196 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



ship or community club showing all of the modern devices for the 

 saving of labor in the home — dustless mops and home-made fireless 

 cookers — things that are educational, and people will come and see 

 and say "Why didn't I know of that before?" I want the women to 

 learn all of the new tricks of the business. Nine out of ten women 

 do not have any help. One woman wondered how far she walked 

 and got herself a pedometer, and she discovered that she walked 

 13 miles on an ordinary day, and from 15 to 18 to get a Thanksgiv- 

 ing dinner, and about 5,000 miles per year. She washes dishes 

 1,095 times, she washes the clothes 52 times, she scrubs the floor 

 twice a week or 104 times, and then we wonder how it is she gets 

 time to send things to the fair. I want her to be able from this 

 county fair to take usable things home so that she can just turn 

 around and adopt in her own home what ideas she got at these 

 household booths. If she visits the booth she will see the scrubbing 

 chariot, if you please, and she will want it. Many of us have to get 

 down on our knees to scrub the floor, to get into the corner, etc., 

 and this chariot is a small platform that is padded and runs around 

 on casters, and is much easier on the housewife than getting down 

 on the knees. 



Then we'll want child welfare booths. When you stop to think 

 that every third child under five years of age in the state of Iowa 

 is under-nourished and under-weight, you think there is something 

 wrong. I have just come in from the national stock show — I was 

 there 15 days; I looked at that stock and I sometimes wondered if 

 those men who went home with blue ribbons on their stock, if they 

 had sent in their children, how would they be scored? Would they 

 be blue-ribbon children? Would they? I want the mothers of the 

 state of Iowa to raise this standard. Think of it, every third child 

 under-nourished. The children are fed everything, and very often 

 things that they shouldn't at all have. So I want this child welfare 

 booth and a good big premium, say $25, put on it, and let these 

 mothers, young mothers, see some of these things and they will stop 

 and look, and have a county nurse there, a Red Cross nurse or 

 county nurse to talk to the people, the home people, to push that 

 thing. What is our county fair for, and why are we raising better 

 stock — it is simply to make better homes and a better fair, and the 

 outcome of it should be we should go home better off because we 

 have seen some educational things. I know we all must get recrea- 

 tion, but there are some other things besides that. So we would have 

 the household booth, the child welfare booth, and these other de- 

 partments, all to work jointly with the high schools and the teachers 



