The parents complained that the small children could not go so far, that there were no play facilities, that the location was secluded, so that it was dangerous for girls, that the term was too short, and that the attendance of the children seems unimportant to the school authorities. As the community was almost altogether Italian, the parents would have preferred a woman teacher for the girls over ten or twelve years of age. A more intelligent and a more incisive indictment of an educational situation than this criticism expressed by the Italian families in this remote mining community could hardly have been drawn. It is inevitable that similar dark spots should continue, so long as no central agency is responsible for the maintenance of a minimum opportunity everywhere. Of course it is not to be expected that those jurisdictions that so neglect the children will care for the adult. Many states have the central agency that could take over the work. And there exist Federal agencies able with enlarged resources to adapt their work to meet many of these needs. The United States Children's Bureau has published bulletins in simple form containing such information as every woman should have concerning the care of mothers and young children. Only the lack of resources has kept that bureau from undertaking to bring these facts to the knowledge of all mothers, including the foreign born.[60] HOME ECONOMICS WORK In the so-called States Relations Service of the Department of Agriculture, established under the Smith-Lever Act,[61] and in the Federal Board for Vocational Education, there are agencies which, if developed, can establish national standards in these fields and do work of national scope. These acts constitute, in fact, so important a step in the direction of nationalization of these problems that items in the statutes creating them may be of interest here. The first of these Acts provides for co-operative effort on the part of the United States Department of Agriculture and the state agricultural colleges. There is an agency provided to "diffuse among the people of the United States useful and practical information on subjects relating to agriculture and home economics, and to encourage the application of the same." This Act refers especially to the needs of the rural population, and the work done under it consists of instruction and practical demonstration in agriculture and home economics to persons not attending or resident in the agricultural colleges. The methods should be such as are agreed on by the Secretary of Agriculture and the officials of the state colleges benefiting under the earlier Act of 1862.[62] To carry out this co-operative effort, an appropriation was provided, beginning at $480,000--$10,000 for each state--and increasing first by $60,000 and then by $500,000 annually, until after seven years a total of $4,500,000 was reached, the increase to be distributed among the states in proportion to their rural population.