INTRODUCTION

What a tribute to the worth of woman are the names by which she is
enshrined in common speech! What tender associations halo the names of
_wife, mother, sister_ and _daughter!_ It must never be forgotten
that the dearest, most sacred of these names, are, in origin, connected
with the dignity of service. In early speech the wife, or wife-man (woman)
was the "weaver," whose care it was to clothe the family, as it was the
husband's duty to "feed" it, or to provide the materials of sustenance.
The mother or matron was named from the most tender and sacred of human
functions, the nursing of the babe; the daughter from her original duty,
in the pastoral age, of milking the cows. The lady was so-called from the
social obligations entailed on the prosperous woman, of "loaf-giving,"
or dispensing charity to the less fortunate. As dame, madame, madonna,
in the old days of aristocracy, she bore equal rank with the lord and
master, and carried down to our better democratic age the co-partnership
of civic and family rights and duties.

Modern science and invention, civic and economic progress, the growth
of humanitarian ideas, and the approach to Christian unity, are all
combining to give woman and woman's work a central place in the social
order. The vast machinery of government, especially in the new
activities of the Agricultural and Labor Departments applied to
investigations and experiments into the questions of pure food,