Linoleum, Better Babies, and the Modern Farm Woman, 1890-1930

“Holt offers an interesting look at the lives of farm wives at the close of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. It wasn’t roughing it like earlier pioneer women, but it wasn’t as cushy as microwave ovens and instant foods either. These ladies worked! Holt also gets points for covering minority women.”—Library Journal Classic Returns

“[Holt] deserves particular credit for her attention to non-Anglo participants, who have often been neglected in similar studies. She also merits praise for the inclusion of many photographs, several of which illustrate the endeavors of non-white women.”—Journal of American History

“Holt’s study provides a readable history of developments in a significant part of rural women’s lives—the domestic-economy movement—as well as treating topics that allow better understanding of rural life in general.”—Historian

“A well-documented and very readable account of the lives of farm women during this period. . . . Linoleum, Better Babies, and the Modern Farm Woman, 1890-1930, offers more than just a description of the numerous programs and resources that the ‘domestic economy movement’ promoted. More important, it is an account of the rural women who sorted through those reforms and adopted those new technologies and techniques that they identified as beneficial for themselves and their families.”—Ann Billesbach, Nebraska History