Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 202, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 August 1919 — GOOD FROM WORK OF HOME-DEMONSTRATION AGENTS IS DECLARED TO BE TREMENDOUS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

GOOD FROM WORK OF HOME-DEMONSTRATION AGENTS IS DECLARED TO BE TREMENDOUS

(Prepared by the United States Department of Agriculture.) For several years TTncle Sam, through the state relations service of the United States department of agriculture, has been sending home-dem-onstration agents into the highways and byways to help housewives with their problems. Approximately 1.700 of these trained workers are in city or country, and the help they have been able to give is represented by a long list of activities varied to suit the section in which the agent works. Some of their work, such as helping women retrim hats, may seem petty, but in the aggregate, the good from the work of the home-demonstration agents is believed to be tremendous. Work of Many Kinds. In addition to the universal problems of feeding the family, baking prize-winning bread, canning vegetables, coaxing hens to lay, trimming hats, making fireless cookers, and bathing the baby properly, there has been the work growing out of war conditions —the use of substitutes for wheat, meat, fats, and sugar, how to save fuel, learning to make and use cottage cheese, Americanization, thrift, and loan campaigns, salvage of clothing, Belgian relief, and a host of other activities. Guided by the home demonstration agents, many women have learned to can and store all kinds of food; to prepare well-balanced one-dish meals that save time and strength; and to rearrange their kitchens and add la-bor-saving machines; to establish community laundries, canneries, drying plants, and storage county where there was no man county agent, the home demonstration agent planned and conducted a seed corn campaign, took the labor census, kept the records of the, thrasher rings, and published a Farm Bureau News. Work in the West. The home demonstration agent in a western state showed farmers how to

po'sou grasshoppers, securea positions for 20 workers, and found homes for three old people. On a big reclamation project in Nevada the home demonstration agent found a group of women enduring the hardships of pioneering in an alkali country just nu&e over by Irrigation. After talking over various problems, this group decided that the thing they wanted most was some instruction in making dresses and hats. They said: "We can ‘get by* in some fashion with the cooking, but we cannot make goodlooking clothes and hats,” so they asked for a class in millinery. "It is marvelous the way they took to the work,” the home demonstration agent related. “Never before did I have such eager pupils. They came to my office and plied me with questions. I had classes twice a day and again at night. First we talked about textures, Hops, and colors that make for becomingness, suitability, and du*

rnbillty. We made a sample hat on which they learned some of the stitches and the problems of hat making. They worked very industriously on this, for we had agreed we would not use new material until they had learned how to ust* the old. In the meantime we sent to Los Angeles for a consignment of millinery supplies on approval. These we got at cost, thus providing the material for becoming, suitable and durable hats at small expense. , “There were incidents both amusing and pathetic. One womain,the mother of five children, said she had not had any dressup clothes for years, and that she thought it wasn’t worth while for her to have a hat herself, so she'd just make some hats for the two little girls. What a Hat Did.; “I said: ‘Mother should be especially well dressed. I’ll make your hat.’ I made the best-looking hat I could. When it was finished I sent for her to come to see if it fitted. She was delighted with it, but she said: ‘lt will make me look too young.’ I straightened her collar, rearranged her hair, and set the hat above it, and she did look ten years younger. Then she was afraid her husband would not like the hat. But a short time after she left the husband telephoned and said he had lost his former wife and a very good-looking young woman had come into his home and wanted to stay. He said ‘l’d like to let the old one go and keep the new one.’ “The next week the club women said : ‘Now, we have some good-look-ing hats and dresses, we want to learn your way of cooking.’ “The study of foods led the mothers to confer with the school teacher and later to assist in making plans for a hot dish for the school lunch. The help given during the ‘flu’ epidemic brought courses in Invalid cookery and home nursing. Then, because one woman cannot do everything for a whole county, and because the work develops the neighborly spirit, a school of instructions was organized to train volunteer workers from the community eager to help In other parts of the country."

A Most Excellent Helper on Wash Day.

A Kitchen Cabinet Saves Many Steps.