She not only makes her head save her heels, but she takes another kind of inventory which is as well worth while.  It is the inventory which we all need to take of ourselves to be sure that we are making the best of our opportunities instead of drifting along day by day in a rut.  She searches out the hidden places in her soul to see if she is just as patient, as thoughtful, as cheerful as she might be ... [Footnote:  Reclamation record, Feb., 1918, p.55, “Project Women and Their Materials,” by Mrs. Louella Littlepage.]

COMMUNITY COOPERATION AND THE HOME

In some rural communities the home has been relieved of much of the household drudgery by the development of cooperative creameries, cooperative laundries, and other community institutions to do work that was formerly done entirely in the home.  In such cooperative enterprises, citizens of the community buy shares of stock as in the case of the fruit growers’ association.  In one community in Michigan “a vote was taken, the women voting as well as the men, to determine the sentiment of the community on the establishment of such a laundry, and the vote was so overwhelmingly in favor of the proposition that the Farmers’ Club promptly called a meeting to promote the enterprise.”  An addition was built to the cooperative creamery, which the community already possessed, so that the same steam plant could be used for both.  The farmers brought their laundry when they brought their cream, and carried it back on the next trip.  “The laundry has been successful in relieving the hard life of a farmer’s wife, and in addition has been not only self-sustaining but a profitable institution.”  One of the women of the community says,

It has lightened the work in the home to such an extent that one can manage the work without keeping help, which is very scarce and high priced, when it would be impossible to do so if the washing was included with our other duties.

And another writes,

This change gives me two days of recreation that I can call my own every week and also gives me more time in which to accomplish the household duties. [Footnote:  “A Successful Rural Cooperative Laundry,” in the Year Book, Department of Agriculture, 1915, pp. 189-194.]

GOVERNMENT SERVES THE HOME

A great deal of help is now being given to the home by the government, and this is especially true in the case of the rural home.  The public schools, both in city and country, now consider home making and “home economics” as worthy of a place in the course of study as geography and mathematics (see Chapter xix).  State agricultural colleges are beginning to give as much attention to these subjects as they do to soils and fertilizers and stock-breeding.  Moreover, the colleges conduct “extension courses,” sending teachers trained in the art of home making