The passing of this bill was an item of the 1914 national budget. Before the eventful thing happened many processions of women protesting their desire for more formal acknowledgment before the law and in the privileges of the vote had walked the length of Fifth Avenue, and in these processions many men of the highest stamp had taken their chivalrous place. By the time the bill was being framed the woman side of things for city and for country had begun to hold a far different position in the public mind than it did in the days of Thoreau or Horace Mann. It was not just as a slip of the tongue that the words "and home economics" were placed by the words "subjects relating to agriculture." No: the concurrence of the phrases came about as a natural outcome of well-considered belief, as indeed a testimonial to the fact that in the mind of the framer of the bill the two matters were of equal importance and were to be logically united in the minds of the people. At any rate, the fact that the phrase "home economics" stands at the head of this bill represents an incalculable leap forward of public opinion in the direction of betterment for the home and all that it contains of influence on our well-being. Let it be deeply impressed, then, that the two words, "Agriculture" and "Home Economics" stand together at the head of a bill that is to provide for instruction on a vast scale for all the rural districts of this land. In a letter to the author, the Honorable Asbury F. Lever, the framer of the Smith-Lever Bill in its present form, shows a full appreciation of the claim of the countryside to a fair share in this distribution. The letter by kind permission may be quoted here and is as follows: COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE, _House of Representatives, U. S._ WASHINGTON, D. C., August 20, 1914. MRS. MARTHA FOOTE CROW, Tuckahoe, New York City. _My dear Mrs. Crow:_