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Extension Family and Consumer
Sciences: Why It Was Included
in the Smith-Lever Act of 1914
How was Cooperative Extension home economics
incorporated into the Smith-Lever Act of 1914?
Historical references (1840s–1914) including
AHEA (AAFCS) documents; Cooperative Extension, legislative, university, and hospital reports;
government publications; news releases; college registries and correspondence courses; and films, theses, dissertations, and monographs were consulted
to develop an answer to this question. Nine major
bills introduced between 1909 and 1914 formed the
basis for the Smith-Lever Act’s passage, but it was
the ingenuity and sacrifices of a variety of individuals and groups and the philosophy and technology
of the times that made the largest contribution.
As C.W. Warburton (1939) said during the
25-year anniversary celebration of the Smith-Lever
Act, “Cooperative Extension may rightfully assert
that it has accomplished far more for the public
welfare than was ever dreamed by its sponsors.”
This progression in agriculture grew out of the
progressive era and its industrial revolution.
It also grew out of the philosophy that a classical education of Latin and Greek had not provided
farmers the practical education they needed for
their trade. An anonymous quote from the period
acknowledges this gap:
Is it more important that the farmer should
speak a classical language, or that he shall
understand the principles of agriculture and
be skilled in the tools and machinery of the
Jan Scholl
farm? Be he even so highly educated, he will
lapse into unclassical English when he pounds
his thumb-nail through lack of skill.
Two significant developments are credited with
the establishment of Extension work in the
United States. First, President Lincoln signed the
Morrill Act in 1862, which created colleges of
agriculture and mechanical arts, now known as
land-grant universities. The farmer’s institutes (1or 2-day meetings held for farmers in local areas)
after 1860 was the second development. Between
1860 and 1900, activities on behalf of the farmer
and farm families were influenced by the “university extension” movement and a growing interest
in adult self-improvement (Mathews, 1893). In
1877, the Farm Journal magazine was published,
one of the first ways agricultural information
reached farm families. The Hatch Act (1887)
established experiment stations to improve what
was known about agriculture and “diffuse it among
the people of the United States.” Later, the SmithLever Act was passed (1914) so that farmers would
have the benefit of this information in their local
communities.
The Smith-Lever legislation also provided the
authority and funds for inaugurating a system for
teaching the farm wife and farm girls the elementary principles of homemaking and home management. Little is known, however, how Extension
family and consumer sciences (under a variety of
Jan Scholl, PhD, CFCS ( [email protected]) is Associate Professor, Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology and Education, at
Penn State University in University Park, PA.
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names in the 20th century) came to be included in
the establishment of the Cooperative Extension
Service.
The Smith-Lever legislation also
provided the authority and funds for
inaugurating a system for teaching
the farm wife and farm girls the
elementary principles of homemaking
and home management.
Objectives
The purpose of this historical study was to discover how Extension home economics began and
why it was incorporated into the Smith-Lever Act
that established Cooperative Extension.
Methods
This study utilized primary sources of information
contained in several archival collections including
the Elsie Carper Collection at the National Agricultural Library, the Grace Frysinger Collection at the
Harvard-Radcliffe Schlesinger Library, the Kroch
Library collections at Cornell University, the film
libraries of Archives II (College Park, MD) and the
Library of Congress, and Montana State University
Library archives collections. Legislative documents
were reviewed not only for the legislative content,
but also for the discussion of each of the bills
(United States Congress, 1959). Secondary sources
of published documents also were loaned from a
variety of libraries. All references were studied
using a method outlined by McCulloch and
Richardson (2000) to provide a rigorous comparison of each document for historical accuracy.
Limitations
The beginning of Cooperative Extension (referred
to as Extension in the rest of this article) work
evolved in many areas at the same time. Though
there are many examples of Extension work that
could be reported, only a representative sample is
included in this article. The terms home demonstration and home economics are used because
these were the most popular terms between 1890
and 1914. Though it is recognized that men supported home economics programs and some
taught homemaking concepts, most programs
were provided by women at that time.
Findings
Before the mid-1800s
There are some who feel Extension home economics started early—very early. Kate Hill (1958)
indicated that the first home demonstration agent
might have been Dorcas in the Bible who “used
her home as a center where other women were
taught to sew and gathered to cooperative [sic] in
making robes, saddles and other articles of wearing apparel under her skillful tutelage” (p. 5).
Shackleford (1971) indicated that Ann McGinty
was the “Matron Saint” of home demonstration
agents. In September 1775, McGinty rode into
Fort Harrod (Kentucky) over the Wilderness
Road with little more than the spinning wheel tied
on her horse. She realized quickly that the finery,
brought to the new world, would not last long
and the flax for linen would require a few years to
take hold in the fields. She located and spun wild
nettles and, with her husband, devised a loom to
weave the cloth. She also experimented with roots,
barks, nut hulls, and berries to produce a variety
of bright dyes to improve the look of the yarns. In
those days, McGinty felt that men’s lives were less
difficult. He would hunt, tend crops, look after his
land, and sometimes fight the Indians. She had to
think about the children, their clothing, and nutrition so they could thrive.
Mid-1800s
The National Grange, a nonprofit, nonpartisan
fraternal organization, was started in 1867 to
advocate for rural America. The organization was
unusual at the time because women and youth
were encouraged to participate. The importance
of farm women was reinforced by the fact that
four of the elected positions in the Grange could
only be held by women (Gardner, 1949).
Chautauqua, established in 1874 in Western
New York, began as a response to the social and
geographic isolation of American farming and
ranching communities. In addition to summer
programs that included women as participants,
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pamphlets and correspondence courses were provided as a form of outreach. Several colleges picked
up the Chautauqua idea, giving instruction not only
in agriculture, but also in topics that appealed to
women. In 1896 and 1902, for example, Miss S.A.
Little of Penn State College taught home furnishings by correspondence. She also taught food
preservation in this manner between 1899 and
1914. These correspondence courses were included
in the college’s list of courses, though they were
offered without credit.
Lecturers
Even before the agricultural experiment stations
were established, women began attending the
farmer’s institutes, and special lecturers often were
hired from the New England cooking schools. In
1884, Minnesota hired Juliet Corson, Superintendent of the New York Cooking School, to lecture
on food habits and bread baking. The idea of a
woman lecturer was criticized because it wasn’t
socially correct at that time for women to speak in
front of a “mixed audience” of men and women,
but she drew a crowd of 1,100, perhaps because
of her previously published, Fifteen Cent Dinners
for Workingmen’s Families (1878).
Women found other places that would accept
their oratory. Two such women who spoke on the
conditions of the farm wife in the late 1800s were
Clara Bewick Colby and Matilda Fletcher.
Clara Bewick Colby was a child of a pioneer
farm household in Dane County, Wisconsin, and
was educated at the University of Wisconsin. She
believed that that the advantages of a better life
were accessible to progressive rural women. In her
14-page speech at the Wisconsin State Agricultural
Society in 1881, Colby addressed the acute and
interlocking problems of farmer’s wives: early marriage, poverty, and overwork; the moral failings
resulting in a life lacking in social grace; the effects
of patriarchal control of household finances; the
domestic sphere and the farm wife’s isolation; and
lack of opportunity for self-improvement or a
community of supportive peers. “Many times the
woman is left to confront life with a husband, who
values farm productivity, and nothing else, especially when the husband sells and buys everything,
including her clothes.”
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At the 1873 Nebraska State Fair, Matilda
Fletcher (1873) warned, “Have a care girls whom
you marry” and provided the sad story of a farmer
who mowed down the flowers planted by his wife
because he believed that they were a “sinful waste
of time.” Unlike their husbands, women had few
conveniences in the home. Many had to haul water
a dozen or more times a day to cook, clean, and
wash clothes. Even at county fairs, generous premiums were given to encourage the show of fine
stock, but women’s work was rewarded with diplomas so there might be a purse for horse racing
(p. 267). Fair exhibits also warned: “Is Wife Number One working for Wife Number 2?”
Fiction
The plight of the farm wife also was indicated in
the literature of the time. Susan Elton Wallace
(1883) wrote the following in The Storied Sea:
“There are thousands of women who will live and
will die before long, in narrow ruts, who long to
see the world, but cannot look beyond the limits
of their own state. . . . Sunburt, flat chested, high
shouldered farmer’s wives, who from rosy youth
to wrinkled age vibrate between nursery and
kitchen; patient women with hard hands and soft
hearts, whose unwritten lines bear a pathos
unspeakable. They have buried the [sic] early
wishes, hopelessly cherished now, ineffably dear,
like the memory of dead children. The passionate
longing has faded into a tender, lingering regret.”
Legal Action, Medical and Congressional
Reports
It was not just the speeches and literature that
indicated a need. An excerpt in the Central Law
Journal, dated 1898, cited that a man was entitled
to divorce for his wife’s desertion on account of
his compelling her to take care of five cows and
churn (at the same time that she was nursing a
young baby), making her work in the garden and
live on rye flour, refuse potatoes, mackerel, mush
and milk, and pickled pork . . . not allowing her
to go to church and treating her family coolly . . .
the husband being a poor tenant farmer and the
parties having lived together but three months.
(A comment written in the margins noted, “it is
no wonder that farmer’s wives go crazy. . . .”)
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Indeed this was the case. Kirkbride (1863)
noted that among similar institutions, the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane in Philadelphia had
reported since 1841, when the institution was
founded, that “the largest number of their cases
were farmers’ wives, farmers’ widows, and farmers’ daughters [and indeed the farmers themselves]” (p. 15–21).
By the end of the 1800s, several
agricultural administrators were
recognizing the importance of the
farm wife to the farm operation.
By the end of the 1800s, several agricultural
administrators were recognizing the importance of
the farm wife to the farm operation. Secretary of
Agriculture James Wilson wrote in his 1897 annual
report to Congress: “In the great work of helping
the women of our land, nearly half of whom are
toiling in the homes upon our farms, this department it is believed has a large duty to perform. For
whatever will be effective in raising the grade of
the home life on the farm, in securing the betterment of the farmer’s family and in the surroundings with the refinements and attractions of a well
ordered home, will powerfully contribute alike to
the material prosperity of the country and the general welfare of the farmers” (Frysinger, 1935).
During the same time as agricultural Extension
was getting started, science began to play a role in
home-related matters. Catherine Beecher had written her Treatise on Domestic Economy in 1842 and
Ellen Richards gave credibility to home economics
as the first woman graduate of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology in 1873. Scientific discoveries, such as Belgian bacteriologist Van Ermengem’s 1895 isolation of the Clostridium botulinum
(published in 1897), promoted public concern
about adulterated food and led to the Pure Food
and Drug Act of 1906, advances in home canning,
and improved agricultural production.
Most of the home economics programs established between 1890 and 1900 were associated
with resident education at colleges and universities. Melvil Dewey (of Dewey decimal fame)
learned of home economics during the early Lake
Placid Conferences and wanted to establish a
home economics program at Cornell University.
He contacted the head of agricultural programs,
Liberty Hyde Bailey, to help him. When they visited the university president about this matter, the
reply, which was published in several newspapers,
was “Cooks at Cornell—NEVER!”
This was a dismal outcome, but it was from this
meeting that work in Extension home economics
was born. (This was later confirmed by Ava Miliam
Clark of Oregon State who knew the situation at
Cornell and other programs at that time (Clark &
Munford, 1969). Bailey was involved in directing
the agricultural University Extension program supported by New York state legislature (under the
Nixon Act) and felt some type of home economics
program was needed. He issued a letter to farm
families asking if they would be interested in a correspondence course for farm women. He received
more than 5,000 positive replies by mail. This was
a significant number because rural free delivery
had just been established, and the delivery of mail
was erratic due to few paved country roads.
Martha Van Rennselaer, who had been a teacher,
a dean of women (preceptress) at a preparatory
institute, and an elected rural superintendent before
she came to Cornell, began her university Extension
work with the Farmer’s Wives’ Correspondence
Course. Within 6 months, she reprinted 6,000
copies of her first issue, wrote more courses, and
answered letters not only from farm wives, but also
from physicians, ministers, and other professionals.
This was truly an Extension correspondence
course; Van Rennselaer required that participants
return answers to questions about the content,
upon which additional resources and suggestions
were provided to each participant. She wrote
thousands of letters and also traveled to various
places in New York State by train and, like many
later Extension workers, was further transported
by buggy or wagon, spending the night with farm
families after her presentation. During the first 3
years of her Extension appointment, she reached
more than 10,000 women.
With Dewey at the state library in Albany, Van
Rennselaer established a book club (rural women
often were forbidden in city libraries due to their
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“lack of cleanliness”). As her programs thrived,
she was invited to present at conferences in various states and Canada. Before the Smith-Lever
Bill was passed in 1914, Van Rennselaer was
elected national president of the American Home
Economics Association (AHEA).
Unlike the farmer’s institute lecturers, Van
Rennselaer was hired for 9 months each year and,
3 years later, worked year-round. Though she
became involved in other home economicsrelated endeavors (Cornell eventually established a
resident education program), her influence in
Extension home economics programs was felt for
more than 30 years.
Van Rennselaer talked publicly about social situations and the value of learning more about the
home. She was criticized because, at that time,
only mothers were supposed to teach such skills.
However, even city women were finding new roles
because few homes could afford household servants. According to Van Rennselaer, women’s colleges were not doing their part in educating women
for their home responsibilities as part of marriage.
In her speeches, she would relate:
I shall never forget a remark of a poor, wornout slattern of a woman in a slum. She was
washing a heap of dishes. She hadn’t scraped
them first, and her dish water was in consequence thick with grease, lumps of refuse floated on its surface. Plunging her hands into that
horrible, lukewarm stew, the woman said, ‘and
to think Miss, that I’d ever come to this! Me
that was so highly educated before I was married. I couldn’t even fry a steak.’
Between 1900 and 1910, Van Rennselaer published
at least 20 correspondence courses relating to the
farm home. The United States Department of
Agriculture’s experiment station, in conjunction
with Maria Parloa, a well-known cookbook author,
published about the same number of courses during that period. Topics included meats, fish, poultry, legumes, eggs, grape juice, breakfast foods,
vegetables and fruits, milk (and cottage cheese) as
protein foods, bread and bread making, canning,
and principles of nutrition and the nutritive value
of foods (USDA, 1911).
Van Rennselaer was not a nutritionist and often
referred scientific questions to Ellen Richards or
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her colleague, Flora Rose. Yet her topics were
equally popular in New York and other places.
Topics included saving steps, saving strength,
practical housekeeping, laundry, germ life (bacteriology) in the farm home, the rural school and
the farm home, and reading in the farm home.
The Chautauqua Institution published her correspondence courses for out-of-state use because
her Extension programs were funded by state
appropriations. Many state Extension programs
printed the correspondence courses verbatim.
The North, the South, and the North
In 1902, John D. Rockefeller established and
endowed the General Education Board, which
supported many of the early Extension activities
in the South. He was not the only philanthropist.
George Washington Carver of Tuskegee Institute
asked Morris K. Jesup for funds to equip and
operate a movable school (called the Jesup wagon).
The goal of this work was to allow farmers and
farmers’ wives to benefit from close contact with
experts and make use of innovations in their own
communities. (One theory is that the model for
Extension work was based on the activities of a
traveling salesmen.) Carver also conducted experiments that led to many food and household products made from peanuts, pecans, and sweet
potatoes.
With General Education Board funds, Seaman
Knapp was employed in 1902 by the government
to promote good agricultural practices (Martin,
1921). In 1903, the first cooperative farm demonstration was conducted at the Porter Farm near
Terrell, Texas, to eradicate the boll weevil. This
demonstration work led to Knapp’s work with
boys and girls clubs (started in 1902 by Albert
Graham of Ohio) and eventually, to homemakers.
In 1902, Theodore Roosevelt reported to Congress that “The farmer should realize that the person he most needs to consider is his wife. . . but if
she does her duty she is more entitled to our
regard even than the man who does his duty; and
the man should show special consideration of her
needs.” It was Theodore Roosevelt who signed
the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.
In 1905, the Association of American Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations (United
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States Congress) issued their own report: “Home
Economics cannot be separated from any organized Extension Service.” The report further recommended that provisions be made immediately
for workers in this field. “This is the first time in
the history of the country that the federal government has shown any tangible purpose or desire to
help the farm women lessen her burden. The
drudgery and toil of farm women have not been
appreciated by those upon whom the duty of legislation dwells, nor has proper weight been given
to her influence upon rural life.”
“Home Economics cannot be separated
from any organized Extension Service.”
In 1906, Liberty Hyde Bailey was elected president of this association and in 1908, Theodore
Roosevelt appointed him to chair the national
Country Life Commission to address the migration of farm families to the city. The commission
surveyed farmers, rural postman, creditors, and
others. Though few inquiries were made about the
“lot of farm women,” survey answers indicated
that home sanitation was a priority (Larson &
Jones, 1976). Bailey’s knowledge of Van Rennselaer’s work and that of subsequent women was
important to the continuance of Extension programs in home economics. The main recommendation of the Commission’s report was that a
Cooperative Extension Service be established
(Bailey & Roosevelt, 1909).
Seaman Knapp had continued his demonstration work within USDA. At the first conference of
State Workers in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, he told the agents not to go into the farmer’s
house and tell him they had come to teach his
wife to cook. He preferred to approach the home
through the activities of mother-daughter clubs.
He suggested canning (first) and poultry clubs
(introduced as the young people became older).
He also experienced problems when he went
to the Secretary of Agriculture with the request
for the appointment of the first woman agent. No
woman had ever been appointed by the Department of Agriculture for field work.
However, Marie Cromer (Dickert, 1988) was
hired in early 1910 to serve a girl’s club in Aiken
County, South Carolina. She met with quite a bit
of apathy, indifference, and some opposition related
to her tomato clubs, but she secured an enrollment
of 47 club members in different parts of the county.
Soon Cromer and her girls attracted much attention
and favorable comment and she was appointed as a
special agent by the USDA. Cromer also spent a
summer in New England visiting institutions that
gave instruction in home economics. Ella Agnew
was federally appointed a few months later to do
similar work in three counties in Virginia.
In her book, When We’re Green We Grow,
McKimmon (1945) noted that the first state home
demonstration agents appointed in the U. S. were
Marie Cromer, Ella Agnew, Susie Powell of Mississippi, Virginia Pearl Moore of Tennessee and,
herself, Jane McKimmon of North Carolina (p.
16). However, this list did not include other educators such as Dora Dee Walker of South Carolina
whose giant tombstone still proclaims her as “the
first home demonstration agent in the world.”
The minutes of the 1909 annual meeting of
AHEA noted that “Extension work in home
economics was being accelerated with greatest
emphasis in New York, Illinois, Wisconsin, Georgia, Missouri, Colorado, Kansas, Iowa and Maryland” (AHEA, p.2). Many publications were
printed during that year, including the first issue
of the Journal of Home Economics and Good
Housekeeping magazine. Books, bibliographies,
and curricula also were published by individuals,
the U.S. Government, and the American School
of Home Economics in Chicago.
Seaman Knapp and Ellen Richards both died
in 1911, but between 1910 and 1914 dozens of
women were hired by states as home demonstration agents and the work continued. One of them
was Annie Peters Hunter, who started in 1911 as
the first African American home demonstration
agent (Scholl & Finchum, 2012). She was from
Boley, Oklahoma and established community
canning centers, often walking to these locations.
Before she met the manager of the telephone company in the early 1920s, Annie Peters was a single
mother and, despite the racial controversy at the
time, she was included in program planning
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events, such as the 3-day district Extension meetings in 1913 (Bentley, 1914). The second African
American home demonstration agent was Mattie
Holmes of Hampton Institute in Virginia, who
was appointed May 24, 1912. The experiences of
these women were not unlike those of Mame
Weaver of Yell County, Arkansas, who worked 6
months a year, 3 days a week making trips over
the county on foot, walking as many as 20 miles a
day, at a salary of $12.50 per month (less than half
of the White agent salary). Weaver also taught
school during the fall and winter to pay the debts
she contracted while being a canning club agent
(Frysinger, 1919, p. 12 from a Arkansas Extension
Report dated 1913).
The Railroads
Since the early part of the 20th century, the railroads in the country provided discounts to farm
families to attend experiment station meetings,
farmer’s institutes, coursework at the land-grant
university, and fairs and conferences. The railroads also distributed USDA and state Extension
publications. This started around 1896 when farm
prices were so low that farmers hesitated to transport their grain, thereby adversely affecting railway revenues (Scott, 1965). Though farmers
benefitted, lecturers in home economics were
“riding the rails” as early as 1900. When heavy
snows forced Abby Marlatt to miss the regularly
scheduled train to take her to a 1909 institute
speaking engagement, she hired her own train
with special engineer and conductor (Weber,
1978). Likewise, Van Rensselaer secured farm
equipment to rescue stranded women—and herself—from a railcar caught in an avalanche on the
way home from a state meeting.
In the 1910s, Van Rensselaer and home demonstration workers from other states outfitted train
cars with exhibits that could be viewed when
stopped along a train route. One of these exhibits
showed how to put together a fireless cooker (also
known as a hay box). This cooker was helpful to
farm families because it allowed foods to cook while
not connected to a heat source, and also assisted
home demonstration agents, who had to travel with
hot food in order to give presentations. Another
useful invention was the iceless refrigerator.
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Legislators
These and many other innovations, shown by
these early Extension workers, did not go
unnoticed by legislators. Van Rensselaer and her
colleague, Flora Rose, are credited for one of the
early campus home economics buildings because,
in an emergency situation, they had to serve a
noon meal to legislators. Remembering the experience a year later, one legislator stood up and said,
“I vote for the one who taught me how to eat
cooked [vegetables].”
Extension specialist Mignon Quaw wrote and
produced a play about Extension and provided
free tickets to legislators in Bozeman, Montana.
The next year, the legislature more than doubled
the state Extension home economics budget due
to her ingenuity (Cooley, 1919).
Between 1909 and 1914, 16 to 32 (depending
on the source) different legislative bills were submitted for some type of federal aid for Extension
work (United States Congress, 1959). Whether it
was just to release the farmer from several outdoor tasks or to improve the farm family life and
health, in no case did any of the legislative rhetoric criticize or devalue the role of the farm wife in
the farming operation. Although the treatment of
the farmer’s wife was fairly disagreeable in the
1800s, by 1914 a tremendous amount of work had
been accomplished. Advances in the home kitchen
and laundry also played a part. So did the technology related to the U.S. mail, the telegraph, the
automobile, and the roads.
In 1913, both Raven and Barrows reported
survey findings of the Extension programs
throughout the country, and Christie (1913) published a government bulletin on educational contests for use in Extension work. AHEA provided
the first home economics syllabus in 1913. Also
that year, USDA produced the first (of more than
400) silent educational films, Helping the Farmers
of Tomorrow. (Soon after, a government publication was produced with a cover illustration showing how to run the film projector from a Model T
car battery.)
Considering all that was to come before the
1920s, it was fortunate that Cooperative Extension
programs for farm women and the home economics profession came along when they did. A large
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part of what would keep our country healthy—and
rescue nations such as Belgium from starvation
during the World War I—was the work of Extension educators who would accomplish much in
this nationwide effort of non-formal education for
farm families. Even today, some of the same issues
related to the theory and practice of home life and
the roles of men and women in the farm operation
are addressed in Extension work.
This article affirms that Extension programs
started much earlier than the Smith-Lever Act and
that the inclusion of home economics, now family
and consumer sciences (FCS), was an integral part
of this legislation from the start. The ingenuity and
sacrifices of a variety of individuals and groups
and the philosophy and technology of the times
were all contributing factors.
Extension programs started much
earlier than the Smith-Lever Act and
inclusion of home economics, now FCS,
was an integral part of this legislation
from the start.
References
AHEA. (1909). Milestones in home economics (Part VII), as sent
by Jenny Schroeder to Jan Scholl, November 2, 2007.
AHEA. (1913). Syllabus of home economics. Baltimore, MD:
Author.
Bailey, L., & Roosevelt, T. (1909). Report of the Country Life
Commission: Special message from the President of the United States transmitting the report of the Country Life Commission. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
Barrows, A. (1913). Extension work in home economics
through agricultural agencies. Journal of Home Economics, 5(1), 61–66.
Beecher, C. (1842). A treatise on domestic economy for the use of
young ladies at home and at school. Boston, MA: T.H. Webb.
Bentley, W. D. (1914). Early history of the farmers cooperative
demonstration work in Northwest Texas and Oklahoma.
USDA Circular 252, General Series 91. Stillwater, OK:
Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College.
Central Law Journal. (1898). Grounds for divorce. Central
Law Journal, 43(5), 82.
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Ellen Henrietta Swallow
Ellen Henrietta Swallow
(1842–1911) was the first
woman awarded a Bachelor
of Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston in 1873.
She entered in 1871, one of
90 first year students, and
had already graduated with
the first class of Vassar College (1870).
William Barton Rogers proposed the Institute (MIT) as a new kind of scientific and technical college where:
. . . professors’ lectures should be useful to
everyone . . . which might draw all the
lovers of knowledge of both sexes to the
halls of the Institute. (1846)
The faculty of the new school were not as
open-minded: admission of female students was
not consistent with the present condition of the
school and the organization of the classes.
(1867)
When Ellen Swallow applied, the faculty
admitted her without tuition:
. . . the admission of women is as yet in the
nature of an experiment. (1870)
President Runkle wrote:
I consider the introduction of ladies to the
Institute a consummation devoutly to be
wished . . . I congratulate you and every
earnest woman upon the result.
Ellen wrote during her student days:
I hope I am winning a way which others
will keep open. Perhaps the fact that I am
not a radical and that I do not scorn womanly duties [cleaning, sewing] . . . is winning me stronger allies than anything else.
Ellen’s work testing drinking water supplies
and water contaminants made her a pre-eminent
water scientist before her graduation. She and
Professor Ordway created the first sanitary engineering laboratory in the United States, which
became the Massachusetts Lawrence Experiment Station.
Source: MIT Alumni Page: Celebrating 125
Years of Women at MIT
http://www.mit-amita.org/esr/swallow.html
Point of View (continued from page 7)–Kathleen A. Olson
• Provides innovative professional growth and
development opportunities
• Is a nation-wide education, information, and
resource network
• Promotes Extension Family and Consumer
Sciences and the mission and goals of the
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Land Grant University Extension
System.
We appreciate that AAFCS is devoting an entire
issue of JFCS to this important time in our history.