W* RURAL. NEW-YORKER 
853 
Home Bureaus’ Influence 
[Several of our women readers have 
requested us to print the following article 
by Dr. Ruby Green Smith of Cornell Uni¬ 
versity. They state that it is the best ex¬ 
position of the subject they have seen. It 
is reprinted from the Extension■ Service 
News.] 
Story tellers have immortalized such 
themes as that of the man who went 
around the world in search of gold and 
came home to find a gold mine on his 
own farm. William Hamilton Gibson 
claimed that the “richest biological field 
, is the one most studied” and, like Gilbert 
White, proved it by delightful nature 
books recording the interesting things at 
his very door and in his own home town. 
'Similarly, the Home Bureaus are help¬ 
ing the people to discover that their own 
communities may become the best in the 
world; that, like romance, interest does 
not always lie over the rim of the world, 
but may be developed wherever neighbor- 
linees and community spirit are cultivat¬ 
ed. The Home Bureaus are helping to 
emphasize the importance of satisfying 
rural community life. They are throwing 
the spotlight on social problems while the 
Farm Bureaus are especially engaged 
with economic ones and both are working 
together for the common good. 
Aside from the projects that concern 
the better individual housekeeping, prac¬ 
tically every Home Bureau community or¬ 
ganization is following a program that 
touches the larger housekeeping of the 
community. 
What is this larger housekeeping that 
challenges the interest of the women and 
gives the Home Bureau organization vital 
work to do that it lias not been possible 
for isolated individual rural homemakers 
to do alone? It is the larger housekeep¬ 
ing at the school where the children spend 
most of their waking hours; it is the 
larger housekeeping that relates to the 
recreation offered by the community for 
spare hours of all the people; it is the 
larger housekeeping in the country store 
where the family’s needs are supplied; it 
is the larger housekeeping of the church 
and other spiritual influences of the com¬ 
munity. 
The Home Bureaus have taken the in¬ 
itiative—and have sometimes done the 
cooking—in getting hot school lunches 
served in over 200 rural schools. Better 
grades and better health for the children 
have resulted, not to mention the train¬ 
ing in co-operation gained by the Home 
Bureau committees. 
They have interested school boards and 
teachers in plans to introduce homemak¬ 
ing courses in public schools. They have 
substituted sanitary towels and drinking 
fountains for the roller towel and various 
modern equivalents for the old oaken 
bucket. They have pointed out to moth¬ 
ers the way to health for poorly nour¬ 
ished school children through nutrition 
classes and clinics. They have helped get 
new things for their schools, including 
lunch equipment, flags, pictures, window 
shades, and in one school, a piano. 
School grounds have not escaped the 
attention of some Home Bureau groups. 
Plants and play equipment have already 
made a few rural school grounds less sor¬ 
ry in contrast with neighboring decorative 
cemeteries; or, in other words, something 
has been done for the quick as well as the 
dead. But even the cemeteries have been 
given organized attention by one Home 
Bureau group. Thus they seem des¬ 
tined to serve all from cradle to grave! 
Finally, and most important of all, the 
interest the Home Bureaus are taking in 
schools, they have pledged their organized 
support to the Committee of Twenty-one 
on rural schools, one-seventh of the 21 be¬ 
ing representatives of the State Federa¬ 
tion of Home Bureaus. Under the guid¬ 
ance of the committee, the Home Bureaus 
desire to do their part in making the 
rural schools worthy of being entrusted 
with so large a share of the waking time 
of the most important crop of all, the 
children. 
The resurrection of a rural church that 
had had no resident pastor for 25 years 
was brought about by the efforts of the 
Home Bureau in one community. 
In two counties, the Home Bureaus 
have helped develop community Sunday 
schools where denominational Sunday 
schools had disappeared with the closing 
of rural churches for lack of members and 
funds. These Sunday schools seem to 
indicate a latent spiritual unity which 
may eventually result in the Teturn of the 
rural church to a position of leadership 
in rural life. Thus in some villages, 
where several church properties are now- 
closed, the community groups brought to¬ 
gether by the Farm and Home Bureaus, 
are discussing the possibilities of one 
union church adequately supported, and 
the probable sale of unused churches un¬ 
less one of the three or six churches that 
struggle for existence in many New York 
villages should need to be kept for use as 
a community recreation center. 
In _ some counties the Home Bureaus 
are giving the country merchant a chance 
to bid on and handle their co-operative 
orders. They are co-operating with the 
Farm Bureaus, chambers of commerce, 
and the State College in arranging con¬ 
ferences with the country merchants in 
the hope that mutual understanding be¬ 
tween buyers and sellers may lead-to im¬ 
proved country stores. As “buyers of 
things for the family, the women are de¬ 
termined to give the country merchant a 
square deal. However, they are also de¬ 
termined that if necessary to better ser¬ 
vice, they will encourage the coming 
of co-operative stores where the merchan¬ 
dise they must buy will be handled at 
least partly for service and not wholly for 
profit, as in the buying and selling or¬ 
ganizations that are making for a more 
efficient handling of farm business. 
Lincoln walked weary miles to borrow’ 
books to read. There are still places in 
rural New’ York where books are hard to 
get. The Home Bureaus, first in Wayne 
County and later elsewhere, have joined 
hands with the State Library, in placing 
books within reach of rural Now Yorkers. 
Groups have agreed to be responsible for 
the State’s traveling libraries in commu¬ 
nities not having libraries, and have ar¬ 
ranged for centers for the reading or loan 
of the books in places where the com¬ 
panionship of good books has never before 
been known. 
The Home Bureaus have started or 
helped with such a variety of community 
enterprises that one can no more than 
enumerate some that are stories in them¬ 
selves, but are perhaps only typical. Thus 
they have used their organization to an¬ 
swer urgent calls during epidemics and 
fire, and have helped town and county 
care for public charges. They have 
started clean-up days in villages, had un¬ 
sightly dumping grounds removed, con¬ 
ducted milk campaigns, and rented, 
bought, or built thrift houses, thrift kitch¬ 
ens, community sew'ing rooms, community 
houses, as centers of work for an enriched 
community life. 
In the belief .that farm people need to 
smile as much as they need the latest 
facts about tractors or some recipes for 
pie, the Home Bureaus arrange recrea¬ 
tion features of all sorts. Community 
“sings,” plays and pageants, as well as 
less formal entertainment through games 
and contests, are finding places on every 
county Home Bureau program. Better 
fairs and picnics have been held because 
the home and Farm Bureaus have greatly 
cared that they should be better. Parks 
in villages have been restored to their 
charm as village greens and ball grounds. 
Rest rooms for farm women in the towns 
where they shop or visit or go to church 
have been established by the Home Bu¬ 
reaus in several counties. At these and 
at more temporary headquarters at fairs, 
picnics, and large meetings of farm peo¬ 
ple, the Home Bureaus have provided 
nurseries and playgrounds where the chil¬ 
dren could be “checked” in tender or en¬ 
tertaining care while adults attend meet¬ 
ings without interruption. 
These things that the Home Bureaus 
are doing for their home communities are 
the things that have been crying to be 
done for many a year. They are the 
things about which the individual home¬ 
maker could only say, “Oh, dear me!” 
That so new an organization as the Farm 
and Home Bureaus should have found 
so many things to do for rural life in so 
short a time and should have done them, 
would seem to promise the dawning of 
finer things for life in the open country. 
The following extract from a letter 
from Stella INI. Trapp of Cortland County, 
addressed to Vera MeCrea, tells eloquent¬ 
ly the inner meaning of such community 
work as has been touched upon here, and 
indicates that the Home Bureaus have 
found vital work to do for a more satis¬ 
fying country life: 
“As you know, I should perhaps have 
left the farm and country life and gone 
with thousands of others to the city if I 
could have done so. I have looked for- { 
ward to the time when possibly I might 
go with the others. But now’ the Home 
Bureau work among tis has changed ! 
things. I am so absorbed and fascinated 
by the work you and others have shown 
rue. to do that I doubt if I should leave 
it just at present for all the allurements 
of the city, even if I could go just as well 
as not. This should be a matter of satis¬ 
faction to you. I thank you for the won¬ 
derful service you have worked so hard to 
give us in our county. 
“You know we all have visions and 
dreams. Mine are now r the same as yours, 
that we may yet see rural communities 
so cultivated that they will all be changed 
from weedy and deserted spots iuto real 
little Gardens of Fdeu, where peace, 
harmony and good fellowship abound, and 
where we may live life more abundantly.” 
than others 
because: through every process of man¬ 
ufacture they are handled with the utmost 
consideration and care. They are individ¬ 
ually cast from a special gray iron that is 
heated not too hot, nor cooled too cool. 
They have an unusually close texture that 
cannot be disintegrated by the heat, or 
stress and strain of piston ring service. 
They are all subjected to a series of exact¬ 
ing tests. They are wrapped in moisture 
proof paper for packing. Precision pre¬ 
vails throughout the Gill plant. 
THE GILL MANUFACTURING COMPANY, 
8300 South Chicago Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 
Canadian Manufacturer: 
BROWN ENGINEERING CORPORATION, Limited 
Toronto, Ontario 
Sole Export Agents: 
AUTOMOTIVE PRODUCTS CORPORATION 
Woolworth Building, New York, N. Y. 
Identify the Gill 
One - piece Piston 
Ring by the joint, 
but do not meas¬ 
ure its merit by the 
joint alone. 
r Gill Service is nation wide. There are more 
than 2,000 stocks of Gill Piston Rings in the 
country. Some one of these dealers is located 
near you to supply you with whatever size you 
may want and the number you want when 
you want them. If your garage or repairman 
or accessory deal . doesn’t happen to carry 
Gill One-piece Piston Rings tell him to get 
them from his jobber or from the nearest of 
our 39 Branch Offices. 
