The American Country Girl

—Professor Martha van Rensselaer.

CHAPTER XIX

THE FARM PARTNER

The Country Girl of to-day may look forward to a life in which she shall serve in a double capacity. She is to be a farm-woman and she is to be also a wife-mother. The farm woman may do what she can in the work of the farmstead, but her occupations there must be in abeyance before the vastly greater importance of the work which is specially hers—the conserving of the best and highest interests of the family. She is, first, the head and link of the family. If after she has finished her contribution to the work of discipline, education, inspiration, reading and story-telling, spiritual and esthetic guidance, mending and making, and placing food thrice on the table daily; after she has supplied her own needs in self-education and self-inspiration, in recreation and social satisfaction, so that she may come to the tasks mentioned above with spiritual and mental energy and alertness; and if then she still has time, strength, patience, will, energy and taste, left for still greater demands upon her resources; then she may help in the things that concern the farm business. She may do whatever will be a joy to her to do, whatever she can do buoyantly and with enthusiasm.

No doubt in the new era this will be possible. But the woman of the next generation is going to insist upon being happy, and her happiness is to consist in maintaining efficient working power and in having her work appreciated. Her work in the home must be thought of as having the same value as any other earning work. It must be acknowledged in the home of the future that woman's skill and woman's power to save are both business assets. It should be acknowledged in the home of to-day both for the wife and for the daughter.

One may say that all business is carried on by men in order that the home—which means the wife and the children—may be sustained and that its happiness and its outlook to the future may be made to prosper. All men work for this end. The love of a man for his wife and for their children is the inspiration of his daily toil. But with all other occupations save the farmer's, the business is one thing and the home is another. The woman and her share of world's work, namely the making and the keeping of the home, are a thing apart. They are placed in a little coop by themselves and there treasured as a shrine. Sometimes, to be sure, the little coop where the woman plies her work is in the mind of the man quite other than a shrine. But in the majority of cases it is this, and we are speaking of the law and not of the exception.

But with the wife of the farmer, the woman's laboratory-machine-shop-studio is not a little room by itself. The home is a business center; it is a dynamo from which goes out the power for the whole machinery; it is itself a piece of elaborate machinery without which the rest of the cogs and bands and phlanges would all go awry and break into pieces, doing damage to the whole farm-factory.

It is because of this that the woman in the farm home is so essential a part of the farm business; it is for this reason that she is to be thought of as a partner. It is for this reason that the farm woman may have the satisfaction of knowing that she contributes more of constructive value than do the women of any other group. From these conditions farm women gain a training that no other women have. It is claimed that suffrage was carried in the Northwestern States by the weight of the women of the agricultural regions; they had been trained to the new point of view by their position in the farmstead.

Students of the conditions of living in the homes of both city and country have proposed various schemes for the practical finances in the home. An excellent scheme for a household budget appeared in the Journal of Home Economics for June, 1914. It provided for three separate accounts, one called "The Man's Personal Account," one "The Woman's Personal Account," and the third, "The Family Account." Into the first went the man's clothes, traveling expenses (carfare, etc.), charities, amusements, society dues, dentist and doctor's bills—all personal expenses. Into the second went similar items for the woman, except that the bills connected with the birth of children were not recorded there. These went into the third account, together with the running expenses of living, and all expenses connected with the children, their clothing, amusements, instruction, etc. A weekly sum came from this account for the use of the wife for the household; what remained there after these depredations, composed the mutual savings, and this sum belonged equally to both husband and wife and could be used for any purpose only by consent of both. This scheme in its general features is adapted to any family, but might of course, after discussion and consent, be altered to suit circumstances.

Every difficult question in the apportionment of these separate accounts should be talked over thoroughly. Each member should endeavor to see the question in the abstract, pure from every selfish impulse. Each should try to see it from the other's standpoint, freed from prejudice, and in the dry light of reason.

By working out these problems for several years, it may be possible to bring the sums set apart for certain purposes down to fixed amounts. But it must not be forgotten that the general cost of living varies—who does not know that, alas!—from year to year. We have green years and slack years; therefore we are not to be blamed if we do not always live up to an ideal standard. Besides, we need a new cloak one year and do not need one the next. New-cloak-year cannot be always last year or always next year; it sometimes must be this year!

The comfort of a family budget can hardly be imagined by those who have a family to plan for and have not tried this system. You know what you have to do with; you can plan and thus reduce expenses where they can most conveniently be shaved off and not feel it so much. The husband will have the comfortable assurance that he is obeying that great principle of efficiency that calls for a "square deal" in the human group with which he has most to do. The wife knows that when she is taking a sum of money to use for herself or for her family she is not asking a favor; she knows that she will never hear the dire question, "Where is the dollar I gave you last month?" Immense quantities of self-respect are carefully preserved by a methodical arrangement of the home budget, and happiness is laid up for use both here and hereafter.

We may then ask how this general scheme may be adapted to homes in the countryside. The financial plan for the farm home ought not to present any difficulty, but it seems to, and for two reasons. In the first place the money generally arrives in bulk in connection with harvests, not scattered along through the year as in most other forms of business. But one would think that this peculiarity would aid system; to know all in a month what is to be available for twelve should be the most effective basis for a wise plan.

Second, a large part of the supplies for the farm home come directly from the farm without intervention of butcher, baker or candlestick maker. This, again, ought not to prove a difficulty. Why not record the farm-supplies on the day book at market prices, as if they did come from butcher and grocer? This is the normal, systematic and efficient thing to do. It is only the close interweaving of farm and house functions, that makes it seem difficult; but in spite of this a carefully worked out and closely followed system of bookkeeping will give aid at nearly every point.

May we, however, ask a further question? In trying to make just and equitable plans in the unique structure of the farmstead, how shall we place a value upon the labor of the house administrator? The farm home is an absolutely essential part of the farmstead, its heart and focus. The business of the home is a part of the business of the farm. Whatever the woman does to fulfil her duty in the home, to make the output of the home a real productive contribution, is of actual economic value to the farm business, and should be appreciated as such. If by specially good management, by industry and thrift, she can make an unusually good showing in her administration, lessen expenses by saving, increase energy by a studied dietary, make children more efficient and the family happier and healthier, she should be the more appreciated as a business partner whose service is invaluable and who is well worthy of her share of the profits.

If, then, besides these duties that are the normal work of the homemaker, she is able to add such work in the farmstead as belongs to the farming business, such as the care of the cream and butter, providing meals for the farm hands, care of stock, chickens, bees, lambs, or the garden, she takes the part of a farm hand or a farmworker, she is a unit in the farm business as well as a partner, and should have the value of the service she performs paid to her in wages. Of course we hate the word. We want at least the mother in the home to be the final unmerchantable thing there. But there are families in the country scattered here and there who painfully need some such planning of home affairs as this. If the happier women would move on lines of economic system, even though they do not themselves feel tragic need for it, but just in the interest of scientific accuracy and efficiency, the other wives would be happier and all life in the home realm would have a better adjustment. As long as the farmstead is a combination of home and farm business, the presiding genius in this combination may work for love many hours in the day; but where work is done by the woman administrator that a house servant, if one were employed, would be doing and would be paid for doing, the woman administrator, the mother in her function of housekeeper, should be paid in money at commercial rates for those services; and this should be accurately recorded day by day and week by week and taken full account of in the budget.

The spirit that will uphold the mind and heart during the instalment of such plans is the desire to know with scientific accuracy what the annual budget of the house is and likewise what the budget for the farm business is, and what each contributes toward the success of the other. That each institution will be more efficiently run under such a system, and that the elastic interplay of the two will move more harmoniously, with less friction, and with a larger output of happiness for all, admits of no possible doubt. Also that the Country Girl of to-day will be anything less than fitted, disciplined and willing to act well her vigilant part in this plan is equally inconceivable.

In order to meet this situation the average Country Girl no doubt needs training in system and in bookkeeping. She needs to adopt a point of view. She must take into account two things: first, every item, however small, is important; second, every item, however small, must be recorded. The apron-pocket should have pencil and tiny pad in it all the time, except that every few minutes it must come out to receive a record. One of the most important principles of efficiency is that we should record our daily or momently efforts. We must know exactly what we have been able to do before we can take a long breath and try to do more. All this the Country Girl of to-day may do for her present home; and in her future home, if she does not do it, she will be completely out of tune with her time.

In a thoughtful and courteous book on rural conditions in the United States, by a distinguished English observer, the suggestion was made that the woman in the farm home is the fitting person to keep the accounts. The author decides this by her leisure (save the mark!) and by her well trained faculty for detail.

This statement of opinion aroused a storm of comments in other books, chiefly by American gentlemen, claiming that the farm woman lacks the training for keeping accounts and the large comprehension needed for that part of the business. But this training is now accessible to the Country Girl, and we believe the "large comprehension" will come with experience. At any rate this will come to her as easily as to the unwilling agriculturalist himself, and the leisure (in a new era) and the faculty for detail will remain her valued assets. It is idle to say in this day and age of the world that the woman has no mind for the keeping of accounts when women are bankers and millionaires and managers of large business enterprises by myriads.

It is a simple matter for the girl to take charge of the butter and egg accounts, and also of the bookkeeping for the whole farmstead: she will be all the better mentally and morally for attending to this duty. Mentally she will improve under the discipline of exactness and promptness; morally she will improve under the discipline of the strictness and definiteness required by the responsibility. The reason why so many women have been so irresponsible in money matters is because they have been treated as children and therefore have adopted the habits of children in their buying and selling.

There is a telephone girl who can tell the 'phone number of nearly all the houses in three large cities where she has worked in the hotel 'phone booths. There are a good many things she cannot do but she can do that. The person at the head of the department for receiving payments at one of the largest department stores in New York City is a woman. She takes in all the bills and makes change on the charge slips and the checks, and estimates all the details of the accounts. She puts her mind completely upon the papers in hand, so that while a set of these are before her she is so absorbed in them that no question put to her by any one standing at the door of the cage would any more reach her mind than if she were dead. In a moment she hands the papers to the proper person with the correct statement; then that is over and she is ready for the next. She has done this work every day for sixteen years, and she looks young and blooming. This woman is working for herself; but she is doing her work so excellently that it becomes a universal benefit, inspiring us to imitate her efficiency.

As the home is the reason for being of the farmstead, the woman therein is making good her partnership if she is taking care of her housekeeping and family duties. Her contribution is being made. But the farm and the home are so closely interwoven that she is of far greater importance than this shows. She is a true partner and is worthy of all the rights and duties that this indicates. If the woman is not the keeper of books for the farm business, it is at least her right as a partner to have the books of the business always open to her. To see the books would be the first request of any partner.

One of the best farmers, who was also one of the best of men, affirmed that he was not in the habit of confiding his business matters to his wife. She on her part was one of the most loyal and most refined of women, the mother of wonderful children, and the very effective though unencouraged worker by his side for many years. His thought was that he would take the whole responsibility for the support of the family; he did not want to bother the rest of the household about details of business. One summer he lost a thousand dollars through the bad outcome of a bargain, but he did not tell his wife of this. Then after a while he made five thousand dollars more than usual—but neither did he share this news with her. Do you not think that if that wife had known that summer that there were four thousand extra dollars that might be depended upon for the use of the home, she would not have used two of them in the development of an efficient kitchen, placing a set of machines there that would have given her hot and cold water at hand, some form of power for the washing-machine, dummies, dust-chutes, ice chests, fireless cookers, lighting, wheeled trays, and all the necessary paraphernalia to put her household on an efficient basis—by this means not only lifting her own work up to the place of a scientific laboratory but raising the productive level of the whole valley where she lived and helping to lighten the burdens of a hundred farm women who were having not even so comfortable a time in their life plans as she was?

Now if this woman had had a little more business sense she would have realized that she had begun wrong years ago. It may also be that, if she had understood the whole situation, she would have approved of leaving the money in the bank for a time: it may be that she would have devoted it to sending a daughter to college. But, other things being equal, and if to her marriage had been a platform from which the soul of woman takes a new flight, we may believe that she would have devoted some of the money to better equipment for her own workshop.

But all these things are aside from the point, which is that she had earned the money as much as he had, and that she should have had as much to say as her husband had about the disposal of their joint savings.

The Country Girls of to-morrow must profit by experiences like these in the families of the generation now passing, and make certain that the efficiency principle of the square deal and the basic principle of a true partnership shall be established in the home-plans they are making. If they cannot assure themselves that conditions satisfying to their self-respect will prevail for them in the farmsteads of the future, they are justified in rejecting the countryside for their home and in leaving it to wither away in its lack of their dynamic and rejuvenating presence.

CHAPTER XX

—President Wilson.

—Edmund Janes James.

CHAPTER XX

THE COUNTRY GIRL'S TRAINING

It would indeed be fortunate if every young woman who has been raised in rural surroundings could go to some educational institution where there is a department of home economics, and there prepare herself by a thorough four years' course for a life of service in her home and community. One could hardly ask for a more ideal life than a Country Girl prepared in that way would see before her, a life that would be joy-giving not only because it would be efficient, but because it would be inspired throughout by the noblest motives. There is, in fact, not an hour of the day that may not be full of joyously productive labor, if the Country Girl can take advantage of her present opportunities; and there will soon be no excuse for her, since it is now becoming the fashion in many States for most of the family to leave their farm for a time in the depths of the leisurely winter and to hie away to the university where the men listen to conferences on problems of business and produce, and the mothers and daughters hear lectures on the industrial and other features of the home.

Of this and other methods of special training for special work, some thousands among the millions of country girls must avail themselves if they will do their duty by their generation. At the basis of success in any field lies the drudgery of preparation; excellence and reward are beyond. The task of the household administrator is no exception to this law of efficiency. The work is no haphazard matter, no question of luck; housekeeping is emerging from the realm of medieval magic now.

Other things being equal, the one that has been trained for a work invariably commands the higher salary. An investigation made by the Department of Agriculture in the States of Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, showed that the men with no schooling had an average annual income of $301, those with a common school education earned $586, while those that were college-bred received $796. These figures tell the story and impress the lesson that these sweet fruits grow high and that the ladder to reach them is a superior education. If the Country Girl really is in earnest in asking for further appreciation in the farm budget she must train for the responsibility.

But where shall she begin?

The work of caring for and building up a home is so complex, there is so much to it, that it is difficult to pin it down into a curriculum. It really fits into every department of education. It is science—chemistry, physics, mechanics; it is art—pictures, sculptures, architecture, costume, color, form, proportion; it is pageantry, drama, music; it is history—the family, law, records, relationships, eugenics; it is literature—poetry, story, myth, folk lore, epic, expression, drama; it is philosophy—conduct, the ends of effort, the individual; it is religion—the mission of love, the ultimate things in life, the use of training, the ministry of discipline; it is mathematics—accounts, percentages, adding up, and also (save the mark!) dividing and subtracting; it is economics—averages, outgo and income, the wage, the unearned increment, the community; what, in fact, is it not?

Such a calling of the roll gives us some hint of the scope and range of the work that makes the dignity of the woman's duty and privilege—of her "sphere." It is truly a "sphere," for it rounds out in every direction. There is not a single part of education that may not be useful to the homemaker. There is no least strand that will come amiss in her day's work when she is mother and overseer of the destinies of the family in her household.

A review like this makes it clear how little the education attained so far by the world reflects the whole of life when the needs of the woman in her so important role as nearest helper to the next generation of human beings finds in none of these mentioned subjects the aid she needs for her part—her half, shall it be said?—in the work of bringing forward those who are to lift the race into a larger life in the ever receding, ever growing future.

In the schools of to-day the education is modeled upon the needs of the man. In this country especially, when schools of the higher kind began to be built, the need was for emphasis on professional education. To prepare men for that need was the aim. This was what women found when they began to enter institutions of higher education: they found a system adapted for men's needs, and especially to prepare them for the professions. At first it seemed strange to many men that women should desire to gain this kind of education. But there were other men who saw that the path toward their own needs was through the well-paved avenues of education as it then existed. So women went on; they felt that their first duty was to take the training that men were taking, if for no other reason than to show that they could. They did this. They showed it abundantly. Then they began to philosophize on the situation. They saw that they must have a system of education more adapted to their own needs. Hence the rise of courses of study adapted to the immediate needs of women in their work as home-makers and household administrators. So far these courses of study are usually found in the agricultural colleges or in institutions formed for the special purpose of training women for home-making. This is because the agricultural college has been founded in the main since the new vision of the relation of education and the work of women has touched the eyes of educators. The old-line colleges preserve the ideals of decades ago. They are hopelessly masculinized and professionalized. There women will perhaps never find a natural normal education. At all events they will not find this until it is understood that psychology must as thoroughly prepare the young women to understand the development of the child's mind as it does the business man to understand the principles of advertising, and that chemistry should fit the housekeeper to gain aseptical cleanness in her household laboratory as efficiently as it does the manufacturer's expert to find a use for the by-product and turn it into money value. That the woman has a right to expect her college education in all its branches to prepare her for the duties that are hers, has not yet seemed to enter the minds of educators. She should no longer be required to go to a special institution for this. She has shown that she can undertake the severest strains of educational training; she no longer needs to keep that purpose in view. What she now needs is adaptation for her own work. The highest institutions that exist should give her what she needs. Until this comes along in the natural course of educational development—as it surely will—she must gain the training she needs in such ways as she can.

Nearly all the agricultural colleges now have courses of study in home science and art. For the benefit of any girls who may not be in the habit of studying the catalogs of institutions and who would like to know what subjects the university considers to be of educational value in household economics, I give here some outlines of courses of study pursued at certain typical institutions.

Home Economics Department, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.

Teachers' College, Columbia University, New York City.

Home Economics Department, Connecticut College of Agriculture, Storrs, Connecticut.

Simmons College, Boston, Massachusetts.

A four years' course of study may be arranged as follows:

Correspondence courses are offered in many colleges. The names of many such courses have already been given in the report of one of the girls who took such a course under the direction of the Pennsylvania State College, Center County, Pennsylvania.

The young woman in planning to go to the university for a course in domestic science must take into account the benefits that she herself will gain from the association with the other students in the classes and in the various college exercises. The educational influence the student-body as a whole will have upon the development of the individual has been already mentioned. There are two things that no young person can gain without going away from home to some educational institution. They are these: contact with the great teacher, and contact with the great fellow-student. The first she can make up for to some slight extent in the reading of books; for the loss of the second, if absolutely deprived of it by the lack of companions in her own community, she cannot be reimbursed in any way. And there is nothing quite so inspiring as the personal contact with the revered instructor, nothing so entirely vivifying as the group of fellow-students. Deprived of all this, however, the girl in a lonely life must make up for it as best she may, by books, by personal experiments, by keeping a buoyant and cheerful spirit, by seeking excellence by all means that are attainable. In this endeavor she may approach heroism, and in doing this she may well attain the supreme ends of life without the help of schools, or of machinery, or of any human aids whatever.

CHAPTER XXI

—Frances E. Willard.

CHAPTER XXI

A GREAT OPPORTUNITY

It is possible that a good share of training for her profession will be brought right to the door of the Country Girl's future household laboratory. This she may look forward to as an assured hope.

It is to come about through the fulfilment of a plan which was the outgrowth of the Commission on Country Life, and which has been worked for by many students of rural conditions and lovers of the countryside. The whole scheme sets before the Country Girl of to-day an open door and gives to her more hope of relief from the unfortunate results of the unscientific farming and unbalanced conditions in the country homes of the past than any other one thing that has been devised.

But what is this Open Door? To explain this, we must start in by a sort of detour, with the Boll Weevil. His Imperial Highness was a fiend incarnate; yet his coming was not all a misfortune. For to rid the land of this depredating buccaneer among the Southern domains, demonstration farms were established, and these led to a more adapted form of conveying help to the distressed and threatened farmers in the cotton belt by means of instruction carried to the individual farms themselves. A wonderful degree of success attended this work, and the Western farmers, seeing this, called to the Government for aid of the same sort against their own special difficulties, an assistance which was generously given. Funds were distributed through the States by the Federal Government, and by means of demonstrations, the Government sought to give to all the States the benefits that had been proved so helpful in the South. Meanwhile the States themselves were carrying on many projects of their own for the advancement of the farming interests within their bounds. There was likelihood that there might be duplication of effort, that there might even be waste of means and of energies. To make sure, then, that this should not happen, the Government has now devised a new measure, a bill for the inauguration of Cooperative Agricultural Extension Work, known at present as the Smith-Lever Bill.

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.

Very truly,
A. F. Lever.

When Uncle Sam starts out on some great endeavor, he does so with a wide scope and plans on a magnificent scale. And wise he is, too. The universities, through their agricultural colleges, where, as Secretary of Agriculture Houston says, information has been "reservoiring" for the last half century, will be made the effective means for the distributing of the wealth of the scientific knowledge and research they have garnered.

Through men and women trained in these special schools where all details of farm business and home economics are now accessible to everybody, the demonstration of these forms of scientific knowledge will be carried out to the farms and to the homes on the farms directly. And Uncle Sam will pay for it. Ten thousand dollars is directly appropriated to each State annually, beginning in 1914. The next year after this another sum of approximately the same amount will come to each State according to the percentage of the rural population in that State, counting by the Census of 1910. In each year following, the same sum is added to that of the year before, until 1924 is reached, when the sum becomes a fixed annual appropriation of three million, paid according to the percentage of the rural population at the time. To show that the individual States appreciate all this, they must add to these appropriations in a certain ratio. Will any States fail to show their appreciation, and to meet the offer of the beneficent Uncle Sam? If they do, they will be standing in their own light in the most darkness-loving way.

Now this wonderful bill says distinctly nothing as to how the vast hoard of money shall be divided between the two departments, "agriculture" and "home economics." Perhaps it may be half and half; then again perhaps it may be in a ratio of ninety-nine per cent. to the first one named and one per cent. to the second! Here then is the crux of the matter. Would the young woman on the farms of this country like to have a good half of this sum devoted to her needs that she may carry out her ideals for rural betterment?

Then let her think and talk about what she wants. Let her discuss it in her house and among her friends. Who knows but one young woman may devise some new thing that will not be thought of anywhere else in all the world! Every new idea has to start somewhere; it must be born in the midst of the needs of some one person or family. It may be merely two crossed sticks rubbed together, yet this may light the fires for a whole world. And suppose that the one person who thinks of the one best thing should be too timid about the value of any idea of hers, should have so humble a mind about her own mental product that she will name it to no one and so let the thought fall to the ground and go to nothing! Do not let this happen: let every happy idea be talked out in a letter to the Secretary of Agriculture, stating the need and making the suggestion.

The young women all over the country are showing a keen interest in the outcome of this project. The universities that receive Federal aid, who are to have charge of using these moneys, are setting apart the share that is to go to the home economics work; sometimes it is one-half, sometimes only a fifth; but every State must make some generous assignment or it cannot live with itself in the future. Women have but to make their interest known and—talk about it! to gain attention to their wish. Bret Harte has somewhere made a character say something about "poor lovely helpless woman." Another speaker answers, "No, she is armed to the teeth—she has her tongue." This primordial weapon of woman's—a far better sword than the man's—can be used to good effect now; and if she does this she may see some of her dreams fulfilled.

For instance, suppose the household adminstrator should look out over the piles of work to be done before nightfall and should say to herself, "Oh, deary me! I wish some one would just come along and tell me how to do this so that I could get it done in shorter time!" She not at all realizes that she has struck a very great idea. This is the thought that came into the heads of agricultural committees in several States and countries. In our land only it remains till now to hear it imperatively voiced. Perhaps we may understand this better if we recall that American women, because of the chivalry of our men, the freedom of our institutions, and the high standard of our domestic morality, have been more advanced in personal liberty and efficiency than the women of other countries, have been far more ready and able to cope with the difficulties of life on the farm, and therefore have not had the depression and the weakness that have taken the light out of the eyes of women in the rural parts of other lands. Moreover, in our country, the pioneering period is not so very far back of us. We are still near to the effects of that discipline, which developed in us the hardiness that makes it easier for us to bear the burden of work and the strain of the struggle than women not thus developed could sustain. For all this we should be properly grateful and forget as soon as may be the losses that we have been obliged to sustain while we were gaining this hardihood.

To return to the need for a wise helper and adviser. That efficient person coming along the road to tell the woman on the farm how to arrange her work so that its burden may be lessened, would in one or two European countries be a well-known figure in the farming community. She would be welcomed and would take her place in the family for a time till she had filled the minds of the members of that family circle with much wisdom from her well-filled stores and had shown them by practical demonstration the "why" and the "how" of many a new method of making ends meet, of making long hours short, and of turning off work. After supper she would be with the children for a time and let some light in upon their puzzles; then when they had gone to bed she would talk every difficulty over with the farm wife and the husband too; at least we may be sure that she would do this if she were in this country, though perhaps she would not in the Land of the Hausfrau; and being thoroughly trained in gardening and in the treatment of all the animals that may come under the care of the woman on the farm, whether pigs, lambs, bees, or chickens, as well as in house sanitation, the care of the sick, laundry-work, needle-work, embroidery and crochet, she can come very near to the heart and the hands of her attentive hostess in the farm home.

In this country the woman who is trained to perform this service will be called a Farm Bureau Agent. According to a late letter from the Secretary of Agriculture to his Crop Correspondents, it is the intention of the Government to have in time such agents as these in every county in the United States.

It is such a service as this that the so-called Smith-Lever Bill now projected by the Federal Government would provide for—that is, if the young women of the country will show that in their future homes they would like to have a distinct advance upon the homes of the past. To establish a faculty of trained women to go from home to home all over this land, making periodical visits and putting the results of their training at the command of the women everywhere, is the ideal dwelling in the minds of the workers for this form of instruction. Hundreds and perhaps thousands of women will be needed. They are now preparing for their work, not in sufficient numbers as yet, but soon there will be many who are prepared and willing and glad to lay their ability and their expert skill at the feet of this service.

Let another possibility be suggested. Suppose that a distracted young housewife on some prosperous farm will sit down among a great pile of women's papers that she takes out of the abundance of her means and the activity of her imaginative idealism, and cry out as she reads the many articles and the innumerable columns of suggestions, "O I should like to have a perfect house and a wonderful system of housekeeping! But all these things confuse me—there is really too much to do. I wish I could see just one perfect house, right down in the village there, where I could go and see for myself how it all ought to be done." She again, has little idea that she has hit upon a great discovery, a very great idea. She does not realize that the House for Demonstration of Home Economics is entirely within possibility and is a thing that ought to be within the reach of every woman in the land. Such a House should be in every village and town and within "team-haul" distance of every farm. It should be a social center where every week in the year the women of the region may come and meet one another and talk over their problems. It should be in charge of a scientifically trained woman whose sole business should be to stand there and be a help to every woman within reach who has a single question in home economics to ask. She should know the best ways to do everything about the farm home, the best ways to do them with the machinery at hand, and also the best household machinery to get and the most advantageous changes to be made for the sanitary and artistic and health conditions in each individual home. It is a large order, but the young women who offer themselves to be prepared for such work must and we believe will measure up to the need. Here is indeed a mission for the trained Country Girl.

Although the words "home economics" have not heretofore appeared in papers set before our legislatures, our Government has been for years giving aid to the farmer's wife through many pamphlets on subjects related to her work. From the Bureau of Animal Industry we have advice concerning the health of the farm animals, concerning meat, butter, eggs, wool, leather, diseases, meat inspection,—all of which are matters of vital importance to the home; in the Bureau of Chemistry studies are made on the composition of many things used in homes: sugar, bread stuffs, preservation of fruits, pure food laws, storage, and other subjects of value to the household administrator; the Bureau of Plant Industry gives us information regarding crops for food for animals and humans, protection of plants from injurious diseases, how to domesticate plants and how to secure variety in foods; the department of Entomology aids us in our warfare against flies, mosquitoes, ants, moths, etc.; the Agricultural library sends us bibliographies; the Experiment Stations investigate in every direction; the Office of Public Roads tries to bring markets and farms closer together; and so the work goes merrily on, full of beneficent endeavor. Does the Country Girl sufficiently appreciate our Uncle Sam? Does she make the most of his efforts in her behalf?

Any girl that has learned to take pen in hand and can command the value of a postage stamp can send a respectful request to the Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C., asking for the list of bulletins on the farm home and on problems connected therewith. When she has received this and has read it carefully, she will be full of thoughts no doubt on subjects about which she would like help. She can then write again to the Department at Washington asking for the bulletins on the particular subject that interests her. For instance suppose she is interested in the subject of bee-culture. She should write and ask for a bulletin on that subject. One girl on a Western ranch is very much interested in the subject of—what do you suppose? It takes a keen, unprejudiced mind to show this interest;—it is nothing more than weeds! Studying into this, she finds that all the books she can get hold of give her very little help because they do not refer to the conditions in that part of the world where she lives. So she is going to study the divergencies she sees between books and facts. She has sent everywhere for bulletins and books, and has now a considerable library on the subject; and she has gone vigorously to work to mark out all the differences between her own experiences and those that are recorded in the books. In time her records will be added to those, and she will have been of great service to the world by giving new knowledge that may be used for the benefit of her whole region. In this way the Country Girl, however lonely the farm where she lives, may feel that she is in touch with great movements, and can believe that her life is of especial use to the world.

CHAPTER XXII