Wednesday, July 10, 1918
“It will be the responsibility of the women of the United States during the war and afterward to conserve the food, fuel and clothing so that the world may be warmed, fed and clothed,” a Cornell University scholar tells the women of Rensselaer County today. Nearly 50 women representing 27 villages and towns take part in an advisory meeting in the grand jury room of the county court house. Mrs. Herbert F. Roy, wife of the county attorney, presides. The meeting results in the formation of a county home economics organization. Esther Snook of Cornell describes “The responsibility resting upon our country and Canada to provide foostuffs for ourselves, for the people of the tropics and partly for the inhabitants of south temperate zone,” as well as for the nation’s partners in the war against Germany. “The seriousness of the food situation in England, Italy and France was urged, and the fact noted that the United States must furnish food for these countries,” The Record reports. “The war still looms ahead of us as a long struggle,” Snook stresses, “and those who have been simply consumers must become producers. Not only this, but the consumers must learn how to conserve as well as consume, and this conservation must include clothing as well as food.”
Sarah M. Freeman emphasizes the global need for textiles in her talk on “Reasons for County Organization.”
“The necessities of the present war have made it obligatory upon the women not only to feed the world but to clothe the world and to make every particle of textile fabric go as far as possible,” Freeman says, “Whether you like it or not, you must rise to the occasion and provide, conserve and reconstruct.
“Too many meetings are tedious and tiresome, and women are too busy to attend any more meetings than are necessary, but a county organization made up of individual women of the county will shout loudly to the state and federal government what the county needs; and the state and U.S. governments do not know the county’s needs until they are made known. Therefore, let us organize.”
County food demonstrator Alice J. Bunce has been instructing local women on food conservation. Addressing today’s meeting, Bunce concedes that “no wonderful things have been accomplished,” but “considered the outlook very hopeful.” At the very least, “the poorer work is becoming better.”
The meeting approves a draft constitution for the new organization and starts making plans for a membership drive culminating in a mass meeting to make it a reality on a date to be announced.
-- Kevin Gilbert