1. Provision for assembling material in food, household management, including expenditures, and child care, particularly, and adapting this material to the needs of the members of the different foreign-born groups, by supplying salaries for two persons experienced in teaching, who would devote themselves to the preparation of classroom material, leaflets, charts, etc.—$2,400
$4,800
2. The granting of stipends to graduate students who would work at institutions approved by the committee and who would do practice teaching with such groups. In the assignment both of the stipends and of the institutional patronage, the interests of both urban and rural women would be taken into account by supplying scholarships for ten graduate students to teach under supervision and to assemble material under direction, these to be awarded by the committee with due regard to needs of rural and urban women—$750
$7,500
3. Securing the services of several highly skilled home-economics teachers, under whose supervision the practice teaching, and the preparation of these students would be carried on, and developing through advice teaching centers for the use of such material wherever possible, by supplying salaries for four persons to supervise and direct teaching—$4,000
$16,000
4. Securing teachers who are experienced housewives, who with short courses might assume certain teaching functions, supplying stipends, $75 a month for four months ($300) for fifty women who, selected under rules drawn up by the committee, would take short training courses, to be organized under the direction of individuals or departments or institutions approved by the committee
$15,000
The problem can be dealt with adequately only by state-wide and nation-wide agencies, and should as soon as possible be taken over by nonsectarian educational agencies. But the public-school system is at present wholly without the equipment necessary for the performance of these functions. It is not only not national; it is in many states not even state-wide in its supervision and standards. In Illinois, for example, the school district is the unit, and until a board was created in 1919 to deal with the problems of vocational training, the control exercised by the state was negligible.
The situation in an Illinois mining town illustrates the waste resulting from treating these questions as local questions. The town referred to is a mining town, lying partly in one and partly in another county. The only public school available is in one county, and it is said to be overcrowded. The road from a settlement in the other county to the school is said to be impassable all winter or in bad weather. It leads over a mine switch that is dangerous as well.
The parents complained that the small children could not go so far, that there were no play facilities, that the location was secluded, so that it was dangerous for girls, that the term was too short, and that the attendance of the children seems unimportant to the school authorities. As the community was almost altogether Italian, the parents would have preferred a woman teacher for the girls over ten or twelve years of age. A more intelligent and a more incisive indictment of an educational situation than this criticism expressed by the Italian families in this remote mining community could hardly have been drawn.
It is inevitable that similar dark spots should continue, so long as no central agency is responsible for the maintenance of a minimum opportunity everywhere. Of course it is not to be expected that those jurisdictions that so neglect the children will care for the adult. Many states have the central agency that could take over the work. And there exist Federal agencies able with enlarged resources to adapt their work to meet many of these needs. The United States Children's Bureau has published bulletins in simple form containing such information as every woman should have concerning the care of mothers and young children. Only the lack of resources has kept that bureau from undertaking to bring these facts to the knowledge of all mothers, including the foreign born.[60]
HOME ECONOMICS WORK
In the so-called States Relations Service of the Department of Agriculture, established under the Smith-Lever Act,[61] and in the Federal Board for Vocational Education, there are agencies which, if developed, can establish national standards in these fields and do work of national scope. These acts constitute, in fact, so important a step in the direction of nationalization of these problems that items in the statutes creating them may be of interest here.
The first of these Acts provides for co-operative effort on the part of the United States Department of Agriculture and the state agricultural colleges. There is an agency provided to "diffuse among the people of the United States useful and practical information on subjects relating to agriculture and home economics, and to encourage the application of the same." This Act refers especially to the needs of the rural population, and the work done under it consists of instruction and practical demonstration in agriculture and home economics to persons not attending or resident in the agricultural colleges.
The methods should be such as are agreed on by the Secretary of Agriculture and the officials of the state colleges benefiting under the earlier Act of 1862.[62] To carry out this co-operative effort, an appropriation was provided, beginning at $480,000—$10,000 for each state—and increasing first by $60,000 and then by $500,000 annually, until after seven years a total of $4,500,000 was reached, the increase to be distributed among the states in proportion to their rural population.
By the Smith-Hughes Act of February 22, 1917, both teachers and supervisors, as well as training for teachers and supervisors in the fields of agriculture, home economics, industrial and trade subjects, were provided.[63] The Federal Board for Vocational Education consisted of the Secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce, and Labor, the United States Commissioner of Education, and three citizens appointed for terms of three years, at $5,000 a year. One of these three is to represent the agricultural interests, one the manufacturing interests, and one labor.