cannot make sufficient and efficient
reply unless we are outfitted and
drilled—even as our soldiers were.
I was talking very recently with the
president of a woman's club which has
installed in a small town a . Communitycenter
rest room to which country women
are most ¦ I heard a patriotic woman say this: "I celebrated the armistice by
making a big pan of fluffy, white-flour baking-powder biscuit! How
good they tasted! But I shall not be extravagant again—there are too
many hungry."
So I am sure we all say. We have not really let down—we have
only been taking a breath of relief before we settle to the harness of service
and begin anew the long up-hill
march. Al| the peoples Over There
need the help of the "land of the free,"
and in order to give that help, you and
I must go on doing, each in her own
place.
Is our specialty just being mothers?
Then let us put ourselves in line for all
the mother-wisdom that's
heartily welcomed. She
told me two facts that come forcibly to
me as I write .this article:'
(1) How wonderfully the farm women
measured up in all war work, and
THE STATE IS DIVIDED *-' \
INTO SEVEN GENERAL DIS-
TRICTS. -COUNTIES IN BLACK
HAVE COUNTY HOME ADVISERS AT
WORK, THOSE CROSS-BARRED ARE
(2) That all women as well as all men
seem now to be more or less letting
down in their community work.
ORGANIZED TO INTERVIEW CAN-
DIDATES. SLANT LINES INDICATE
ORGANIZATION NEARI NO COMPLE-
TION. CITY AGENTS EMPLOYED
ARE INDICATED BY DOT.
Of course farm women were wonderful
in their service for they have had long
and intensive -training in helpfulness!
Equally, of 'course, if women have re- HIS map, coupled with Miss Mamie Bunch 's article (see page
J
laxed a bit now the trenches are not 164) on Training Home Makers, puts squarely before every rural
community reached by THE FARMER'S WIFE, the proposition of the
dealing out and receiving death, they practical value of Home Demonstration workers not alone to the indi-
will be the first to come back to the full vidual iarm home community but to the stale and the nation. Could
THE FARMER'S WWE swing of reconstruction. ,
gather in the testimony of every rural home that
¦„ knows by f irst-hand experience, tlie value of these trained helpers, the
The accompanying map of Illinois' story would make a volume of inspiring facts.
organization for skilled home-making Our readers are hereby heartily invited to tell THE FARMER'S WIFE
and splendid citizenship shows much by correspondence what they know about County Home Advisers or, as
done, much more to; be done.
they are more commonly called, Home Demonstration Agents.
The war is over , but the price of
war has still to be paid and the lessons
of war applied to peace. Brief was the proclamation that declared By availing themselves of the.service of the War Emergency Agents
us as war-participators: it took every man, woman and child of us, sent out through the agency of the State Universities, rural communities
to win the conflict! The armistice was signed in the presence of a in great numbers took tremendous strides forward in the science of
few men, and at the Conference Table of the Nations a mere handful of home-making. The work is but begun and no one but the home-makers
leaders will decide on the terms of Peace:it -will take every man, woman themselves can go on with it. It is a progress that begins at the center
and child of us to work out the terms >of peace and carry on the new and works out and it will begin and work out, exactly as fast and far
era that has begun.
as the people in the homes and communities desire and will that it should.
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