I04 ACRICI'LTIRK OF MAINE. 



lying their preparation, and also in dietetics the selection of the 

 proper food, dependent on the age of the person, the work in 

 which they are engaged, etc. We also do some work in the care 

 of infants and infant feeding. 



Then in sewing we teach the practical work — the selection of 

 materials, the proper colors to be combined in clothing, and their 

 hygienic values. We study the household management, the 

 division of income and the budgets proper for the various ex- 

 penditures of the house; we do something with the servant 

 problem, take up the serving of meals and the various processes 

 of laundering, sweeping, dusting, and other household duties. 

 And we also study the sanitation of the home as well as its 

 structure, the planning of the house, its decoration, the buying 

 of the proper furniture, wall paper, carpets and the like. 



In the other division we might put the fundamental sciences, — 

 the fundamental subjects to be taught in other departments with 

 relation especially to our own work. We have chemistry, bac- 

 teriology, physiology, physics, sociology and economics which 

 are perhaps the most important, and of course the girls take 

 English and a foreign language, as well as a number of other 

 subjects, as their time will permit. 



We have broadened the scope of the work very decidedly 

 since the beginning of home economics. In the first place, I 

 think the people were interested primarily and fundamentally in 

 the individual family, in the individual home. But the work of 

 the National Association of Home Economics has been broad- 

 ened. It is not only interested in the individual family, but 

 it is interested in the larger families which we find in the various 

 institutions. It is interested in the country and city community. 

 It is interested in the state and in the nation, in the state laws 

 that we have regarding food adulterations, for instance, sanitary 

 laws, laws governing public health. And the scope of its activi- 

 ties has been widened. In the first place, the only work that was 

 done, we might say, was in the college, or the university, a 

 school of that type. Now it has gone out from these institutions 

 to the entire community. I think that perhaps we are doing just 

 as great a work, if not greater, in the great movement that has 

 been started within the last, five or six years in carrying this 

 information to the entire community. Of course that work is 

 being supervised by the various extension departments. 



