Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. Uh. It
Speaker 1: may not surprise people when I get to the end
Speaker 1: of this sentence, but I have been thinking a lot
Speaker 1: lately about my maternal grandmother, who grew up during the
Speaker 1: Great Depression. After that, she went on to raise five
Speaker 1: children while also working full time at the mom and
Speaker 1: pop furniture store that she and my grandfather started together
Speaker 1: and before before that really got off the ground, she
Speaker 1: had also graduated from college in nine with a degree
Speaker 1: in home economics. By the time I was in high school,
Speaker 1: a lot of school systems were phasing out their home
Speaker 1: met classes, and by that point those classes, a lot
Speaker 1: of the time focused mostly on the basics of things
Speaker 1: like cooking and sewing, But whole economics, says a field,
Speaker 1: was a lot broader than that, and for a time
Speaker 1: the U. S Department of Agriculture had a whole Bureau
Speaker 1: of Home Economics, which was run pretty much by and
Speaker 1: for women, and was also a huge part of the
Speaker 1: response to crises like the Great Depression and World War Two.
Speaker 1: So thinking about my grandmother led me to this episode,
Speaker 1: So we're gonna start by talking about the development of
Speaker 1: home economics as a field. People who do domestic work,
Speaker 1: whether in their own home or someone else's, have always
Speaker 1: had to learn how to do it, but before the
Speaker 1: middle of the nineteenth century in the United States, almost
Speaker 1: all of that learning was informal. It was just handed
Speaker 1: down from person to person, usually from one woman to another,
Speaker 1: possibly supplemented with things like books and magazines. In general,
Speaker 1: education for women and girls was limited and often most
Speaker 1: accessible to white, relatively affluent students. So one of the
Speaker 1: first people to start thinking about homemaking and do mess
Speaker 1: dick work as a formal course of study with Catherine Beecher.
Speaker 1: She was the sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Beecher was
Speaker 1: a proponent of education for women, and she also thought
Speaker 1: that a woman's sphere was the home, so a lot
Speaker 1: of her educational ideas were really focused on teaching women
Speaker 1: domestic skills. She started implementing her Beacher Plan to that
Speaker 1: end that Milwaukee Normal Institute and High School, which was
Speaker 1: founded in eighteen fifty one. More home economics courses came
Speaker 1: along in the eighteen sixties. In conjunction with the Moral
Speaker 1: Land Grant College Act of eighteen sixty two, or an
Speaker 1: Act donating public lands to the several States and territories
Speaker 1: which may provide colleges for the benefit of agriculture and
Speaker 1: the mechanic arts. This act granted land to the states,
Speaker 1: with the amount of land based on how many seats
Speaker 1: the state had in Congress. The states then sold the
Speaker 1: land and used the proceeds either to fund new colleges
Speaker 1: or to fund the creation of agriculture and mechanics schools
Speaker 1: and exist ssting colleges. The first formalized home economics programs
Speaker 1: got their start at land grant colleges including Iowa State College,
Speaker 1: Kansas State Agricultural College, and Illinois Industrial University. Today those
Speaker 1: are now Iowa State University, Kansas State University, and the
Speaker 1: University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. These programs described what
Speaker 1: they were teaching using several different names, including home ecology,
Speaker 1: human sciences, and practical life sciences. In addition to home economics,
Speaker 1: some private women's colleges, including Wellesley, also dabbled with the
Speaker 1: idea of home economics programs, but that idea didn't really
Speaker 1: take off within the realm of private education in general.
Speaker 1: The private women's colleges that were established in the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century were focused on giving women access to the same
Speaker 1: education that men had, not on teaching women what was
Speaker 1: already thought of as women's work. The person who started
Speaker 1: pulling all of these disparate home economics programs into a
Speaker 1: more cohesive movement was Ellen Swallow Richards. Richards was the
Speaker 1: first woman to be admitted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Speaker 1: which was a land grant school. She also became one
Speaker 1: of the first women to work as a professional chemist
Speaker 1: in the United States. Richard's time and m i T
Speaker 1: followed a similar trajectory to other women that we've talked
Speaker 1: about on the show. She completed PhD coursework, but was
Speaker 1: not granted that degree because m i T did not
Speaker 1: award doctoral degrees to women Because of her gender, Her
Speaker 1: first year's teaching chemistry were unpaid, but she also focused
Speaker 1: on opening doors for women in m i T, including
Speaker 1: advocating for the establishment of its woman's laboratory, which was
Speaker 1: funded by the Woman's Education Association of Boston in eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy six. Most of Richard's work as a chemist was
Speaker 1: focused on water quality but she also studied the chemistry
Speaker 1: of homemaking. In eight nineties, she oversaw the establishment of
Speaker 1: the New England Kitchen, which provided food to low income
Speaker 1: families while also offering instruction and food preparation and food safety,
Speaker 1: and they also conducted scientific research into cooking and nutrition.
Speaker 1: In eighteen ninety one, she published The Chemistry of Cooking
Speaker 1: and Cleaning, a manual for housekeepers, and she did demonstrations
Speaker 1: of these concepts at the Chicago World's Fair in eighteen three.
Speaker 1: In eighteen ninety nine, Richards convened a summer conference at
Speaker 1: the Lake Placid Club in New York to discuss the
Speaker 1: latest advancements in the field and where it was going.
Speaker 1: Eleven people attended the conference in its first year, and
Speaker 1: they agreed to standardize the name of the field as
Speaker 1: home economics. The annual Lake Placid conferences grew over the
Speaker 1: next decade, and the conference hung onto that Lake Placid name,
Speaker 1: even when the meeting itself took place somewhere else. In
Speaker 1: nineteen o two, attendees agreed on this definition of home
Speaker 1: economics one. Home economics, in its most comprehensive sense, is
Speaker 1: the study of laws, conditions, principles, and ideals which are
Speaker 1: concerned on the one hand with man's immediate physical environment
Speaker 1: and on the other hand, with his nature as a
Speaker 1: social being, and is the study specifically of the relation
Speaker 1: between those two factors. Two. In a narrow sense, the
Speaker 1: term is given to the study of the empirical sciences
Speaker 1: with special reference to the practical problems of housework, cooking,
Speaker 1: et cetera. More than seven hundred people attended the final
Speaker 1: Lake Placid Conference in nineteen o eight. That year, attendees
Speaker 1: established the American Home Economics Association, and Richards served as
Speaker 1: its first president. The following year, she established a journal
Speaker 1: of home Economics and provided its initial funding. Some of
Speaker 1: the other people who were heavily involved in the early
Speaker 1: years of the home economics movement included Melville Dewey, who
Speaker 1: developed the Dewey decimal system and his wife Annie. In
Speaker 1: the early twentieth century, attendees of the Lake Placid conferences
Speaker 1: actually lobbied very hard but unsuccessfully, to change how home
Speaker 1: economics was classified within the Dewey decimal system. They tried
Speaker 1: to move material that was more related to economics and
Speaker 1: sociology under three hundred sociology instead of six hundred useful
Speaker 1: arts basically sociology was a more prestigious number. Today, those
Speaker 1: Dewey decimal classes are social Sciences and Technology. Two other
Speaker 1: important figures were Martha Van Rensselaer and Flora Rose, who
Speaker 1: were the first two women to become full professors at
Speaker 1: Cornell in nineteen eleven. They served as co directors of
Speaker 1: Cornell's newly established Home Economics Department, which eventually became its
Speaker 1: own school. Rose and Van Rensselaer were partners at work
Speaker 1: and at home for more than twenty years, and they
Speaker 1: were described as inseparable until Van Rensselaer's death in ninety two.
Speaker 1: Together they were affectionately named Miss Van Rose, and they
Speaker 1: advocated for home economics programs across the US. In addition
Speaker 1: to their work at Cornell. Home economics programs got another
Speaker 1: boost with the Smith Lever Act of nineteen fourteen. This
Speaker 1: established the Cooperative Extension Service to provide outreach services, especially
Speaker 1: to rural communities through the land Grant Colleges. There were
Speaker 1: also more land grant colleges by this point thanks to
Speaker 1: a second Moral Act passed in eighteen ninety that established
Speaker 1: funding for schools for black students in the South. The
Speaker 1: first Moral Act back in eighteen sixty two had allowed
Speaker 1: states with segregated education systems to establish schools for black students,
Speaker 1: but almost none of them had done so. Within a
Speaker 1: year of the Smith Lever Act being passed, there were
Speaker 1: more than eighteen hundred extension workers in the US who
Speaker 1: conducted lectures, demonstrations, and classes through cooperative extension programs. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen alone, more than twenty seven thousand women took
Speaker 1: home economics classes through cooperative extension services. That year, the
Speaker 1: Smith Hughes Act also established funding for teachers for industrial, agricultural,
Speaker 1: and home economics courses. A year later, home economics programs
Speaker 1: were actively involved in relief efforts during the nineteen eighteen
Speaker 1: flu pandemic. Home economists and home ex students cooked meals
Speaker 1: for the sick and for healthcare workers. They sewed masks
Speaker 1: and gowns for medical personnel, and they assisted with patient care.
Speaker 1: Some colleges converted their home economics schools, which were already
Speaker 1: equipped with kitchens and other necessary facilities, into field hospitals.
Speaker 1: By this point, the field of home economics was well established,
Speaker 1: with people, mostly women, learning domestic skills through classes taught
Speaker 1: in public schools. Colleges and universities and cooperative extension programs.
Speaker 1: Home economists were also involved with public health policy, community outreach,
Speaker 1: and advocacy. The field also had a lot of crossover
Speaker 1: with other progressive era movements, including labor activism, the settlement
Speaker 1: house movement, and the women's suffrage movement. The field of
Speaker 1: home econom mix also involved a lot of research. Home
Speaker 1: economists studied subjects like food science, nutrition, textile science, child development,
Speaker 1: and design. They evaluated newly introduced consumer products and services,
Speaker 1: and they were really instrumental in public acceptance as some
Speaker 1: of these new products, including things like prepackaged, canned, and
Speaker 1: frozen foods. All of this research folded back into the
Speaker 1: fields practical instruction arm as schools established graduate programs in
Speaker 1: home economics. People with those degrees were also hired to
Speaker 1: direct public health and school nutrition programs, as well as
Speaker 1: food programs during times of hardship. Women with home economics
Speaker 1: degrees also went on to work in hotel and restaurant management,
Speaker 1: interior design, and other related fields. So the field of
Speaker 1: home economics recognized that the work women were expected to
Speaker 1: do to run a home was work, and that there
Speaker 1: was a huge amount of it. As a few old.
Speaker 1: It was dedicated to studying that work and its outcomes
Speaker 1: into finding solutions to problems to try to make that
Speaker 1: work easier, which would improve the quality of life for
Speaker 1: homemakers and their families, and by extension, society as a whole.
Speaker 1: So among its advocates, the field of home economics gave
Speaker 1: women access to education that they would not have otherwise
Speaker 1: and tools that they could use to make their own
Speaker 1: lives better and their work easier and more effective. But
Speaker 1: critics argued that the existence of these programs was just
Speaker 1: reinforcing the expectation that the only thing women could or
Speaker 1: should do was to become homemakers. There have been other
Speaker 1: criticisms as well. Even as colleges and universities for black
Speaker 1: students established home economics programs, the most vocal invisible people
Speaker 1: in the field and the people hired to lead government
Speaker 1: programs continued to be predominantly white. Because the field was
Speaker 1: so focused on what was thought of as women's sphere,
Speaker 1: some of its proponents were opposed to various well rights
Speaker 1: measures for women, including the right to vote. Many college
Speaker 1: programs and home economics included practice houses or practice apartments,
Speaker 1: where students lived together to get practical experience in domestic skills.
Speaker 1: Many of these programs also had practice babies that were
Speaker 1: on loan from local orphanages, and these babies were basically
Speaker 1: cared for by a rotating assortment of students. I may
Speaker 1: be doing an episode on this soon, depending on where
Speaker 1: the research takes me. The home economics movement also had
Speaker 1: some overlap with the earlier years of the eugenics movement
Speaker 1: and things like better baby contests. One of the early
Speaker 1: names for the field was even euthenics or better living,
Speaker 1: which was coined as a companion to Sir Francis Galton's
Speaker 1: term eugenics were better breeding. We have a prior episode
Speaker 1: on the eugenics movement in the archive for folks who
Speaker 1: want more information on that. All that said, for a time,
Speaker 1: offices and program ms within the federal government also recognized
Speaker 1: the massive amount of labor involved with homemaking and how
Speaker 1: critical it was to the nation, and they took steps
Speaker 1: to help. We're going to talk more about that after
Speaker 1: a sponsor break. The U s Department of Agriculture was
Speaker 1: established in eighteen sixty two, and by the start of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century it had various programs and offices that
Speaker 1: were related to the field of whome economics in one
Speaker 1: way or another. Then, in nineteen fifteen, the Office of
Speaker 1: Home Economics was formally established as part of the State's
Speaker 1: Relations Service. Those existing programs that had been kind of
Speaker 1: spread through the U. S d A Were consolidated under
Speaker 1: the newly established office, and that office started up new
Speaker 1: projects as well. In the words of various appropriations bills,
Speaker 1: the office would allow the Department of Agriculture to quote
Speaker 1: investigate the relative utility and economy of agriculture real products
Speaker 1: for food, clothing, and other uses in the home, with
Speaker 1: special suggestions of plans and methods for more effective utilization
Speaker 1: of such products for these purposes, and to disseminate useful
Speaker 1: information on the subject. So it was a department that
Speaker 1: did a lot of outreach and created educational programs and materials,
Speaker 1: as well as doing a lot of research, including analyzing
Speaker 1: data that was being gathered by other departments. A lot
Speaker 1: of this research was about food it's digestibility and its nutrients,
Speaker 1: including analyzing vitamin content. Vitamins at that point were still
Speaker 1: a really new discovery. The office managed studies that used
Speaker 1: a respiration calorimeter and that to assess the caloric content
Speaker 1: of different foods. All of this led to the nation's
Speaker 1: first government nutrition guidelines, and this was not just about
Speaker 1: how much food it took to sustain a person, but
Speaker 1: also about how much money a family needed to be
Speaker 1: spending on food and how to prevent food waste. Experiments
Speaker 1: in a test hitchen looked at questions like the best
Speaker 1: ways to need bread, how to conserve fuel in stoves
Speaker 1: and ovens, how to get bigger yields in homemade jellies.
Speaker 1: Researchers studied various methods of home canning to figure out
Speaker 1: how to preserve food safely while maintaining its quality. Other
Speaker 1: projects involved studying different fats and frying methods to reduce
Speaker 1: the waste of oil. The Office of Home Economics also
Speaker 1: surveyed women about the problems they faced in their lives
Speaker 1: and what the office might do to help them. For example,
Speaker 1: a nineteen fifteen survey on the domestic needs of farm
Speaker 1: women revealed that women living on farms had concerns about
Speaker 1: pest management and efficient kitchen design, and fashionable a dresses.
Speaker 1: The women who were surveying talked about really wanting clothes
Speaker 1: that they felt good about wearing. And that were easy
Speaker 1: enough to make that they could get it right the
Speaker 1: first time without wasting fabric on doovers. So the Department
Speaker 1: of Home Economics started drafting functional attractive dress pattern They
Speaker 1: had a lot of features, like having three quarter length
Speaker 1: sleeves so that you were less likely to get your
Speaker 1: sleeve caught in the cooking fire. Like that kind of
Speaker 1: a mindset. They also made patterns for women's work clothes,
Speaker 1: since the surveys also revealed that farm women did not
Speaker 1: like having to work in their husbands altered cast offs.
Speaker 1: The Office of Home Economics also published material for educational programs.
Speaker 1: For example, in nineteen seventeen bulletin by Louis Stanley outlined
Speaker 1: all the topics that should be covered in a complete
Speaker 1: first year home economics course. They were food selection, both
Speaker 1: in homegrown and purchased food, as well as food preparation
Speaker 1: and planning and serving meals. Shelter including home sanitation, planning, decoration,
Speaker 1: furnishing and care. Clothing including selection making, keeping in good
Speaker 1: repair and laundry. Care and training of children including infant care,
Speaker 1: addressing problems in young children, and amusement for children. HW
Speaker 1: gene and sanitation including knowledge of diseases and ways to
Speaker 1: preserve health, caring for the sick at home, household management
Speaker 1: including budgeting and training for the enjoyment of leisure time.
Speaker 1: I like the idea that that sort of reads as though, uh,
Speaker 1: you've got so much to do that you might need
Speaker 1: a little help figuring out how to enjoy it when
Speaker 1: you have leisure time. Uh. In the Association of Land
Speaker 1: Grant Colleges started advocating for the Department of Home Economics
Speaker 1: to become its own full fledged bureau. Congress authorized the
Speaker 1: creation of the Bureau of Home Economics on July one.
Speaker 1: Of the chief of this newly created bureau was Dr
Speaker 1: Louise Stanley, author of that bulletin that we just mentioned.
Speaker 1: Stanley was the third woman to head a federal bureau,
Speaker 1: and the first to head one that was considered major.
Speaker 1: The two that were ahead of her where Grace Abbott,
Speaker 1: who was chief of the Children's Bureau of the Department
Speaker 1: of Labor, and Mary Anderson, who was chief of the
Speaker 1: Department's Women's Bureau. Stanley had earned a PhD in chemistry
Speaker 1: from Yale in nineteen eleven, and she had served as
Speaker 1: professor and chair of Home Economics at the University of
Speaker 1: Missouri before joining the FDA in nineteen fourteen. For most
Speaker 1: of the nineteen twenties, she made her home in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. With Annabelle Matthews, a solicitor with the Department
Speaker 1: of the Treasury. Mabel Walker Willow Brandt and her adopted daughter,
Speaker 1: Dorothy joined the household in the mid twenties, and when
Speaker 1: she and her daughter moved to Georgetown in ninety nine,
Speaker 1: Stanley adopted a baby girl named Nancy, who had previously
Speaker 1: been a practice baby. The news article about that is
Speaker 1: how I learned about practice babies, and almost abandoned this
Speaker 1: entire episode to just focus on that, but I did
Speaker 1: not did not have time to be changing the horse
Speaker 1: in the middle of that stream. When the Bureau of
Speaker 1: Home Economics was first established, it had a budget of
Speaker 1: seventy two thousand dollars and a staff of about five people.
Speaker 1: Stanley's salary was about five thousand dollars, and that made
Speaker 1: her the highest paid woman in the federal government at
Speaker 1: that time. By the nineteen thirties, the bureau had grown
Speaker 1: to a staff of seventy one and a budget of
Speaker 1: more than a hundred and sixty eight thousand dollars. The
Speaker 1: main areas of focus for the Bureau of Home Economics
Speaker 1: were food and nutrition, textiles and clothing, and the economics
Speaker 1: of the home. The Respiration Calorometer was transferred to the
Speaker 1: Bureau of Animal Industry, but the Bureau of Home Economics
Speaker 1: still did a lot of research into vitamins, diet, the
Speaker 1: nutritional content of foods, and food preparation and storage methods.
Speaker 1: This included research into using diet to treat and prevent pellagra,
Speaker 1: which is caused by a nyasin deficiency and was widespread
Speaker 1: in the South. The Bureau of Home Economics built on
Speaker 1: a lot of the research that the Office of Home
Speaker 1: Economics had previously been doing studies in food and nutrition,
Speaker 1: including cooking times and temperatures, storage temperatures, and shelf life,
Speaker 1: along with continuing to refine home canning practices. The Bureau
Speaker 1: also studied preparation methods for reindeer, which had been introduced
Speaker 1: into Alaska as a food source for Alaska natives over
Speaker 1: the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Bureau did
Speaker 1: similar work with rabbits during times when people were encouraged
Speaker 1: to raise rabbits as a food source, which included during
Speaker 1: World War Two. As home refrigeration became more common in
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties, the Bureau used a microbiology lab to
Speaker 1: determine temperature ranges for safe refrigeration. When it came to textiles,
Speaker 1: there just had not been a lot of formal study
Speaker 1: into how to best care for different fabrics. The Bureau
Speaker 1: studied had a care for different fibers and how those
Speaker 1: fibers could most effectively be used. They also researched home
Speaker 1: laundering things like water temperatures and the efficacy of different detergents,
Speaker 1: including how much soil was really removed and how the
Speaker 1: textiles themselves were affected. The Bureau also researched ironing, stain removal,
Speaker 1: and hygiene. The Bureau also continued to design and extribute
Speaker 1: patterns for clothing and household articles. They really focused on
Speaker 1: items that were sturdy and practical with easy construction and
Speaker 1: easy laundering, and Chouldren's clothing. They focused on durability, ease
Speaker 1: of care, and designs that allowed children to learn to
Speaker 1: dress themselves. When ready to wear garments became more widely
Speaker 1: popular and widely available, the Bureau shifted its focus away
Speaker 1: from home sewing and onto how to select and care
Speaker 1: for store bought garments, as well as on advocating for
Speaker 1: standardized sizes and ready to wear clothing. The department's focus
Speaker 1: on the economics of the home came from a lot
Speaker 1: of directions. One aspect was how people were using their incomes.
Speaker 1: A lot of this research focused on food and clothing,
Speaker 1: since those are the two major expenses in most households.
Speaker 1: The bureau studied what people actually bought, with the goal
Speaker 1: of matching production in the US to what consumers were
Speaker 1: going to consume. The bureau also studied mother's pensions, which
Speaker 1: were payments to mothers of newborn to encourage them to
Speaker 1: stay home, which had been implemented in most states by
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen thirties. The Bureau wanted to determine whether
Speaker 1: the payments really were enough to allow a new mother
Speaker 1: to stay at home. The bureau also focused on the
Speaker 1: more intangible idea of homemaker's workloads, including asking women to
Speaker 1: keep really detailed records of their days. Hilda guard Neiland
Speaker 1: was the head of the Economics of the Home team, and,
Speaker 1: in her words from a publication called is the Modern
Speaker 1: Housewife a Lady of Leisure? Quote five six of these
Speaker 1: homemakers spent over forty two hours a week in their homemaking.
Speaker 1: More than half spent over forty eight hours, and one
Speaker 1: third spent over fifty six hours. The average for all
Speaker 1: is slightly over fifty one hours a week. If this
Speaker 1: be part time work, what one may ask would be
Speaker 1: full time. This economic study wasn't just about documenting how
Speaker 1: much work it took to manage a home. The bureau
Speaker 1: also researched time and labor saving techniques to try to
Speaker 1: make the work involved in keeping a home more efficient.
Speaker 1: All of the research that the Bureau was doing informed
Speaker 1: a wealth of publications that were distributed through public schools, colleges,
Speaker 1: and extension programs, as well as home economics clubs. The
Speaker 1: bureau's outreach also went straight to consumers through pamphlets, cookbooks,
Speaker 1: radio addresses, and other materials. In nineteen forty three, the
Speaker 1: Bureau of Home Economics became the Bureau of Human Nutrition
Speaker 1: and Home Economics. Hazel Catherine Steebling became its chief in
Speaker 1: nineteen four. Like Louise Stanley, she had a PhD in chemistry.
Speaker 1: The Bureau continued with this efforts to quote develop through research,
Speaker 1: new knowledge about efficient household management and ways to make
Speaker 1: best consumer use of food, fiber, and other products of
Speaker 1: the country's farms. In the nineteen forties, this included research
Speaker 1: into the most efficient kitchen design, concluding that a U
Speaker 1: shaped kitchen could allow enough space for two women to
Speaker 1: work while keeping cross traffic from the rest of the
Speaker 1: house from getting in the way. As expectations and roles
Speaker 1: for women shifted in the nineteen sixties, the federal government
Speaker 1: started to scale back the bureau, and the Bureau of
Speaker 1: Human Nutrition and Home Economics was disbanded in nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 1: Some of the research that had been going on continued
Speaker 1: through the U. S d A's Agricultural Research Service, and
Speaker 1: some of the same types of research in some areas
Speaker 1: do continue today, both through the Agricultural Research Service and
Speaker 1: through the Economic Research Service. The fields of home economics
Speaker 1: and home economics education were also changing. From its beginnings,
Speaker 1: homec had been thought of as a subject for women,
Speaker 1: and in many public schools, girls automatically took home economics
Speaker 1: while boys took shop or industrial arts. Title nine of
Speaker 1: the Education Amendments of nineteen seventy two outlawed this type
Speaker 1: of discrimination, which led to questions about whether these classes
Speaker 1: were still legal if they were open to all, but
Speaker 1: if only girls enrolled. Of course, there are also other
Speaker 1: conversations about like what kinds of education were necessary and useful,
Speaker 1: and what schools and school systems should be paying for,
Speaker 1: which is one of the reasons that by the time
Speaker 1: I came along, like the home mech at school and
Speaker 1: a lot of places, was not as big of a deal.
Speaker 1: In the American Home Economics Association became the American Association
Speaker 1: of Family and Consumer Sciences, and in places where these
Speaker 1: types of classes are still part of the curriculum and
Speaker 1: where college programs still exist, Family and Consumer Sciences is
Speaker 1: the more common name. The cooperative extension service that was
Speaker 1: such a big part of home economics education still exists,
Speaker 1: and Family and Consumer Sciences continues on as this interdisciplinary field,
Speaker 1: incorporating a lot of the same specializations that were previously
Speaker 1: thought of as part of home economics. We hadn't really
Speaker 1: talked about the Bureau of Home Economics role in times
Speaker 1: of crisis, which is a big reason behind doing this episode,
Speaker 1: and it also touches on some topics that we have
Speaker 1: gotten a lot of quest for lately. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: get to all that, but first we'll take a quick
Speaker 1: sponsor break. The Office of Home Economics and the Bureau
Speaker 1: of Home Economics. We're both instrumental in helping American families
Speaker 1: cope during some hard times. The Office of Home Economics
Speaker 1: was already in place when the United States became involved
Speaker 1: in World War One, and the Bureau of Home Economics
Speaker 1: had programs that were meant to address the hardships that
Speaker 1: accompanied the Great Depression and World War Two, So we're
Speaker 1: going to spend a few minutes talking about them. During
Speaker 1: World War One, the Office of Home Economics was a
Speaker 1: huge part of food conservation programs in the United States.
Speaker 1: The overall goal was not just to make sure households
Speaker 1: were able to make do with what was available, but
Speaker 1: also to allow the United States to provide food support
Speaker 1: to its allies in the war. In the words of
Speaker 1: the Day's Food in War and Peace, the situation has
Speaker 1: become critical. Is not enough food in Europe? Yet? The
Speaker 1: soldiers of the allies must be maintained in full strength,
Speaker 1: Their wives and children at home must not face famine,
Speaker 1: The friendly Neutrals must not be starved. And finally, our
Speaker 1: own army in France must never lack a needed ounce
Speaker 1: of food. There is just one way in which all
Speaker 1: these requirements can be meant. North America must furnish the food,
Speaker 1: and we must furnish it from our savings, because we
Speaker 1: have already sent our normal surplus. The Day's Food in
Speaker 1: War in Peace was published by the Department of Agriculture
Speaker 1: and the Woman's Committee of the Council of National Defense,
Speaker 1: and it was created in part with the government's home economists.
Speaker 1: It was a teaching tool meant as a guide for
Speaker 1: things like club programs or community demonstrations, and it also
Speaker 1: directed women to their local university's home economics departments as
Speaker 1: well as the local branches of the American Home Economics
Speaker 1: Association for support. This publication really focused on reducing the
Speaker 1: use of wheat, meat, fat, and shower and strictly portioning
Speaker 1: other foods to eliminate food waste, but it also stressed
Speaker 1: not to hoard food. It also called for women's support
Speaker 1: in the food conservation effort, not just for the sake
Speaker 1: of their nation and their families, but also out of
Speaker 1: empathy for the women of Europe, especially France. It noted
Speaker 1: that most French women bought their bread from bakers, and
Speaker 1: that if bakers didn't have the wheat they needed. Even
Speaker 1: after making substitutions, French women had to turn to making
Speaker 1: porridges and cakes that weren't already part of their cooking repertoire,
Speaker 1: while also caring for the sick and wounded and living
Speaker 1: in constant wartime peril. Quote. Not one slightest additional burden
Speaker 1: should be laid on the women of France. Far less
Speaker 1: should they be forced to add another hour to their
Speaker 1: long day of toil because we failed to send them wheat.
Speaker 1: The day's food and War in Peace includes a lot
Speaker 1: of recipes. There are victory breads, which were any breads
Speaker 1: that contained a wheat substitute in place of at least
Speaker 1: twenty five percent of the wheat that was normally called for.
Speaker 1: Substitutes included barley flour, rolled oats, corn flour, and buckwheat.
Speaker 1: There are also quick breads made entirely from wheat substitutes,
Speaker 1: and meatless recipes, including bean soups and stuffed cabbage, as
Speaker 1: well as sponge cakes that didn't require wheat or fat.
Speaker 1: This publication also includes information about the calorie content of
Speaker 1: different foods, as well as the calories needed to support
Speaker 1: an eight hour work day in different occupations, depending on
Speaker 1: how strenuous those occupations were. There's also a cost breakdown
Speaker 1: based on the price of foods versus how many calories
Speaker 1: they provide. One of the later chapters encourages people to
Speaker 1: buy as much as they can locally and to research
Speaker 1: the farms and other resources in their own area. Throughout
Speaker 1: it is full of information about how wheat, meat, fat,
Speaker 1: and sugar work in food and in the body, and
Speaker 1: the why behind the directions to conserve them. The Day's
Speaker 1: Food and War and Peace was aimed at people who
Speaker 1: would be teaching this material to others, but the Office
Speaker 1: of homeak and on X was also involved in informational
Speaker 1: pamphlets for consumers. These pamphlets included directions on how to
Speaker 1: prepare food in an economical way, how to make limited
Speaker 1: ingredients stretch, and how to prepare foods that might not
Speaker 1: have been pantry staples and other circumstances. Titles from this
Speaker 1: series included make a Little Meat Go a Long Way
Speaker 1: instead of meat, Vegetables for Winter, Save sugar dried peas
Speaker 1: and beans, and wheatless bread and cakes. The Office of
Speaker 1: Home Economics also contributed to thrift leaflets that were published
Speaker 1: in conjunction with the Savings Division of the Department of
Speaker 1: the Treasury. By the start of the Great Depression, the U.
Speaker 1: S d A had developed a character called Aunt Sammy,
Speaker 1: who was Uncle Sam's wife and who gave advice and
Speaker 1: answered women's questions. Aunt Sammy's Radio Recipes was a collection
Speaker 1: of recipes that had first come out through weekly housekeeper's
Speaker 1: chats that were aired through the radio. This became the
Speaker 1: first cookbook in the US to be printed in braille.
Speaker 1: From the start, the Aunt Sammy Recipes were intended to
Speaker 1: be pretty economical, and during the Great Depression, the Department
Speaker 1: of Home Economics went even further with a series of
Speaker 1: publications about low cost meal preparation and recipes. This included
Speaker 1: titles like Getting the Most for Your Food Money, The
Speaker 1: Families Food at Low Cost, and a weekly newspaper column
Speaker 1: called Market Basket. Some of the advice in these publications
Speaker 1: was similar to what had been in the Day's Food
Speaker 1: and More in Peace when it came to conserving food,
Speaker 1: avoiding waste, and incorporating cheaper ingredients, but the Depression era
Speaker 1: publications also included a lot more about incorporating canned and
Speaker 1: frozen foods, as well as enriched food products. The cost
Speaker 1: of many foods had dropped, but people also had less money,
Speaker 1: so along with tips about getting the most for your money,
Speaker 1: there were tips about using cuts of meat that some
Speaker 1: families had previously found too expensive, but we're now priced
Speaker 1: lower than other alternatives. A lot of these depression error
Speaker 1: recipes were cheap and filling, and they were nutritionally complete
Speaker 1: based on the knowledge of the day, but they were
Speaker 1: not necessarily appetizing. In general, they tended to be both
Speaker 1: mushy and bland. For example, a low cost menu from
Speaker 1: a nineteen thirty three edition of The Market Basket goes
Speaker 1: like this, prunes and hot cereal or toast for breakfast,
Speaker 1: along with tomato juice for young children, milk for older children,
Speaker 1: and coffee for adults. A dinner of mashed dried beans,
Speaker 1: stewed tomatoes, brown bread or grand muffins and tea for adults,
Speaker 1: with milk for children, and a supper of cottage cheese, salad,
Speaker 1: bread and butter, cocoa and canned fruit. I'm having a
Speaker 1: kitchen related sad trombone in my I mean, we've been
Speaker 1: eating a lot of dried beans during the pandemic that
Speaker 1: we have been living through, but they have not been
Speaker 1: prepared in a mushy, bland way. No, I feel like,
Speaker 1: because we're cooking at home all the time, we've kind
Speaker 1: of been eating like kings because yeah, I love a
Speaker 1: little kitchen experiment action and I love to invent things.
Speaker 1: So uh. Some of this mushy blandness, though, that we're
Speaker 1: talking about, was because of a belief that overly seasoned
Speaker 1: foods were too invigorating to the digestive system and would
Speaker 1: make people feel hungrier. As an aside, this breaks my heart,
Speaker 1: but there was probably some prejudice at work here as well.
Speaker 1: In general, the bureau's recipe writers did not approve of
Speaker 1: spices that recent immigrants often relied on. During World War Two,
Speaker 1: the Bureau of Home Economics again focused on food conservation,
Speaker 1: including cooking with rationed ingredients. As I read a whole
Speaker 1: pamphlet that was about how much sugar you could get
Speaker 1: for canning with the ration system. It also published materials
Speaker 1: to help women process and store vegetables that were grown
Speaker 1: in victory gardens, although information about the gardens themselves typically
Speaker 1: came from other parts of the U. S d A
Speaker 1: and the War Food Administration. One aspect of this included
Speaker 1: a December three radio broadcast reminding women that if they
Speaker 1: got canned vegetables or preserves as Christmas presents, they should
Speaker 1: carefully save those canning jars and lids for the following
Speaker 1: growing season. The Bureau also published material to help women
Speaker 1: who were entering the workforce during wartime. Publication called Work
Speaker 1: Clothes for Women listed these chapters in its table of contents.
Speaker 1: Know your job and dress for it Field suit, mechanics suit, jumper,
Speaker 1: slack suit, protect all food preparation dress, divided skirt, dress,
Speaker 1: belted overall apron, surplus overall Apron, laboratory dress, surplus house
Speaker 1: dress cover itt Princess overall Apron, Nurses uniform, utility aprons.
Speaker 1: The Bureau also published patterns for these and other work
Speaker 1: garments for women. After the end of World War Two,
Speaker 1: President Harry S. Truman established the President's Famine Emergency Committee
Speaker 1: to fight against World famine. The Bureau of Home Economics
Speaker 1: was ready with publications advising Americans again to cut back
Speaker 1: on wheat, fats, and oils to contribute to the overall
Speaker 1: aid effort. One pamphlet advised people to quote reach for
Speaker 1: a potato instead of bread, and offered suggestions for using potatoes, cornmeal, oatmeal,
Speaker 1: and other substitutes in place of bread. This particular publication
Speaker 1: also noted that people should conserve rice and not throw
Speaker 1: it at weddings. And since this was all government produced work,
Speaker 1: it is in the public domain today and a lot
Speaker 1: of it is available online. If you google Bureau of
Speaker 1: Home Economics publications, you can go down a real rabbit
Speaker 1: hole patterns here. I come, yeah, there's patterns is also,
Speaker 1: I mean, just so many different recipes, some of which
Speaker 1: I was curious to try, like various victory breads or
Speaker 1: quick breads that are including wheat substitutes. Um, Like, I
Speaker 1: know some people have had a hard time getting wheat
Speaker 1: and used during the pandemic, and like, I was very
Speaker 1: curious about trying some of those. Some of them I
Speaker 1: found a little more uh questionable. Like I found, um
Speaker 1: a broiled fish recipe that advised cooking the fish um
Speaker 1: at a temperature like three fifty or something like that
Speaker 1: for like twenty minutes and then putting it on the
Speaker 1: broiler for another fifteen more minutes. And I was like,
Speaker 1: this does not sound like a good number of total
Speaker 1: minutes for some fish to me. I suspect, like the
Speaker 1: broiler had to be less powerful than what we're used
Speaker 1: to has to be because otherwise you're gonna have fish
Speaker 1: jerky fish charcoal. Do you have listener mail to go
Speaker 1: with this delightful adventure? I already found a pattern I'm
Speaker 1: gonna make. Um. I have listener mail from Maggie. Maggie
Speaker 1: says Hello, Holly and Tracy as one of perhaps many
Speaker 1: people who have written episode requests for Anything bee Keeping.
Speaker 1: When I opened today's podcast and saw a brief history
Speaker 1: of beekeeping, I think the neighbors could hear my shriek
Speaker 1: of delight. After eight years of being a beekeeper, member
Speaker 1: of our local hobby Beekeepers Association, and editor of the newsletter,
Speaker 1: I know a bit about the subject, but you did
Speaker 1: not disappoint with new and fun facts. I loved hearing
Speaker 1: about what Samuel Peeps had to say upon seeing an
Speaker 1: observation hive and quote the bees making their honey and
Speaker 1: colmbs mighty pleasantly. Their comments of agreement with his feelings
Speaker 1: were a surprise. I thought it was only nutty beekeepers
Speaker 1: who fell in love with their little charges. A while back,
Speaker 1: I had an MRI I type scan and before going
Speaker 1: into the tube, the technician advised me to go to
Speaker 1: my happy place when I emerged, I commented to her,
Speaker 1: I bet not a lot of people tell you their
Speaker 1: happy place is watching bees. She said, indeed not. Maggie
Speaker 1: goes on to say that she doesn't have any hives
Speaker 1: this year and missed is that the bees terribly so
Speaker 1: thanks for that little buzz, and then in parentheses beekeepers
Speaker 1: are a penny lot. UM. Maggie also sent some pictures
Speaker 1: of of a bear proof a biary UM, which I
Speaker 1: looked at and I was like, I bet a bear,
Speaker 1: really determined bear might still get through that UM, and
Speaker 1: then also donned outfit for UM treating with some vapor
Speaker 1: to try to control baroa mites in the beehives. UM.
Speaker 1: So this email ends with thanks again, and stay out
Speaker 1: of those crowded hives, Maggie, Thank you so much, Maggie. UM.
Speaker 1: I said in that episode, I really like bees. UM. Lately,
Speaker 1: I've been playing a lot of animal crossing, like I
Speaker 1: know a lot of other people have also. And when
Speaker 1: a friend of mine UM found the d i y
Speaker 1: recipe for bee hives, she immediately may multiple bee hives
Speaker 1: and I sent her more waspness to make more beehives
Speaker 1: out of so now I have like three bee hives
Speaker 1: on my animal crossing Island. I've also been playing a
Speaker 1: lot of Assassin's Creed Odyssey, where I very recently needed
Speaker 1: to go find a beehive out in the world, and
Speaker 1: I got really excited about that because I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I just learned all these various things about bee hives
Speaker 1: and beekeeping doing that that episode of the podcast what
Speaker 1: beehive design is going to be in Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Um,
Speaker 1: the answer was spoiler alert, stacked horizontal tube hives that
Speaker 1: were um longer than I expected them to be. Um,
Speaker 1: but still pretty cool. So anyway, thank you so much
Speaker 1: Maggie for this lovely email. We got it a couple
Speaker 1: of other emails about bees this morning, so be keeping
Speaker 1: might make another appearance in future listener mail. If you
Speaker 1: would like to write to us about this or any
Speaker 1: other podcast or his podcast at i heeart radio dot
Speaker 1: com and you can find us all over social media
Speaker 1: at missed in History. That's where you'll find our Facebook, counterest, Twitter,
Speaker 1: and Instagram. And you can subscribe to our show on
Speaker 1: the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, and anywhere else you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is
Speaker 1: a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: i Heeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.