The American Country Girl

A beautiful enthusiasm for Canning Club work comes from the South. Joined with many other good things that come inevitably with the organization of young life, it has enriched and blest the girls incalculably. Writing to me of this, one woman said: "It has done more to stir the Southern girls from the lethargy into which so many of them had fallen than anything else I can think of." In reply to an inquiry, Mr. O. H. Benson, in charge of Canning Club Work for the U. S. Department of Agriculture, I wrote: "During the present year there are about 250,000 boys and girls enrolled in club projects in the United States who are receiving special follow-up instruction and who are organized on the federated basis, making them members not only of their own local community but of the State and national movement. About half of these are girls who are doing work with poultry, home gardening or the canning club project work." Mr. Benson was kind enough to lend me the photograph of the young lady with the two Jersey calves. She is Miss Myrtle Hardin, of Camden, Tennessee, a girl fifteen years of age, who has been a member of the Gardening and Canning Club of the State for four years. The two Jersey calves were won as premiums for having the best records for Club Work in the State Fair for 1912 and 1913. Mr. Benson gives a list of the prizes she won, and of the educational trips she has taken, and adds: "Besides this, she has earned from her work several hundred dollars which she deposited in the bank and will use to pay her expenses to attend college and take a domestic science course."

This efficient girl so interested me that I wrote her and asked her to tell me herself something about her achievements that I might hand it on as an inspiration to other girls. She wrote me this delightful account:

In all these wage-earning endeavors there is but one caution to be thought of beforehand. We should remember that when a young woman is working in the kitchen of the farm home, she is doing a wage-worthy work fully as much as when she is offering to some outside market. Now if she undertakes to make use of some by-product of the farm, if she cans the waste vegetables, reclaims them to common use, and standardizes the product, will not this new industry march into the factory as the others have, and will not the woman in the home be left without her wage as before? Unless the right principle underlies the business of canning, this will surely come to pass. There is no reason why the housework should not be standardized and brought under the law of economic production; there is no reason why a new sort of canning should be left in the unregulated realm for the benefit of the woman's whim for a work of her own. It shall surely not escape commercialization. The rag carpet, now a cheapened factory product, should be a warning to women. What we should work for is not the enclosing of a certain piece of work with bars that we may get our hands upon it, but the establishment of economic laws that shall make women free to work wherever their taste and abilities incline them.

For the Country Girl in her plans for a future life of healthful, satisfying labor, the pathway to this better order lies over the rocky pavement of household systemization and scientific budget-making.

CHAPTER XVII

Proverbs.

St Paul.

Jesus.

CHAPTER XVII

THE DRESS BUDGET

The Country Girl has this advantage—the business of the farm and the home are so closely connected that the work she has to do can be carried on without separating her from her home. This would not be so in any work she could undertake in the city. She would not have a great big house to return to from her store or factory, but some little upstairs room, the "hall-bedroom" of that tragic book The Long Day, which so painfully portrays the conditions of work for girls in a great city. The Country Girl in her home with her housework about her is in a paradise compared with conditions such as these.

The "home" means rent, board, general living expenses—all these are looked out for in the scheme of life for the Country Girl. Why, then, does she feel so great a need for sheer money? The reason is partly this: she has the dress problem on her hands. She is scantily supplied with a bit now and then when she asks for a cloak or some other garment; she is not assigned a certain sum a month, as her self-respecting spirit demands, and left free to use it as her judgment directs. She has not been trained to do this and the fear that she will not do it wisely keeps the father from inaugurating such a system. In the long run, after the daughter has gained wisdom from a few mistakes with the suffering resulting therefrom, the outgo from the parental pocket would not be much increased by adopting the educative method of letting her have the personal management of her little budget. Few fathers can bear to see a daughter really suffer; most fathers will not let her even foolishly think that she is suffering, and a plea from her will generally bring an indulgence in some unnecessary purchase.

The problem is intricate and has many sides; but we believe the best way for the father to take would be to place a set sum at her command with the injunction that she is to plan and use it carefully—and make it do! If the parent is able to go so far in the process of education as to start her on a cash account and oversee her as she tries to carry it on, especially if he will initiate her in the mysteries of a small bank account, he will in the majority of cases be richly repaid in the development of an ability to manage and to save that he did not suspect the daughter to possess.

The father himself, in the happy-go-lucky method of most fathers in their financial relations with the women of the family, does not know what the daughter's dress budget for a year ought to be. The following lists of items for a country girl's dress budget are presented here as much for the father's sake as for that of the girls. The lists have been drawn from various sources and they represent the thought of many students of country life conditions and of some country girls themselves.

The first list was made by a wide-awake Country Girl in the State of Idaho:

LIST OF CLOTHING FOR A YEAR, FOR A GIRL IN HIGH SCHOOL

She adds this note: "Some figures are guessed at, for I make and remake my clothes always. Note that the suit is not necessary. Needless to mention these figures are doubled and even trebled by some thoughtless girls of poor but long-suffering parents. I earn my own money."

The following meager list represents, I am sure, the thought of a girl who has been accustomed to the least that could possibly be got along with:

DRESS FOR A VILLAGE GIRL GOING TO SCHOOL

The following is quoted with permission from a valuable little leaflet prepared by Miss Caroline D. Pratt, of Hampton Institute, Hampton, Virginia, and shows what the prices would be for a girl in the southern realm:

SUGGESTIONS FOR CLOTHING FOR SCHOOL GIRLS

This list has been very carefully thought out, it is evident; but while the sum is small, we believe that it would be difficult to get clothing of good material at these figures. For instance, the corset. A fifty-cent corset cannot easily be made to last a year; and it would probably be of such a shape that it would be injurious rather than helpful to the wearer. Perhaps something else could be substituted for that, however; that should be studied out by the Country Girls.

To this budget Miss Pratt adds a page of suggestions that are so useful that we are glad to have more girls read them.

Here they are:

WHAT A WELL-DRESSED GIRL WEARS TO SCHOOL

WHAT A WELL-DRESSED GIRL DOES NOT WEAR TO SCHOOL

From a report by Miss Caroline Gleason, Director of Social Survey for the Consumers' League of Oregon, is copied, with permission, a carefully made list representing conditions in the Northwest:

Miss Gleason adds: "In making out a budget for the cost of the Country Girl's clothes, I would feel it necessary to consider whether they were procured in the city at city prices (through mail order houses) or in the country store. My reason for saying this is that, judging from my slight experience, country prices are higher than city prices even with postage attached."

These Western and Southern reports may be supplemented by two that come from New England. The first of these is made by Miss L. G. Chase, Social Worker in Providence, Rhode Island, and represents a great deal of thought and experience. It may be called final for that part of the country. It is as follows:

Underwear—

Coats, hats, gloves—

Rubbers, shoes, stockings—

Dresses—

Left over for use for another year—

The second New England budget was prepared by a group of girls at the Agricultural College of Connecticut, most of whom came from the country. The scheme is made for three years' wear and is given with the caption that the girls themselves chose.

A THREE-YEAR BUDGET

SUITABLE FOR A SIXTEEN TO EIGHTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL LIVING IN THE COUNTRY AND ATTENDING A NEIGHBORING HIGH SCHOOL, WITH THE ADVANTAGE OF SHOPPING IN THE CITY.

To be attractive is not to attract attention. In choosing her clothes, a young girl at school must consider style, suitability, durability, neatness, and cost. Cheap materials should not be chosen merely because they are cheap, for in the end a high-priced material is often cheaper than a low-priced one.

These various budgets are given that we may be sure to have some approach to a standard for each part of the country. But it is of course possible that none of them will meet the case of a great many of the girls. However, the hope is that they may at least give the suggestion that it is a useful thing to make such a list in order that a girl may thus be able to see at a glance what she is doing with her money; and when she is looking forward into the year ahead she may feel an inspiration to plan beforehand and thus forestall the disaster that so surely follows poor investment. The first principle of efficiency is to put in a pin, as it were, at a certain point, so that one may see what point has been reached and so be helped to decide whether it can be surpassed another time.

Let this chapter be a help to put in such a pin, to set something like an ideal of what is possible in the matter of reasonable dress. It may also aid the daughter to know what she may fairly expect her father to supply for her needs. It may help the well-meaning father to realize what he must do if his children are able to hold up their heads in the community. The rank of the head of the family is often reckoned by the appearance of the wife and child. Some of these lists are evidently made for a girl whose father may be marked by the daughter's dress as a man of less position and generosity and fairness than he imagines himself to be. That state of things can easily be corrected. On the other hand, the girl that has time for sewing, and the cleverness and training to do it, should take delight in making her clothing for herself. Given those antecedent conditions, the Country Girl's dress will thus be not only less expensive, but also better adapted to herself, and more charming because more individual.

CHAPTER XVIII

—Sigismund von Eberstadt.

CHAPTER XVIII

FOUNDING A HOME

There is one thing that may not be mentioned by any Country Girls even in their dearest confidences, but that we may for a surety know: it is that every one of them looks forward to the making of her own home. Yes; every one has her dream of a "hope chest"; and as she wanders about her home community she is looking here and there to see what hillside or what sightly place on the plain will be the destined location for her home. Like the wise woman in Proverbs, she, in imagination, buildeth her house beforehand, and thinks it all out according to the scope of her ideals.

These ideals that are cherished in the thoughts of the young woman are her most valuable possessions. They are the blossoming of the best that she has received from her education, her surroundings in the home, the advice of her elders, the influence of the books she has read, the music she has heard and has made, the plays she has seen and the poetry she has learned. They are the inherited result of long years of experience on the part of the race; and perhaps in no place is the best that past centuries have garnered to be found more assimilated and concentrated than in the country home in America.

In the history of the evolution of society we recall that woman was assigned no small place. In those early eons of the long slow growth of society, she was the creator of the home; she was the master of the mysteries of fire and of household devices; she was the carrier, the lapidary, the builder, the inventor, the harvester, the tiller of the soil; she was the weaver, the skin dresser, the maker and mender of clothing, the hewer of wood and the drawer of water; she was the linguist and instructor of girls; she was a prophetess and a founder of religion; she went into battle with the fighting men and she deliberated in the council of the tribe. She had her full share in the creation of a social order.

To dwell upon the history of domestic evolution will perhaps encourage the young woman of to-day to step forward and shoulder the responsibilities that belong to her. But the young woman in the rural field has at present a special difficulty. If the better and more adventurous among the rural young men withdraw to the city, the choice of the young women that remain is restricted. Indeed many may continue unmarried because of the lack of companionship of their own caliber. This situation should work several ways; to the young men who are tempted to run away to city life, it should be an incitement to stay where their true home is; it should also be an inspiration to the youths remaining in the home village when the less loyal or the more enterprising young men have departed, to build up efficiency in every possible way, so that they may make themselves more acceptable and successful in the social field of the community.

But as to the girls themselves—ay, there's the rub! Difficult as the problem always is for any young woman, it is doubly so for her in the country to-day. Under these circumstances, what the dignified position for her to take is hazardous to say.

There is no use in trying to minimize the great importance of the problem. The advance or the deterioration of the community depends on the mental and physical health of the race. In order that a home may be successfully founded; that it may carry on the best traditions and improve upon them, it should be made by the best possible choice of each other on the part of those that form it. Back of these best possible choices must lie the highest ideals and the courage to demand the fulfilment of these ideals. For the characteristics of the children in any home will be formed by the characteristics of both the parents. Therefore, the quality and character of both parents will determine whether the race shall ascend in the scale of being or shall decline and deteriorate. The young may not choose for their own pleasure alone; they should choose also for the sake of the whole race and its hopes and aspirations. They must develop themselves; they must make themselves and keep themselves sound and well-trained and in good trim not for their own joy in living, not even solely for the benefit of those about them, but for the strength and success of those who are to live after them.

It is for this reason that the choice is so momentous. And it is not to be wondered at that many young men and young women find the years of youthful decisions fraught with an almost tragic significance.

In the present state of social evolution, the burden of choice seems to rest chiefly upon the young man. But is it really so? Professor Scott Nearing asks the question and then makes the suggestion that though the conventionally modest young woman of to-day may shrink from the thought that she should take the lead in this matter of selection, still she may unconsciously and instinctively do so after all. The same suggestion is strongly urged by another educational authority. One of the wise men of Illinois, a man of culture, an educationalist and a close observer of life, writes as follows: "What the country girl most needs and wants is a larger opportunity for social development. Her life is isolated, her friends limited. She has little choice when she selects a husband from the home community. I almost wish custom would permit her to make the proposal, for I feel sure that she could do so more intelligently, and better results would obtain." We have indeed a mighty precedent in the earliest days of our national story for the initiative of the woman. "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?" has been said once, and it can be said again.

But then again, would the state of things be bettered if this important initiative were placed equally in the hands of women and men? Would the young men suffer themselves to be ensnared by the unbelated suggestion, remain in the rural environment and found their homes there? Would they allow themselves to be tied down in a place where they do not desire to be? And who would want to tie them down, anyway? The wings of Lord Love are tremendously energetic, especially when bound by artificial cords. In questions like these we must wait until we have seen what the young folks have done before we make up our minds what is right to do; and especially to-day when the boys and girls are suffering from the neglects of the last generation. The people who have just passed off the stage allowed education, science, recreation, good times, hospitality, and spiritual life to drag behind; now the younger farm people of to-day are feeling the results. We must look to the new life, the new methods, the new community spirit of to-morrow to make things over so that there shall spring up perfectly balanced homes all along the countryside with such attraction in home and community that no one can possibly be lured away. In this reorganization of community life, as we have seen, the Country Girl has a great share and duty. And one of the greatest services she can perform will be to cherish in her own heart the highest ideals as to the right and necessary construction of a home in the character of the parents, and to hold everybody on whom she has any influence in the community to those ideals as strictly as she possibly can. For it would be indeed far better for her and for her part in the onflowing life stream of racial progress if she should dwell unmarried, run her own farm, and fill her house with the laughter of some unmothered and unfathered children who would no doubt repay her with love and service and honor as devotedly as if they had been children of her very own, as if she should unite in a family plan that by carrying on impure or diseased influences would contribute to the degradation of the race, and increase the misery of the world.

Though hampered with some disabilities, the Country Girl of to-day has one great advantage. She was born after the time when it was settled conclusively that there was nothing in her sex alone that ought to hinder her mental growth and her opportunity for activity. In her time woman has come to realize that when she believes in her own inferiority, in the possibility that her sex may be a handicap, her nature will be restricted, and she will not be able to develop the powers she does possess. She sees that the obsession of this thought has tied down the woman in the past and has impeded her development. She is now wakened from this daze.

What barrier can there be to a woman's progress? Truly life presents many. For instance, her idea of what would for her be progress, may not be the right idea. There are many stern duties that sometimes seem to impede progress; duties to parents, to family, or to the social order; duties to religious forms that have become woven into society and could not be drawn out without too much sacrifice of what is good and necessary; duties to common legal form that has dominance and is the result of centuries of experience, and that could not be taken exception to without too great risk—these and many other things may form barriers to the desire of the mere individual. But, these being granted, the woman can have a free chance for growth and development only when she believes that nothing coming out of the mere fact of sex has a right to hamper her growth or restrict her activity, and that no one shall have the right to say what is best for her or what she ought to wish for herself, in matters where she alone can have the means for understanding the situation.

These principles intimately concern the question of marriage. George Meredith said that to a woman marriage should be a platform from which her soul may take a new flight. How wonderful! A platform from which the soul may take flight!—not a black cage in which the soul of woman must crouch, to which her soul must fit itself, moving cramped, and slowly, and at war with itself; not a cage in which a caught and imprisoned canary bird must sing for the amusement of its owner. No! a platform from which to take flight, with sunlighted realms to investigate and new skies to discover, with wings growing ever stronger for more daring ascensions into still clearer light.

Let every girl make sure that that is the kind of platform that is being built for her in the character and in the attitude of mind of the destined lover. And let her make certain that she also is building and developing in herself a character that shall be worthy of her high mission, that shall be sufficient for all its needs, and that shall merit the deep reverence that all hearts give to the mother and homemaker.

In order that the founding of a successful home may be the Country Girl's happy lot, is it too much to ask that she should cherish for herself the ideal of a nature clean and pure, with so high a reverence for purity that she shall demand it in her lover as in herself? And that she shall recognize no difference in her standard for the morality of both the young man and the young woman? Should not her ideal include the fact of established health, both physical and mental, with a physician's certificate for both young man and young woman as to this, and include also a good inheritance of health in both families together with absolute freedom from alcoholism or other death-dealing diseases? Moreover, no marriage can be quite happy and successful that is not based upon the principle that each shall respect the personal rights of the other; and this should include, not only matters of income and property, but of tastes and opinions, and of all personal relationships. Both should have a good common school education and as much more as circumstances will permit. If he is a college graduate, she should be one also; and she should never be asked to leave her college course in order to marry. A wise girl will frown upon the young man who makes plans for marriage before he has gained a thorough training in some good bread-winning occupation and also developed a fair money-earning capacity. The Country Girl may be reminded again that she herself should have the thorough training in the science, art, and business of the household that will make her a perfect house administrator and homemaker and leave it possible to adapt some part of this varied work to money earning should occasion require. The ideal for two who are to found a home together should certainly include a genuine love of home life, together with love of children and a capacity to become a wise, efficient father and mother. A home will be more interesting and therefore more successful, as years move along, if the founders are people of growing nature, if they have a disposition to keep in touch with affairs, if they indulge themselves with an avocation, something they especially like to do, something that will carry on their education to farther heights. There must be courage,—home-founding calls for heroism—there must be fortitude, reserve force, patience. Ordeals will come, and trials: a buoyant faith in the spiritual realities alone will bear us through these. Then it must be remembered that we live in the community. It is well to select a socialized nature, one having ability to live among people and to meet them successfully, one that knows the give-and-take of social life. Both the young man and the young woman must be good citizens in the community.

Now what has been forgotten? The great thing that perhaps with most young people is thought of first, namely, the question as to whether these two young people like each other or not. But the phase being presented here concerns not so much the choice of a particular one who shall be companion in the founding of a certain home, as the qualities of the group of people from among which that choice shall be made. Certainly it is of the greatest importance to decide whether the two young people do really like each other or not. It would be blasphemy to enter into the relationship without that satisfaction in each other's society that alone gives promise of happiness. There should be a strong, deep affection and love for each other; they should have a mutuality of interest, tastes and ideals; they should enjoy each other's society; and these points should be put to the test of time and absence—but not too much of either!

Homes founded by members of groups who hold ideals like these and live up to them, will be certain to carry on into the future the best the race has attained and to add to the stores of happiness and well-being of all people. Into such homes it will be the best possible fortune to be born; and if these homes are set against an unspoiled country background, they will be the places where children will have the best chance to develop to perfect human height. It should indeed be a part of the ideal cherished in the depths of every country girl's heart, that she will, if possible, make to the world a contribution of children, the most perfect that she can compass, the most complete in all their powers, the most invincible in their strength, mental, physical and moral; and that these shall go forth into the world trained for the most distinguished service among the world's great needs. This should be her ambition; and I believe that it is the desire and the ideal of the great majority of the girls of the present generation.

To present a completed, full-grown, thoroughly efficient man or woman to the world, is a contribution to the world's storehouse of power. But how much more that means than simply to bear the child! The right direction of the babyhood and youth, the full apprehension of the value of education, and the entire dynamic encouragement to both the sons and the daughters, the example of industry, the inspiration to work, the enthusiasm and self-sacrifice to help in reaching high ideals, the wisdom to guide these endeavors—these are the things that belong to the contribution of the woman. Whether or not a woman has made her due contribution is bound up in the matter of what her sons and daughters actually do for the community and the world, how wide their influence is, how serviceable they are to the general good. The mother of Edison, for instance, made a great contribution.

Let every young woman take this point of view and consider what she is now doing, even while yet only a girl, to make it possible for her children that are to be, to have large lives, useful to the whole community.

In olden time the family numbered fifteen to twenty children. Then, indeed, there were things happening in the farm home! Then was there companionship under the roof tree! The evenings were merry about the fireside—and, by the way, there was a literal as well as a spiritual fireside for the children to be merry about! Then, too, there was hospitality, the Thanksgiving dinner, the Christmas home-coming for all the cousins! In those days life was worth living and there was no country life problem.

We must look forward to larger families. The next row of fathers and mothers must live for this, plan for it, trust for it, and educate themselves for it; for only thus will the farmstead be at once a place where rafters shall ring with jollity, and the complex life offer dramas enough to be interesting. In this way we shall save the country.

The story of the home life of the Beecher family, a typical large family of old New England days, touches a high-water mark of vivid home life. There was a perfect furor of intellectual excitement going through the house all the time. Every topic of public interest was brought to the home circle. Books were read aloud continually. Excitement of all kinds was going on in the evenings, discussions of all sorts at the table. The children were not invited, they were required, to argue. If they did not do it cleverly the father would confound them with ridicule, or he would say: "Now present this argument and you will be able to down me." And then he would tell them just how to manage the point in order to show up the fallacy and gain the right conclusion. So the wise father trained their minds in a sort of play.

People have talked a great deal about the value to a child of a noble mother; let a word or two be said for the value of the father in the training of the home. It should be thought of both after the home is established and before. Young women should think of this in making the choice of a partner and the young men should know that they are doing so. In fact, this may be actually happening already. Two little boys were talking in the playground not long ago, and one said to the other: "You mustn't do that, for if you do, you are not training for parentage." The new era has certainly begun!

But there is a still larger view. The Country Girl should also consider what she is now doing for the community to make it one in which her sons and daughters shall, twenty years hence, have a chance for clean, wholesome and inspiring lives. If she now forms a society for the girls in her village so that the strength of each individual girl will be multiplied by the braiding together of their efforts, to the end that better social enjoyments and more intellectual and more ethical ideals may become habitual, it may be that the years filled with these high activities will result in a state of things in that community that will make higher things the rule and lower things impossible. Then her village will be a safer place for her children when they come than it could have been without her own girlish endeavors.

The country child starts out with a better physical development than the city child. Our countryside from the Atlantic to the Pacific is full of children who are especially endowed for the highest attainments. May not the Country Girl of the next generation be expected to do something adequate and wonderful with these good gifts of heaven?

CHAPTER XIX