GIRLS' HOME CLUBS 



These half -grown boys and girls could make a garden and raise the 

 fruit and poultry to support the family if they would. It might 

 brown their skins and soil their hands, but it would help them to do 

 something and to know something. It would aid the family pocket- 

 book and help the family character. There is no sufficient reason 

 why every American family should not own a good home and have a 

 snug sum laid by for a rainy day, except our laziness, our lack of 

 thrift or jDossibie sickness, and nine-tenths of all sickness is due to 

 malnutrition, which is another name for ignorance." 



All the women agents who attended the first conference 

 of State workers in the United States Department of Agri- 

 culture will recall the definite, specific instruction and the line 

 of approach to the home. Dr. Knapp told these agents not 

 to go to the farmer's house and tell him they had come to 

 teach his v/ife to cook. He said the man would knock them 

 down, and that he would be justified in doing it, out of respect 

 to his wife whether she was a good cook or not. This line of 

 reasoning caused him to prefer to approach the home through 

 the activities of the girls in the clubs. He suggested canning 

 and poultry clubs. He said that if the girls began with the 

 study of one plant in the garden, that they Vv^ould soon learn 

 how to utilize other vegetables and fruits. He realized from 

 the beginning, also, that they vrould be making most inter- 

 esting demonstrations in farm animals and their management. 

 That is why he said that after the girls had had some ex- 

 perience as members of the Canning Clubs, many of them 

 would want to take up poultry as their advanced course. He 

 suggested that the gardening and canning activities would 

 constitute the freshman and sophomore years in the club life, 

 while animal husbandry would be engrossing them mainly in 

 the junior and senior years. 



Before the Girls ' Club Work was established the General 

 Education Board had been financing the Farm Demonstration 



[6i]. 



