THE DEMONSTRATION WORK 



farm work and life. More attention has been given to farm 

 implements and machinery. Let it not be inferred that the 

 home making of devices and conveniences has prevented, or 

 hindered, the purchase of the best available equipment along 

 these lines. On the contrary, it has had the opposite effect. 

 In counties where good home demonstration work has been 

 done, the people are installing water works and lighting sys- 

 tems more rapidly than has ever been known before. This 

 means, too, that they are buying washing machines, churns, 

 meat grinders, mechanical refrigerators, motor-driven sewing 

 machines and other similar equipment which reduce the 

 drudgery, and increase the intellectual activity of farm women. 

 It can be readily seen that the foregoing program of 

 work, as evolved during a decade, has brought the women 

 agents into the home, and their advice and help are now being 

 sought in home arrangement, equipment, furnishing, construc- 

 tion and beautification. The average agent can now look over 

 a kitchen and draw plans for the placing of the furniture so 

 as to save steps. She can take observations and measurements 

 of the bedroom of a club girl and show her "how to adorn a 

 simple home and make it appear like a palace, ' ' without incur- 

 ring more expense than the girl can spare from the money she 

 has made on garden or poultry. This agent can survey a site 

 and suggest the kind of home suitable for such location and 

 also in keeping with the resources of the people who are to 

 live there. The time has arrived also when this versatile 

 worker must be a landscape architect and artist. Many of them 

 can already lay out a farmstead, and make it symmetrical and 

 beautiful. Any agent should be able to change a front yard 

 into a lawn. This is so much needed in those sections of the 

 country where the front yards are bare, and where they have 

 not learned to grow grass, shrubbery and flowers in proper 



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