Home Demonstration

Study Clubs in Home Economics, 1916:

LESSON 1
Roll Call — How I Earned My First Money.
Paper — Reasons for Sharing the Business of the Farm and the Home with the Children.
Round Table — Methods and Devices that Diminish the Work of Wash Day.
Discussion — Oregon’s Municipal Food Laws and Ordinances.

LESSON 2
Roll Call — A Book That is Enjoyed by Young People.
Paper — America, a Nation of Meat-Eating People: Results and Remedies.
Discussion — How the Home May be Made More Attractive for Young People.
Paper — Washing of Woolens and Silks.

LESSON 3
Roll Call — Quotations on "Home."
Paper — House Sanitation; Disposal of Waste in the Country Home.
Discussion — Cooperative Laundries.
Paper — Use of Eggs, Milk, and Meat as Food.

The extension agent’s job did not end in the field.  Home economics was another important facet of the extension program’s curriculum.  During WWI the emergency food conservation programs bolstered the need for home demonstration agents.  These programs focused on three phases of conservation to help ease the food shortage by teaching about relative food values, canning and drying surplus products, and the best methods of preparation and use of food substitutes.  However, due to the narrow focus on war foods programs, after the war most of the state home economics programs ended.  Only three counties, Jackson, Josephine and Umatilla chose to retain home agents. 

Despite the lack of agents, community-run homemaker study groups continued through the 1920s with assistance from the School of Home Economics in Corvallis.  Popular programs included projects in clothing construction and dress form making, food preparation and preservation, kitchen arrangement, and child welfare.  To support these local efforts, Mrs. Jessie D. McComb served the Extension state leader in home economics.  She was joined in running the program by two Extension specialists, Miss Lassie Lane as foods and nutrition specialist (1919) and Miss Jessie Biles as clothing and textiles specialist (1920).