“Social and Labor Needs of Farm Women.” 
 “Domestic Needs of Farm Women.” 
 “Educational Needs of Farm Women.” 
 “Economic Needs of Farm Women.”

These reports can be obtained only from the Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, 15 cents each.

“The American Farm Woman as She Sees Herself,” U. S. Department of
Agriculture Year Book, 1914, pp. 311-318.

“Selection of Household Equipment,” Department of Agriculture Year
Book 1914, pp. 330-362.

Dunn, Arthur W., “The Community and the Citizen,” chaps, v, vi.

CHAPTER X

WHY GOVERNMENT HELPS IN HOME MAKING

Our nation requires healthy citizens, intelligent citizens, prosperous and happy citizens.  The home can do more to produce them than any other community agency.  Therefore the nation is wise to look after its homes.

RELATION OF HOME CONDITIONS TO INDUSTRY

People cannot do their work well if they live in unwholesome or unpleasant homes.  This was made clear during the recent war.  The lack of suitable living places for workmen and their families was one of the chief obstacles to shipbuilding and munitions manufacture during the early part of the war.  England found this out as well as the United States, and one of the first things both countries had to do was to take measures to provide proper home conditions for those who were engaged in supplying the nation’s needs.  During the first year of the war our Congress appropriated $200,000,000 to build houses for industrial workers.

The problem of securing good physical conditions of home life has naturally been greatest in crowded industrial centers, but it is by no means absent in small communities, or even in the open country.  One writer describes a certain farmhouse where five people were accustomed to sleep in one not very large bedroom, which had only one small window, and even that was nailed shut, one of these five had incipient tuberculosis.  These people were well-to-do farmers, living in a large twelve-room, stone house and simply crowded into one room for the sake of mistaken economy—­ presumably to save coal and wood.

Many such cases could be described, not only in the more remote and backward regions, but even in prosperous farming communities.

What is the result of this overcrowding and lack of proper housing in the country?  Just exactly the same as in the great cities—­lack of efficiency, disease, and premature death to many ...  While the great majority of people subjected to overcrowding and bad housing conditions do not prematurely die, yet they have a lessened physical and mental vigor, are less able to do properly their daily work, and not only become a loss to themselves and their families, but to the state ... [Footnote:  Bashore, “Overcrowding and defective housing in the rural districts,” quoted in Nourse, agricultural economics, pp. 118, 119, 121.]