Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Putting The House In Order: Women’S Cooperative Extension Work In The Early Twentieth Century, Abbe L. Karman

Maine History

Maine’s Cooperative Extension Service, in addition to its work with farm men, sent female agents into the countryside to teach women the principles of thrift, modernity, and efficiency in the home. How successful agents were at instilling modem principles is difficult to determine, but their experiences, recorded in Extension annual reports, reveal the tensions between women aspiring to professional standards and those whose work revolved around the home. In this article, Abbe L. Karmen explores the biases of the agents themselves and the force of traditional domestic patterns in rural Maine.