12 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



omy, domestic science and the culture of the child in its manifold rela- 

 tions shall be made an everyday culture. 



I am sorry there are not many women in this session today. 1 

 believe they will miss a great deal in the sessions that are to come. 

 In New York, under the organization of the New York mothers, there 

 are four hundred organizations. In Illinois, the president of the 

 Illinois Congress of Mothers writes me that they are busy all week 

 organizing child culture departments. 



I am here in behalf of the Iowa Congress of Mothers to tell you 

 that we hold ourselves ready to meet with you at any time and at any 

 place in Iowa. We will give you a list of speakers who will meet with 

 you. if you prefer, and in many instances will give you literature and 

 study outlines, so simple and so inexpensive that every woman can have 

 them. We will tell the women how to organize a little neighborhood 

 group to meet occasionally, weekly or semi-monthly, and discuss these 

 questions and keep in close touch with the work, and we want to extend 

 a most cordial invitation to them to meet us at the headquarters at 

 the State Fair Grounds. I want to urge this upon the superintendents 

 of the county institutes, that you do not spend all your time in these 

 things which build up material wealth. What avails it to you if you 

 are master of a thousand acres, your splendid herds, and your crops? 

 What amounts it to, if that boy of yours, who is dearer to you than 

 your right arm, if he fails to obtain the years of development that you 

 want for him, He can have it; he may have it, if you, his father and 

 his mother, begin now with the little child, to train it as it should be 

 trained. 



I will be very glad to confer in this matter with any of the county 

 superintendents and managers of county institutes who want the co- 

 operation of our organization, and would be very happy to talk with 

 any of the women of this organization. I believe there is a great field 

 here, and I look to the future of our great Agricultural College at 

 Ames, which stands for so much, to introduce child culture in that insti- 

 tution. I look forward to the time when that institution, along with ito 

 domestic economy, with its training of the young men, will also inaug- 

 urate a child culture department. I believe it entirely feasible to 

 take these children and put them in a special department under the 

 care of an expert. I believe these children should be of both sexes. 

 I believe every girl in that institution should spend some time in that 

 nursery, where these children are trained. I think that a class of 

 these children should be taken before the whole school, so that the 

 students might learn the real development of the children, the awaken- 

 ing of their mental faculties — the moral sense should be indicated and 

 made plain to these people, so that when they get away from this great 

 institution they will not only be cattle breeders or horticulturists, but 

 that they shall be prepared for that culture which we all expect of them. 

 I believe this is no fancy sketch. I think, as the years develop, that 

 will come, and that our young people of the State will have an oppor- 

 tunity to get an all-around education. I believe the prediction I make 

 here today will after a while be verified in our State work. 



