100 years in The Saratogian
Thursday, Dec. 18, 1918. “Through the Community Association of the Home Bureau, the influence of the women is destined to be invaluable to the home and Civic Life of the city,” The Saratogian reports after a Saratoga Springs Community Association is organized at the state armory this afternoon.
“A central organization through which the women might make known their views upon all problems
confronting the welfare of the homes and city has long been needed and now that the time is at hand when through the assistance of the states and nation, Home Bureaus under the Federal extension system seeking to better home and civic conditions are being organized everywhere, Saratoga Springs does not intend to lag behind in the movement.” County Home Bureau chairman Allena G. Pardee presides at today’s meeting. Keynote speaker Lillian Backus of the state college of agriculture, tells members that “During their months of work and cooperation to help win the war, women have felt the universal need for a strongly centralized organization through which their efforts might be made of greatest value.”
The Community Association promises to be highly organized. “To get the best working results from the organization and to make it possible to reach every woman in the city, there is later to be chosen a district leader for every district in the city, and a block chairman for every block,” a reporter explains.
The Home Bureau has four main objects, Backus says. The first is civic education, a high priority for women who only received the right to vote this year. Then comes public health, focusing on “violations of health rules which only women realize.” The third object is really twofold: community improvement and “the standardization of domestic problems.” This covers a range of initiatives from school lunch programs to the opening of public meeting halls to the establishment of community laundries and sewing rooms.
The fourth priority is dealing with the “recreation problem,” which covers “the kind of movies that our young people go to see, and the kind of entertainment and amusement that they seek.
“Home bureaus will find a field of great promise in which to work in this one labor alone,” Backus predicts, “The recreation of a community must be of high standard; for we all know how valuable are the leisure hours of our young people.”
What’s Happening
The leisure hours of young people are especially valuable to the city’s movie houses. The Broadway offers Douglas Fairbanks in “Mr. Fix-It” today, while the Palace presents Carlyle Blackwell in “By Hook or Crook” and the Lyric features Fritzi Brunette in “The Velvet Hand.”