APPENDIX K..

CORNELL UNIVERSITY, COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE. BUREAU OF NATURE-STUDY AND FARMERS' READING-COURSE.

How to Organize a Farmers' Wives' Reading-Club.

At the present time there are three Correspondence courses conducted by the Farmers' Reading-course and Nature-study Bureau. These are (a) the Farmers' Reading-course, (b) the Farmers' Wives' Reading-course, and (c) the Home Nature-study course. These are especially adapted for study in clubs, and this circular suggests how women's clubs may be organized and conducted.

A club may consist of five or more members. An ideal number is twelve. Anyone interested in home work, directly or indirectly, is eligible to membership.

How to organize:-Some one must take the lead. Let this person (you) write us for information regarding the Readingcourses, distribute the circulars, and talk it over personally with as many women as possible. When interest has ripened, call a meeting at your own home, or some other convenient place, to consider organization. Then select a president and a secretary. She may be asked by the club to forward the answered quizzes in one consignment to this office. She should supply this office promptly with a list of the members and their addresses.

Select a suitable night for meeting. Each lesson will furnish subject matter for two meetings. One lesson is furnished each month, so that meetings may be held fortnightly. An excellent way is to meet at the house of the members of the club. Early in the season arrange a schedule giving places of meeting for some time ahead. Of course if a room in the grange, town hall, or school house is available and convenient, this may prove to be the most desirable arrangement. The club may apply for a charter from this Bureau, by adopting a name and reporting it to us with the first consignment of answered quizzes.

The sessions should not last over an hour and a half; the discussion should be brisk, and it is better to adjourn early when interest is warm, than to wait till it cools and discussion lags. The meeting should begin promptly at 8 p.m., better still at 7.30.

When the meaning is not clear, or when new ideas occur to you, write us by all means. Let us labour together for the success of your club.

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APPENDIX L.

UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, ALBANY, N.Y. HOME EDUCATION DEPARTMENT.

HOME ECONOMICS SYLLABUS.

Syllabus prepared by the Lake Placid Conference Committee on Home Economics.

This syllabus, giving a suggestive outline of the present state of the subject, is expanded from a course given in 1900 by Mrs. Ellen H. Richards, B.S., M.A., Instructor in Sanitary Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Mrs. Alice Peloubet Norton, M.A., Home Economics Department, Chicago Institute. Only a few of the best books are referred to, and enough topics for papers given to provide for local conditions and needs.

LECTURE 1.

HOME AND FAMILY LIFE: IDEALS AND STANDARDS.

To keep the home a centre of moral and intellectual progress in the face of the economic tendencies encroaching on its position the problem of the day.

Family life is unselfish devotion inspired by self-sacrificing love. Cooperation for a common aim creates a spirit of mutual helpfulness.

The significance of the family to the individuals composing it and to the nation. The physical, moral, and intellectual development of its members.

Its historical development: growth from reproductive and social institution in which wife and child were alike valued for their powers of production, to a spiritual relationship in which each gives according to his power and receives according to his need. Basis of choice in primitive marriage, economic utility and physiological attraction; modern basis, personal relationship.

The growing individualism of all the members of the family; the union of all in the service of each.

Woman's past progress conditioned on the overcoming of men's passions and her education; her future progress dependent on the growth of her self-respect and her work; the result of knowledge.

Farther progress conditioned on evolution, not revolution; the family life, the development of ages, is to be spiritualised, not materialised.

The significance of a higher or more complicated adaptation is not reduced to the level of a lower or simpler one by showing that it has been evolved from the latter.-Griggs.

The future of the race is bound up in the development of home ideals. Standards of life come before standards of living. 'There is little moral consequence in the association of parents and children unless there are ideas to communicate."-Ross, Journal of Sociology, Vol. 5, No. 5, 1900.

Home life distinguished from community life; the home educational rather than economic. Character building above price.

Salmon.-Domestic Service.

Small and Vincent.-Introduction to the Study of Society.

Stetson.-Women and Economics.

Wright.-Industrial Evolution of the United States.

TOPICS FOR PAPERS.

1. How can the ideals of family life be maintained under present economic and social conditions?

2. Is it necessary to prepare and eat food and to make and launder clothing in the house in order to retain the essentials of the home?

3. The family as a unit of society.

4. The "living" wage; definition; rises according to standards of living. Show that comforts increase and luxuries decrease efficiency.

5. The woman in bondage to her neighbour's opinion; how may she be set free?

6. The inveterate shopper; how can her ideals be elevated?

LECTURE 2.

THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL SITUATION AND ARCHITECTURE.

Shelter the protection of home life. Maintains unity and privacy with sense of ownership.

The house beautiful: Location, plan, grounds. Soil must be clean, dry, porous. Influence of ground water and ground air. Sunshine and pure air essential; scientific reasons for need of sunlight.

Plan of house according to needs of family; both privacy and community of interests to be provided for; individual rights respected. Labour saving in stairs, in proximity of certain rooms; care in placing doors and windows for various reasons. Sun plan the most important requisite. "Sweetness and light" interpreted by the sanitarian means sunshine and pure air.

The detached house needs its setting of grass or shrubs, or both, and flowers, if there is one to care for them; sickly, straggling flower-beds are as distasteful as uncared-for children. Treatment of small grounds may relieve ugly architecture.

REFERENCES.

Brown.-Healthy Foundations for Houses.

Clark.-Building Superintendence.

Gardner.-The House that Jill Built.

Grimshaw. Hints on House Building.

Osborne.-Notes on the Art of House Planning.

Parsons.-How to Plan the Home Grounds.

Richards and Talbot.-Home Sanitation. Ch. 2.

TOPICS FOR PAPERS.

1. House architecture; how to secure beautiful, comfortable homes.

2. The apartment house; its advantages and disadvantages.

3. The lawn; its treatment and care.

4. How to improve that eyesore, the small back yard.

LECTURE 3.

THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL: SANITATION.

Esthetic and sanitary requirements not opposed; often identical. The poorly-built, ill-equipped house, neither healthful nor beautiful.

Ventilation and heating in close connection. Pure air not free in cold climates. Importance to health; methods of providing; tests.

Plumbing and drainage: General requirements are simplicity, accessibility ventilation of system. soundness of material, tightness of joints, thorough flushing.

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REFERENCES.

Barré.-La Maison Salubre.

Billings.-Ventilation and Heating.

Corfield.-Dwelling Houses.

Currier.-Outlines of Practical Hygiene.
Egbert.-Manual of Hygiene and Sanitation.
Gerhard.-House Drainage and Sanitary Plumbing.
Plunkett.-Women, Plumbers and Doctors.

Putnam.-Lectures on Principles of House Drainage.
Richard and Talbot.-Home Sanitation. Ch. 3-6, 9.
Tracy.-Handbook of Sanitary Information.
Waring.-How to Drain a House.

Principles and Practice of House Drainage.

Sanitary Condition of City and Country Dwelling Houses.
Sanitary Drainage of Houses and Towns.

TOPICS FOR PAPERS.

1. The house plan with special reference to sanitary requirements.
2. An ideal system of ventilation for a modern house.
3. How to adapt modern principles to an old house.
4. Advantages and dangers of modern plumbing.

LECTURE 4.

THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL: FURNISHING.

Adaptation to purpose and environment. Fitness as to form, colour, cleanliness, and durability. Truth a fundamental element of beauty. Simplicity tends towards healthfulness and beauty. Overcrowding spoils effect of really good things. Furnishings should minister to comfort or pleasure; should not make a slave of mistress or maid. Knowledge of true values necessary.

REFERENCES.

Beauty in the Home.-20th Century Club Leaflets.

Church.-How to Furnish a Home.

Cook. The House Beautiful.

Dewing.-Beauty in the Household.

Gardner.-Homes and All About Them.

Garrett.-Suggestions for House Decoration.
Loftie.-A Plea for Art in the House.
Lyon.-Colonial Furniture of New England.
Ormsbee.-The House Comfortable.

Salisbury.-Principles of Domestic Taste. i
Watson.-Art of the House.

Wharton and Codman.-Decoration of Houses,

Wheeler.-Household Art.

TOPICS FOR PAPERS.

1. Hall and reception room: How to express hospitality without sacrificing family privacy and reserve.

2. The living room: Its furniture, decoration, schemes of colour.

3. The nursery: What it can do for the character of the child.

4. The dining room: Influence of surroundings on digestion; special reference to cleanliness.

5. The sleeping room: Not a sitting room; appropriate furnishing.

LECTURE 5.

THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL CLEANING AND CARE.

Cleanliness is next to godliness.

DUST, INDOORS AND OUT:

Composed of inorganic and dead matter, and living organisms; danger chiefly from the latter. Of these dust plants the most important are bacteria.

BACTERIA:

1. Description and life history:

Simple one-celled plants; smallest of living things and perhaps most numerous. Classified according to shape as cocci, bacilli, spirilla. Reproduction by cell division.

2. Methods of culture. Dust plant" gardens:

Bacteria too small to be thoroughly studied even under the microscope till methods of cultivating them were devised. Beef tea, specially prepared and stiffened with gelatin or agar-agar, serves as food and also as a prison. Bacteria planted in this grow and form "colonies" large enough to be seen and studied. A small particle of dust introduced into this medium may produce thousands of these colonies.

DUST AND DISEASE:

1. Disease germs:

Most bacteria harmless or even useful, but some foes to human existence. Some of these disease germs, notably those of tuberculosis, often conveyed in dust.

2. Protection of body against disease:

Ciliated cells of air passages; dust filters in lungs; phagocytes or wandering cells of body.

HOUSEHOLD APPLICATIONS:

1. Cleanliness of food:

Milk supply. Fruit and candy exposed on street for sale. 2. Care of house:

(a) House should be finished and furnished so as to provide as few dust traps as possible. Smooth finish, rounded corners, simple ornaments desirable. Carpets v. bare floors. (b) Removal of dust. Sweeping and dusting should remove and destroy dust, not merely stir it up. Results of experiments with different methods.

MUNICIPAL HOUSEKEEPING :

Clean streets and sidewalks; proper disposal of refuse; influence of clean houses and schoolhouses; moral effect of good housekeeping.

1. Dust as a means for carrying disease.

2. Plan for furnishing a house with special reference to avoidance of dust. 3. Housekeeping v. home making. Is the care necessary for exquisite cleanliness conducive to the happiest home?

4. Some devices in house building which would simplify housekeeping.