SCENE I.--COURT OF KING ERIC.

Produced by Annie McGuire

THE AMERICAN COUNTRY GIRL

[Illustration: The American Country Girl. An abundance of sunshine,

fresh air, good water, and healthful exercise in the open permit

wonderful young life to reach its highest development.]

THE AMERICAN

COUNTRY GIRL

BY

MARTHA FOOTE CROW

AUTHOR OF

"ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING," "HARRIET BEECHER STOWE," ETC.

_WITH FIFTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS_

NEW YORK

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

_Copyright, 1915, by_

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

TO THE

SEVEN MILLION COUNTRY LIFE GIRLS

OF AMERICA

WITH THE HOPE THAT THEY

MAY SEE THEIR GREAT PRIVILEGE

AND DO THEIR HONORABLE

PART IN THE NEW

COUNTRY LIFE ERA

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I THE COUNTRY GIRL--WHERE IS SHE? 1

II THE HEART OF THE PROBLEM 13

III IS THE COUNTRY GIRL HAPPY ON THE FARM? 23

IV A CALENDAR OF DAYS 31

V WHAT ONE COUNTRY GIRL DID 45

VI STORIES OF OTHER COUNTRY GIRLS 59

VII THE OTHER SIDE 73

VIII THE INHERITANCE 83

IX THE DAUGHTER'S SHARE OF THE WORK 97

X THE HOMESTEADER 107

XI THE NEW ERA 121

XII THE HOUSEHOLD LABORATORY 135

XIII EFFICIENT ADMINISTRATION 145

XIV AN OLD-FASHIONED VIRTUE 155

XV HEALTH AND A DAY 167

XVI THE COUNTRY GIRL'S WAGE 179

XVII THE DRESS BUDGET 193

XVIII FOUNDING A HOME 205

XIX THE FARM PARTNER 219

XX THE COUNTRY GIRL'S TRAINING 231

XXI A GREAT OPPORTUNITY 241

XXII THE ILLS OF ISOLATION 253

XXIII THE SOLACE OF READING 265

XXIV THE SERVICE OF MUSIC TO THE COUNTRYSIDE 277

XXV THE PLAY IN THE HOME 289

XXVI PAGEANTRY AS A COMMUNITY RESOURCE 303

XXVII ASSOCIATIONS, ESPECIALLY THE YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN

ASSOCIATION 315

XXVIII THE CAMP FIRE 329

XXIX THE COUNTRY GIRL'S DUTY TO THE COUNTRY 341

XXX THE COUNTRY GIRL'S SCORE CARD 349

INDEX 359

BIBLIOGRAPHY 363

ILLUSTRATIONS

The American Country Girl. An abundance of sunshine,

fresh air, good water, and healthful exercise in the open

permit wonderful young life to reach its highest

development _Frontispiece_

The Country Girl is the life of the home. She is a companion

for the parents and a playmate for the little brothers and

sisters 26

The Country Girl and Her Pets. "The quietness of the country

permits a greater spiritual and mental growth, with its

abundance of life, plant and animal, which challenges the

mind to discover its secrets" 27

The Country Girl takes a pride in her chickens that makes

their care a pleasure to her 86

The Inheritance. The Country Girl, working cheerfully beside

her mother, will learn much that will be of value to her in

her effort to make the housework of to-day a joy and not a

burden 87

A happy homesteader in front of her "soddy." The vastness

of the country does not daunt her. She learns to love the

quiet, broken only by the roar of a river at the bottom of a

canyon or the howl of a coyote on the great sandy flats 118

A Knitting Class at an Agricultural School. Note the splendid

poise of the Country Girl in the background--how naturally

and yet perfectly she is holding herself 119

This Tennessee girl is a member of a Gardening and Canning

Club. She won the cow and calves as premiums for having

the best exhibit at the State Fair 190

Springtime in the country. City children may well envy their

little country cousins the free life in the open and the

companionship with animals 191

A lesson in household economics, at Cornell University 236

Children in a country school scoring corn. Everywhere the

country is responding to the call of Progress, and these

members of a new generation are striving to reach the best 237

The swiftly awakening artistic energies of the Country Girl

are finding an outlet in the new national interest in

pageantry. The farm, meadow or field makes an ideal

stage 306

One of the many Eight Weeks Clubs organized throughout

the country by the Y. W. C. A. 307

This photograph of a Camp Fire Girl shows the opportunity

country life affords for good sport 336

A school garden where the children are taught to love and

understand the growing things as well as to cultivate

them 337

NOTE

The author acknowledges with gratitude the kindness of her friends among

the members of her fraternity, and among the graduates of Wellesley

College, of Northwestern, Syracuse, and Chicago Universities, and of

Grinnell College, who carefully found Country Girl correspondents for

her in all parts of the country; and especially of Professor Martha Van

Rensselaer of Cornell University who generously shared with her some of

the results of a questionnaire on _The Young Woman on the Farm_, which

was sent out by the Home Economics Department of that University.

It would be impossible to name here all the helpers that this book has

the honor to claim; the many specialists who have been good enough to

advise the author; the enthusiasts whose fire has sustained her courage;

and above all the many friends who have entertained her in their country

homes and talked over with her their problems. The author would,

however, acknowledge her special indebtedness to the Honorable John T.

Roberts, the well known lover and sympathetic critic of country life,

who gave valuable time to reading her manuscript and made some vital

suggestions; and to Miss Mary L. Read, head of the School of

Mothercraft, who gave some of the chapters a studious criticism.

While acknowledging many sources of inspiration the author alone is

responsible for the opinions expressed in the book, opinions sometimes

maintained against valued authority. All quotations from Country Girl

experiences are made with direct personal permission of the writers; the

kindness of the girls, who for the sake of other girls have given these

permissions, is here mentioned with special appreciation.

For illustrations the author is indebted to the Home Economics and other

Departments of the Agricultural College at Cornell University and to the

Home Economics Department of the School of Agriculture at Alfred, N. Y.;

also to Mr. S. H. Dadisman of the Agricultural College at Ames, Iowa; to

Mr. O. H. Benson of the United States Department of Agriculture; to Mr.

A. A. Allen of the Cayuga Bird Club, and to Mr. James M. Pierce of the

_Iowa Homestead_ of Des Moines, Iowa. The list should also include Mr.

R. M. Rosbrugh of Syracuse, N. Y., and Mrs. Mabel Stuart Lewis,

efficient homesteader, of Fladmoe, South Dakota. Other names are

mentioned in the text and need not be repeated here. To these and other

helpers, great thanks are due.

This book has been written about the Country Girl and for the Country

Girl; for her mother and father, and for everybody else as well; but

especially for the Country Girl herself. It will reach its aim if some

father says, "Why, here now, somebody has written a book about my little

gal there. I should not have thought it was worth while to make a book

about her. Well, now, perhaps she is of some account. Guess I'll give

her a little more schooling; guess I'll let her go to that institute she

was asking to go to; guess I'll let her have some music lessons, or buy

her a piano, or send her to college." Or if some mother says wistfully,

"My daughter is going to have a better chance than I had!" Or if the

Country Girl herself should say, "I see my opportunity and I will arise

and fulfil my mission."

The book will reach its aim, too, if another thing should happen. This

is the first book about the Country Girl. There have been tons of paper

devoted to the farmer; reams filled on the farm woman; not a line for

the girl. May this first book be followed by many, correcting its

misconceptions, rectifying its mistakes, directing its enthusiasms into

the best channels for the welfare of the six and three-quarters

millions of Country Girls of this land! By that time there will be seven

millions--unless in fact these six millions shall have run away to build

their homes and rear their children in the hot, stuffy, unsocialized

atmosphere of the town, leaving the happy gardens without the joyous

voices of children, the fields without sturdy boys to work them, the

farm homes without capable young women to--shall I say, to _man_ them?

No, let us say to _woman_ them, to _lady_ them, to _mother_ them, and so

to make them centers of wholesome interesting life that, if the girls do

their part, shall be the very heart and fiber of the nation.

The author is sorry that she cannot write to all the Country Girls who

have written her either through the questionnaire or through other means

of communication in the groups with which she has been so happily

associated; but she wishes that every Country Girl who reads this book

would write to her (using the address below) and tell her where she

thinks the book has spoken truly and where mistakenly. She trusts the

judgment of the Country Girls of America absolutely, if they can but be

induced to speak in unison and after careful thought.

MARTHA FOOTE CROW.

Tuckahoe, New York City

August, 1915.

CHAPTER I

THE COUNTRY GIRL--WHERE IS SHE?

Woman will bless and brighten every place she enters, and she will

enter every place on this round earth.

_Frances E. Willard._

_O Woman, what is the thing you do, and what is the thing you cry?_

_Is your house not warm and enclosed from harm, that you thrust the

curtain by?_

_And have we not toiled to build for you a peace from the winds

outside,_

_That you seek to know how the battles go and ride where the fighters

ride?_

You have taken my spindle away from me, you have taken away my loom;

You bid me sit in the dust of it, at peace without cloth or broom;

You have shut me still with a sleepy will, with nor evil nor good

to do,

While our house the World that we keep for God should be garnished and

swept anew.

The evil things that have waxed and grown while I sat with my white

hands still,

They have meshed our world till they twined and curled through my very

window sill;

Shall I sit and smile at my ease the while that my house is wrongly

kept?

It is mine to see that the house of me is straightened and cleansed

and swept!

_Margaret Widdemer._

CHAPTER I

THE COUNTRY GIRL--WHERE IS SHE?

The clarion of the country life movement has by this time been blown

with such loudness and insistence that no hearing ear in our land can

have escaped its announcement. The distant echoes of brutal warfare have

not drowned it: above all possible rude and cruel sounds this peaceful

piping still makes itself heard.

It has reached the ears of the farmer and has stirred his mind and heart

to look his problems in the face, to realize their gigantic

implications, and to shoulder the responsibility of their solution. It

has penetrated to the thoughts of teachers and educators everywhere and

awakened them to the necessities of the minute, so that they have

declared that the countryside must have educational schemes adapted to

the needs of the countryside people, and that they must have teachers

whose heads are not in the clouds. It has aroused easy-going preachers

in the midst of their comfortable dreams and has caused here and there

one among them to bestir himself and to make hitherto unheard-of claims

as to what the church might do--if it would--for the betterment of

country life.

And all of these have given hints to philanthropists and reformers, and

these to organizations and societies; these again have suggested

theories and projects to legislators, senators, and presidents; the

snowball has been rolled larger and larger; commissions have sat,

investigations have been made, documents have been attested, reports

handed in, bills drafted and, what is better, passed by courageous

legislation; so that now great schemes are being not only dreamed of but

put into actual fulfilment. Moreover, lecturers have talked and writers

have issued bulletins and books, until there has accumulated a library

of vast proportions on the many phases of duty, activity, and outlook

that may be included under the title, "A Country Life Movement."

In all this stirring field of new interest, the farmer and his business

hold the center of attention. Beside him, however, stands a dim little

figure hitherto kept much in the background, the farmer's wife, who at

last seems to be on the point of finding a voice also; for a chapter is

now assigned to her in every book on rural conditions and a little

corner under a scroll work design is given to her tatting and her

chickens in the weekly farm paper. Cuddled about her are the children,

and they, the little farm boys and girls, have now a book that has been

written just about them alone--their psychology and their needs. Also,

the tall strong youth, her grown-up son, has his own paper as an

acknowledged citizen of the rural commonwealth. But where is the tall

young daughter, and where are the papers for her and the books about her

needs? It seems that she has not as yet found a voice. She has failed to

impress the makers of books as a subject for description and

investigation. In the nation-wide effort to find a solution to the great

rural problems, the farmer is working heroically; the son is putting his

shoulder to the wheel; the wife and mother is in sympathy with their

efforts. Is the daughter not doing her share? Where is the Country Girl

and what is happening in her department?

It is easier on the whole to discover the rural young man than to find

the typical Country Girl. Since the days of Mother Eve the woman young

and old has been adapting herself and readapting herself, until, after

all these centuries of constant practise, she has become a past master

in the art of adaptation. Like the cat in the story of Alice, she

disappears in the intricacy of the wilderness about her and nothing

remains of her but a smile.

There are some perfectly sound reasons why American country girls as a

class cannot be distinguished from other girls. Chief among these is the

fact that no group of people in this country is to be distinguished as a

class from any other group. It is one of the charms of life in this

country that you never can place anybody. No one can distinguish between

a shop girl and a lady of fashion; nor is any school teacher known by

her poise, primness, or imperative gesture. The fashion paper,

penetrating to the remotest dug-out, and the railway engine indulging us

in our national passion for travel see to these things. Moreover, the

pioneering period is still with us and the western nephews must visit

the cousins in the old home in New Hampshire, while the aunts and uncles

left behind must go out to see the new Nebraska or Wyoming lands on

which the young folks have settled. We do not stay still long enough

anywhere in the republic for a class of any sort to harden into

recognizable form.

New inhabitants may come here already hardened into the mold of some

class; but they or their children usually soften soon into the

quicksilver-like consistency of their surroundings.

There is also no subdividing of notions on the basis of residence,

whether as townsman or as rural citizen. The wind bloweth where it

listeth in this land. It whispers its free secrets into the ears of the

city dweller in the flat and of the rural worker of the cornfield or the

vine-screened kitchen. The rain also falls on the just and the unjust

whether suburbanated or countrified. There is no rural mind in America.

There has indeed been a great deal of pother of late over the virtue and

temper of "rural-minded people." This debate has been conscientiously

made in the effort to discern reasons why commissions should sit on a

rural problem. Reasons enough are discernible why commissions should

sit, but they lie rather in the unrural mind of the rural people, as the

words are generally understood, than in some supposed qualities imposed

or produced in the life of sun and rain, in that vocation that is

nearest to the creative activities of the Divine.

And if there is no rural mind, there is no distinctive rural

personality. If the man that ought to exemplify it is found walking up

Fifth Avenue or on Halstead Street or along El Camino Real, he cannot be

discovered as a farmer. He may be discovered as an ignorant person, or

he may be found to be a college-bred man; but in neither case would the

fact be logically inclusive or uninclusive of his function as farmer.

The same is almost as exactly true for his wife and his daughter. If one

should ask in any group of average people whether the farmer's daughter

as they have known her is a poor little undeveloped child, silent and

shy, or a hearty buxom lass, healthy and strong and up to date, some in

the group would say the latter and some the former. Both varieties exist

and can by searching be found along the countryside. But it is nothing

essentially rural that has developed either the one set of

characteristics or the other. To be convinced of this, one who knows

this country well has but to read a book like "Folk of the Furrow," by

Christopher Holdenby, a picture of rural life in England. In such a book

as that one realizes the full meaning of the phrase, "the rural mind,"

and one sees how far the men and women that live on the farms in the

United States have yet to go, how much they will have to coagulate, how

many centuries they will have to sit still in their places with wax in

their ears and weights on their eyelids, before they will have acquired

psychological features such as Mr. Holdenby gives to the folk of the

English furrow.

A traveler in the Old World frequently sees illustrations of this. For

instance, in passing through some European picture gallery, he may meet

a woman of extraordinary strength and beauty, dressed in a style

representing the rural life in that vicinity. She will wear the peasant

skirt and bodice, and will be without gloves or hat. A second look will

reveal that the skirt is made of satin so stiff that it could stand

alone; the velvet bodice will be covered with rich embroidery; and heavy

chains of silver of quaint workmanship will be suspended around the

neck.

On inquiry one may learn that this stately woman was of what would be

called in this country a farmer family, that had now become very

wealthy; that she did not consider herself above her "class"--so they

would describe it--no, that she gloried in it instead. It was from

preference only that she dressed in the fashion of that "class."

Now, whether desirable or not, such a thing as this would never be seen

in America. No woman (unless it were a deaconess or a Salvation Army

lassie or a nun) would pass through the general crowd showing her rank

or profession in life by her style of dress. And that is how it happens

that neither by hat nor by hatlessness would the country woman here make

known her pride in the possession of acres or in her relation to that

profession that forms the real basis of national prosperity. Hence no

country girl counts such a pride among her inheritances. Therefore if it

is not easy to find and understand the country girl as a type, it is not

because she is consciously or unconsciously hiding herself away from us;

she is not even sufficiently conscious of herself as a member of a

social group to pose in the attitude of an interesting mystery. She is

just a human being happening to live in the country (not always finding

it the best place for her proper welfare), just a single one in the

great shifting mass.

Although it may be difficult to find what we may think are typical

examples of the Country Girl as a social group, yet certain it is that

she exists. Of young women between the ages of fifteen and twenty-nine,

there are in the United States six and a half million (6,694,184, to be

exact) who reside in the open country or in small villages. This we are

assured is so by the latest Census Report.

By starting a little further down in the scale of girlhood and advancing

a trifle further into maturity this number could be doubled. It would be

quite justifiable to do this, because some farmers' daughters become

responsible for a considerable amount of labor value well before the age

of fifteen; and on the other hand the energy of these young rural women

is abundantly extended beyond the gateway of womanhood, far indeed into

the period that used to be called old-maidism, but which is to be so

designated no more; the breezy, executive, free-handed period when the

country girl is of greatest use as a labor unit and gives herself

without stint (and often without pay) to the welfare of the whole

farmstead. The American Country Girl is not by any means behind her city

sister in her ability to make the bounds of her youth elastic, though

the girl on the farm may go at it in a somewhat different way. Then,

perhaps, too, the word "youth" may, alas! have another connotation in

the mind of one from what it has in the dreams of the other.

If we should, however, thus enlarge the scope of our inquiry, we should

increase but not clarify our problems. Moreover it is the Country Girl

that interests us, the promise and hope of her dawn, the delicate

swiftly changing years of her growth, the miracle of her blossoming.

There is something about the kaleidoscope of her moods and the

inconsistencies of her biography that fascinates us. The moment when she

awakes, when the sparkle begins to show in her eyes, when we know that a

conception of her mission and of her supreme value to life is beginning

to glow before her imagination--that is the crisis to work for and to be

happy over when it comes. As for us, we ask no greater happiness than

once or twice to catch a glimpse of that.

That great host of six million country girls is scattered far and wide;

they are everywhere present. A certain number of millions of them are

working industriously in myriads of unabandoned farms all over the

Appalachian plateau, and on the wide prairies to the Rockies, and

beyond. In thousands of farmsteads they are helping their mothers wash

dishes three times a day three hundred and sixty-five days in the year,

not counting the steps as they go back and forth between dining-room and

kitchen. They are carrying heavy pails of spring water into the house

and throwing out big dishpanfuls of waste water, regardless of the

strain in the small of the back. They are picking berries and canning

them for the home table in the winter; they are raising tomatoes and

canning them for the market; they are managing the younger children;

they are baking and sewing and reading and singing; they are caring for

chickens and for bees and for orphan lambs; they ride the rake and the

disc-plow and sometimes join the round-up on the range. Moreover they go

to church and they go to town and they look forward to an ideal future

just as other girls do. The Country Girl is a human being also.

It has been intimated that young women living on remote secluded farms

have not, with all their singing, been always able to dispel the

monotony of a thousand inevitable dishwashings a year; they are said

nowadays to have opened their ear to the lure of the town and to have

started out, keeping step with their brothers, to join what some one has

called, "the funeral procession of the nation" cityward. If we could, in

fact, get them to confide in us, we should find that they have longings

and aspirations, many of which are unsatisfied; and that is the reason

why it seems to be high time for their voice to be heard.

Some of the younger farm women are showing themselves equal to the

larger burdens in the business of agriculture. They are running their

own farms in Michigan and their own automobiles in Kansas. They are

taking up claims. They are developing them and proving up in the Dakotas

and through Montana and Wyoming. From four to six in the morning they

till an acre; then they ride twenty miles to the school and teach from

nine to four; after that they ride back and work in their cornfields

till the stars twinkle out. They stay alone in their shack and are happy

and fearless and safe.

Moreover some thousands of the girls are laboriously teaching schools in

thousands of one-room schoolhouses, where they provide almost one

hundred per cent. of the common instruction for fifty per cent. of the

population.

Besides this, there is no one of all the gainful occupations in which

young women of this country engage which has not drawn upon the

reservoir of country strength for supplies. Among those women

blacksmiths and engineers, those clerks, secretaries, librarians and

administrators, those lawyers, doctors, professors, writers, those

nurses, settlement workers, investigators and other servants of the

people in widely diverse fields, there are many whose clearness of eye

and reserve of force have been developed in the wholesome conditions of

the open country. The Country Girl has no reason to be ashamed of the

part she has borne in the non-rural world. It has been said that about

eighty per cent. of the names found in "Who's Who in America" represent

an upbringing in the rural atmosphere. The proportion of women in this

number or the special proportion of grown-up farm girls to be found

among those women cannot be stated; but the number must be large enough

to justify a belief that to spend a childhood in the open country or in

the rural village will not, in the case of women any more than in the

case of men, form an impassable barrier to eminence.

From this great rural reserve of initiating force, sane judgment, and

spiritual drive have come, in fact, some of the most valued names in

philanthropy and literature. Among them we find the leader of a great

reform, Frances Willard; the inaugurator of a world-wide work of mercy,

Clara Barton; the president of a great college, Alice E. Freeman; the

wise helper of all who suffer under unjust conditions in city life,

Jane Addams; and the writer of a book that has had a national and

world-wide influence, Harriet Beecher Stowe.

It heartens us up a bit to name over examples like these. They give us a

vista and a hope. But now and then there is a Country Girl who would

rather have, say, a better pair of stilts over the morass or a stronger

rope thrown to her across the quicksand, than a volume of "Who's Who"

tossed carelessly to her in her difficulties. For all the Country Girls

on their farms do not sing at their work. They are not idle, heaven

knows!--but their work does not invariably inspire the appreciation it

deserves.

CHAPTER II

THE HEART OF THE PROBLEM

New times demand new measures and new men;

The world advances and in time outgrows

The laws that in our fathers' day were best;

And, doubtless, after us some purer scheme

Will be shaped out by wiser men than we,

Made wiser by the steady growth of truth.

_Lowell._

CHAPTER II

THE HEART OF THE PROBLEM

The reason why the American people care so much for the ideals that are

presented to us in the Country Life Movement is that there is something

very deep-seated and permanent within us to which these motives can

appeal. We are a country-life people. The bogy of the overshadowing

city, threatening to spread and spread until, like a great octopus, it

should suck all the sweet fields into its tentacles and cover the green

areas with a compact blackness, has given us a definite fright. The

result of our terror is the "Country Life Movement." It is not that we

were actually approaching an imagined danger-point; it was only that a

vision of life constantly fed and inspired by the pure unadulterated

influences of the country was before the eyes of a country-bred people,

and was of so great preciousness that we must guard it at the first hint

of peril. There are indeed grave dangers threatening some fundamental

interests in the agricultural realm; to these the nation is now well

awake. The republic has many problems but on the whole it is prospering,

and perhaps one reason why this is so lies in the fact that the

profession of agriculture is still the backbone of our national life.

The so-called Country Life Movement, then, is not a sudden onslaught

upon our consciousness by an alien influence, as if we were fish

suddenly commanded to go and live on the land. It is more as if a band

of mountaineers with lungs adjusted to a height of several thousand

feet, had been trying to breathe the air in a close and stuffy valley

far below their proper levels, but who had now returned to their native

height and were feeling the glow and triumph of their original energy;

or who perhaps, being frightened lest they should be imprisoned in that

low valley, were making frantic efforts to escape this doom and to reach

their mountain homes where they could breathe freely and grow normally

again. The Country Life Movement is not the despairing gasp of expiring

effeteness; it is an exclamation of robust joy in the possession of a

life healthily adapted to our needs.

At present there are well-nigh six million farmsteads in this country.

They form what we may untechnically call the agricultural group, and

represent roughly, but of course vitally, the great business of farming.

In our consideration we have to include also the small rural villages,

because the United States Census Reports include under the word "rural"

both people living in the open country and those living in villages up

to twenty-five hundred inhabitants in size.

In the agricultural group the unit is the farmstead. By that term is

meant the whole complex organization of the farm, including the land and

its products, the stock, the barns and the sheds, the whole family

together with whatever houses it, the corps of workers, farmer, farmer's

wife, sons, daughters, maiden aunts, working people unhired and

hired--in fact, everything "animal, vegetable or mineral," as the

children say when they play "Forty Questions," that ministers in any way

to the success of the farm as a business and to its ultimate object, the

happiness of the family living thereon. So when we say "farmstead" we

mean not only fodder for beasts but also food for the human beings; but

inasmuch as the human being is soul-endowed and has imperative appetites

in the aesthetic and spiritual realm as well as in the physical, the

farmstead covers the matter of the piano as well as of the hoe. A

wealthy farmstead is indeed one that has cattle upon many hills, or that

sends many carloads of milk to the city; but it can scarcely be called a

wholly prosperous farmstead unless it has an unrestricted view of the

scenery from its living-room windows, a public reading room within reach

of its buggy's wheels--that means, say, within twelve or fifteen miles

at most--or of its automobile--which may mean within forty or one

hundred miles according to the roads and the car; and, we may add,

unless it takes advantage of this and other cultural privileges.

It may be said that the ultimate end of the whole farm business is the

happiness of the family; yet the minds of many do not travel to the

ultimate--they pause at some one of the possible stopping places along

the way and fashion that subsidiary idea into the fiction of an ultimate

end. For instance, one may make the fattening of stock or the purchase

of a certain additional strip of land into an ultimate end, and work for

that, sacrificing much that is of immediate happiness value, or perhaps

even of supreme happiness value, to gain that minor object. Meantime the

real end, the one that if we should penetrate to the heart of our

ideals, we should find seated in the most sacred place: namely, the

welfare and happiness of the family group for which we live and labor,

has been neglected, and nearer, more direct means to attain it have been

overlooked.

This, then, is the heart of the matter. The farmstead is an intricate

organism with many parts working wonderfully together. The object, the

reason for the existence of every item and strain of it and for the

thing as a whole, is that there should be at the center of it a radiant

core of joy in which every human member of the little cosmos may have a

share and so reflect back to the others a still greater brightness. In

this farmstead world, each individual member must therefore be made

happy. A tricky word--that word "happiness!" Perhaps it cannot be

defined, but Americans are entitled to pursue it, whatever it may mean!

The wise ones, however, say that the one condition that can and will set

alight a vigorous flame of happiness at the heart of any human farmstead

is that there should be found there the opportunity for growth for

every individual in the circle, for the development of his or her latent

powers, so that each life may find that whatever it was intended to be,

it has been fully able to become; that none of its God-given abilities

have gone to waste for want of notice, furtherance, food, or

inspiration. It would be a pity to find that there was one social

structure among the devices of our high civilization that was stubbornly

inhospitable to the entrance of that messenger, "Growth," who precedes

and announces the heavenly visitant, "Happiness." The farmstead must not

be accused of being such a structure as that unless it is absolutely

necessary.

To what extent, then, does the farmstead offer opportunity for such

growth? Is it too much to ask that the ultimate joy of living, the joy

of growth, should be brought very near to the eyes of the people living

on the farmsteads, that their imaginations should be touched even more

keenly than they now are to a consciousness of the real possibilities in

their environment? What can we do to create an atmosphere that will give

its own enthusiasm to the people, that will bind each member of the

farmstead indissolubly to the place; one in which there shall be so

swift a certainty that it will seem like magic; that must so charm the

mind and the heart of each one that the tie will hold against any kind

of onslaught?

But the claim is being made in some quarters that the countryside home

does not live up to its possibilities in this respect, and if not in

this respect then the country life movement has a real pang behind it as

well as an uprising of renewed life. If the father in the home, who is

the farmer and head of the homestead, does not find happiness according

to his needs, it may from all the signs be concluded that the government

and the universities and the newspapers and the legislators are busying

themselves to the greatest possible extent to relieve his disabilities;

he may be left in their care for the present. Of the farmer's wife, who

is the head of the home and the partner with her husband in the farm

business, the government has lately in a group of letters addressed to

fifty-five thousand farm-woman correspondents, asked the question, What

do you wish to have done that your life may be more filled with content

and that your disabilities may be relieved? It is safe to presume that

the longings of their hearts will be by some means satisfied in longer

or shorter meter. The sons are sharing the fortunes of the fathers, but

if they are not, numbers of them may go out from the home valley and

easily seek what they believe will be a better fortune along the outer

avenues of a man's activities. And the daughter? While that ship comes

slowly in that is to bring something comforting to her mother, while her

father is giving the farm the benefit of his fast accumulating

scientific information and lessening the daily labor by up-to-date

machinery, what is happening to her? Is she having her share of content?

Has she the chance to grow and fill full the possible round of her own

personal development? Is the Country Girl happy on the farm? Or is she

in her heart dissatisfied and glowering? Is she suppressed and sodden in

mood? Is her face expressionless and too old for her years? Is she

round-shouldered and heavy of step? Is she listless and suspicious and

sensitive?

[Illustration: The Country Girl is the life of the home. She is a

companion for the parents and a playmate for the little brothers and

sisters.]

Or is she full of spirit and enthusiasm, a perfect dynamo of energy? Is

she the life of the home, with a word and a joke for everybody and is

she a perfect mischief among the other children? Is her face full of

expression, with smiles and dimples all the time? Is she full of love

and affection toward each member of the family, and endless in her

devices for their comfort and entertainment? Is she a veritable steam

engine to get the work done and equally a master hand at all kinds of

games and plays, able to get up something in no time and carry out any

kind of a scheme with nothing to do with? Does she sleep the very sleep

of the dead the whole night long, and is she all day the widest awake

being that can be found for miles around? Has she an appetite to startle

one fully three times a day and even more often, if something good to

eat is being made? In fine, is she receiving her share of possible

growth? Is she having her chance to show all that she is able to become?

And thus is she being happy? And also thus is she making the rest of the

circle in the home that is at the center of the farmstead, happier than

it could ever have been if she had not been there and had not been the

fully developed girl that she is?

This is the question that seems most important at just this time. This

is the problem on which light must be thrown.

It seems to be an important question for several reasons. It is said

that the young men are showing their dissatisfaction with farm life by

going away in large numbers to find occupation in the city; that the

best and most energetic of the young men, those who would have been

leaders for betterment in the general countryside, are found among those

who desert the countryside, and that thus the farm community is depleted

and deprived of good elements that it cannot well spare. The wind of

destiny for woman that has swept through the country and the world

during the last two decades or so, has penetrated the valleys where in

seclusion the Country Girls have grown up, and has now whispered

inspiration and courage into their ears, so that if they are

dissatisfied with the conditions of their lives they will have the

daring to go forth also, following their brothers, and to take up some

industrial fortune in the city whither the bright star of independence

beckons them. They are doing this already; and the news of it should

make thoughtful people bestir themselves. There seems to be a great

problem here, and the Country Girl seems to be at the heart of it. For

if the rural question is the central question of the world, and if the

social problem is the heart of the rural problem, and if the failure of

the daughter's joy and usefulness threatens the farmstead,--then once

more in the history of the world has the hour struck for woman; then

does the welfare of the world depend upon her as much as did the life of

the bleak New England shore depend on the health and survival of the

Pilgrim Mothers?

Of course no one would wish to claim that the young woman in the

farmstead is of more importance than other members of the home; but as a

chain will break if one link fails, so the farmstead will be ruined if

it lacks the cooperation of the daughter. She has, at least, a function

all her own; and the happiness that comes through normal growth must be

hers in order that she may fulfil her mission. The farmstead girl must

take her place in the farmstead or the farmstead unit will lack one of

its component parts and fall to pieces. It is her patriotic duty; it is

her home and family duty; and it is her greatest happiness. The young

woman on the farm must grow up with the idea that she is essential to

the progress of country life and therefore of the national life, and

that a career is before her just as much as if she were aiming to be an

artist or a writer or a missionary. This purpose makes her life worth

while. She must conserve her health for this; she must develop her

powers for this; she must train herself heroically for this.

We are, then, face to face with the question, so important to us at the

present moment, whether the daughter in the farmstead family is having

her own full meed of happiness in her farm home or not. Has she the

opportunity that is her right to grow and develop all her latent powers

and to become the person that by all the gifts of nature she is capable

of becoming?

CHAPTER III

IS THE COUNTRY GIRL HAPPY ON THE FARM?

Let the mighty and great

Roll in splendor and state!

I envy them not, I declare it.

I eat my own lamb,

My own chicken and ham,

I shear my own sheep and I wear it.

I have lawns, I have bowers,

I have fruits, I have flowers.

My lark is my morning's charmer;

So you jolly dogs now

Here's God bless the plow--

Long life and content to the farmer.

_Inscription on an old English pitcher._

CHAPTER III

IS THE COUNTRY GIRL HAPPY ON THE FARM?

The young women who read this book will surely believe that no mere

curiosity inspires the question at the head of this chapter, but a fully

fixed idea that much depends on the answer. If it is not to be possible

for the young women to be made happy in the rural environment, they

surely are going to turn in great numbers and follow the beckoning

finger of industries and engagements townward. And if multitudes of them

do this, it will be increasingly difficult to keep that composite thing,

the farmstead, in perfect balance; and in that balance the daughters

have every year a more important part. Their share, in fact, is

constantly growing more vital, more indispensable to the welfare of the

whole.

There is also an even more important consideration. It is this. The

daughters in the homes of to-day are the home-makers of to-morrow; if

they are estranged irrecoverably from the countryside, what is to become

of the countryside in the days that are to come? Can we entertain the

hope that the city cousins will come to the rescue? Can we reply upon

the inrush of new families from across the seas to enter our widespread

fields and valleys and support for us the burden of scientific

housekeeping, and high-minded home making, and modern education in the

spirit of American institutions?

These are some of the thoughts and some of the fears that students of

the situation entertain. The result is that a strong interest is felt to

know if possible exactly how the country girl herself does feel about

her life on the farm, whether she is dissatisfied with the conditions

that surround her, whether she suffers from a deep-seated sense of

neglect and suppression, and whether she is attentive to some distant

call of the metropolitan lure.

Many conversations and a wide and representative correspondence leave

the impression upon the author that the Country Girls of America,

however far apart in geography and condition, are alike in one

characteristic--the sincerity and soberness of their testimony. The

young woman on the American farm is thoughtful, well balanced,

dignified. She takes herself seriously, and she is developing powers

that promise well for the future of American life.

The first unthinking impulse of many country girls is their love for

their country homes. Some are optimistic enough to claim that the

farmer's family can enjoy all the advantages of village or city life

without any of the disadvantages, and with the added enjoyment of the

country itself. Now that books, pictures, and music are so easily

accessible to the farm, now that the telephone puts one into

communication with friends in city or country, and modern traveling

conveniences make it possible to secure such urban benefits as lectures,

church, lodge, post office, etc., they feel that they have all

grievances done away with. Girls in thickly-populated New York and in

wide-awake, modern Idaho give the same testimony. There is a large group

who will even exclaim as one Missouri girl did that she never had had a

single reason for wishing to leave the farm; that she knew of no other

place which offered so much help in physical, mental, and spiritual

growth and development.

A young woman with an ear to economic values suggests that on the farm a

great part of the food can be produced at home and can thus be kept free

from adulteration. This is not by any means a minor consideration.

Another who perhaps has at some time known stringency in the city and

can look at the problem from another angle, thinks that in the country

it is rather a relief not to have to count the cost of each separate

meal.

The opportunities on the farm sometimes appeal to the fun loving

propensities of the young girl. One has, or nearly always can have, they

say, space for games, such as tennis, basket ball, etc. Many think that

there is more real fun in the distinctive exercises of the farm than in

those of the town; for there they have nutting, riding down hill, going

berrying, riding on loads of hay;--all these are thoroughly appreciated.

In the varied business of the farmstead the daughter may see her love of

animals gratified. On the big Iowa farm where one Country Girl lives the

farm stock is to her the chief attraction. They make pets of nearly all

their creatures, and she herself assigns the fanciful and literary pet

names.

Some times the more mature country girl has reached the height where she

finds the good of country life to consist in its liberty, its leisure,

its varied interests, its fresh air and nearness to nature, and its

distance from the pettiness of the towns people and their limited

outlook. On the farm time may be devoted to the really big things of

life without petty distractions. One gains there a wholesome, sane view

of life. There may be plenty to do on the farm but what you do is of

consequence.

[Illustration: The Country Girl and Her Pets. "The quietness of the

country permits a greater spiritual and mental growth, with its

abundance of life, plant and animal, which challenges the mind to

discover its secrets."]

Some of the more spiritual aspects are gathered together in this

transcript of a Country Girl's thoughts and dreams. In trying to

describe the charm that the country has for her, she mentions "the

quietness and peace which permit of one's greater spiritual and mental

growth, the abundance of life, plant and animal, which challenges the

mind to discover its secrets; the rocks and streams which call out to

one for study and discovery, the beauties of the sunrise, the clouds,

the sunset, the moonlight, and the far off stars,--these call to our

spirits to penetrate their mystery and lift up our souls to those levels

above the commonplace where we commune with the Maker; the hills and the

wide expanses make us reverent and teach us to walk humbly and

patiently; the clean sweet air gives us health and strength of body and

soul; and the freedom from restraint by formalities and

conventionalities permits the development of the person in a sane and

natural way."

Another thoughtful mind writes this: "Farming is creative; being

experimental, it is interesting. On the farm both body and mind are

exercised, therefore both are kept nearer a normal level. We have

fresher, purer food and air; freedom from foolish forms and ceremony. We

are nearer to God."

An aspect that many country girls have keenly felt is shown in this

passage from the letter of a loyal girl of the countryside: "I fail to

find the hardships of farm life, and it always makes me indignant to

hear about them. Save as all life has its hardships, these special

hardships are a bugaboo that does not exist. A few weeks ago I was

hostess to fourteen of the girls from a large drygoods store in the

city. I was grieved to see what undersized, ill-nourished little people

they were. They ranged in age from sixteen to twenty, and every one was

prepared to despise the country and to look upon it with contempt and

the people with pity because they do not live in the city. Their

prevailing idea seemed to be that they had come to another race of

people whom they regarded with a tolerant pity and contempt. I heard

them telling my cousins, honest manly fellows, how very different they

were from boys in the city. Ah me! the simplest things about nature

which they did not know would fill many a book."

This delightfully peppery communication may be followed by one that

gives that feeling of joyousness that we believe should always be found

in real country life, and at the end strikes clearly the most important

note of all: "The attractiveness of farm life lies in as many, diverse,

and wonderful things as the breadth of the individual girl's mind can

comprehend and enjoy. To some the sense of freedom in country life is a

large means of happiness. The feeling of exultation in the far sweep of

vision, the glorious sunsets, and the movements of the clouds in the

wind and the coming storm. Then there is the pleasure in seeing and

helping things grow, in the frolic of the lambs in the spring, of the

colts at play, and in the young plants sprouting and growing in the

summer showers and sunshine; especially if you have pulled the weeds and

hoed about them yourself. Frequent outings to the lake or river for an

afternoon or evening holiday with bathing and canoeing in the afternoon

and a bonfire in the evening with a group of friends to toast

marshmallows or roast corn, and later with stories and songs, add much

to the pleasure of farm life. Then there is the quiet and peace of the

country where one may be alone at times and think. In the country there

is a more compact home life than anywhere else, for each member of the

family is working together for the home." This most important point

might receive further emphasis.

The young women in our farm homes, are, with true American spirit,

appreciating the possible play in rural life of freedom and

independence. Young women of the rural communities seem to be at one

with the time spirit of the whole country. Nothing has set them askew,

not even a world-wide women's movement! It delights them that country

life fosters individuality; but they absolutely identify themselves with

the welfare of the farmstead as a whole. The idea that their good could

be separated from the good of the family and business group in which

their life is embedded, does not seem to influence the minds of our

country girls, north, south, east, or west. And they have their far

thoughts; they look ahead and see that life on the farm furthers the

unity of the family; that it is the best place to rear children; that

family life and affection are more successfully fostered in a country

town than in a city flat, hotel or mansion. They find that simplicity of

living is easier to attain in the farm home and they believe that this

is favorable to the welfare of the family. Moreover, the coordinating

spirit of the age has touched the minds of some. They see now that the

farmstead is closely knit up with the larger unit of the farm community.

They find along the countryside greater friendliness among neighbors

than is found in the crowded city; they realize that the farmer's family

can set its own standards without losing social recognition; and they

prize the informality of social intercourse which is found in the rural

world.

These are some of the things that the young woman in the rural realm

will set down in her brief for country life. Her voice is an

even-tempered voice; there is self-control in it and there is a dynamic

element behind it that will compel a hearing. Talking with many Country

Girls and reading long letters from them, one gains an impression that,

like the composite photograph, reveals a country girl personality whose

sanity and thoughtfulness win our respect, and whose serious facing of

the facts bodes ill for such country life leaders as may in the future

neglect the resources to be found in the sagacity, alertness, and powers

of execution stored up in the young womanhood of our rural life.

CHAPTER IV

A CALENDAR OF DAYS

A country life is sweet!

In moderate cold and heat,

To walk in the air how pleasant and fair!

In every field of wheat,

The fairest of flowers adorning the bowers

And every meadow's brow;

So that I say, no courtier may

Compare with them who clothe in gray,

And follow the useful plow.

They rise with the morning lark,

And labor till almost dark;

Then, folding their sheep, they hasten to sleep,

While every pleasant park

Next morning is ringing with birds that are singing

On each green, tender bough.

With what content and merriment

Their days are spent, whose minds are bent

To follow the useful plow.

_Anon._

CHAPTER IV

A CALENDAR OF DAYS

The wisest find life a difficult thing to classify; therefore young

girls must not be blamed if they do not critically analyze the causes

and the effects that appear in their personal environment. When asked,

however, to give pictures of their daily experiences they do not fail

us. Such glimpses of the real life of some Country Girls in their farm

homes will be afforded by the partial recitals given in this chapter. To

other Country Girls or to those to whom the welfare of the country girl

is dear, or even to those urbanized city residents who consider the

dwellers in the open country as a sort of alien race whose ways must be

made a matter of study before they can be comprehended--these and

perhaps others will surely be interested in these fresh and vivid

accounts of the everyday doings in the farm homes of our country.

A fortunate country girl when asked to write a description of a

representative working day of her life, sends the following joyous

account. She is fifteen years old. Her life is under the protection of

highly educated parents and the safeguards of right home training, taste

and refinement. They come from magnificent stock and work a farm of

medium size in the Northwest. She said:

"I get up at about half-past six in the morning, and have breakfast at

seven. Then I help Mother what I can before I start for school. Mamma

puts up my luncheon while I get ready. About a quarter past eight I

start on my two mile walk to school. For about three quarters of a mile

I follow the road, then I turn off into woods. By following a

half-beaten trail for a ways, I come to a bridge made of wire. The

sides and bottom are of wire; on the bottom are laid rows of planks with

cross pieces to keep them where they belong. The bridge sways when you

walk on it and sometimes it sags quite a little. Across the river I go

through more woods. The schoolhouse is set on the top of a little hill.

There are about twenty pupils in the school. At recess and noon we often

play baseball. We have a fine teeter and swing. At noons all of the

girls and sometimes the boys take their dinners and go out and find some

pretty spot in the woods to eat. In the spring-time we often go flower

hunting. I never get home in the afternoon until about half past four.

After school I play, sew, or help in the garden till supper time. After

supper I do the supper dishes, then we all have a nice time sewing,

reading, or playing games around the fireplace."

A rest-breathing idyl like this shows that it is possible for bits of

heaven to appear here upon earth now and then! The picture is made still

more vivid by this little note:

"Several times we took lunch to an unworked mine near by and enjoyed the

beautiful view and amused ourselves by picking gold out of the crevices

in the rocks." The final touch of romantic beauty!

A roseate story like this should be followed, for contrast's sake, by

one picturing the harder side. The following, written by a girl of

sixteen, a description of a day in haying time, shows how a blithesome

spirit can make work light and joyous:

"Haying time is a very busy season for all on the farm. At 5.30 o'clock

Mother comes to our room, saying, 'It is going to be a good hay day,

girlies. You must get up now; the men are nearly through milking.' She

is forced to call several times, but finally we are up and dressed; we

help finish getting breakfast, feed the chickens, and drive the cows to

pasture. After breakfast my sister and I take the milk to the milkman

who carries it to the milk station. Father hitches our horse and loads

the milk for us, and then hurries away to begin his mowing so that the

hay will have time to be well cured in the afternoon. We drive a half

mile to the milk stand where our milk is unloaded by the milkman;

exchange good-mornings with him and perhaps with a neighbor or two, and

drive back home. We take care of our horse and wagon and then help with

the morning housework. About half-past eight my sister and I start out

after huckleberries in a near-by field. It is a beautiful morning and we

enjoy the walk. We pick enough berries for a pie and for supper that

evening and a few more. But we hurry back in order to have a little rest

before half-past ten, when I must start raking. At half-past ten, then,

I hitch my horse to the rake and ride off to the lot to work. I rake

until dinner time and have perhaps a third of the raking done. I

unharness my horse, water him, and put him in the barn. I go to dinner

with an enormous appetite and a feeling of anticipation, both of which

are soon appeased.

"Soon after dinner I begin raking again and rake until six o'clock.

Father and the hired man draw in six large loads of hay. The haying for

the day is done and it is pleasant to lie in the hammock and read a

paper or book while the men finish unloading their last load. But before

I enjoy this I must take care of my horse and carry him a drink of water

from the well. After supper my sister and I help with the dishes and

then run off to play in the swing while the men finish milking. When the

milking is done we take the cows and the horse to pasture. Then we feed

the calf, Claire by name, who is a very dear little creature and always

greets us with great joy when she sees us coming. We shut up the

chickens also. Then there is about a half-hour or more left for play,

and we have a good time, forgetting that we ever worked.

"All our days are not so busy as this one; and when the haying and

summer sewing are done, we have a chance for good times. Our haying was

done this summer in eight days or perhaps less. At quarter of nine we go

to bed. I read a chapter or two in some book I am reading, but by ten

o'clock we are both asleep with the starlight and the moonlight shining

in on us through the open screen."

If our sixteen-year-old girls can be completely satisfied to have but

half an hour a day for recreation and to spend all the rest in

unintermittent and heavy toil, and then can come out of it not only with

unbroken courage but also with buoyancy and a poetic mood, then our

respect for the country girl's character and nerve ought to be enhanced.

This one ends her story thus:

"Indeed my sister and I love the farm very much and have no desire to

leave it. We often declare that we would not live in the city for

anything."

Perhaps the above letter will be recognized in some mysterious way as

belonging to one of the Middle States; the following delightfully

individual letter can come only from a big ranch in the Northwest. One

feels the personality of the writer, like a dynamo, through all she

writes. A Rocky Mountain breeze blows through her words; and her day, we

know, is only one among many equally dramatic and interesting.

"This morning I was wakened by the sun as it first shone in at my

window. As it was only a quarter of five I covered my eyes for one more

nap. We have cool nights, but yesterday it was 104 in the shade. Soon I

heard Papa get up, so I did likewise. I built a fire in the kitchen

range and cooked my own breakfast. 'Cookie Sis' was not up and Papa does

not eat breakfast.

"I thought the rest had slept long enough, so I turned on the water near

the house and began to carry wash water. That got them up. While my

water was heating, I gathered the clothes, swept four rooms, irrigated a

little on the garden, and picked up chips. Then I washed--they call me

the 'family laundry.' I must be somewhat Irish, too, for I must have

everything in the house and on me washed clean.

"At noon I was still washing. While waiting for dinner, one of the hired

men struck a bargain with me. He is to bring down his spring and summer

collection of seventeen dirty shirts; I am to show him how to wash them

and then I may iron them. I promised because I believe in helping my

neighbor, because this fellow sometimes takes my sister riding in his

new buggy, and because he and I have red hair.

"Dinner was good even though served on our decrepit ranch dishes. We are

running three kitchens. We have good meals always. We eat well and work

hard for what we get here in the West.

"In the afternoon I finished the washing, helped clean the house, and

mended. After three o'clock I sat here in a cool room by an open window

watching Papa mow alfalfa and the men stack grain. The children were in

swimming. By and by one of my chums drove by on her way home from town.

We visit thus mostly.

"Supper at six. I ironed before and after, as long as the irons were

hot. Now at sunset my work is done. But Papa is irrigating--that takes

twenty-four hours a day.

"This was a typical working day; but it would have been as natural for

me to have described one of the six days last week when I spent ten

hours a day hoeing corn. To-morrow we girls will put on overalls and

shock hay. Don't let it shock you--we live in the West!

"The trouble with farming is that the days are not long enough for work

or the nights long enough for sleep."

The writer of the following "typical day" has become early the possessor

of husband and child; but we shall not omit her story on that account.

She lives sixty miles from the railroad station and has wonderful

mountains about her horizon. Her account of one of her marvelous days

may be commended to all country people wherever they may be found. The

joy of work and the joy of living, here reach a climax together:

"It is dusk. The children and I have just come in from the corral,

where I milked seven cows. I am so in love with life that I find a day

very short to hold its allotted joys.

"First, I awoke a little earlier than usual this morning and lay

thinking over the 'had-to-be-dones.' It was baking day; but that is a

glad-to-be as well as the other, because I love to experiment outside of

the cookbooks. At half-past five I arose and by half-past six had

breakfast on the table and my bread set. By eight o'clock we had

breakfasted and I had the seven cows milked. How I love my gentle cows!

What an inspiration their calm patience is! And I love to get out at

that hour. At this altitude the mornings are always chilly but by eight

it is pleasant. At half-past eight I had the three larger children

dressed and at breakfast, while I ran the milk through the separator.

While the children finished, I went again to the barnyard, where I fed

my little chicks and turkeys and looked after the rest. I have two rows

of flowers between the barnyard and the house, so I stopped a few

minutes to smell the sweet-peas, to admire the gorgeous colors of the

poppies, and to pull a few weeds. By ten I had baby Robert bathed and

all his little wants attended to, the breakfast dishes and the milk

things washed, my bread in the oven and my dinner started. So I sat down

to churn and to read while I churned. I use an old-fashioned dash churn,

therefore I have an excuse for sitting down. I am glad of it, for I can

read then. By twelve I have my sweet golden butter printed, have heard

Jerrine's lessons and have dinner ready. By half-past one we have had

dinner and I have the kitchen in order and we all lie down for a rest.

At two I begin making the beds, by three the whole house is

straightened, so I have two hours for myself. I read a little story for

the kiddies and then send them all to play while I read a little. I

write a couple of letters and then go out to hoe and pull weeds a while.

I cook most of my supper while I cook dinner so I can prepare supper in

a few minutes. So I feed my biddies, and the children gather the eggs,

until we hear the men coming in from the field. By seven o'clock we have

had supper, and Baby is put to bed. Jerrine helps me put the kitchen to

rights. Then comes the goodest part of the day. We go to milk. Jerrine

and Calvin sit in the wagon out of harm's way and I milk. Jerrine lets

the cows in for me and empties the milk. We all enjoy the beauties of

the sunset, the beautiful colors, the crisp little mountain breeze. By

nine the kiddies have had their bath and are in bed. Daddy-man is

playing the phonograph so they can go to sleep lulled by _Annie Laurie_,

_Bonnie Doon_ and _The Sword of Bunker Hill_. Now that I have that line

written I see it is rather an odd thing to be lulled by a sword, but I

reckon you can figure out the meaning. At ten o'clock my day will be

finished. I shall finish this paper and read a little with Daddy-man and

then it will be my bed-time. As I finish I see I have left out many

little joys. I have kissed little hands to make hurts well perhaps a

dozen times. I matched some colors and cut some blocks for Jerrine's

patch work; I made a finger-stall for the hired man. I have answered the

'phone a few times and-- Now if some university can help me to make my

days more elastic so that they can encompass all my joys comfortably, I

shall be glad. There's so much I want to do but-- Good-night."

The writer of the following story goes beyond the one typical day and

for the sake of a more accurate treatment of her program includes a

whole week. Thus is recorded the general plan of the American housework

system as it is carried on to-day. She says:

"A representative week of my life at home in the summer is easier to

describe than one day, for each day is individual to itself. To begin

with the most interesting occupation of the morning, I get up at about

five-thirty in time to toast the bread for breakfast. After breakfast I

take care of the milk and then Mother and I wash the dishes. Sweeping,

dusting and putting in order the kitchen, dining-room and living-room

comes next. The hard-wood floor in the kitchen is mopped twice a week.

Next the bedrooms are put in order. This regular morning work takes from

an hour to an hour and a half. On Monday we always do the family

washing, which generally takes me about three hours and a half when

Mother hangs up the clothes. Mother bakes the bread, prepares the

vegetables for dinner and plans the desserts. If she needs me I

sometimes help with these. She lets me bake the cake and what extra

bread is needed for variety, such as brown bread, graham, cornbread,

etc. Monday afternoon we generally iron for an hour and a half to start

on Tuesday's work. After the ironing is finished I sweep and dust the

bedrooms, unless something extra comes up, such as indoor painting,

varnishing hard-wood floors, cleaning of cupboards, etc. Tuesday

afternoon is open for sewing. On Wednesday and Thursday after the

morning work is completed Mother and I sometimes go visiting, but

generally I spend these days sewing. On Friday there is the weekly

sweeping of the living-room, the lamp chimneys to be washed, the windows

to be polished and the porch to be cleaned. Sometimes there is company

expected Saturday or Sunday, so that I do part of this work Thursday.

Saturday morning there is a cake to be iced and in the afternoon we

often have callers or else we go somewhere.

"Sunday is a day looked forward to all the week. We sleep a little later

Sunday morning and after the morning work is done all the family,

consisting at present of Mother, Father, my two brothers and I, get

ready for church. In the afternoon we sometimes either go away or have

company, but the kind we like best is the good old fashioned kind that

we enjoyed when we were children, just to read a favorite book or story

for the two or three short but precious hours before chore time. In the

afternoon after their naps Mother and Father always enjoy a walk back on

the farm. The evening we either enjoy quietly at home or if it is fair

weather we attend the evening meeting at the church.

"This is the frame-work of the program of the summer days on the farm. I

have said little of the heat because our kitchen is cool, nothing of the

work because nothing is worth while which isn't hard work, made emphatic

with backache and punctuated with drops of sweat. Gathering the berries,

early apples, etc., was omitted because they come in just any time and

are fun. Driving on the horse fork, canning fruit, etc., all come in

their time, making every day full of busy little tasks."

The following gives the experience of three sisters in an opulent home

on the western slope of the Catskills. It seems likely that the writer

depreciates her own share in the work and in the success of the

systematic household. She says:

"It is difficult to select any one day for a representative farm day

program. The work changes with each day in the week and also changes

very much with the seasons. In the spring there is the gardening, house

cleaning and the raising of chickens, besides the shipping of many

crates of eggs to New York. All this is done in the house and, although

it is done all the year, in the spring when there are more eggs the work

is heavier.

"The chickens are hatched out by incubators in a small house built for

that purpose and when hatched they are moved to the brooder house. Here

they are cared for until strong enough to be put out doors in brooders.

Later they are sorted and put into larger colony houses out in the

field. The entire responsibility and work of this is taken by my sister

Isabell, so it is needless to say that her program through the spring

months would show days that were more than busy.

"In the creamery, from which butter in pound prints is shipped twice a

week to private families, the work of wrapping, packing and marking is

also done by Isabell. There is more of this work to be done during the

winter months than in the summer because so many of the people who take

the butter go abroad for the summer months.

"The management of the house, the cooking, and to a large extent the

management of the business fall to my oldest sister, Elizabeth. We have

two dining-rooms, one for the men, of whom there are sometimes as many

as eight--and the other where we eat. For the housework we have no

outside help except a woman who comes in once a week to bake for us and

who also does the washing for the men. Our own washing is done by

Elizabeth, with the aid of a power machine and steam which is piped from

the creamery to the laundry.

"During the summer Elizabeth cans berries, fruits, beans, corn and

tomatoes in as large amounts as our garden may produce for winter use.

Ham, bacon and sausage are also made on the place. Even soap is made in

the big iron kettles in just the same way that our grandmothers used to

make it. Many people marvel at the amount of work which is done here

without any apparent confusion, and the reason for this is to a large

extent due to my sisters' management. We have electric lights and steam

heat and the kitchen is arranged in every way to save unnecessary labor.

"As for social life, we are not able to have as many guests here or to

go to as many things in town as when we had sufficient girls in the

kitchen. Most of our friends live in town six miles distant. This is due

probably to the fact that we all went to High School there. We have a

driving horse and go to most of the social things in town which occur in

the afternoon. We rarely go down at night unless there is some

exceptional event. My sister belongs to several clubs in town and

recently has organized a study and social club among the farm women of

this immediate vicinity. I think if one asked my busy sister what kind

of recreation she enjoyed most, she would answer horseback riding and

shooting. Most of the time we are too busy and interested in things here

to complain about being far away from things in town. Sometimes,

however, when the roads are bad, it becomes monotonous to be shut away

from the outside world, and I can easily see how this phase of farming

is often the reason for great discontent.

"My part in the community is rather small. I just help, and when the

other members of the family go away, I fill their places. The year

Isabell was at Cornell I had charge of the chickens. Now the bees occupy

a great deal of my time.

"I don't know as it is necessary after writing all this to add a program

of a day, but I will simply put down the things I do in a day which

isn't especially rushed.

"I get up at about 6:15 or am supposed to. My sisters get up earlier.

After I have eaten my breakfast I prepare the potatoes for dinner. By

that time all the men have had their breakfast and I wash the dishes and

clean up things in general. Then there are beds to be made and perhaps

rooms to be cleaned. After that some mornings I go to the creamery and

wrap butter, but recently I have worked for an hour or so fixing bee

equipment. About 10:30 on some mornings, I put on my bee togs and work

with them until nearly dinner time, when I set the table and help get

dinner. After dinner I wash the dishes and, unless there is garden

picking or preparing of something for canning to do, as there often is,

I am free until about four-thirty. If I go to town I leave directly

after dinner and get back about six. We don't go down a great deal

however. During the afternoon the mail comes bringing the daily paper

and at the end of the month the magazines. The entire family take turns

reading the paper, and the magazines are read at the first opportunity.

We sew, do little odd things, and are never at loss as to how to spend

the time. Supper is at five, so the men can milk after it. I wash dishes

or gather eggs after supper and unless something turns up to do am

free. We often pick garden things for the next day because it is cool

then."

The itinerary of the American Country Girl might thus be followed from

the energizing cool of the morning when the impact of the day's work is

so buoyantly met to the quieting cool of the evening when rest is so

joyously welcomed. So far in our investigation there has always been

some source of hope and enthusiasm to be discovered. If the margin of

unbearable drudgery seems to be reached, there is the solace of music at

evening when the whole family join in an orchestra of violin, cornet and

piano. If the days seem to grow unendurably monotonous, a pageant looms

on the horizon to capture the interest and to make life fascinating at

once. A fourteen-hour day of hard labor is broken by a recess in the

midst to write a letter and send it out to some girl friend in the great

big world that shall keep the secluded spirit in some touch with the

outside currents of life. At the stroke of eleven the daily paper comes;

at the twentieth of the month the magazine. A French or an organ lesson

is possible; and life, though burdened is kept enlivened on every side.

In such homes, work is not drudgery and the word "monotonous" has no

fatal meaning.

Perhaps it may be said that there is always something that can be found,

if it is looked for searchingly enough, to make a life of hard work

bearable. Work is good; all of us write that down on paper and believe

that we believe it. But when the principle is illustrated in a practical

form many things are required to sustain our conviction. There must be a

meaning, a hope, a definition, a goal. Each life is a system set in with

other systems. To make one of them a success, all must move on right

lines toward the chosen end. Other letters from these sensible young

women in the rural realm will perhaps make us feel this more keenly than

the foregoing.

CHAPTER V

WHAT ONE COUNTRY GIRL DID

THORN APPLES AND SWEET ACORNS

I love the taste of thorn apples and sweet acorns and sumac and

choke-cherries and all the wild things we used to find on the road to

school.

And I love the feel of pussy willows and the inside of chestnut burrs.

I love to walk on a country road where only a few double teams have left

a strip of turf in the middle of the track.

And I love the creaking of the sleigh runners and the snapping of

nail-heads in the clapboards on a bitter cold January night.

In the first cool nights I love the sound of the first hard rainfall on

the roof of the gable room.

And I love the smell of the dead leaves in the woods in the fall.

I love the odor of those red apples that grew on the trees that died

before I went back to grandpa's again.

I love the fragrance of the first pink and blue hepaticas which have

hardly any scent at all.

I love the smell of the big summer raindrops on the dusty dry steps of

the school house.

I love the breath of the great corn fields when you ride past them on an

August evening in the dark.

And I love to see the wind blowing over tall grass.

I love the yellow afternoon light that turns all the trees and shrubs to

gold.

I love to see the shadow of a cloud moving over the valley, especially

where the different fields have different colors like a great

checkerboard.

I love the little ford over Turtle Creek where they didn't build the

bridge after the freshet.

I love the sunset on the hill in Winnebago County, where I used to sit

and pray about my mental arithmetic lesson the spring I taught school!

_Elisabeth Wilson._

CHAPTER V

WHAT ONE COUNTRY GIRL DID

It may be interesting to some of the Country Girls who read this book to

see not only some pictures here and there from the life history of girls

but also to look over several more detailed accounts, so that they may

realize more fully what the new era in country life means to a young

woman on the farm who takes hold of her problem with vigor and

enthusiasm. To gratify this desire there will be given in this and the

following chapters, with the kind permission of the writers, a number of

sketches in some detail of the experiences of several girls, who though

they represent widely separated regions of the country, still seem to be

moved by a like impulse toward an advance in efficiency and power of

service.

The first of these accounts expresses the great awakening of southern

womanhood in the new activity of the "beloved southland." This story is

especially interesting because it shows what one girl has done just with

what she had, and how she found that she had a great deal more to work

with than she had dreamed. The writer of the many letters from which the

account is framed, is a little over twenty years old, and lives on a

farm of two hundred acres, twenty-five of which are cleared. The nearest

village, which consists of just a score of houses, is three miles from

her farm. The land is not productive without fertilizer, but at the best

produces a fair crop of corn and sweet potatoes.

This is the way the farm looked when she first saw it: "Around the house

was an old-fashioned flower garden planted years before. The woods and

creek were beautiful. The day we arrived, after we had crossed the creek

and were inside the clearing, what we saw made us forget the long drive

through black stumps and fallen trees. The oaks were just coming into

leaf. The dogwoods formed a semi-circle around the place and were white

with bloom against the green of the pines, while the wisteria hung in

great clusters and the bridal wreath was one heap of white flowers."

This was the first entrancing glimpse. But any one who knows about farm

work, realizes that this view of a run-down, neglected old place means a

long struggle. Nature has reached out hands to pull the whole

cultivation back into the wilderness. In that tangled fragrant clearing

was waiting a severe test for a trained farmer, not to say, for a

beginner. But this girl was determined to live on the farm, and she

stood ready to face all difficulties in the attainment of her desire.

That neglected garden was typical. She soon had it cleaned and the bulbs

reset, and it was not long before there were flowers for every month in

the year. All difficulties seem to have been met with a spirit of

determination and of cheer. "We were crazy," she declares, "to live on a

farm and determined not to fail; but as soon as one problem was solved,

another would bob up. There was never a day without some unexpected

happening, and adventures were plentiful."

She would have amply proved that she appreciated the attractiveness of

farm life if she had not classified her thoughts and set them down so

neatly. To her the charm of life on the farm consists, first, in the

fresh air and wholesome food, with plenty of fruit and vegetables,

together with the pleasure of helping to produce and prepare the food.

In her opinion having to depend upon one's self to decide courses of

action as much as you do in farm life, gives one backbone and trains one

to rely upon self and to be an effective leader. She has, as most true

country people have, an ineradicable and fundamental passion for

independence. In town one may have the advice of the minister, the

doctor and the lawyer; but in the country, she says, it is the Lord and

I. Again, it takes much less time and less expense to keep up

appearances in dress in the country; one is freer from interruptions

than in town, and ties of kinship are stronger among people of the

country. No, the farm is not monotonous; one acquires a liberal

education just by being alive; nature study, the work in the flower

garden, affords constant variety; and there are new interests and

adventures every day.

This girl has also thought on the other side of the question, and she

can see that there may be reasons why one may prefer to leave the farm.

One may feel the lack of companionship near one's own age and the lack

of recreation. Too much importance may be placed on field work to the

neglect of the garden; unkind criticism by neighbors may be the only

recreation available; and not paying the women of the family for their

aid in the household service, may be in her mind sufficient reasons for

desertion. These, in short, are some of the things she emphasized.

An average day of her life on the farm is a busy one. She says:

"The sun wakes me up in the morning, or maybe it is the mocking-birds

singing. I work in the garden gathering the vegetables, picking the

flowers, or cultivating, until breakfast time. After breakfast I make

the beds and straighten the bedrooms; then I work in the garden again

until about 9:30 or 10:00 o'clock. Then I come in and help with the

dinner or sew or study or write, and if it is bread-baking day I always

knead the bread and prepare it for the oven. As we have breakfast about

five-thirty o'clock we get so hungry we have dinner about 11:30. After

dinner we rest a half hour either by reading or by lying down. In the

afternoon after a bath I study or sew until it is cool enough to work in

the garden. For supper we only make coffee and warm over something left

from dinner. We have supper at five o'clock, but usually have a bowl of

clabber or a glass of milk before going to bed. I work in the garden

until dark; then we talk a while and go to bed about nine o'clock. In

the winter we talk or read after supper until bed-time. However, in

canning time the study, the sewing, and a good part of the reading are

put aside."

It is evident that her share in the housework is not a small one. She

does the sewing and much of the gardening, taking entire care of the

flower-garden. She does marvels of canning; she keeps the accounts; she

straightens out the rooms, and helps with the cooking. She runs the

errands, waiting on the father, who is permanently disabled. To

facilitate her work she has a sewing machine, an oil stove, a pump near

the door, and a wheel-hoe. What she desires in the way of equipment in

order to make her housekeeping easier are these only--her thoughts for

herself have not flown very high!--a kitchen cabinet and a clothes

wringer. Since they eat a great deal of cream cheese and lots of fruit

and vegetables raw, she does not feel that they need a fireless cooker;

but she does greatly need a canner. Since the canner is so frequently

offered as a prize, this need will no doubt be soon supplied.

The recreations of this hard-working girl consist of reading, going

visiting, walking, studying nature, making a flower garden, and writing

letters. She also naively includes going to Sunday School among her

recreations. She takes an excursion to the shore once in a great while;

but only seldom has she the time for that. She can have the use of a

conveyance at convenience, and on Saturday she and her mother drive to

town and occasionally on Sunday to church. Has she no games? No, she is

an only child and has never had any playmate in the home. Besides the

flower garden and nature study form her recreation. But she thoughtfully

encloses in one letter a list of games that she thinks girls may like to

know about and gives a bibliography of articles on games for young folks

in the woman's paper they are accustomed to take in her home. In her

community there are perhaps twenty-five young people. They have a dance

once or twice a month and a picnic twice a year; and there is a school

social every two months. The social life of the village centers about

the school as much as anywhere. Perhaps they could attract more interest

to the church if the members of the church choir only had tact and

facility enough. They have no resident minister and therefore the church

lacks a centralizing element. But the village has a hall with a

platform, a two-roomed school house, and a tennis court, as facilities

for a social center. There is also a rest room at the ice cream parlor

and back of the church there is another hall. One would say that there

was no excuse for this town if it did not have a thriving social life

and a good time for everybody on the highest lines. And ought they not

to overcome all separating difficulties, if there be any such, and

establish a regular pastor and begin to have a real community life? For

how can a town with all those advantages hold up its head among the

towns of America if it has a church building and no church therein?

Certainly though one girl can do much, she cannot do all.

One may judge any girl by the books she sets down as her favorite

reading matter: This farm girl mentions The Bible, Shakespeare, _Silas

Marner_, _Days Off_, _The Calling of Dan Matthews_, _Alice in

Wonderland_, _Little Women_, _John Halifax Gentleman_, _Lorna Doone_,

_David Harum_, _The Little Minister_, _Distractions of Marietta_, _The

Chimes_, _Treasure Island_, _Josephus_, _Lady of the Lake_, _Rose and

Ring_, _Prince Otto_, _Red Badge of Courage_, _Poems of All Great

Poets_, Idylls of the King, Department of Agriculture Bulletins,

Botanies and School books. To this list she adds the name of the woman's

paper she and her mother had taken, the file of which she has preserved

for some years. Those she underscores as the ones she reads with most

delight are these: _Little Women_, _Little Minister_, _Alice in

Wonderland_, and all the stories in her woman's paper. The serial story

appeals to her most, because she has to wonder how it is going to come

out.

She does not let anything interfere with reading an hour or so every

day. She and her mother read together a great deal. She reads to her

mother articles in the woman's paper, and the poetry of Lewis in the

Houston _Post_. They take several weekly papers, three monthly

magazines, and a daily city paper. She herself took two of these, the

woman's paper and one of the most vital of the national weekly journals.

She likes these two best--one because it gives the home view and the

other because it gives the world view. They supplement each other, she

thinks, and help one to develop a well balanced mind and character.

Her other cultural interests, however, are centered in the household

tasks and in helping in the Sunday School, and she finds these so

interesting that the days are all too short. The Sunday School must mean

a great deal to her for she mentions it as a cultural as well as a

recreational resource. It was about four years ago that the Sunday

School was started. They had good music for about two years, one family

playing all the instruments. Through the librarian she loaned her books,

bringing them as they were called for. The librarian saved her the

trouble of asking for the return of the books and in five years only one

was lost. They also had a plan for passing their magazines about. Every

Sunday when she went to church she would take armloads of flowers to

give away; and if any one wanted plants or bulbs she brought them on

request. This seems so delightfully practical. Why should not the church

door be a place for the exchange of free will offerings of all kinds?

There seems on first view very little opportunity for a girl in some

secluded farm to learn much about the great fields of classic art. This

girl is one to whom art subjects have a great appeal though she feels

the lack of opportunity to develop this interest. She draws enough to

have some appreciation of form and tone and she studies reproductions

of famous paintings; she enjoys especially watching the sunrise and the

sunset, and the stars on a clear night. Nothing in nature is alien to

her. Trees, birds, ferns, wild flowers and garden flowers, all are

beloved. She has the scientific spirit as well as the artistic. She has

made collections of pressed wild flowers, and the expert consulting

botanist of the United States Department of Agriculture Bureau of Plant

Industry names them for her. She made two sets of specimens, numbering

them, keeping one and sending the other to Washington.

With delightful frankness this efficient Country Girl recounts her

financial endeavors. Her chief way of earning money is by raising

vegetables for the table and by cutting down expenses by careful

planning of the diet. During one year the family had only to pay out $71

for bought groceries, and the eggs helped to pay for that, so that the

bought groceries were only $1.50 apiece per month for the four members

of the household. Circumstances have thrown a load of responsibility

upon this young girl, but unconsciously she was being trained for the

work. She was already a unit in the complex structure of the farmstead

before she was so acutely needed. In her earlier girlhood her father

paid her a salary of ten dollars a month for her household assistance.

In doing this he was enlisting her interest in an enterprise to the

success of which she was led to feel that she was essential. She

responded to this educational method by being ready when the need came

to plan wisely and efficiently and to carry out these plans

successfully. That first money she earned she was permitted to save. She

let it accumulate for a time and when she had a good opportunity she

bought a lot with it. After a while she moved a house upon the lot and

fixed it up. The family lived there for about a year and then she sold

it, making a good profit. During that time they owned a garden and a

cow. The garden was held to be her own special property; but her

enthusiasm for the whole farm project was no doubt to a good extent the

result of the training in responsibility she had received at the hands

of her wise parents.

When she found that she could obtain government publications on farming

problems, she promptly availed herself of this means of help. Almost as

soon as she moved to the farm, her Congressman at her request sent her

the publications of the Department on Agricultural Education. There she

read about the correspondence work at the Pennsylvania State College;

and by the time she had been on the farm four months, she had begun

correspondence courses in domestic science and agriculture under that

patronage. She completed thirteen subjects: Principles of Cooking,

Heating and Ventilation, Canning and Preserving, House Furnishing,

Butter-making, Dairy, Breeds of Cattle, Vegetable Gardening, Dressing

and Curing Meat, Stock Feeding, Principles of Breeding, Farm Manures,

Commercial Fertilizers, and Farm Bookkeeping. For this work she received

two certificates. The tuition was free and no books had to be specially

purchased for these subjects.

For her home library and text-book facilities for these studies this

energetic and persevering girl had at command, besides the bulletins of

the United States Department of Agriculture, only the file of that

household journal that she had taken since 1893. Added to this was the

constant advice of her mother, who had had opportunity to observe the

work in a large hotel where her husband had once occupied some position

that gave her the entree to the kitchen laboratory. This aid came in

well on the household side of the problem.

As one would certainly expect, it is found that this correspondent takes

part in all meetings and movements to promote better housekeeping that

are at hand. She has the Girls' Canning Club and The United Farm Women.

For information in regard to clubs and societies she sent to the

colleges receiving federal aid as listed in Circular 971, Office of

Experiment Stations. By this means she has begun a thriving

intercommunication by letters with many other girls, with whom she

exchanges items of information as to what they find out in their canning

and gardening experiences. After a little the Bureau of Plant Industry

asked her to report the blossoming and ripening of fruit for the region

where she lives; in return for this they sent her a whole mail sack of

bulletins. These bulletins and others from the Department, together with

the household journal which she and her mother had taken for several

years, she used in studying the lessons in her correspondence course,

making a list of references for each lesson.

The Girls' Canning Club meets at her house, and she prepares the

questions for them. She has copied over two hundred recipes on canning

for the Department of Agriculture. She hopes to get the National Plant,

Flower and Fruit Guild started in her vicinity so that she can send

things to the Orphans' Home in the nearest city. For two years she has

sent an exhibit of canned products to the Fair--twenty-one varieties in

1912. She read in the papers about the Girls' Tomato Club in an

adjoining State and she wrote at once to the professor in charge of the

Extension Department of a Polytechnic Institute in her own State, asking

him to help start some clubs for girls. This professor soon journeyed to

her county to look the situation over and to see what could be done. He

became enthusiastic about it and won the interest of the County

Superintendent; thus the clubs were soon started under the patronage of

the school teachers. At present there are 165 girls in the Canning Clubs

of that one county alone. In the Club in the one little village there

are seventeen members, nine girls and eight women. They have four

meetings and a Canning Party annually. At the last meeting the founder

read a paper on _The Uses of Tomatoes_; she also asked forty questions

on tomatoes, five on berries, five on beans and cabbage, and five on

jelly. The club is now working on a Tomato History; they will send their

exhibits to the Fair where they stand a good chance to win one of the

five prizes offered.

The Canning Club also belongs to the United Farm Women. By this

organization programs for suggested meetings are sent and at the time

for the meeting various bulletins and booklets on the subjects chosen

also come. The girls consider those in the _Better Babies_ group a

valuable collection. The Club asked the storekeeper in the village to

hand out the bulletins on the _Care of the Baby_ to the country

customers wherever he hears of the arrival of new babies. He says the

people are very thankful for the bulletins.

Among other resources of various kinds that this girl and her friends

can call upon is the Daughters of the American Revolution, who through

their Conservation Committee offer seven canners as prizes to the

Canning Clubs of that State. The members of the Club also receive

magazines from the Church Periodical Club, and they pursue extension

courses in agricultural subjects. Certain colleges that have

correspondence courses on subjects connected with the farm home have

been called upon for aid by some of the young women who belong in the

realm of this girlhood endeavor. When the girls began to feel the need

of beautification about the Church surroundings, they asked the

Landscape Gardener of the Bureau of Plant Industry for aid and he drew a

blue print plan for setting out the trees and shrubs; now they are

asking the same favor for the country school houses in their vicinity.

Community spirit has reached such a height now that effective meetings

in the interest of Good Roads are being held. Many people think that

this is the final stage in community success, for all things become

possible if the roads are good. Says this young enthusiast: "When we

have as good roads as they have across the line in the next State, we

shall have to move to a pioneer country to find some new problems."

This concludes the report of a wonderful young life--a life full of

promise, one that seems to be developing through service, making

economical gain and keeping economical balance as she goes along.

Nothing greater could be asked, as far as ultimate good is concerned.

CHAPTER VI

STORIES OF OTHER COUNTRY GIRLS

Well then, I now do plainly see

This busy world and I shall ne'er agree;

The very honey of all earthly joy

Does, of all meats, the soonest cloy;

And they, methinks, deserve my pity

Who for it can endure the stings,

The crowd, and buzz, and murmurings

Of that great hive, the city!

_Cowley._

CHAPTER VI

STORIES OF OTHER COUNTRY GIRLS

The first of the three stories in this chapter represents the work of a

young woman who spends more than half of her time with her mother and an

aunt upon an ancestral home in a mountain region of New England. Again

we discover what a girl can do who looks about her to see what the needs

are and then stands ready to help in any way she can. The ways that are

opening before her are many and her life seems likely to be marked by

the most joyous of fulfilment in helpfulness and radiating energy.

The farm where she lives has about nine hundred acres and is situated in

the edge of a village of some four hundred inhabitants. The place is

full of historic interest, and has wonderful views over the mountains in

every direction. Such a home as this naturally makes a great claim on

the attachment of the open-eyed young woman who writes about it; but she

possesses also a pure straightforward love for the simple country

wherever found. Watching the growth of plant and animal life has a charm

for her. The fresh air, the good water, the abundance of fresh

vegetables, and the freedom from the noise and hurry of the city, make a

strong appeal. Yet she sees that there might be reason in some

complaints against the country system as it is. An absence of cash

results for work done by members of the family in the home or in the

field; a lack of interesting recreation; a longing for freedom; the

narrowness and spirit of criticism in village life: any of these may

justify a young woman in going away. As for herself she has no

grievance.

Her share in the work on the farm and in the home consists of a good

part of the cooking, cleaning, canning and gardening, but it is not too

much for her. They have many household conveniences: running water in a

barrel, a blue flame oil stove, a bread-mixer, and a carpet-sweeper. She

would like a kitchen cabinet, electric lights, a furnace, a vacuum

cleaner run by electricity, and a system of plumbing. But these, in that

thickly populated region, will doubtless come in the near future.

In the summer her regular work is the care of the garden, and bringing

in the vegetables. When they have no hired girl, she washes all the

dishes, fills the lamps and the wood-box, and does most of the sweeping

and cleaning. She does a great deal of sewing and is occupied with

everything from upholstering chairs to making posters for lectures and

plays. During the canning season she cans string beans, corn, swiss

chard, spinach, beets, carrots, pears, plums, cherries, berries, etc.,

and makes astrachan jelly enough to supply the church suppers for the

whole year. She seldom has a chance to sit down unless it be to prepare

the vegetables for dinner. Her afternoons are taken up with club work,

or with other outside activities, with time for an occasional walk with

her mother, or an informal call. Evenings there is either choir

practise, Christian Endeavor meetings, Grange, church suppers, Club

work, or plays, with business letters and sewing to fill up whatever

time remains.

Yet room is made for a little music. There is a piano in the home and

they sometimes have hymns and old standard songs in the evening. When

sewing is to be done, some one always reads aloud. The house is well

supplied with books. There are most of the standard books though few

novels and little light reading. The newspapers and magazines are read

aloud evenings. The table is well supplied with periodicals: they take

the _Outlook_, the _Independent_, the _Geographic Magazine_, the

_Atlantic_, the _New York Times_, the _Hampshire Gazette_. For herself

alone she takes _Wohelo_, the Camp Fire magazine, and if she should add

another it would be the _Survey_. That would help her most, as her

reading at present is along the lines of sociology. To be sure, her

reading is somewhat interfered with by housework, sewing, and occupation

with outside interests. Besides she has too much physical vitality to

sit still long. But if she does need more books than her own house

supplies, there is a public library a quarter of a mile away. She is a

trustee of this library and goes there twice a week. She helps the

librarian catalog the new books, obtains loan agricultural library

books, exchanges books with other towns, and obtains agricultural

bulletins,--thus making herself an invaluable helper to the whole

region. She sees to it that the library gives help to those that are

interested in nature study. She herself has an interest in birds and

wild flowers. In her home they have a stuffed collection of fifty or

more species of birds. She modestly says that she "knows ferns

somewhat." Thanks to her ministrations the town library has books on all

those subjects. The chief sources of culture in the village, she says,

are the library, the Grange, the stereopticon lectures, and a good

pastor.

In order that she may do her full share in helping to promote the

general welfare, she has become Guardian of a Camp Fire Club and in that

group does all she can to encourage efficiency among the girls. She

takes a vital interest in all the organizations for young people. There

cannot be a girl in that region who does not know that if she wants any

good thing this older girl stands ready to help her. She is herself a

Unitarian but she has no sectarian prejudice against working in the

Christian Endeavor Society and she shows this by taking part in the

meetings every Sunday evening. She owns the only stereopticon in town

and generously sees to getting the slides for the monthly lectures. She

sings in the church choir. She keeps more or less in touch with the

school superintendent who is very responsive to suggestions and she

tries to help him and the five district school teachers in every way she

can. She is medical temperance superintendent in the Women's Christian

Temperance Union. In this connection she puts up posters and prepares

charts for the school children. She is Guardian not only for the Camp

Fire Girls but also for the Bluebirds, which is organized for the girls

under twelve.

As to earning money, she is so happy as not to have to work for that at

present. However, "on the place," she says, "I think I could earn by

making jelly, if I could find a market. In the past, when we were living

elsewhere, I was given seventy-five dollars a month to pay my share of

the housekeeping accounts (which I ran) and to lay aside. Now on the

farm, I do not have any set sum, but I own a share in the farm."

Asked if this sharing in the ownership made her more enthusiastic for

the success of the farm, she answered that she thought it did. She would

like to know of more ways of earning money that she might recommend them

to her Camp Fire Girls. She has had no special education for farming as

a business or for home-making; but she follows the suggestions of an

agricultural teacher in a high school in the next town, and she reads up

on various lines of home work in connection with the judging of the work

of the girls in the Camp Fire, and she has taken two courses at a

college in household chemistry.

A life of such incessant activity must have a great deal of joy in it.

There are, however, some special forms of recreation accessible to her.

There is a Fourth of July celebration with floats and a parade; there

are athletic contests; there is baseball, and there is an entertainment

consisting of a play, and other exercises. There are occasional school

picnics, and plays are given by the Grange or by the Camp Fire Girls.

Sunday evening stereopticon lectures are run by the Christian Endeavor

Society. She attends the baseball games, the W. C. T. U. parties; the

Cradle Roll parties, the Camp Fire parties, and the Bluebird parties for

the little club girls.

Social life centers about Church and Grange. There are enough girls to

have societies of their own and though they live widely apart, it seems

that this girl with the spirit of a leader is able to draw them

together. Though she is very modest about her part of the attraction,

she could doubtless say, if she would, "a great part of it I was!" There

are about a dozen young people in about a dozen houses in her village

and there is something going on once a week or oftener which is

specially for the girls.

There is a great deal more that might be said about this faithful and

enthusiastic worker. Her loyal following in the path that first opened

before her has led her into a special field of moral education where her

efficiency and fine spirit are making her useful not only to her own

region but to a much wider circle. She has been trained for a service

which it is a joy to render.

The second record in this group represents the great bounding life of

the Northwest, and is as full of the new elixir of country life as the

other accounts given.

The writer says: "I could tell you volumes about our Western rural

life," and if there were room, those "volumes" should be included. She

is twenty-one years old, and is one in a family of ten children. The

farm she refers to is one owned by her grandfather and there she spends

a great deal of her time and lavishes a great deal of work. There are

eighty acres; forty of them are hilly, unirrigated lands, while five

acres are still in sage-brush. The rest is irrigated by electric pumped

water. The nearest town is six miles away and has twenty-two hundred

people.

Many charming glimpses are given of the home this girl represents. She

is an enthusiast for the possibilities of farm life. She prizes it

because she finds that freedom of action is possible there in matters of

dress and in the choice of companions. All desired urban benefits--such

as lectures, church, organizations and social events, seem to have

become accessible to her. She thinks, too, that the farm realizes

outdoor life at its best. There is plenty to do--this she rates as one

of the great advantages--and she adds this pregnant sentence, "what one

does is of consequence."

She acknowledges that parents might desire to go away from the farm in

order to put children in a town school. But she adds: "I'd rather take

them to a good centralized country school. I have taught in town and

country both, and am now teaching a country school under town

supervision with ten pupils and every advantage. As I keep house for my

grandfather on a dry homestead two miles from school, I have the fun of

walking to and from the schoolhouse."

Again she says that people may go to the town in order to spend their

money; town, she says, is a good place to go for that purpose. She adds

this caustic note: "But my father made money in town and spent it in the

country--as long as he kept tenants on his farm!"

Her share in the housework is ample and joyous. She says: "Myself and

two grown sisters, both younger than I, take turns about doing the

entire housework. The rest work in the garden and the field, irrigating,

hoeing, etc. I prefer outside work too, but I always wash and iron, even

when I am working outside." Her home conveniences are a washing-machine,

a pump in the house, running water at the door, a telephone, the daily

weather reports, a typewriter, a sewing-machine, screened windows and

doors, and homemade soap. Who but a girl of the great untrammelled

Northwest would call the weather reports a home convenience, or think of

including homemade soap? Of course she is not satisfied: she would like

electrically pumped water, electric lights, ice, and a gasolene stove.

Some of these she hopes to have next year, and the electric stove will

doubtless come too and other new and important things.

Opportunity for recreation is not wanting. There are fishing on the

place, swimming in the large irrigation canal, and buggy riding. In

winter there is dancing at farm homes; visits are made over the 'phone.

Sewing and sewing bees are recreation; so are reading and writing

letters. Caring for small brothers and sisters seems to come under the

same head; water-color painting, hunting jack-rabbits and grouse, taking

kodak pictures, going to picnics and celebrations, camping in the

mountains, lectures, lodge, and socials in town, horseback riding and

day dreaming do not seem so difficult to include. She harnesses and

drives, hitching up to the buggy, the democrat, or even the jockey cart;

she rides the bicycle and expects to drive an auto--"some day." All the

games they play in that large and varied family are "to work, and to

tease one another." Evidently here is a place on the planet where work

and play run into each other and become one and the same thing! She

says: "There seems to be no necessity for games." She adds: "We older

ones often amuse and watch the three children play."

As to the number of young people in the vicinity she says that there are

about twenty "within this natural district." During the school year they

have about six social gatherings; in summer there are informal picnics

and Sunday visits with refreshments. Social life centers about the

school and the doings in the adjacent town. Among some of the neighbors

there is a German Club. As facilities for a social center, they have the

schoolhouse (but with stationary seats), a playground, any number of

natural groves and of fishing holes, and the big ditch for swimming. For

the girls alone they have swimming parties and visiting parties; and

they help one another during haying and threshing. This she puts down

among the social gatherings for girls in her neighborhood!

In the house there is a library of about two hundred and fifty volumes.

Lack of time is the only thing that prevents reading. There is a public

library in the nearest town and she goes there every week in winter. In

summer however she is too busy with farm work to go so often. In the

family evenings either she or her mother reads aloud: also on Sunday

afternoon. The books that they have thus read together of late are

_Lorna Doone_ and one by Wason called _Friar Tuck_ which she marks an

underscored "Good."

They have a piano and the favorite songs are such old favorites as

_Annie Laurie_ and _Juanita_. Also they sing church songs, and popular

tunes, such as _The Trail of the Lonesome Pine_. They adapt the music to

the different tastes in the ten-children family.

Besides the daily evening paper and the local weekly paper, they take

_Successful Farming_, _Better Fruit_, _Scientific American_, _American

Magazine_, _Cosmopolitan_, _Epworth Herald_, some law papers, the

government bulletins and reports, _Current Opinion_, etc. For her own

interests she is going to take _Epworth Herald_, _Primary Education_,

_Youth's Companion_, _American Geographical Magazine_, _Current

Opinion_, _Stock Reports_, _Successful Farming_. Her other cultural

interests are these: Music; school, especially high school

entertainments, correspondence with normal school friends; teachers'

institute, each fall, one week; water-coloring; making beautiful clothes

and fancy work; Rebecca Lodge; Church in town; amateur photography; and

reading, underscored again. It is fascinating to see what a girl like

this will include under the head of "cultural interest."

On the question of earning and using money, she says: "From the time we

were very small we earned all our spending money by being paid for extra

work. I have been absolutely independent, even to buying my clothes,

since I was seventeen years old. I figure that my work more than pays my

board." First among the ways of earning money, she names hoeing corn;

next she mentions teaching school. "I teach school nine months of the

year. Before I began that and ever since, I have earned money. I put

myself through the Normal School. I packed prunes (at four cents an

hour), sold garden truck (twenty-five cents a day, average--did no

peddling), and sewed for others at usual rates." No special sum is set

apart for her use but she has all she earns. In teaching she receives

sixty dollars a month. She has taught for this salary for two years and

with this she has paid two hundred dollars she had borrowed for her

school expenses. She has four hundred dollars remaining. Most of this is

now in interest-bearing notes on farm securities. She adds: "I buy my

clothes, go one-half on board with grandfather on the homestead, and am

beginning a 'hope-box.'" She is to have a share in the corn crop. "When

I am married," she says, "I expect to invest some in cattle for beef."

The vital question as to whether her sharing in this ownership makes her

have more enthusiasm for the success of the farm, receives this answer:

"Certainly; you should have seen me top the corn when it got frosted

June 6. It's doing fine now; I think we saved it, for it was frozen to

the ground." She has read all on the subject of farming that she could

find. She took some work in the Normal School--enough, she says, to make

her realize that she knew very little; she believes she could do much

through correspondence. Her interest is now about equally divided

between farming and home economics: but, she is good enough to confide,

"I expect to make home-making predominate some day." Ah, then this is

the true meaning of that "hope-box"! This efficient girl is to be a

farmer's wife and she wishes to know how to do her part in helping run a

grain-haystock ranch of a thousand acres successfully. So she has taken

one year at the Normal School in Home Economics and some studies in

agriculture also; she studied family sociology in a forty weeks' course;

and she has given some study to the laws governing women's property. May

her hope-box overflow! May she in time run her own car, and may all her

schemes work out perfectly!

Is there room to put down just one more story? This one has been sent by

a friend who for years has been teaching in the Idaho Industrial

Institute, a school where they train boys and girls for farm life. The

writer of the paper, a girl of nineteen, interested her especially and

she asked her to write a brief record. The farm where this girl lives is

in a hilly region and is productive; they have from it oats, wheat,

clover, timothy, and potatoes. There are 160 acres, and they are six

miles from town.

"Farm life to me is attractive," she says, "because on the farm one has

the freedom that cannot be gained anywhere else in the world. One learns

the habits of birds and animals and one comes in touch with nature and

hence with the Creator himself. Children raised on the farm grow strong

in body and spirit, and they store their minds with more venturous

thoughts. By living on the farm one gets all the fresh vegetables,

fruits, butter, milk, eggs and meat that one desires. But of course

there may be reasons why one might desire to leave the farm. One may get

the idea that one has to work harder for less pay than elsewhere. One

may think that the pleasures are few and that farm life is not

respectable enough, and that if one could only leave and go to the city,

one would be contented. But any one leaving the farm will never be happy

while away and will soon learn that there is no place in life like the

farm."

This young woman shows the usual picture of work and of small

opportunity for social enjoyments. These are her books: The Bible,

_Stephen_, _Soldier of the Cross_, _Jesus of Nazareth_, _The Coming

King_, _Tempest and Sunshine_, _The Broken Wedding Ring_, _Sweet Girl

Graduate_, _Daddie's Girl_, _Wild Kitty_, _Girls of the Forest_, _Ruby

or a Heart of Gold_, _Taking Her Father's Place_, _Now or Never_. She

was very much delighted, she says, with all in this list. She has the

long winter's evenings to read in but the additional work in summer

interferes somewhat with her reading. They have no musical instrument in

the home but they have many of the best hymn-books and country songs,

and they sing hymns together. She is very much interested in ways of

making better homes. She herself takes the _Mother's Magazine_ and _The

Christian Endeavor World_, and is pursuing a course in Home Economics at

the present time.

A single working day of her life is thus described:

"One bright morning in early July I was awakened by my mother who told

me that it was half-past four. I arose immediately for I had had a good

night's rest and did not feel sleepy. I dressed in my riding habit and

went to the barn and waked my brother who was sleeping in the hay-loft

and asked him to come and saddle my pony, 'Daisy.' He saddled her and I

mounted and went to the timber for the cows. The air was fresh and cool.

It filled me with joy and seemed to affect Daisy the same, for she threw

her ears forward, listened a second for the cows, and hearing the tinkle

of the bell she started out on a gallop. After about a half hour's ride

I found the cows and drove them home. When I had taken the saddle from

Daisy and given her her breakfast and a few loving caresses I left her

and went to the house, arriving just in time for breakfast. After

breakfast I told my two sisters I would do the housework myself while

they washed. I had an early start, was in high spirits and ready for the

day's work before me. It did not take me long to plan my dinner, which I

decided should consist of baked potatoes, creamed carrots, greens, and

radishes, all fresh from the garden. For dessert I made blanc mange with

cocoa sauce. I had plenty of fresh butter, cream, and light-bread at my

disposal. The first thing I did on entering my kitchen was to mix up my

light-bread. It did not take me long to clear off the breakfast table

and put the dining-room in order. When I came to the kitchen I did not

find it so easy; but my greatest delight being to set a kitchen in order

I did not mind the task before me; but before starting it I did up the

milk work which only took me half an hour, there being no churning that

morning. I had my kitchen in order and the bread molded by ten o'clock.

I then cleaned myself up and read a short story in the Sunday School

paper before starting my dinner which I did at ten-thirty. My dinner was

a success or at least my father pronounced it so when he had finished

eating a not small portion of it. After I had the dinner work cleared

away, everything in order and my bread baked, I made my small brother a

suit and had it done by the time that my mother had supper ready. After

supper again I saddled Daisy and went for the cows while my sisters

washed the supper dishes. That evening as we gathered around the kitchen

table and my father read a chapter from the Bible, I think I was one of

the happiest girls in the world even if I was tired. As I went to bed

that evening I thanked the dear Father that I had a father, mother,

brothers and sisters to love and help care for. This is only one day out

of many that I have spent in this way."

When one reads this account, one pictures the strong vivid life of this

sound generous-hearted girl. It seems glorious to be so able and so

willing. What, then, will be the surprise when on looking down the page

a little farther one sees in the handwriting of the friend who had asked

her to write an account of one of her working days, a paragraph like

this: "The writer of the above is a cripple, getting about with the aid

of a crutch. She entered the Institute this fall and pays half her

expenses by working more efficiently than most pupils." After reading

this, what words of praise would not sound futile!

CHAPTER VII

THE OTHER SIDE

I cannot bear to think what life would be

With high hope shrunk to endurance; stunted aims

Like broken lances ground to eating knives;

And low achievement doomed from day to day

To distaste of its consciousness.

_George Eliot._

CHAPTER VII

THE OTHER SIDE

The experiences related in the last chapters have been purposely laid

before the reader with little comment. They make their own impression.

They may help to dispel an apprehension lest the girls on the farms

should be having too hard a time, or lest when the work in which they

are asked to join is closing somewhat too strongly upon their young

strength they should be weighed down with the sort of dullness that

comes from continued pressure on one nerve. They seem to give an

assurance that the country girl's day in many, perhaps the majority, of

cases, affords some time for reading and for music; there is a concert

in the evening or a spare afternoon hour for the village guest. They

encourage us to believe that when the point of joylessness approaches

there will be ready a new supply of energy for rejuvenation and

refreshment. As long as this state of things exists the case is not so

bad.

Into this serene atmosphere a bomb must be thrown; for both sides have a

right to be heard. The testimony of the Country Girl when she is

speaking in favor of country life has been accepted; the same courtesy

must be given her when she tells us more or less frankly--frankly when

she can be brought to speak at all--what objections some may have to a

life which it seems to many ought to be good for any one, and which, if

it is not, surely can very easily be made so.

It is no more than right that a system should be judged not only by the

most fortunate example of its working, where factors that have little to

do with its essential principles may have crept in to modify the

outward appearance, but also by the less known cases, by flagrant

examples of what is possible under the existing plan. What wrongs can be

found? What sufferings to certain individuals? What must be rectified in

order that the machinery may be wholly approved? Is the system, which

was evidently designed to foster justice and happiness, accomplishing

this end for a reasonable majority? These are very natural questions to

those who listen to the testimony of the girl of the rural districts

when she discloses her problems almost without knowing that she is doing

so. What about exceptional cases? What about a vital minority?

The following description of a Country Girl's working day is taken from

the life of a fourteen-year-old girl, who lives on a farm of medium

size, so fortunately or so unfortunately placed as to be not very far

away from a summer colony. There is no mother in this farmstead.

"Description of my average working day? Here it is. I rise shortly

before five o'clock and dress hurriedly. Father is calling me to come

and strain the milk and get his breakfast. Go down cellar and strain the

milk into pans, set them on a large stone table, and skim the milk for

cream for the campers along the lake. Measure out ten to twenty quarts

of milk and put them into separate pails to be sent out to customers

encamped on the lake. Take cream up stairs and put it in a warm place to

ripen for churning. Get breakfast, call the children, and after the

others have eaten and the boy has started on his morning delivery, I eat

breakfast and clear away the dishes. While sister washes them, I mix

bread and set it away to rise. Stir the cream, and then sweep three

floors and make five beds. By this time it is nine o'clock. Then there

are berries to pick, and vegetables to be got ready for market and I go

out to help till about half-past ten, when I come in and make three or

four pies and a cake or a pudding. While these are baking I clean the

vegetables for dinner and put them on to cook, set the table and put

the dinner on, meanwhile watching the baking pies, the rising bread, and

the ripening cream. In the course of the morning ten or a dozen persons

have come in for milk, eggs, butter, or something else, and I have to

wait on them and keep their accounts up in my book. After dinner the

bread is ready to make into loaves and is then set to rise again before

baking. While the bread is rising I scald out the churn and rinse with

cold water and then put in the cream and churn it by hand. After the

butter has come and gathered, I remove it from the churn, rinse the

buttermilk out and work the butter; salt and work again and set it in

the cellar till the next day, when it must be worked again and put into

pails or jars. Then I pour the buttermilk from the churn into a jar and

set it away for future use, clean and scald the churn, setting it out in

the sunshine to dry. By this time the bread is ready to bake and must be

watched rather closely and the wood fire also. I begin to get things

ready for supper, going out into the garden to pick berries, gather

vegetables, dig potatoes, etc. Meantime I wait on more people. After

straining milk and skimming other milk, I eat supper and then measure

out milk for evening delivery, get vegetables and bread ready to be

delivered also and start the boy on delivery. Wash dishes and meanwhile

wait on milk customers who are transients. When boy returns from

delivery, I wash milk cans and put them out in the air, write up books

of accounts, plan out next day's work, make list of groceries, etc.,

that must be bought to replenish our slender stock. By this time it is

ten o'clock; I am weary and my hair is a sight. After taking off a

little of the dirt with a sponge in the wash basin I tumble wearily into

bed until the next morning."

An account like this arouses a perfect hornets' nest of question-marks.

It cannot be well for the nation, and especially for those that are to

bear the burden of the day in decades to come that the girls of the

present time should in any large numbers be required to endure such

strain as this sixteen-hour-day of unremitting, heavy and exacting work

imposed upon a young girl between the age of thirteen and seventeen, in

one of the largest and most prosperous farming States of this country.

Fortunately she has had phenomenal strength and physical persistence,

and the baneful conditions have not caused her absolute break-down.

But--she has run away! Otherwise she probably would never have gained

the development that gave her a voice to speak out for herself as she

has spoken in this letter.

More laconic, and yet expressive of a more deadly blight, was the letter

from a girl of fifteen in another State. This girl lives on a prosperous

seventy-five acre farm, three miles from a good-sized town. There is a

public library in that town but she never uses it: and there is no home

library to give her any aid. There are no contests, no prizes that are

accessible to her to awaken her ambition; and there is no association or

society of any kind for girls in her vicinity. There is no music in her

family, no games are played, and no magazines are taken; she has no

share in any part of the farm business except to work tirelessly as

directed; nothing on the farm can she call her own; and no sum of money

is set apart for her use. She has no enjoyments, no encouragement; she

is hard at work all the time. She neither knows why any one should find

the farm attractive nor why one should desire to leave it. Time and

interest for her have ceased.

It is news from such a girl as this that most startles us. But such a

Country Girl exists, hushed, unexpressive, unresponsive, undeveloped.

She is the blind gentian in the country garden. Are there many of these?

Who can tell? If diligent search is made for them they are found upon

the most remote farms where no newspapers ever penetrate, where the

roads are bad and the neighbors are far away or are beyond forbidding

hills, where the deadly round of dishwashing or the weight of work too

heavy for the years of the girl are exhausting her strength, stifling

her exuberance, and deadening all the power of expression she may have

been capable of having. The least fortunate girl is the one that has her

power to express developed to the least extent; she does not now know

her own wants; but yet when told she too will begin to live and to do

her lovely part in the rooms of life.

One of the group who has thus begun at last to live voices a part at

least of the inwardness of the reason why the young women and young men

of to-day will not be satisfied with the ways of their farming

ancestors. She says: "There exist on many farms conditions which make

life there almost unbearable, to young people particularly. One of them

is lack of congenial companionship; which may be due to lack of

material, or to the thoughtlessness of the parents, which makes it

impossible for the young people to have their friends come to their

homes. Then in many farm houses there is a woful lack of books,

magazines and papers of the best sort; again due to the lack of

education or of interest on the part of the parents. So also with

pictures, music and recreation. But perhaps greater than any other,

excepting perhaps the first named, is the dull weary succession of

duties following each other day in and day out without rest or respite,

and without any or with few of the modern conveniences to lighten the

work. So many farmers, of the old school at least, understand little of

the reasons for the why and wherefore of the things they do. They were

taught of their fathers who were taught of their fathers and who did

things in such a way because they proved expedient. By trial, or

accident, one may have discovered something to be more expedient some

other way, but the wonderful process and reason back of it, they

understood little or not at all. This also is true of the farmer's wife.

This blind way of doing things suits the young folks not, for the

unrest, that spirit of the times which is forever questioning things, is

within them, filling them with nameless longings even though they know

it not. In their ignorance they believe they will find something better

in the city, something more beautiful, more interesting, more thrilling.

Were these young people taught the reason for things and the

possibilities of experimentation to find a better way, were they given

conveniences with which to work, so that there might be some leisure for

books, music and friends, there would be, I believe, little discontent."

Again we find our Country Girl closing with a hopeful note.

The gentle critical comments of those that in spite of their love for

country life reject its claims as a mode of living favorable to human

development and content, are based upon motives that are sometimes

vocational and sometimes social in character. When they deny to the

country their allegiance it is because they fail to find in rural life

as they know it, those boasted possibilities and opportunities. Farming

seems to them drudgery, which means labor without inspiration or

acknowledgment. They have no interest for the work. They may have taste

and fitness for some other occupation; but there is the fact--they do

not take to farming. They feel intensely the monotony of farm life, the

stagnation of the rural community. The sameness, the humdrum tediousness

of the everyday life drives them to the city.

In the work of the farmstead, the Country Girl of this disheartened

group plainly sees that the subsidiary, detail work, which has no

intellectual and very little social stimulus will be assigned to her.

She knows that the monotony of this heterogeneous drudgery will daily

leave her too tired to go out, even if she has somewhere to go; and too

destitute of initiative to seize upon any form of pleasure unless she

has already a mind trained to find delight in books; and she sees no

prospect of being able to gain the training that will open fields of

intellectual enjoyment to her. She keenly feels the lack of recreation.

She comes to believe that if she were in the city she would not have

such late hours of labor. She does not see the twelve and fourteen hour

days of work in that rosy dream of good wages and leisured evenings in

town. On the farm it is from five in the morning till nine at night; the

work is not only too heavy for her, but it is closely confining. She has

not the strength for it; and the enforced toil exhausts her energy

prematurely. She now sees that the methods used in her household

workshop are laborious and out of date; her task is unnecessarily

difficult; and who can blame her if under such circumstances her

enthusiasm for her work fades away? There is resentment in the remark of

the young girl who said: "If we always have to work in an awkward

kitchen with rusty old pans, if we do not go anywhere and never have any

company, we do certainly want to leave the farm." When the blind gentian

speaks out like that the emphasis must be multiplied a hundred fold.

From the work of girls like these, incentive has been removed, or else

it was never there. This sort of Country Girl may not reason it out to

the point of clearness, but the lack of acknowledgment of her labor in

the farmstead as an industry, as an essential part of the business,

makes her toil seem hopeless; it renders her feeling toward whatever

charm the country may have for her permanently callous; and it takes all

the vibrancy out of her spirit. All this makes her alert to find

deep-seated defects in rural life in conditions that, but for her

disaffection would seem but difficulties easily overcome.

The look cityward is not always caused by the incitement of an uneasy, a

commercial, or an ignoble impulse. It is sometimes the call of the best

and noblest part of the soul. To such as recognize this higher purpose

the passion for education, for free access to libraries, for association

with intellectual people, form a part of the city's lure. They desire to

see more of life, to have more and closer contact with one's fellows, to

gain valuable companionship, to get more and broader pleasures, to have

greater opportunities to make something of one's self. The young women

who are thinking such thoughts as these are full of the energy of

youth; they are at the moment of opening ambitions and developing

personality; they are making plans for the future. They are not the

women who in long years have grown accustomed to their burdens and have

either learned how to bear them or have become sodden with the despair

of ever finding any relief from their load. The brightness of young hope

has not faded out, and the buoyant spirit still stands up underneath

whatever is to be done or borne. Youth feels equal to anything.

Therefore the slightest deflection of their courage from the norm should

have the closest attention.

CHAPTER VIII

THE INHERITANCE

We men of earth have here the stuff

Of Paradise--we have enough!

We need no other thing to build

The stairs into the Unfulfilled--

No other ivory for the doors--

No other marble for the floors--

No other cedar for the beam

And dome for man's immortal dream.

Here on the path of every day--

Here on the common human way--

Is all the busy gods would take

To build a heaven, to mold and make

New Edens. Ours the stuff sublime

To build Eternity in time!

_Edwin Markham._

CHAPTER VIII

THE INHERITANCE

This, then, is the indictment of country life as it now is, by the

Country Girl who is now living in the midst of it.

It is depressing, it is terrible, that a concourse of country girls will

stand up before The Fathers and declare that while they love the

country, and prefer to remain there all their days, yet they cannot,

because life there is intolerable to them. They say this in all

sobriety; no one can accuse them of speaking in haste; their mood is

most judicial. The young woman in the farm life of to-day has a

deep-seated love for country life; many things about it command her

affection and give her delight; but there are also some things that she

does not feel called upon to endure. If it were not for them, for these,

and these, and lo! all of these, objections to it, she would be

perfectly content and satisfied to live on the farm all her days; but as

it is, well, she can only join that funeral procession of the nation

cityward.

It is true that the Country Girl does not enjoy a house with no music

under its roof-tree, a house where no games are played, where no stories

are told or read about the lamp in the long winter evenings: a house, in

short, with nothing she calls happiness in it; but this is a small part

of her indictment.

She does not enjoy trudging back and forth a million times a year over

the same square yards of floor-space; but that, too, is immaterial to

her. In fine, she does not object to the work itself, but she cannot

endure that heterogeneous, unsystematized, objectless drudgery, the

enforced character of the toil, the out-of-date methods, the absence of

acknowledgment of any economic value in her contribution to the

business--this is what grinds her soul.

She is not wanting in appreciation of the possibilities in farm life and

the farming business; but, to quote with variations, she says to

herself:

If they be not fair for me,

What care I how fair they be?

She sees the beauty of the changing seasons, and she enjoys the

companionship of animals, naming them one by one after all her favorite

heroes and heroines of fairyland; but the fact that she has nor chick

nor lambkin for her own is as

The little rift within the lute

That by and by will make the music mute.

[Illustration: The Country Girl takes a pride in her chickens that makes

their care a pleasure to her.]

If the struggle to pay the mortgage is long and the work heavy, she does

not especially enjoy spending days and nights of toil with the rest of

the family to accomplish the desired end; but more than all this does

she dislike having the father keep all the trouble to himself; she wants

a share in the responsibility. She wants some acres of her own, some

stock of her own. She wants her personality as a factor in the business,

which it really is, to be justly acknowledged. For without that, she

reasons, what is there to look forward to? Hope is the anchor of the

soul; and without something to hope for, how can one hope? She finds

that she has none of these joyous anticipations of the future that every

young woman loves and has the right to entertain. She cannot look

forward to the natural and normal life of the home for her future lot,

for the existing scheme of country life does not provide her with a

husband.

Therefore if the home cannot be made happy and the work in the farmhouse

cannot be made interesting, if her fair share of incentive as a human

being in the common round of life cannot be assigned to her, if her

part in the complex structure of the farmstead cannot be put upon an

equitable basis, if the universal happy fortune of woman cannot be seen

to shine as a goal in the long service of the farmstead, why, she will

have none of it!

If this is the irrevocable decision of the farmers' daughters of the

present day, it is a very serious matter. It means that the farmstead

will have to be broken up, that the farm home must go out of existence,

and the whole system of farm life must be revolutionized. What will

happen then, it passes wisdom to prophesy! The Country Girl may well

say, "After me, the deluge!" For if at any one point in the procession

of the generations, the women will stand together and say "Thus far and

no farther!" the procession must stand as still as the pillar of salt

that commemorates the wife of the unfortunate Lot.

Can it be that the Country Girl has in some measure reached this point

by doing what Lot's wife did--by simply looking behind her? Casting her

eye along back over the generations, did she see anything that appalled

her? May it have been something in the experience of her own mother that

lent decision to her mind as she considered what she herself would

choose for a life-path? Or rather, as she looked over the career that

lay nearest to her, the life-struggle that was visible to her in her own

homestead, did she see something that held up before her a warning hand?

There still lives many a farm woman who has to walk down a hill and

carry up from a spring all the drinking and cooking water for her

household and who gets it fresh for every meal. Her round of work may

include all the house work with the washing and ironing, the scrubbing

and cleaning. She sweeps all the rooms up stairs and down every week,

covering all the furniture with sheets to keep off the dust that she

flings into space with her besoms and brooms. She picks the berries for

the table and they may have them three times a day. She gathers all the

vegetables. If she has no cow, she goes for the milk and brings it

home. She is an expert cook, serving the meals in courses, carrying in

and out the dishes, and providing ample quantities of everything. She

may can the fruit and make the pickles, jellies and preserves. She will

certainly take care of the chickens. In spite of all this she will never

seem tired. She will go to the woods and bring ferns and put them into

pots to set about the house. She will bring wild flowers and carry them

with all sorts of dainties to neighboring houses where there is illness.

Her dress is invariably changed in the afternoon; and she always goes to

prayer meeting. She is a great reader and stays up after the family have

gone to bed to read the church paper and the farmers' magazine. She is

full of life and fun and can talk intelligently on any subject. Every

evening after her work is done she may walk to a neighbor's to visit, or

if the village is near enough she will go every night to bring the mail.

This woman of the rural realm is a super-woman in the farm environment;

her discouraging example cannot be taken as a rule to be followed by

others, since few can equal her in strength of body or mind. She is one

who has in some way become possessed of a mental training above the

average; her intellectual outlook has been brought to such a point that

she can take pleasure in many of the resources of culture. She has

learned to read,--really read--a thing accomplished by but few of the

many who can glibly reel off the words from the printed page. This woman

of the farm gathers the ideas and enjoys the fancies that lie behind the

mere alphabetical letters. She is one who can gain solace from her hour

of reading whenever it is possible to have one; and this keeps her young

and buoyant. Then she has also a real interest in everything around her,

the garden, the making of the jelly, the missionary cause, all the great

wonderful world--everything has attraction for her. Moreover as a result

of her mental and inner poise, she has the power to systematize the work

of her home and so to get the best results in the shortest time. Does

her husband appreciate what a wonderful woman fate has assigned to him?

If not, if he never acknowledges the economic value of this woman's

courage and gay spirit, as well as of her mere hand-work and its

efficient system, then there may be a sore spot underneath that will

never be cured in all her life. Many a farmer husband has said

affectionately to his wife that he could never have made a financial

success of his farm without her help. But it will take more than

assurances like that to satisfy the mind and the heart of the Country

Girl in the new era.

Going but half a generation farther back into the past one may find the

woman who had not only all that has been described to do but the milking

and the butter making beside. She worked up the wool and spun, wove, and

made full cloth for men's wear, for flannel sheets and for all the

flannel dresses, and she knit all the socks and stockings for the big

family. She would rise at four, summer and winter. She would build her

own fires, milk four to eight cows, and have breakfast at six. There

would be a sugar orchard that made many hundred pounds of sugar, and she

would make the syrup and care for it. The floors of her rooms would be

covered with carpets of her weaving. The table linen and toweling would

be both spun and woven by her hands. All the time she had for

intellectual employments would be while some labor was going on. It is a

tradition from the past in this country that if a woman can work with

her hands or her feet and at one and the same time employ the eyes in

some studious pursuit, she has a fair right to whatever intellectual

attainment she may be able to gain thereby. Roxana Beecher in Guilford,

Connecticut, a hundred years ago, had a volume of philosophy fastened to

her wheel and read the book while she treadled and spun; and no woman

was really accomplished in the old days unless she could knit and read

at the same time.

Sometimes--but rarely--the women of past time in this country took some

part in the outside farm labor. The author knows of a woman who husked

six hundred bushels of corn in one summer. The following season she

piled up one hundred cords of wood and did all the housework beside. It

would not be possible to speak of some pathetic cases of enforced toil

lest some good men should be led thereby to fall from grace and wish

they were noncombatants. The truth is that it has never been the custom

in this country that the women should enter into the heavier farm work;

from the beginning women were held so sacred that nothing must be risked

that could injure their permanent strength. The men rolled in the logs

of wood for the big fireplaces and did all the heavier work of the

place, answering without a moment's demur the request of the women for

help. Such a spirit in the men of America has crystallized in many laws

more favorable to women than to men, and in many others designed to give

special protection to women and to ward off the possibility of a failure

in the persistence of their physical soundness. But clever bad men may

break laws that clever good men may make; or good men may be confidingly

inattentive while valuable laws and customs become obsolete. Yet the

fact does stand out that the spirit of the republic does not favor

anything that will dull the physical vigor of the women; and those who

feel this spirit and are representative of its urgency--and they are, we

must believe, the great majority--are the men in most danger of falling

from grace in the manner referred to above. Moreover they are also the

people, voters and what not, who will make an effective bar against the

inroads of a certain disposition on the part of the foreigners who are,

in the main beneficently, coming across the wide seas to find homes in

our farming regions, namely, to place the women of their tribes in rows

along the fields who bend their backs like the picture of "The Gleaners"

by Millet, and to produce such descendants as Markham's "Man with the

Hoe." A sight like this with promise such as this is abhorrent to the

institutions of our country; the men of the republic, not to say the

women, will not tolerate it.

But progress is made little by little. There are cases of arrested

development and examples of retardation. There are places where

backward-drawing influences have kept some groups from making the

advance that other groups have made. If we could penetrate still farther

into the past, we should find more reason for the drawbacks that we run

across here and there in our own time. We have no histories of selected

working days that the great mothers of times past wrote--they certainly

had no time to count up calories and set down scientific records of

their cookery and their collections of simples. There is a Journal

extant which was written by one Abigail Foote in 1779. It goes something

like this:

September 2. I spun.

" 3. I spun.

" 4. I spun.

" 5. I spun.

" 6. I spun.

" 7. I spun.

And so on, excepting, of course, Sundays.

About November the record is stated in this wise:

November 11. I wove.

" 12. I wove.

" 13. I wove.

" 14. I wove.

" 15. I wove.

And so on, again. Certainly monotony could no farther go. If such

workers had not fastened a book to the distaff, insanity would surely

have set in. The weaving never could be quite so monotonous as the

spinning, for there was necessary a constant watching of the web that

effectually prevented any wandering from the business in hand, or any

flashing of looks toward the window-sill where lay the volume of

romance.

If however, a leaf from the daily life of one of our grandmothers were

accessible, it would contain the story not only of the bread-making, but

of the soap-making too. That good grandmother in her brisk and energetic

days would kindle the big fire in the back yard, bring the large kettles

up from the cellar, pack the barrel full of good hard-wood ashes and set

it on its supports, and then pour the water through it to make the lye.

She would then melt up the bones and grease saved from the winter's

supply of pork, and when the grease was tried out she would mix the lye

and the melted grease with as nice an art and with an expertness as much

the product of long experience as is the skill of the artist when he

combines his paints for a masterpiece. "With what do you mix your

paints?" inquired a young sprig of a great artist. "With brains, sir,"

was the answer. So might the housewife of a hundred years ago have said

if she had been asked how she attained her ends in the soap, the

candles, the dyes, the cakes, the baking of the beans--as critical a

piece of business as ever a Parisian chef could attempt--the turning of

the heel in stocking-making, the weaving of the colors in the carpet,

the bleaching to snowy whiteness of the linen and the woolen blankets.

"I mix all these processes with brains--with the results of experience

bought through many decades of experiment by many costly mistakes and

especially by a vivid and unfailing memory of what happened when it was

done in one special way and what happened when it was done in some other

way. By these means I gained the power to do these things and to gain

these successes. It was not so easy as it may seem." Thus might the

ghostly grandmother speak if she could come back and let her voice be

heard and then she would point to the long rows of soap-bars, put away

side by side, white or brown or yellow according to the purity of the

grease that had been used, to become dry and fit for household use for

the next half-year. Meantime the tallow would have been saved out to be

used for dipping the candles or for molding them out in the tin

candle-forms. The cotton cord would be strung through the long tin tubes

and pulled out at the lower end for the wick end; or the strings of

wicking would be hung along a pole, to be dipped into the melted fat

again and again as fast as the grease would cool on the strings and thus

increase with every dipping the size of the slender tapering candle.

Between the intervals of dipping, the little mother would hurry back to

her chair and there sit and cut long strips of cloth and sew them

together into carpet rags. When the piles on the floor at her side would

be high enough, she would run them off around her elbow into a hank

ready to be colored. The little girls in the family would have peeled

bark from the butternut trees and gathered golden rod and other herbs

and these would have been steeped thoroughly for the magical liquors

which would be standing ready in crocks full of dyes to give the brown

and yellow and green and blue tint to these hanks of rag-cord. Then the

weaving loom would be got ready in the attic and the shuttle would fly

back and forth and the rags would soon be transformed into a smooth,

well-striped carpet, which would come off in pieces several yards long.

Later on these would be sewed together into a beautiful floor covering

to be used for the parlor first, afterward, when the freshness was

somewhat worn off, for the living-room; later for some hallway, and last

of all, what remained from many footsteps would be made into little rugs

to be put down extra in such places as needed special protection.

The craftswoman who did all this was equally gifted in making the

cross-stitch initials for the corner of the bolster and the knitted lace

for its edge. She was master of all tricks with the needle as well as

with the shuttle and the wooden spoon. Moreover, that grandmother was

the mother of fifteen children, and there was nobody but herself to

make mittens and stockings for all of them for both winter and summer.

So her knitting-needles simply had to fly in all the interstices between

tasks of weaving and spinning and dyeing and soap-making and

candle-making and other work. All this was to be done besides what the

average women of to-day have to do and think pretty hard for them.

Edith Abbott in her book, _Woman in Industry_, mentions forty-nine

different processes in the factory of to-day that now take the place of

the work of one woman as she stitched a pair of shoes in her home, as

women often did in the middle New England pioneering era, to accomplish

the detail of all the industries that passed through the hands of that

capable little grandmother of ours in, say, 1790 or thereabouts.

In still earlier days the women performed prodigies of heavy labor and

bore a child a year while they did it. History, however, grimly adds the

illuminating note that most of these had a short career. And it is just

possible that the women of that earlier time went beyond their strength,

exhausting their resources of vigor, so that the women of to-day have

not their full share of energy for the tasks before them and therefore

do not add to the sum of life in the same numbers that their foremothers

did.

Such grandmothers, such mothers as those, were "the kind of mothers that

men must worship," says Sarah Comstock in _The Soddy_ as she describes

the trials of women in present-day pioneering; and she adds, "worshiping

mothers makes men great!" Is it not clear where the true greatness of

America lies? If there are old men living who are the sons of such

mothers, though they may be worshipers of the memory of their heroism,

if those sons have any spark of chivalry remaining in their bosoms, they

will wish that their mothers had lived to-day instead of then, that

their labor might be lessened by modern work-saving methods and their

lives brightened by modern amplitude of resource.

The practical executive ability of those great women of one, two, and

three generations ago should be the inheritance of the Country Girls of

to-day, and their faithful examples should be an inspiration to them.

But the loyal descendants of those self-sacrificing and sacrificed women

should say that they will do all in their power to make the time come

swiftly when there shall be a new day in the kitchen, a day when the

housework may be a joy and not a burden to press the strength and

buoyancy out of the young spirits of those who prefer--if they can get

themselves to be brave enough--to enter upon the long service of life in

the environment of the open country.

CHAPTER IX

THE DAUGHTER'S SHARE OF THE WORK

THE KITCHEN

O little room, wherein my days go by

Each like to each, yet each one set apart

For special duties ... nearest to my heart

Art thou of all the house ... in thee I try

New issues when the old ones go awry,

And with new victories allay the smart

Of dismal failures; and afresh I start

With courage new to conquer or to die.

O simple walls, no pictures break thy calm!

O simple floor uncarpeted below!

The inward eye has visions for its balm,

And duty done is solace for each woe,

And every modest tool that hangs in view

Is fitted for the work it has to do.

_Helen Coale Crew._

CHAPTER IX

THE DAUGHTER'S SHARE OF THE WORK

There is a doctrine held by some theorists that a people really needs

now and then to be plunged into the struggle and stress of actual war in

order to become inured to hardship, toughened and strengthened in nerve

and fiber. In a memorable essay Professor William James proposed a

"moral equivalent" for this discipline that he thought would afford a

like toughening training. His suggestion was that there should be a

military conscription of the whole youthful population; that they should

for a certain number of years form part of an army enlisted in the fight

for the conquest of nature, a campaign for compelling the forces of the

material world to become subject to the needs of mankind. Definitely,

Professor James' suggestion was that "our gilded youths" should be made

to go to work in coal mines, on freight-trains, in fishing fleets in

December, at dishwashing, clothes-washing, road-building and

tunnel-making, in foundries and stoke-holes, and on the frames of

skyscrapers, in order that they may get the "childishness knocked out of

them" and come back into society with "healthier sympathies and soberer

ideas."

When the word "youths" was used in the last sentence it probably was not

held to include, as it sometimes does, the young women as well as the

young men. But the work of girls and women must have been in the mind of

the writer when he said "dishwashing and window-washing," for these have

been feminine specialties from time immemorial or at least ever since

the days of the Amerinds when women were the bricklayers, builders and

architects, and men were the weavers. Therefore by admitting these

occupations it is avowed that the women may come in for some of the

benefits of discipline that the struggle for the conquest of nature is

to bring to those that take part in it. Does it not make the

down-trodden woman feel more grand, does she not hold her head higher

and stiffen her neck proudly, when she thinks that her melancholy and

sickening work of dishwashing will stand for her in the place of that

grandeur of the army going out to battle, that her humble employment may

be invested with some of the heroism of the flag-bearer for his

country's sake, that she may take to herself a little of the glory of

the battle-scarred? If this may be so, there will be some comfort for

the housekeeper in the farmstead on a rainy day when the wood from the

pile outdoors is so wet that it will not burn, and the water is cold,

and everybody in the house is cross!

It is not a matter to be treated lightly. Whatever burden there is to be

borne falls more heavily upon the wife than upon the husband in the

farmstead. If the farm is isolated, she is the loneliest person there.

If there is poverty, she has the least to use or to spend. If there is

lack of labor-saving devices, she has far fewer than the farmer has. If

life there is monotonous, hers is the victim of the greatest sameness,

the unending changelessness of three meals a day through planting and

harvesting, through week days and Sundays, year in and year out.

Professor Fiske, author of _The Challenge of the Country_, takes a large

view when he touches this phase of the subject. "The annual conquest of

farm difficulties," he says, "makes splendid fighting. There are plenty

of natural enemies which must be fought to keep a man's fighting-edge

keen and to keep him physically and mentally alert. What with the weeds

and the weather, the cut-worms, the gypsy, and the coddling moths, the

lice, the maggots, the caterpillars, the San Jose scale, and the scurvy,

the blight and the gouger, the peach yellows and the deadly curculio,

the man behind the bug gun and the sprayer finds plenty of exercise for

ingenuity and a royal chance to fight the good fight. Effeminacy is not

a farm trait. Country life is great for making men; men of robust health

and mental resources well tested by difficulty, men of the open air and

the skyward outlook. Country dwellers may well be thankful for the

challenge of the difficult. It tends to keep rural life strong."

This was written from the standpoint of the farmer himself and his

business. A like account and with quite as much zoology in it could be

made for the women that share his problems. Life under farming

conditions is as likely to provide opportunity to develop character in

the women folks as in the men; and the daughter in the house may receive

some of the benefits of this developing discipline.

To have a joyous share in a useful work is one of the most satisfying

things in the world. In such a joy as this, the daughter in the

farmstead is, within the bounds of her working capacity, invited to

partake. She may have the inspiration of work, the exhilaration of

struggle, and the keen delight of victory in the solution of farm

problems. There is much that she can do without injury, even if she is

not very strong, and almost nothing that she cannot do, if she is robust

and vigorous. If the housework seems a hardship, the matter must be

attacked as a problem and studied into to see what can be devised to

lessen the drudgery or re-adapt the burden. Invariably the parents

should consider what is good for the girl, not what is good for the

farm. Sacrifice the farm, if need be, but save the daughter.

[Illustration: The Inheritance. The Country Girl working cheerfully

beside her mother, will learn much that will be of value to her in her

effort to make the housework of to-day a joy and not a burden.]

The American Country Girl is doing her full share and often-times more

than her share. In the majority of cases "shares" should not be

mentioned at all, for each does all that is in her power more for love's

sake than because the division has been allotted out by some technical

rules of supposed right or law. The Country Girl of to-day can have

nothing to blame herself for in the part she takes as first assistant

to her mother in the home part of the farmstead. She is the vice-regent

in a kingdom where the mother is queen. And if the mother falls behind

in the race for the finish the daughter comes in and takes her place.

She does this ungrudgingly. The daughter in an American farm home

bestows liberally of her strength to make the housekeeping as nearly a

success as under the circumstances it can be. Either she shares the work

with the mother, or she works under the mother's direction, doing the

heaviest parts; or she does all the work while the mother takes care of

the chickens or carries on some of the business of the farmstead that

presupposes experience.

For instance, a twenty-two year old girl who is a good helper in a house

where the work is not overwhelmingly heavy may have for her "share" to

do all the chamber-work, wash the dishes, do the sweeping, the dusting,

and all the ironing; to rinse, starch, and hang out all the clothes; to

bake all the cakes, the pies, the cookies; to help also with the mopping

and scrubbing, and to have the loathsome duty of taking care of the

kerosene lamps. And she may add the churning and much outdoor work

beside.

Such a girl as this does not consider her work a stint; she does not say

that she will do so much and no more: she helps till all is done. She is

the crack-filler.

The Country Girl and her mother make some attempt to organize their work

and to introduce some little system into the program of the day.

Sometimes they will arrange for the daughter to be housekeeper one week

and assistant cook the next. Sometimes they divide the work equally

between mother and daughter; or two sisters take turns about doing the

entire housework.

An arrangement like this affords to both mothers and daughters a rich

opportunity. But a strange little paradox comes in here. If the

daughters wish to give the greatest degree of reverence and protection

to their mothers they should not pay too much attention to what the

mothers tell them to do. In other words if they will follow the

beckoning hand of progress and take up with the suggestions of modern

invention in their further housekeeping, they must depart from their

parents' advice and from the ways of the old folks. The oft repeated

saying, "what was good enough for my father is good enough for me,"

should never again be heard without protest by any member of the younger

generation--at least an inward protest that will rob it of its

depressing influence. It is not a want of reverence toward the memory of

our forefathers that makes us wish other and different conditions from

what they had. It is not a disloyalty to the living mother for the

daughter to say that she will not follow in her footsteps if she now

sees better ways of doing things. Shall not the large-hearted mother

wish that her child may have better and improved ways, greater

conveniences, lighter burdens, machinery for making work less

burdensome, more leisure for the higher life? She should--but does she?

She often does not see the use for the new-fangled appliances. She is

too stiff to change her ways, even when she sees that the new methods

are an economy of time, labor and nervous force. As to such a farm woman

as that, one who is so fixed in her ways that she will not listen even

for her children's sake, to the voice of progress: why, there remains

nothing for her to do but to pass on. Peace be to her! She has stood

there for a life-time and drudged and submitted and has done nothing for

household or community advancement. Some among the older women may awake

to a new life; here and there one will step over the abyss that

separates her from her daughter, will pass down and stand side by side

with the younger woman. But as a general thing the abyss is too fearful

and she lacks the energy for the leap. There remains for her only a

martyr's crown and a harp.

The most isolated farm woman in the country of half a century old must

have been touched by the edges at least of the wave of progress in

social and home-making conditions that has swept through our life in

late decades. Most of the dwellers on farms as well as townspeople have

been profoundly moved thereby. Some strange new kind of utensil drifting

to the remotest mountain valley and appearing in some neglected

despairing kitchen, like a bit of flotsam floating across seas from

richer lands, was a symbol of a reorganization as undreamed of as heaven

will be found to our awakening eyes. That utensil was the call of a new

era. The isolated farm wife may not have had her ears opened to know the

sound, but that was what it was, for all that. It represented a new

life, the making over of a whole generation.

Naturally the younger people are a part of this new life; naturally the

difference between the wants of the older people and the wants of the

younger makes a cleavage between them. The more swift the change, the

greater the difference between the people of the two ranges of family

relationship. This is the all-sufficient reason for the frequency of

differences between the young men and young women of this period and

their parents. In the country these differences have appeared with less

frequency because the progress in those parts has been less spasmodic,

more normal, more natural. This has been at least one good effect of the

slowness of the countryside to take up with the new ideas. But the

progress there has been fully swift enough to make a distinct division

between old and young, and this division, the result of perfectly

natural influences that do not by any means belong to the country alone,

has been one of the causes why the young men and the young women have

drifted away to the city.

A better way would be to stay and work out the problem. It would be

wiser for the older and younger to attack it together as one. As for the

Country Girl, we are far from suggesting a separation between the

motherly and the daughterly ideals. We would wish rather to pour

greater tenderness into the relationship, already one of the dearest of

human ties. Said one noble-hearted man, after giving a full description

of the work of his mother under the old regime with soap-making, dyeing,

spinning, and candle-making, "Do we want to return to those good old

times? Not by any means! My greatest regret is that my mother could not

have lived to have some of the luxuries of the present era." This is the

right spirit. And the young woman who brings her thoughts to her mother

with the brand of the later era upon them, must remember that she is

carrying out the spirit, if not the letter, of her mother's life and

character, her cleverness and her patience, her adaptation to

circumstances and her tact and perseverance, when she takes the result

of her mother's work and carries it a step farther, adapting her hands

to the use of the tools that her time provides, even as her mother did

in using the tools of her own time and station a half-century ago, when

she exchanged her tallow dip for the kerosene lamp, her fireplace and

crane for the cast-iron stove.

CHAPTER X

THE HOMESTEADER

What man would live coffined with brick and stone,

Imprisoned from the influences of air

And cramped with selfish landmarks everywhere,

When all before him stretches, furrowless and lone,

The unmapped prairie none can fence or own?

What man would read and read the selfsame faces,

And, like the marbles which the wind-mill grinds,

Rub smooth forever with the same smooth minds,

This year retracing last year's, every year's, dull traces,

When there are woods and un-man-stifled places?

_Lowell._

CHAPTER X

THE HOMESTEADER

In 1777 the famous ladies of Litchfield molded delicately the leaden

statue of King George into bullets that their husbands might have the

wherewithal to fight King George's men. To this day there stands along

the edges of the West many a shack with chunks of lead imbedded in its

walls where women still live who defended themselves there using bullets

they also molded, not a century, but just a few decades ago. The

pioneering era is with us still.

"Over vast expanses of America," says Dr. Albert Shaw, "the log-cabin

period still continues." And if the log-cabin is found--or the tar-paper

shack, or the sod-wall house, or the dug-out, or whatever device stands

as an apology for a dwelling place while the claim is being "proved

up"--then also the dolorous conditions of isolation and struggle, of

overwork and wearing out and all that follows as a reprisal by fate for

the inroad into a new world, are matters of present day experience.

There are unirrigated deserts where women wear out their lives in

despairing labor. The unwatered soil laughs at the puny human beings,

and human need and human desire do not easily learn the lesson that only

by united effort, by community union on a grand scale, can conquest be

made against that array of nature's inexorable forces.

Across prairie uplands on the slopes of the Rockies are vast stretches

of level yellow soil where not a green speck is in sight in any

direction. The gray-hued buffalo grass spreads everywhere and not a

tree, rock or stone can be seen. In the widely separated farmsteads most

of the houses are of sod. The men are sheep herders: they start out

with a collie and supplies for a three months' trip. When they come back

they are startled at the sound of a human voice. Often on their return

they are disturbed in their mental balance. The solitude has not been

good for them. Many go insane.

The women remain in the sod house and work. In illness they have only

the midwife to rely upon. As a result they suffer from the effects of

unskilful treatment. They are all Eastern women, all homesteading; but

they never can save money enough to go back East. Hopeless of that, they

lose impetus and all life descends to a lower key.

In this dark picture, from which some of the deepest shadows have been

intentionally omitted, a definite region has been kept in view; but

there are other places out on the edge of things that are like or

similar to this. Such conditions require the heroism of martyrs. Noble

martyrdoms pay well but reckless waste of life does not. It cannot be

said that any daughters born under these conditions have one-tenth of

their rightful chance in life.

In other portions of the vast and but partially subdued West, conditions

may be trying but they are not hopeless. Here, as we have seen in former

chapters, life to the Country Girl may be buoyant and inspiring even

though the eight hour day of hard labor may stretch out to ten or twelve

or even fourteen hours. The rest is sweet, conscience is crystal-clear,

and "what one does is of consequence."

It is that ultimate possibility that lends zest to effort, the

"consequence" that inheres in the task. While the registry of cattle

brands in the local western newspaper always includes among its symbols

some three-ply hook or decimal fraction or swastika design that stands

for the ranch of an enterprising and successful woman, there is always a

suggested possibility to the mind of the young girl that lends fervor to

her efforts. It is not forbidden that she should excel and even have a

ranch of her own.

The author knows of an efficient woman who owned and ran for twenty-five

years a ranch of fifty thousand acres in the midst of the southern

Rockies. The place produced annually twenty thousand tons of hay; they

had about ten thousand head of cattle, three thousand head of horses,

two hundred angora goats, selling the wool for sixty cents a pound;

there were two thousand chickens, three hundred head of hogs, and two

thousand doves. A stream ran near the house from which a five-pound

trout could be taken at any minute. In summer some fifty men were

employed. The owner had a son and a foreman with whom she advised, but

she managed things herself. There was also a daughter, she sometimes put

on a sombrero and drove one of the two-furrow disk plows when ten in a

line worked over a field one mile wide by four miles long, following the

big irrigation ditch that ran along the side of the field.

Of course the woman's opportunity and will to own a farm are not

confined to the Western country. Many a girl in New Hampshire, Michigan

or Alabama has saved the old home for her disabled parents by putting

her shoulder to the wheel, bearing the disaster of the near-cyclone and

the barn-burning, the desertion of renegade "help," and the distrust of

old fogy neighbors. A girl graduate of Wellesley has hastened to acquire

a farm in a lovely river bend in Central New York before the price goes

higher still, and one has doubts of her success until one hears her at

the telephone arguing with a man who thinks he can go back on his

bargain about her wind-fall apples. Stories like these would take us

trailing across the country from Maine to California and would leave us

bewildered before the upspringing of new life everywhere in the energies

of the young women of America.

To many of these younger women, the fact that in America a woman does

not have to be head of a family in order to take up a claim seems a

golden opportunity; the struggle and privation inevitable in the years

of proving up, are not sufficiently appalling to prevent their attempt.

The number is swelled by recruits from among the straight college girls,

the agricultural graduates, those who have had business training, some

of the writing clan, some artists, and some who are moved by a clear

spirit of adventure. Nothing daunts them.

To this energetic girl the business part is a mere detail. She writes to

the Department of the Interior at Washington, asking for full

information about the method of taking up land, about the unappropriated

lands and instructions for homesteaders. These pamphlets are promptly

received. Or she applies to the Chamber of Commerce of the biggest city

in the State to which she wishes to go. She carefully regards the

warnings set up along the path of the would-be homesteader, which are

these: see the land itself before deciding; decide that the home you are

seeking is to be a permanent one; be sure that you are adapted for

silence and solitariness; and finally, this all-important rule--have

enough capital for buildings, for cattle and horses, for machinery,

wells, cisterns and seed, and enough more to carry you over a bad year

or two, before you undertake the great task.

Having met these requirements, she gaily packs her carefully selected

goods on a gigantic prairie barge and convoyed by an efficient freighter

(a freighter is a human being), she rides the fifty miles from the last

station out to her claim, paying the freighter twenty dollars for his

service.

She is very busy, that instinct for the practical that has been

developed in the ingenious American through centuries of pioneering

comes to her rescue now. She resorts to all manner of tasteful

makeshifts; she works miracles with hammer and saw; she makes easy

chairs out of barrels and dressing tables out of packing boxes. As soon

as possible a piano is installed in the soddy. The tiny shack becomes an

orderly little combination of laboratory, boudoir, and study. The

little house acquires a charm of its own. Wherever the American girl is,

it is a home. She sits at the door of her soddy with her faithful tabby

in her lap and is content.

She loves it all. The wild surroundings have a charm for her. Said one:

"I certainly fell in love with life on the ranch. I still have my place

and have bought more land adjoining it. I guess I am a sort of Indian

myself. I love the big outdoors and I love every rock in our mountains.

There is something in the somber green of the pines that creeps into

one's heart and I am lonesome away from them."

A young woman in Wyoming writes: "This country is so different, so big,

that the horizon alone seems to set the limit. I visited on one ranch

that is fourteen miles from one end to the other. There are no green

wooded hills here, but great rocky slopes and rushing water and great

sandy flats with wonderful changing colors.... I do not think we miss

the outside world as there is something about this country that, after a

time, fills one's whole thoughts and it is hard to remember that there

is any other world than this."

But do they not mind the deep changeless silence in those distant

solitary places? "But there is no silence here," she answers, "except on

the high places of the mountain tops. Here there is always the roar of

the river at the bottom of the canyon and the wind in the cedars all

about me."

But the Indians? Do you not fear that war-whoop? "It used to alarm me to

meet an Indian out on the big flats, but I soon discovered that they

will not even look at you as they pass."

But how about rattlesnakes? In answer came this: "I never had any

rattlesnakes in my bed, though I fancied I had one night. I got up,

carefully lifted off the sheets, and found--the comfortable under me

wrinkled up! There are not many rattlesnakes now--you see, we kill

them."

Another girl who taught in a sod schoolhouse told how one day she

discovered a large snake coiled around the rafters of the little room.

She and the larger pupils got sticks and drove it out. She then

modestly added, "We certainly would have killed it had it not been a

bull snake, but bull snakes kill the deadly rattlers, you know, so we

let it live."

But are you not afraid to stay in your cabin alone on your lofty butte?

"No, I do not believe that I am afraid. When I first came here the

bigness of the hills frightened me, but now some of the best times I

have are when I am walking over the hills and through the trees at

night. I have a bull terrier and a collie that are always with me so I

am not so much alone as it might seem. I have also a beautiful big

Morgan saddle horse; I ride over the country alone and I have never been

frightened."

Another homesteader girl has learned how to overcome fear. She says: "It

takes some courage to stay alone on one's claim night after night. But

perhaps that is a foolish fear, for there is really nothing to be afraid

of. I positively love to hear the coyotes howling and barking among the

hills as I lie on my little bed in my little house. One night last

winter I heard the creaking and groaning of heavy wagons laboring

through the snow. I had been in bed for some time and the noise of the

wagons mingled with the voices of the men awakened me. I rose, threw on

a cloak, and opening the door a few inches, I looked out. The foremost

wagon had stopped just in front of the door. 'What is it?' I called.

'Which way do you go to get to Grassville?' I told him, he thanked me,

and I shut the door. The wagons creaked and moved away. _I had not been

afraid._ Perhaps it is faith in God which keeps us out here. If that is

so, then this life _is_ favorable to moral development, is it not?"

"Homesteading," says one college girl and successful homesteader, "is

not simply one means for leisure, outdoor life and freedom from

conventionality--it is an opportunity to test one's caliber in

withstanding privations, in braving blizzards, in conquering the fear of

rattlers and that greater fear of being alone on a seemingly limitless

prairie. It is also a chance to recognize in those sturdy men and women

of the West their big heartedness and clean mindedness. A girl too timid

to stay alone over night in a city apartment may feel a sense of safety

alone in her shack in the West that the civilized East would not

understand. It does not take long to realize that the old cow-boy

courtesy of protecting women holds good still. As a result of it all we

might say that besides gaining a new view point on life, besides the

moral strength attained in conquering that desire to return to the ease

of civilization, comes that mental and physical vigor which seems to be

inherent in the girl who has held down a claim for fourteen months and

who has successfully proved it up."

To take a place like this in the community such as homesteading

involves, requires the assumption of responsibility, and responsibility

always develops. Cases are mentioned where a young woman has been

strengthened morally by the evident necessity for rectitude. Young women

who have not before been interested in church work have been drawn into

it, for they saw that somebody must do this between the times when the

circuit preacher could come around.

A well-balanced judgment comes from Elinore Rupert Stewart, whose

homesteading experience has been detailed in a delightful book and whose

record of a working day has been shared with us in an earlier chapter.

To her homesteading offers one solution of poverty's problem; but she

adds, if the would-be homesteader is afraid of coyotes and work and

loneliness, she had better let ranching alone. Nevertheless, any woman

who can endure her own company, who can see the beauty in a sunset, who

loves growing things, and is willing to put in as much time at hard

outdoor labor as she has done over the washtub, will certainly succeed.

Her reward will be in independence, enough to eat all the time, and a

home of her own in the end.

This homesteader with her power of literary expression has given us

vivid pictures of the possibilities in the cabin life of the new

country. Her claim lies sixty miles from a railroad. There is no rural

delivery of mails, no doctor, no preacher. To the west the Rocky

Mountains lift great gorge-scarred masses of rock and to the east

stretch bad lands and desert and interminable uninhabited space. Her

"community" includes all the ranches for fifty miles around. And how

interesting are those neighbors! So good, so queer, so like folks! She

has brought Christmas cheer into every camp of sheep-herders within

reach. She is nurse and doctor to every sick woman. She has been

guardian angel to the lone rancher, Zebulun, finding his friends for him

"back home," and to a pair of abused young lovers, for whom she gave a

wedding dinner, providing the elegance of drawn-work paper napkins and

inviting the guests to wash dishes--a compliment that they did not in

the least consider a breach of decorum. She is community companion to

her neighbors in hours of joy and in hours of sorrow. A missionary could

scarcely ask for a more needy, a more vital or a more responsive

"field."

In the circle of her ministrations was found a young girl whom she calls

Cora Belle. This little person, half child, half grown woman, so

unconsciously brave, so pathetically buoyant, asking little of Fate and

receiving so little from the hand of that close-fisted autocrat--forms

an appealing figure and may be thought of as the typical young Country

Girl in the realm of the ranch and the cabin.

Cora Belle lived with her grandparents, two useless old people who drank

up each other's medicines just to save them, and frightfully neglected

the poor little granddaughter. The description of the child brings her

vividly before us. "She was a stout, square-built little figure with

long flaxen braids, a pair of beautiful brown eyes, and the longest and

whitest lashes you ever saw, a straight nose, a short upper lip, a broad

full forehead,--the whole face, neither pretty nor ugly, plentifully

sown with the brownest freckles."

The child did all the housework for her rheumatic and ignorant

grandparents and took care of the stock. From the big sheep men that

passed their way, she begged the "dogie" lambs which they were glad to

give away, and by tender care she preserved their lives. Soon she had a

flock of forty in good condition and preserved from attacks by the

wolves. The next step in her progress was that she began to help cook

for the sheep-shearer's men in order that her sheep might be sheared

along with theirs. The one to whom she appealed was kindly disposed and

he hauled her wool to town, bringing back to her the magnificent sum of

sixty dollars, all of which she soon had the hard luck to see paid out

for more quack medicines. And Cora Belle went on wearing the poor

gingham skirt that was so unskilfully cut that it sagged in the back

almost to the ground. No wonder that this unselfish, hapless little girl

touched the heart of the capable young woman homesteader so that she

made a party all for her, giving her a few simple presents, some

underclothes made of flour bags that she had carefully preserved, a

skirt of outing flannel and a white sun-bonnet built from a precious bit

of lawn and trimmed with an embroidered edging.

Cora Belle came to the party driving her lanky old mare, Sheba, hitched

up with the strong little donkey, Balaam, who balked every three miles

and had to be waited for. The grandparents were in behind all wrapped in

quilts, and they were as astonished as modest Cora Belle herself to find

that it could enter anybody's head to appreciate and honor that small

child. Now--good luck to all the Cora Belles! And may every one of them

find such a friend as this girl has found!

[Illustration: A happy homesteader in front of her "soddy." The vastness

of the country does not daunt her. She learns to love the quiet, broken

only by the roar of a river at the bottom of a canyon or the howl of a

coyote on the great sandy flats.]

While the brave people that have adventured into a new country will

invariably be interesting to the seeing eye, it is the experience of

many homesteaders to find in their expansive communities many who will

surprise them by their ability and attainments. This is not strange for

a new country always beckons to the strong, the intelligent, the highly

individual. In one region the forest ranger had been a newspaper editor

in Dublin; one of the hired men had been a photographer artist in

Detroit; another had been a wireless operator in Alaska; another was

educated in a German university, and an Oxford man drove the stage. "Our

neighborhood," says a college girl homesteader, who herself wears a Phi

Beta Kappa key, "is as cosmopolitan as Ellis Island itself. One family

of three from Illinois are good neighbors and law-abiding citizens.

Another neighbor is a Mexican freighter. Another is a Norwegian whose

sole delight is to poison other people's stock and dogs and to read the

_Appeal to Reason_, which he calls 'The Apple.' Another lawless one

hails from Denmark. Would that he and his tribe had never left the

Fatherland, if they will not become Americanized! Another is a

half-witted Bosco. Another is a woman who has trodden the historic

Appian Way and journeyed to world capitols. Another is a sweet-faced

teacher who is much in demand in higher circles of learning than we have

here. So there are Italians, Scotch, French, Germans, Swedes, and many

Finlanders,--making up the good and the bad, the strong and helpful as

well as the opposite."

Sociability and a community spirit of a kind adapted to the conditions

are possible under such circumstances. And there is probably no better

field for the weekly paper, the woman's magazine and all the monthlies

than in the dug-out and the soddy. "Any pleasures? Heaps of them!" cried

one of the homesteader girls. "Visiting, horseback riding, parties,

socials, dancing, camping, hunting,--all kinds for all tastes." To be

sure, when the ranches are ten to twenty miles apart, it is difficult

for the people to get together very often. But when they do have a dance

they come from fifty miles around. They come for supper, dance all

night, and have breakfast together the next morning.

[Illustration: A Knitting Class at the Agricultural School. Note the

splendid poise of the Country Girl in the background, how naturally and

yet perfectly she is holding herself.]

To a lonely girl on her claim it is an event if another girl becomes her

next door neighbor fifteen miles away. Hence the newcomer no sooner

arrives than an eager neighbor comes to call, and the call lasts the

whole afternoon. They talk about the cabin and its fixtures, cooking

and recipes, dress and styles, the family and the crops--and the

neighbors. If the circle includes foreigners then the question of

being neighborly is more difficult. It is also a problem when one finds

one's self near a group who spend the whole time in playing bridge, for

there is nothing more certain to asphyxiate intellectual intercourse or

human exchanges of any kind. If the leader of the Four Hundred in a

one-hundred-mile-square community cannot read or write but plays cards

like a gambler, it is impossible to entertain a hope that true community

spirit will flourish there and good works will be furthered. But the

Country Girl who finds herself in such a place as that may reflect that

perhaps her very reason for being is to provide from her abundant

resources some offset of joy and entertainment and good will that will

plant good community spirit and unharmful pleasure where evil things had

sway.

Both the gay bravura and the sound judgment of the American college girl

are shown in this picturing bit from Mabel Stewart Lewis, a successful

homesteader of South Dakota. "It is such fun to go visiting the other

girls, to taste their goodies, to sleep four in a bed, toast

marshmallows, and make fudge. But these things are mere trivialities.

The great and glorious fact of _being_ it and _doing_ it is the

pleasure! What could be more delightful than owning one's own land,

having one's own house, digging in one's own soil, and being one's own

and only boss?

"Looking down deeper than the surface and out beyond my quarter section,

I see that our life here is another part of the great feminist movement

of the world, a real and very vital part for the young women who are

fortunate enough to be classed among the homesteaders. And fortunate

not only are they, but the country, a part of which they are building."

Pioneering life is a passing phase; the girl homesteader is exceptional.

But transitory periods may teach great lessons as they glide along

before the glass of history. And if the girls that brave the danger,

endure the solitude, become angels of mercy in their communities,

survive the bad years, and master the situation commercially, show that

they can do this when the incentive that is rightfully theirs is given

to them, they have performed a service worthy of their strenuous labor,

their suffering, and even perhaps of their martyrdoms.

This chapter has spoken of an exceptional group; the following chapters

return to the average Country Girl and her general problems.

CHAPTER XI

THE NEW ERA

It is especially important that whatever will prepare country

children for life on the farm, and whatever will brighten home

life in the country and make it richer and more attractive for the

mothers, wives and daughters of farmers should be done promptly,

thoroughly and gladly. There is no more important person, measured

in influence upon the life of the nation, than the farmer's wife,

no more important home than the country home, and it is of

national importance to do the best we can for both.

_Theodore Roosevelt._

CHAPTER XI

THE NEW ERA

The mother of to-day is a bridge between two eras. Her mother had a

wooden spoon and a skillet; her daughter has a dynamo. As for herself,

she hardly knows which way to turn--whether to be loyal to the wooden

spoon or to enlist her sympathies with the dynamo.

This is, by the way, the reason for many of her troubles, though she may

not assign them to this cause. For the utensil is the symbol of a

psychology, of a rationale of living, of an esthetic ideal, of a

spiritual recognition. When the soap-kettle was carried for the last

time into the backyard to rust away forever in the weeds behind the

barn, the New Era believed itself safe in the dining-room and made up

its mind to stay there. Science riding on a gang-plow and scattering

bulletins along the way, was making happy inroads on the farm; and the

electric motor in the kitchen became inevitable. All that remained for

us was to adapt ourselves to it, and that is what we have been doing

ever since.

It was a revolution--this introduction of machinery; and it was none the

less so because it came so gradually and with so little show of

intention. No one noticed when Hannah found it no longer possible to sit

by her window binding shoes. She then, however, ceased to look through

the pane for her unreturning lover, but sorrowfully rose from her chair

and walking out of the low door, she passed over to the factory across

the street and there went on as before, binding shoes--but in another

way. She simply became one of a hundred who gave their whole attention

to one single element among the forty-nine different elements now made

possible in the process of making a pair of shoes, and left the other

forty-eight elements to be done by other industrious women working in

groups of one hundred. The women were not driven out of their work; they

did not crowd into the places of men in the manufacturing field. They

simply took their long-accustomed work in hand and went into the factory

to do it. So with weaving and many other kinds of industry. So is it now

with canning. Women are the prehistoric caretakers of our foodstuffs.

They still are this when in the factory they are canning pickles and

green corn and tomatoes.

Strangely enough the same influence that took the industrial woman out

of the home is to conduct her back again. It was Power embodied in the

steam engine that wooed her away from the home; it will be Power

expressed in the marvelous dynamo that will set her again by the

hearthside. It will be a regenerated home, one in which the regenerated

woman will be able to live, the woman that can think in terms of

calories, who will act as quickly as the new mechanical force will

demand, and who after a little will find the far more exact methods no

strain upon her powers of adaptation and execution.

In the present era of transition loyalty leads her to make the best of

her surroundings and to do all that she can to-day to ameliorate the

difficulties for herself and her family; sometimes she does not know

that a better lot should be hers; sometimes she is dulled by the care

and the burden she bears. But the great upward pressing tide will reach

every one in time--soon, yes, very soon!--and she will see that the new

way is going to set her free for a better and a higher service to those

she loves. The wonderful element of mechanical power embodied in the

dynamo or in some kindred form, is to contract her working hours, as it

has the stint of men, from ten hours to one, and will leave her with

lightened hands to do other and more valuable things for family and

community. Of course the old era and the new era are now seen standing

side by side and will be for a long time yet. There are ardent

unenlightened women who stand for old ways as if the new must have a

sort of wickedness about them because they are expected to lessen the

work. There are by this time also many who have experimented with the

use of mechanical power in the household and have found this newly

adopted servant of the Lord in that great laboratory of the Lord, the

human house and home, to be a comfortable and loving companion; as at

the beginning, this application of divine force to human happiness has

been pronounced good.

As the old and the new stand side by side, they will be sure to clash to

some extent. Every detail must be studied out and applied to various

needs as they come up. Progress is being very swiftly made just now and

every one must get in step as soon as possible.

The awakening that is proceeding along all the great channels of thought

meets, however, at certain points a very definite obstacle. For

instance, if one of those famous self-sacrificing housewives who survive

from past times, should be asked why she did not have a certain

convenience that would lessen her labor, she would say: "Well, I thought

that over and decided that I could possibly get along without it." The

answer would be typical. Whatever she could possibly get along without

she ought not to have. Unconsciously the woman makes all things a matter

of conscience. But the conscience is a creature capable of education as

well as of ethical impulse and determination. The conscience should be

more highly educated. The question should not be, can I possibly get

along without that?--but, can I bring myself and my family to a higher

degree of efficiency, to a state of more robust vigor, of more intense

and joyous activity, by having the conserving appliances, by cooking

more sustaining meals, by inducing them to wear shoes with thicker soles

and coats of rubber, or to stop work sooner? Can I get a little more

efficiency out of myself and of my family and out of the workers in barn

and kitchen by adopting these new-fangled ideas or devices? The new era

woman will always give the new-fangled idea a chance.

A noble joke was played upon a woman of this kind by her modern young

niece when she took an old barrel from the woodshed and with the aid of

two old kettles and an armful of hay turned it into a fireless

cooker--or rather into a "hay-box" cooker, for it hardly deserved the

better name though it was built on the same principle. The girl had been

bragging that she could cook potatoes for dinner in an old box out in

the woodshed. The aunt, of course, thought her niece was joking. But she

assured her aunt that she was in earnest and would show her. So she

peeled the potatoes and bringing them to a boil on the stove at eight

o'clock in the morning and whisking them, piping hot into the hay-box,

she left them there till exactly twelve, the dinner hour, and then

brought them triumphantly forth, still piping hot, perfectly cooked,

perfectly mealy and delicious. The happiness point was reached for her

when her aunt sank down in a chair absolutely nonplussed with this

miracle that she had seen with her own eyes!-- Or, better still, when

the potatoes the aunt had surreptitiously prepared by her accustomed

methods were refused by everybody, while the family partook of those

that were cooked by the miracle. Triumph could no further go! It cannot

be said that old is old and new is new and never the twain shall meet,

for old and new met here at that moment and old was demolished! The next

thing would be for that identical very capable housewife to buy a good,

first-class, durable and sanitary fireless cooker and use it habitually.

But, alas! the prejudices of her husband prevented that desirable

consummation. Progress was therefore stalled in that particular spot.

But the valley where she lived had had one ray of light let into it; the

thought of a possible relief had come. Let us hope that this may soon

happen to every vale and corner, and kindle a hope in the heart of all

farm women everywhere!

The light of this hope may not shine very brightly in the hearts of many

women of the earlier training and habits. But for the young women, for

the six million between the age of fifteen and twenty-nine, it is

radiant and alluring. The present-day mother may still say that her

mother's ways are good enough for her; but the daughter--as between the

wooden spoon and the motor, what will she be likely to choose? Can any

one ask the question?

She will ask that when her new house is built she shall have ample

accommodation of cisterns full of soft water together with pipes to

carry it to every part of the house where water is needed and an

adequate accompaniment of drain pipes and plumbing. She will ask for an

electric motor or a power-engine to run the washing-machine, to pump the

water into the attic cistern, and to be the avenue of force to every

activity, including the dishwashing.

She will plan to give thirty minutes every other day to that dreaded

work that now takes an hour three times a day. She will make no

provisions for carrying in coal and carrying out ashes, for her electric

stove will not use that kind of fuel and will not produce that kind of

waste.

There will never be a fly in her kitchen; the household laboratory will

be as clean and glowing as the parlor. The floor will be as artistic as

the tessellated pavement of a palace. The aluminum utensils will be

always shining, for the material of which they are made will not

tarnish. They will be light as feathers and never be a trouble to lift.

Her hands will be neat and exquisite; her dress for the laboratory of

the house will be tasteful and tidy and becoming, for there will be no

reason why it should not be. She will be a joy to look at because she

will be happy and because she will be adapted to her work.

If the Country Girl of the New Era is asked to go and begin her own

home-making in the old homestead, she will ask to have the walls

perforated and a large-sized vacuum cleaner installed in the cellar with

hose connections on all the floors. There must be slides and pulleys to

let heavy things down to the lower floors, and to draw them up to

bedrooms or storerooms above. Room must be made for dust chutes from all

floors above the cellar and heating pipes to every room. One may think

that the House in the New Era is to be all pipes, but this is the

laboratory installation idea; this is simply applying the same principle

to the house that men are applying to the office. The telephone, the

private wire, the repeating phonograph, the card system, the calculating

machine and all the different kinds of recording and stamping

machines--these are what the mechanical age provides for the workshop of

the man. Well may we repeat what has been said: "The workshop of the

woman is the worst workshop in the world." But it is not to be so very

much longer.

The scheme above described is not by any means a dream of the far

distant future. No: here and there it is now being realized. In many a

kitchen in small villages and along the countryside where the distance

is not too great to make electric connections from central plants, we

may find installed the electric stove which with fireless cooker and

scientific manipulation is found to be no more costly after the initial

expense of installation than other forms of heating, and the dishwashing

machine which reduces that part of the labor from three separate hours

each day to forty solid minutes of one single morning. We may find also

the inlet of power by which many other household processes as well as

such branches of the farming business as are carried on in the house,

are turned from unbearable drudgery almost into play. In such a kitchen

the fittings will be exquisite; to work there a delight. The housewife

who has devoted so much money to mere machinery may have resigned the

addition of a wing or a porch and devoted the two thousand dollars the

enlargement of the house would have cost to the installation of these

expensive fittings. But it has richly paid her. The whole field of

family welfare has been lifted to a higher plane and the happiness and

health of all indefinitely increased. And the same fine experience will

be within the reach of all farm and village women soon. Those that live

in villages and closely inhabited country districts will get their

electric power from streams and waterfalls, utilized for community

service; those that live on remote farms on the prairies and

mountain-sides will have their individual resources for power. For the

most part these are financially able to gain this, for if they were not

they could not remain in the regions where they dwell. A comparatively

small proportion of the population could not, if they would, make use of

some source of mechanical power. If they would! What prevents them? It

is this--only this: the lack of community spirit! And since this

desirable spirit is constantly increasing, since recruits are coming to

this new army almost daily, since students, teachers, ministers,

philosophers, one after another are putting shoulder to this wheel, and

farm men, farm women, and farm sons and daughters are coming forward

with the new light in their eyes to ask and expect the aid of machinery

to make their work more effective, it is not unwise to hope that the

people of the countryside are not going to be made to wait many years

more for the fulfilment of their dream.

The Country Girl of the New Era will ask to have a new house, built to

the highest ideals of sanitary living, and of release from unnecessary,

uncalled-for toil, or else she will require that the old house be made

over to the new mechanism. Which will be the most economical? Sometimes

that old place has advantages in the lines of its roof, the store of its

traditions, the love laid up in its cubby-holes; but then--it will have

to be torn out somewhere for the entrance of labor-saving devices.

Science will insist on some surgery for cleanliness and deftness and the

wisdom of the future to enter in.

Whatever plan is made for the house of the future that its household

laboratory may have the attention it deserves, the life of the Country

Girl therein is to be set to a new rhythm, or she will be hopelessly

left behind. Can any one doubt that she will ask for such things as she

believes are necessary to her highest efficiency, and insist upon having

them?

Various lists of essential labor-saving devices have been suggested. The

one that follows was taken for the most part from an agricultural paper

and includes most of the things now recommended by specialists in

household economics. But it must be noted that the progress in the

application of forces to needs is now very swift, and any day these

devices may be superseded by more expediting appliances. It is the duty

of every young woman to keep track of these additions to her repertory

of activities. The various journals of mechanics constantly report them,

and the wild frenzy of the advertisers may be turned into righteousness

by watching what they have that will be of use to us.

A LIST OF LABOR-SAVING DEVICES

Water system, including bathtub, and all fixtures connected

therewith.

Heating system.

Lighting system.

Vacuum cleaner.

Refrigerator, or a concrete cooler built near the well to take

advantage of the coolness of the well water.

Sewing-machine with electric power to run it.

Washing-machine, do.

Wringer, do.

Dishwashing machine, do.

Cold mangle.

Alcohol iron or electric iron.

Carpet-sweeper.

Bread-mixer.

Cake-mixer.

Meat and vegetable mill.

Fireless cooker.

Coal-oil stove, three burner.

Dinner wagon or wheeled tray.

Ash chutes, to the kitchen for the range and to each room that has

a fireplace; not needed if electric stove is used.

Cement walks--through the yard and garden to prevent wear and tear

on floors of the house.

A scheme for the equipment of a modern kitchen follows, with, again, the

proviso that the young woman must adapt it to her own needs by careful

study of her conditions:

EQUIPMENT FOR A FARM KITCHEN

FURNITURE

Stove with water-back and boiler.

Kitchen table with drawer.

Kitchen cabinet.

Ice-box.

Fireless cooker.

Scrap basket.

Clock.

A revolving high-stool.

A magnifying glass.

A dissecting microscope.

A linoleum floor covering.

A double sink.

2 double wheeled trays.

A perfectly fitted wire screen for each window.

A wire screen door.

UTENSILS

_Granite or aluminum_

1 tea-kettle, 4 qt. and cover.

3 saucepans, 3 qt., 2 qt. and 1 qt.

3 double-boilers, 4 qt., 2 qt. and 1 qt.

1 pudding dish.

1 colander.

1 coffee-pot.

1 nest of mixing bowls.

A set of covers, various sizes.

1 stock pot, 12 qts.

1 salt dredger.

1 flour dredger.

1 garbage pail, with tight-fitting cover.

_Wire-ware_

1 toast broiler.

1 meat broiler.

2 strainers.

1 tea strainer.

1 flour sifter.

1 potato masher.

2 egg beaters.

1 soap dish.

1 dish drainer.

2 cake coolers.

1 soap shaker.

_Tinware_

4 jelly cake tins.

6 bread pans.

2 cake tins.

1 potato ricer.

1 pint measure.

1 biscuit cutter.

1 doughnut cutter.

1 flour scoop.

1 funnel.

2 dishpans.

2 muffin pans.

1 biscuit pan.

1 wash boiler.

1 quart measure.

1 apple corer.

2 graters, small and large.

1 steamer.

1 ladle.

1 sink scraper.

_Ironware_

1 roasting pan.

1 omelet pan.

1 griddle.

1 frying kettle.

1 coal scuttle.

1 shovel.

1 stove lifter.

1 poker.

1 waffle iron.

3 irons 8 lbs.

3 irons 7 lbs.

1 iron 5 lbs.

1 iron stand.

1 food chopper.

1 pancake turner.

_Japannedware_

1 bread box.

1 cake box.

1 flour box.

1 sugar box.

1 tea cannister.

1 spice box.

1 dust pan.

_Woodenware_

1 mop.

1 broom.

1 vegetable brush.

1 sink brush.

1 stove brush.

1 floor brush.

1 scrub brush.

1 stepladder and chair combined.

1 sugar bucket.

2 chopping bowls, large and small.

1 ice-cream freezer.

1 meat board.

1 rolling-pin.

2 small wooden spoons.

2 large wooden spoons.

1 work board.

1 boiler stick.

1 wringer.

1 ironing-board.

1 clothes horse.

1 pail.

1 ice-cream freezer.

_Hardware_

1 bread knife.

1 cleaver.

1 butcher knife.

2 vegetable knives.

1 heavy mixing spoon.

1 ice pick.

1 meat fork.

3 forks.

1 cristy knife.

1 palette knife.

1 corkscrew.

1 can opener.

1 scale.

1 coffee mill.

6 teaspoons.

6 tablespoons.

1 chopping knife.

1 pair heavy scissors.

1 set skewers.

1 knife sharpener.

_Earthenware and Glass_

1 bowl, 6 qts.

2 bowls, 3 qts.

6 bowls, 1 qt.

12 cups (custard).

6 breakfast plates.

6 fruit jars, 1 pt.

6 jelly tumblers with covers.

6 fruit jars, 1 qt.

1 baking dish, 1 qt.

1 baking dish, 2 qts.

1 teapot.

1 casserole, 2 qts.

1 bean pot with cover.

1 butter jar.

1 measuring cup, 1/2 pt.

1 pitcher, 2 qts.

1 pitcher, 1 qt.

1 pitcher, 1 pt.

LINEN

12 fine linen dish towels for glass.

12 coarser dish towels.

24 knit dishcloths.

12 hand towels.

6 coarse floor cloths.

6 dustless dusters.

12 holders, washable.

12 cheesecloth squares for wrapping lettuce.

MISCELLANEOUS

1 letter file for bills.

1 hook for business notes.

1 memorandum pad and pencil.

1 account book.

1 fountain pen.

1 pencil.

1 indelible pencil.

Supply of blocks, impression papers, pencils, erasers, blotting

paper, ink, pens, pins, clips, etc.

Supply of cards for a card catalog for all household records.

It is not claimed that this list is imperative for each and every girl.

She must adapt it to her special needs. It is merely a typical list. And

if the young woman who reads and ponders it does not know how to adapt

it to her own needs, she certainly is not fitted to undertake her own

housekeeping. She should go to some school where young women are

trained in household science and there study the science of utensils and

the chemistry of cooking and cleaning, and the whole science and art of

home-making.

The list may seem a long one; but when the appliances and utensils are

placed before the adequately prepared young woman, she will have a

sensation not of discouragement but of delight. To make every young

woman realize that if she has adequate preparation she can feel

perfectly at home in a house with an industrious little motor at its

heart from which will go forth the miracle of an invisible force that

will bring every part of the work to magical completion without any

effort of ours and that thus what once was drudgery may be turned into a

delight,--this is the problem that stands with expectant, perhaps

ominous, eyes at our doorway; ominous if we show an unwelcoming look,

expectant if we give it greeting and stand ready to take this friend to

our heart.

Everything in this world is good. The great god Power led the woman out

of her House and into the Factory. It was necessary in order that she

should have a chance to learn the rules of the game. Now, her lesson

learned, the same great god Power is quietly but firmly taking her again

by the hand and leading her back to her House. There she will dwell; and

there she will again attempt to create that divine reflection of heaven

which we call Home. Now that she is once more allowed to undertake this

task, let us hope that she will be successful in building up an

institution worthy of the scientific age in which she lives, illuminated

with electric beams that shall beat into every rat hole and every

germ-protecting dark corner, and with every conceivable energy-producing

and conserving device that can be planned by the human mind.

CHAPTER XII

THE HOUSEHOLD LABORATORY

VOICES IN THE HOUSEHOLD

Upon the shelf the clock ticks merrily;

The kettle sings his song in drowsy mood;

Within the stove crackles the fragrant wood;

The coffee-mill grinds out a cheerful lay.

Surely within the oven one can see

A roast ... what else on earth would smell so good?...

And little globes of fat, all amber-hued,

Dance in the pan and sing with noisy glee.

Sweet sounds! Inviting yet another song;

And I will sing in unison with them.

Work brings the joy that helps the work along,

And so, harmonious, sounds the kitchen hymn.

While all about the ready dinner-table

The children's voices raise a merry babel.

_Helen Coale Crew._

CHAPTER XII

THE HOUSEHOLD LABORATORY

The kitchen should be a combination of laboratory, machine shop and

studio. The work done there is just as complex as that! There are an

almost infinite number of different things needed to accomplish the

different processes that have to be carried on in this workshop. There

must be a variety of mechanical devices to negotiate and subtly maneuver

all the effects that are to be brought out to artistic and wholesome

conclusions.

This is true to a great extent nowadays in all households whether in

city or country. But the farm is yet, as it always was, a place where

there is greater complexity to master because many more things are done

there. The spirit of machinery has entered into the life of the city

kitchen and eased the burden; it must now enter the country household

and work the same magic there.

If the kitchen is to be a combination laboratory and machine shop it

must look like one. It must be filled with appliances for every part of

the intricate work of making ten thousand things that are needed for the

family through the various seasons and changes of the year.

Imagine an exquisite room long and narrow. The walls are painted white

or light gray--a warm golden gray for the relief and pleasing of the

eye. The floor is comfortable to the feet, sanitary, easily cleansed and

durable. There is an iron ring in the floor where the cover to the chute

is lifted down which the dust is to be thrown. There is another for the

ash chute, lined with metal for protection from fire by means of the

hot coals that may sometimes be left in the ashes. One beauty of the

electric stove is that it produces no ashes; one advantage of the vacuum

cleaner is that it does away with dust.

The sink has two compartments--all enameled white--one for the washing

of the dishes and one for the draining. In the second is the wire

drainer. The sink is placed at the right height for this particular

housewife, be she a little treasure done up in a small parcel or a tall

stately woman when standing very straight--as every one ought to,

whether city or country bred.

At the right of the sink there is a table or shelf for the dishes as

they are taken from the wheeled tray that has brought them from the

dining table, and at the left is the draining sink or draining board or

a shelf on which the dishes may be laid when they have been dried with

the linen drying cloth.

There is a window before the worker and from it she can look out over

the garden off to the fields, and beyond toward the village, following

her thoughts now and then to the great big world outside.

When an ideal like this is held up before their eyes, the younger women

see the futility and bad policy of the old methods. For it is the worst

policy to lay heavier burdens upon man or beast than he can carry. It is

better policy to conserve the strength of the beast of burden whether

horse or daughter. The farmer has found that labor-saving utensils and

appliances are his best investment in the barn. Why not in the house?

Running water is needed for the dairy stalls; but it is more necessary

in the pantry. The live stock in the kitchen is of a fiber incomparably

delicate and fine. It will be good for the big brother to scrub that

floor; and everything the father and the brother can do to sustain the

struggle of the mother and the sister will come back to them with rich

interest in the value of the product, viz., the health, happiness and

vibrancy of the women in the home and the power to give out energy in

their home life and to their children.

The young woman of to-day takes it into account that she will probably

have to deal with a scheme of life that does not include service in the

household laboratory other than that of her own hands. She realizes that

there will never be a peasant class in this country; and she sees that

housewives must take the consequences of this happy lack: namely, they

must do their own work. Every woman will be always as good as every

other woman and therefore there can be no servant in our kitchen; there

cannot even be "help."

What then shall be done? There must be fit machinery. The drudgery point

must be reduced till labor becomes a joy. The kitchen is not to be a

place to which the housewife is condemned; it is a place she is going to

love because it is a laboratory where science has sway, where aseptical

cleanness reduces every process to a fragrant dream, and the laws of

processes appear as miracles of nature controlled at last by the art of

man.

Seeing all this clearly, it is not strange that the young woman decides

to relegate the bad kitchen to the limbo of broken and disused

furniture. This, to her, is the impossible kitchen: one that has no

shelves, drawers, or cupboards, and no place where things can be put

away; or if there are any shelves, they are made so wide that things

have to be stored in behind each other so that the first row must be

taken out in order to get at something behind. In this impossible

kitchen the pantry is on the wrong side for the worker. By the

arrangement of doors and windows light and air are shut out. The rotten

old wooden sink is bad smelling, too low, and too narrow, and it is so

far from the pantry that the worker will have to go back and forth ten

times as many times to do a piece of work as she would if the articles

were conveniently placed. The room is too large; there is many times as

much walking as is necessary; it is as far removed as it possibly can be

from the compact convenience of the ideal kitchen. The floor is uneven

and there are broken splinters where the wood has worn. They catch the

dust, and little bits of string drag along from them to catch more dust

and dirt. It is impossible that this floor should ever be clean; the

very thought of it is discouraging. The water must be brought from an

outside well, and the wood from an outdoors wood-pile. If it is a rainy

day, the wood is wet and takes a long time to get to burning in the

range. It is not a range--it is only a stove and a poor one at that.

There are many other things that might be said about the impossible

kitchen, but perhaps it is not necessary to go any further, for has not

everybody seen one? The great majority of kitchens are now impossible.

The great majority should be torn out before any more machinery is

bought for the farm business, and a full kitchen equipment should be

installed in the place of the worn-out floors, the ill-adapted

furniture, the cracked and rusted hardware, the soaked and disease-laden

woodwork, and the leaky pipes and shingles.

When the daughter in the country home sees that the father and mother

are working together for one end, that they have for the good of all

undertaken a task that is too great for them, and that they are

oppressed and almost despairing in their fight against untoward

circumstances, she is ready to join in the struggle and to give her

sometimes slender strength to help in the lifting; but when it becomes

evident that the old unsanitary kitchen of the average farm home could

be renovated and made the workshop of joyous efficiency instead of the

treadmill of despairing burden-bearing; and when at the same time she

sees additions constantly made to the greater efficiency of the farming

side of the farmstead business, the daughter feels with the mother that

their work does not have the appreciation that it deserves. And this is

what puts the one little drop of bitterness into the cup she has to

drink. There is nothing like this to take the tuck out of one. To know

that there exist means to reduce the time limit for a certain piece of

work from four hours to twenty minutes and that these means are

stubbornly and constantly denied to the worker, takes the poetry and the

hope out of her heart and the buoyancy out of her joints more than

anything else could. Especially is this the effect when the chains are

being hung in the new barn to swing the feed along the passageway to

every stall, all to save the strength of the men's arms, and no chains

and pulleys are being strung in the kitchen to lift pails and swing

loads for the mother and sister. To know that the time spent in

dishwashing for a family of five could be reduced from six hours

distributed through two days to forty-two minutes at one time in one

morning--and then to have to go on interminably giving three separate

hours daily to this loathsome, lukewarm, greasy, unsanitary,

ill-assorted, deadening task--no, the next group of household

administrators will not do that!

It is not that the younger women are lazy and inclined to shirk the

heavy tasks. That is not their spirit. But they cannot keep up their

fine buoyancy of mind and heart when better methods are constantly going

into the barn and none into the house; when appliances are bought for

cattle and none for the women. And they know that life will not be held

up to its high level if they cannot command buoyancy of spirit.

Life is framed on a larger pattern nowadays; there is a greater demand

for standard; there is a higher degree of intelligence required. All

this the new young woman sees that she has to do and be. She springs to

meet the situation--but hanging at her heels is a chain, the chain of

old-fashioned methods. She must be free of this chain, or she will not

sustain the burden of country life in the time to come. She thinks she

sees a way out in the industrial opportunity of the town. It is a

mirage--but she follows it. She follows it and follows it--and what is

the end to be? Would it not pay us to give her the opportunity to put

the housekeeping for the next generation of home-makers on a better

foundation and thus keep these finest of the girls of the nation in the

environment they love but now find unendurable because they cannot under

present conditions have the help they need?

The papers and periodicals for women nowadays devote long columns to

telling us how to make some kind of contraption that will take the place

of a fireless cooker or of a movable tray or of some other new

housekeeping device. It is true that woman may use her ingenuity to make

something that will "do."

But we have been too long getting on with half-measures, makeshifts,

contraptions of all sorts. The star we should now hitch our wagon to is

an electric motor. The young woman who wishes to live on the farm would

better enter some industrial field, make something commercially and with

efficiency, sell it, and find in her hands the fifteen dollars for the

fireless, the eleven for the double-decker wheeled-tray, and pretty soon

the larger sum that will be needed to install a perfect kitchen, that

will not only be a joy to herself but will be a lesson to her whole

community, that will lift the whole region into a new realization of

life, that will show how the time necessary to be spent on the drudgery

of the household may be reduced from eighteen hours a day to two, and so

release her energies as to give to the higher needs of the family and to

the equally great needs of the community the services that she alone is

fitted to give, and that are absolutely necessary to the well-being and

the safeguarding of the life of the rural realm and therefore also of

the whole people.

How can we get a kitchen like that? Well, that is the Gordian knot that

the farm daughters will be able to cut. They can do it--they must do it.

Every instinct of patriotism, every breathing of passion for the welfare

of the future homes, every thought of affection for the home circle that

will be theirs, calls for the most valiant struggle to gain the goal--a

perfectly hygienic, perfectly fitted household plant, with all in it

that can by scientific mechanism be placed there, to be the perfect

working basis for that highest product, human happiness in a human

home.

CHAPTER XIII

EFFICIENT ADMINISTRATION

Scientific management is the application of the conservation

principle to production.

The time, health and vitality of our people are as well worth

conserving, at least, as our forests, minerals, and lands.

When we get efficiency in all our industries and commercial

ventures, national efficiency will be a fact.

_Theodore Roosevelt._

CHAPTER XIII

EFFICIENT ADMINISTRATION

If the Country Girl of the future takes her life in her hands and asks

for a household laboratory such as has been described, she must make

sure also that she will be able to work in that place in such a way as

to get the most good out of it and to prove its value to those that have

installed it for her. This presupposes a high degree of efficiency in

herself as well as in the tools she handles.

Never has young womanhood been so fortunate in opportunities for

preparation as is the girl of this day. The very minutes seem to bristle

with the word "efficiency." On every side she may receive suggestion and

instruction as to how to make herself consonant with her era. Scientific

management is being carried out in every sort of factory, workshop,

studio, regiment,--everywhere,--with the one exception, perhaps, of her

own, the household workshop. Therefore it is for her to see what

scientific management means to all these other institutions and to apply

the lesson to her own realm, and make that factory of hers, that

workshop, regiment, and studio, into the most efficient place upon

earth!

The great movement in the interest of efficiency has its origin in the

desire to get just as much result as possible out of the labor of the

workers. Their strength must be conserved, not because of any

philanthropic feeling for the man, but because that strength is needed

for further use, in order that a greater output of the product may be

gained. The method employed is to consider studiously the movements made

in carrying on any one part of the work. They separate this operation

into its elements, and then they determine upon the best motions to make

to accomplish the end, and upon the exact order of those motions,

shaving off a part of a second here and there by the careful choosing of

motions and the surest order of them. The motions the workman makes,

whether with eyes, fingers or arms, are thus economized. The bricks for

the building up of the wall are conveniently placed, and all the details

in following any pattern are fitted together so as to make as few

motions as possible, to use as little energy as possible, and to reach

the end as quickly as possible. This is, says one, "the application of

the conservation principle to production." "The art of management," says

another of these experts, "is knowing exactly what you want the men to

do, and then seeing that they do it in the best and cheapest way." In

order to accomplish all this in, say, the business and work of a

factory, there must be an efficiency engineer, who shall spend days and

weeks and months in finding out what the right order of motions is, what

the best arrangement of the tools and materials shall be, what

elimination of unnecessary acts and things can be made in order that

every possible waste of energy may be pared off and the path to the end

may be absolutely, sternly direct. Then there is the route clerk, who

sees that this order is followed by each man until he is able to do it

involuntarily and as if by instinct. To make definite record of the

success of this work, the time-and-cost clerk will keep track of time

and per cent. items, and make known exactly what are the results of

doing things in one particular way. If not satisfactory, another way

must be chosen.

It is the belief of the advocates of scientific management that if we

thus make the individual efficient, his productive capacity will be

raised twenty-five or fifty per cent., or even sometimes doubled.

Scientific management calls for a careful study of the surroundings. The

appliances must be adequate, comfortable, handy, and such as require

the least percentage of rest. The scaffold or bench must be the exact

height to make as little strain as possible on the worker. The table

must be made at the right height so that the worker will not have to

stoop over for his tools. If he works on his feet, there must be

something for him to stand against so that he may have no fear of

falling. To get the full output, the right appliances must be devised,

standardized, used, and maintained. The worker's clothing must not be

ill-fitting, or it may restrict the movement of his arms and hands. It

must be of such material that he will not be in constant fear of ruining

it. Everything about him must be such as to increase speed and not

restrict motion. Nothing that will affect the eyesight unpleasantly is

to be tolerated. There shall be no reflecting surfaces from which the

light may shine into the eyes. The colors that will help the eyes are to

be selected for the room, those that are pleasant, that will induce a

happy mood and will therefore decrease irritation and help the spirit of

energy. He must take up the nearest tools first; the pockets and

containers to hold tools must be placed so that the least and shortest

motions may be made in handling them. And so on.

There are several reasons why the work of the kitchen has not been more

promptly attacked by the believer in scientific management. In the first

place, the business of the home laboratory is of so complex a nature

that no factory can compare with it in difficulty of analysis. Efficient

housekeeping is a combination of many factories. The scientific expert

can far more easily separate the making of a single pair of shoes into

its forty-three acts than he can analyze any one of the processes of the

home laboratory: say, for instance, the making of a frosted layer-cake,

the assembling and concocting of a mince-pie, or the infinitely complex

business of washing dishes.

In the second place, men have been fairly busy putting this matter

through in their factories. They have naturally studied out the

processes nearest to their own hands. They are not to be specially

blamed for inattention to the woman's realm. That will come next. Now

that their attention is being called to the need for expert management

in the other department of life, they are recommending in many books and

lectures what should and must be done to put housekeeping on a basis for

efficiency. So if women do not standardize their work, men will do it

for them, and that will not be so well for them as if they did it

themselves.

The woman who is administrator in the farm home must be equal to several

women. She must be master in the difficult art of cookery, adapting her

menu to the welfare of a group of people of all ages and with all kinds

of needs. She must be washwoman and laundry woman, cleaning and scrub

woman. She must know all the proper chemicals to be applied to the

cleansing of different kinds of metal, cloth, wood, and every sort of

surface painted and unpainted. She must be food expert, and textile

expert, medicine and poison expert. Besides all this, she must be

teacher, instructor, and entertainer, the encyclopedia and gazetteer, a

theological and philosophical professor. And all these separate

functions must do their work together within the one personality, the

administrator, the little mother of the home, the companion of the

kitchen, the parlor and the bedside.

Translated into technical engineering language this women in the heart

of the farmstead is her own route-clerk, and order-of-work clerk; she is

her own instruction-card clerk, time-and-cost clerk, gang boss, speed

boss, repair boss, and inspector. All these and much more must she be in

order to gain the effects of scientific management in that factory which

is her home realm.

Theodore Roosevelt said, "When we get efficiency in all our industries

and commercial ventures, national efficiency will be a fact." Does he

include the farm laboratory among the "industries"? The farm home is

producing (or ought to produce) the most valuable product that can be

found in the country--the man and woman of the future. If these men and

women are to be efficient, the home from which they are to come must

certainly be a model of efficiency. We have to pierce through the crust

of our national conceit and find there the truth that our people are

painfully in need of more efficiency and that therefore it is a matter

of the most vital concern that we should put the home in all its phases

into a condition more adapted for producing the perfectly efficient

human product.

The Gospel of Efficiency has reached the farmer; he finds that with

three men he can do the work that fifteen men did forty years ago. He

realizes that the efficient farmer progresses, the inefficient falls

behind.

Will not the same thing be true of woman in the farmstead?

To see how the principle of efficiency may be applied in the work of the

farmstead, we have but to look, for instance, at that task of dish

washing. Suppose that the worker were piling the dishes at the right of

the dishpan and also trying to drain them at the same side. The

efficiency expert would promptly decide that this arrangement would

cause a waste of time and energy, for while the right hand was ready to

lift the dishes to be washed into the pan, the left would have to move

back and forth in many unnecessary motions to put the dishes back into

the draining rack which was also on the right. The efficiency clerk

would demand that the dishes be drained at the left. If there were some

article of furniture at the right, so that the dishes could not be

placed there, say a pump or a door or a cupboard, that would have to be

removed. If the time and strength and nervous energy of those workers

were to be conserved and the product to be put forth with the least

expenditure of mind and nerve, such changes would have to be made as

would make labor-saving motions possible. Not to make the changes would

be bad policy, because these conditions would be constantly causing

waste of time and strength; and that time and that strength would be of

pecuniary worth to the business. What business? The important business

of administering the affairs of the home!

Every Country Girl should experiment to see how she can economize

motions and save time. She should make a study of every part of her work

and see where she can by forethought cut down useless movements and

intensify energy. If at first she finds difficulty, she should

persevere; she will master the task in time. There is a knack about it

that she must master before she can become adept.

If, for instance the hair is being done up in a new way, it takes a

longer time than usual the first day, less time the next, and after a

few more days the new way takes no longer than the old. Some natural

motions have been found out that economize the time and effort, that

introduce convenient moves, that shake off awkwardnesses, and set the

whole into a rhythm of motion.

Josephine Preston Peabody has written a lovely poem about a child

watching her mother as she braids her hair. The child is delighted with

the deftness of her mother's hands, and with the perfect rightness of

the braids as every loop comes into its place and all of them are so

quickly and so beautifully fitted about the head. That mother had by

long practise found the exactly right way to manage that complicated

piece of human industry, the "doing up" of a mass of long and wavy hair.

She did it almost without thought. Her "motions" were perfectly smooth,

exquisitely graceful, and adapted absolutely to the end desired through

a series of separate acts composing all together a whole scientific

process. And she was so accustomed to it as a whole and to all the

separate details, that she could do it with a rhythm that was like

music. When it was done she could give one little final pat and say,

"There!" with a slight thrill of delight.

Just so should it be with any of the intricate operations of the

household laboratory. Just such a thrill of delight should be possible

when the complicated piece of hand-work and machine-work called washing

the dishes is finished. At the end one should be able to express a

delighted "There!"--not because a dreaded and abhorrent

quarter-of-an-hour was over, but because a piece of work necessary to

human welfare has been turned off with firm conclusiveness and dispatch.

The inefficient way of doing things is a too frequent experience. A farm

housekeeper will bring a dish of cold potatoes from the kitchen, carry

it all the way through the dining-room, set it down on a chair while she

opens the door to the cellar, carry it haltingly down the stairs, and

then set it down on a box because it is too dark to place it in the

cupboard where it belongs. She does not want to take the pains to get a

lamp, but she has to. She carefully lights the lamp, carries it down the

cellar stairs, places it in a safe place, and then takes care of the

potatoes. Then she comes back and carries a little plate of bacon that

has been left and deposits it in the same careful way. Then follow the

bread, the milk and the cream in pitchers; follow the cake, the jam, and

many other things in little precious bits too good to be thrown away,

all requiring a careful passage, each one at a time. It is good that she

has so many beautiful and promising things to put away; but how

different it would have been if she had been able to load all these

things on the dummy and with one stroke of the arm to move it all

downstairs. Then, O joy! if she had had the electric light to turn on in

the cellar-way and down in the cellar cupboard, she could have gone

downstairs with perfect safety and without fear, and she could have

returned with a light heart, swung the wheeled tray into its place, and

all would have been over in three minutes at the most, instead of taking

twenty-five and being accomplished only by a vast expenditure of effort

and nervous fear. The money that woman wasted in reduced energy and

nervousness causing doctor's bills, would have bought her a wheeled

tray, put in a dummy with pulley, rope, and weights, and paid the family

doctor's bill besides! Nothing can be done hygienically that is done in

the dark.

The Country Girl may practise for efficiency while she is waiting for

her perfect kitchen to materialize, by doing all in her power to make

herself save steps. To learn to make no useless passages across the

floor is to begin a conquest of one's own mind, to establish

self-control, and to utilize forethought.

"Think twice and step once," was a good motto. There is a one best way

to do all things. Why not search for it?

CHAPTER XIV

AN OLD-FASHIONED VIRTUE

Ill Housewifery pricketh herself up with pride;

Good Housewifery tricketh her house as a bride.

Ill Housewifery lieth till ten of the clock;

Good Housewifery trieth to rise with the cock.

_Penny Magazine_, 1798.

CHAPTER XIV

AN OLD-FASHIONED VIRTUE

This may be considered a brief for the "old maid" of olden time; or

rather for the quality that she stands for in our dream and story life.

We have not given this so-called "old-maidishness" its rightful place

among the virtues. The quality deserves to be classified among the

highest expressions of the intellect. In the olden time, when the mother

was busy with her family of from two to twenty children, the mother's

unmarried sister was the "efficiency-clerk" of the big household. She

was the motor, the balance-wheel; she knew where everything was, to the

last sheaf of catnip; she put everything in its place and could go and

get whatever was wanted. Behind all this was her classifying mind.

That "old-maidishness" was composed of three elements: a fine

discrimination of values, an appreciation of little things as pivots for

greater things, and a love of orderliness. To her the first law of

heaven was her first law. Heaven never had a law till it had order; and

when the stars found that there was to be something more than a

fortuitous concourse of atoms in the universe, we know what they did:

they sang. In any house there will be more singing when orderliness

reigns there. But the household is a concourse of myriads of parts. We

cannot always sing that the house "is so full of a number of things"

that we think we "should all be as happy as kings." It is only when we

can keep good track of these things that we can be "as happy as kings."

This was a large part of the mission of the invaluable old maid in our

early centuries.

There was a great deal of system in the housekeeping of our ancestors.

Bags, basket and bundles were trained into the service of good order.

They cross-stitched numbers on the pillow-slips and on the sheets and on

the rare napery they had spun and woven with their own capable hands and

had bleached on their own soft grass-plots. They kept their "simples" in

carefully protected and distinctly labeled sheaves. Their piece-bags

were innumerable. They could go in the dark into the storeroom, put

their hand in behind things, feel unerringly for what they needed, and

find it there.

The burden upon the memory that this elaborate system of old must have

entailed is now transferred to the card catalog. This invaluable modern

device is a system for recording upon cards of a certain uniform size

the items and lists and notes to be remembered and preserved, and of

classifying them carefully for ready reference. These cards are stood up

in a closely packed row, in a box or drawer, or in a compartment made

especially for the purpose, where they are arranged alphabetically or by

subjects, in such a way as to be easily run over by the finger till the

desired card is found. The cards must be made of stiff paper or

card-board; they must be accurately cut to a required measure, usually

five inches wide by three inches tall, and they must be fitted exactly

into the box, with "guides" to aid in finding the main subjects. The

"guide" is a card of a different color from the others, usually yellow,

and has a little top extension, so that when the guide is put in its

place in the row of white cards, this top extension will stand up above

the others so as to catch the eye readily. On this little bit of the

guide that stands up above the rest, a main heading is written very

clearly in fine lettering,--or, better, printed neatly--and on all the

cards that are selected to be slipped in behind that guide are written

the notes or references on subjects that belong under that heading. For

instance, suppose the main heading, written on a certain guide, should

be this: "Recipes." Then each card that follows that guide would have

written on its face the details of some recipe--one recipe to one card.

And all the cards on which the housekeeper had written the recipes she

wished to preserve would be placed behind that guide. Then whenever she

wished to use any one recipe, she would open her drawer, look along the

tops of the cards until she found the guide extension--the little

projecting piece that had the word "Recipes" on it. Behind that guide

she would find all her recipes; then it would be but the work of an

instant to pick out the one she wanted. On each separate card would be

written in the upper right-hand corner, the name of the recipe on that

card. If the housekeeper had a great many recipes, she might make more

guides: one for cake recipes, one for bread, and so forth.

Then there would be still other main heads. One might be marked

"Inventory." One might be called "Clothing." Records of music, of

engagements, of books, and so forth might be set down. Any subject that

needed to be kept track of could be thus securely noted in the card

catalog.

Under the heading "Inventory" a most useful record might be made.

Subordinate headings on cards of some other color should be used. The

first of these would be "Parlor." Behind that would be placed the cards

that told all the articles of furniture or decoration that that

important room contained. "Dining-room," "Kitchen," "Pantry," etc.,

would come along in order and all items considered worthy of note would

be put on their proper cards. Then there would be other cards entitled

"Linen-closet," "Side-board," "Old Bureau," "Old Chest," "Black Trunk,"

"Brown Trunk," "Old-fashioned Deep Basket," or other containers of

clothing, silver, bedding, linen, utensils, or treasures of any kind. In

case of fire, the card catalog, along with the locked document box or

safe, would be one of the things to be sought for first and rescued from

harm. In fact there should by rights be two copies of any household

inventory made, so that in case the inventory in the house should

chance to be burned with the house, there might still be a careful

record preserved in some safe place for future reference, for purposes

of insurance or for historic archives. Every one of us should think of

the family as an institution of dignity, one whose smallest doings have

importance, because we belong to a great human family, and because we

are bearing on the touch of life to future generations. We are now

making history. And we should see to it that our link of the unending

chain should not break for want of a sensible and accurate recorder.

This description of the card catalog is given with so much particularity

because it has been proved by long experience that it is a very great

saving of trouble to have it exactly right. The making of the cards is a

matter of the nicest care. This exactitude is essential to the quick

movement of the fingers and is therefore a saving of time in hunting for

the one card desired. The jelly may be almost ready to "jell," and one

may run to the catalog of recipes to find what is the matter; one must

not be impeded an instant at that critical point. Time is always

precious, too, to the housekeeper, and the orderliness that makes it

possible to find things quickly is one of the most important elements in

the success of the new housekeeping.

Whatever part the daughter in the farm home may have in the business of

the farm, she will find the card catalog of the utmost value to her in

making herself useful and in placing her results on the basis of

authority. In such a system of records she can always find what she

wants on demand; the various accounts can be added to and taken from and

corrected to date at any moment without recopying the whole. So the

records of the daily egg-harvest can be kept, the in-come and out-go of

any of the products of the farm, the weighing and testing of the milk,

the mending and making of fences, the apple harvest, the dates for

putting in crops, the dates of payments to the men and the number of

their days' labor, and many other items that belong to the business of

the farm. Of course when the farm business becomes very large and

intricate, an elaborate system of bookkeeping is necessary. But for the

myriads of little things that belong to the home side of the farmstead,

this ingenious system is especially adapted. Here we may advantageously

keep our records of such memoranda as specially concerns the family, the

household accounts and receipts; inventions we may hear about and new

devices in which we may be interested and that we may sometime want to

find out about or make our own; contents of the tool chest, dates of

repairs and memoranda of things that need to be repaired about the

house; cans of fruit and other things stored away on the shelves and in

the cupboards of the cellar and in the cold room and elsewhere--a

valuable record to check up against another year's yield of these

treasures; doctor's visits and prescriptions, notes of symptoms,

together with dates and any circumstances that may need to be accurately

remembered; music, victrola records; Christmas and birthday gifts given

or received; dates of events, the coming and going of guests at the

home; personal items such as the size of shoes, gloves, collars, hats,

etc., for the different members of the family; books we should like to

have; newspapers and magazines taken or desired; records of the magazine

club or of the book loan club; correspondence, letters received and

sent; patterns, clippings, quotations. For remembering all these things

the card catalog will prove the unfailing helper; and all and many more

will be the care of the Country Girl when she becomes administrator of a

household in the new time.

A simple bookkeeping may also be recorded in the card catalog. The

monthly or seasonal or annual statements of expenses may be recorded

here, however, and may be kept for comparison with other seasons and

years. These records may be placed under the following heads:

_Food_ (including meat, groceries, milk and eggs, green

vegetables, and fruit, ice, and fuel for cooking).

_Shelter_ (including rent or purchase money, taxes, insurance,

interest, repairs, fuel for heating, furnishing).

_Clothing_.

_Education_ (including papers, books, school, lectures, concerts,

art).

_Benevolence_ (including church and charity).

_Recreation_.

_Transportation_ (including expenses of travel).

_Health_ (including doctor's bills, and medicine).

_Savings_.

_Labor_.

_Sundries_.

This scheme is designed to be used for the budget of a family; but it is

most important that every young girl, whether in city or country, and

whether her purse be a long one or a short one, should know each year

whether the demands upon her cash account are exceeding those of the

year before, and that she should make up her mind whether there shall be

any change in that regard during the year to come. This is a training

that every girl should insist upon giving to herself constantly. If she

finds herself called "oldmaidish" therefor, she will know that she

cannot have earned the name, since there are no old maids any more! The

same sort of person must now be called "efficiency administrator."

In suggesting this form of self-discipline to the Country Girl, we know

very well that the girl that determines to keep accurate records of her

expenses has a good fight before her. Women seem at present to have a

preternatural disinclination toward keeping their own accounts, and

nearly every girl inherits this bent. In canning clubs for women it is

found that the members will do all the delicate measuring accurately;

their sense of taste is unerring; their judgment of results is perfect;

but they just will not render an account of their work!

That women are not by right of their sex incapable of mathematical

processes is shown by the fact that so large a number of women attain

distinction in the higher fields of that study, becoming astronomers,

computing eclipses and ranging the outer realms of the sky with great

telescopes. The rather general dislike of women for the simpler forms of

computing probably has grown up in the financially irresponsible state

that has become a part of woman's very bone and marrow during late

centuries. But it must not be so any longer. Too much depends upon

orderliness in finances, for the Country Girl to neglect this means of

becoming efficient in her life-work.

All of these card-catalog and other "devices" are a part of a great

movement to put efficiency into every human industry. And this movement,

again, is a part of the upward striving of mankind. The "industry" that

is to be the life-work of the Country Girl must not be behind.

It is claimed that the average farmer puts more thought into his work

than the average woman in a farm home puts into hers. This is partly

because the seasons make less change in her work than they do in his.

But they do make a very great change in her work; and the difference

between her work and his in this respect ought not to make the great

difference that exists between the amount of foresight he shows in his

planning and the dim irresolute bungling that is so often the

characteristic of hers. We cannot say that we have an ideal unless we

contrive a plan to express that ideal. Something luminous and startling

may glow before our eyes and flatter our self-conceit with a hope that

seems like a resolution. But without a definite plan, the glow soon

vanishes and we are no better for having had it. In fact we are worse.

It is a real injury to our soul development to entertain an unfounded

ideal and then allow it to fade away before we concentrate it into

purpose; for we have deceived ourselves and we have weakened our will.

Now and then we read of some woman of olden time who thought out her

plan for the next day after she went to bed at night. She was a

prophecy of the present; or rather, of the time to come. Too much cannot

be said to the young women of to-day about the necessity of foresight.

Foresight is the great bulwark of efficiency. Hurry, they say, is only

poor planning; and we know what depredations hurry is making upon our

fields of life. The Country Girl, if she wishes to help in the

upbuilding of national character, must drive hurry from her field, and

this she can do by efficient planning. She must now adopt the systematic

spirit in order that when she has a farm home upon her hands she will be

ready for the simplification that alone will make her work under the new

complications endurable and easy. It will be necessary for her to reduce

all to a definite scheme. She must then plan her work by seasons; she

must plan it by days, and by hours in the day. She must make records of

the time it takes for each part of the work, and she must think out a

way to do it in less time. It will be well if she can arrange it so that

different kinds of work will overlap, in order that one thing may be

preparing while she is doing something else. And if she finds it a

weight upon the mind to keep track of so many things at once, she must

yield herself to this discipline, knowing that she is thus training her

mind for better service and that she will be more fitted to use to good

advantage the extra hours that she will thus gain. She will come to the

new cultural duty of the hour she has thus wrung from the working period

with increased joy and with new powers gained by the strenuousness of

the hour's work that went before.

The administration of a house is to call for a higher training in

mechanics. Education is giving much more of this now than formerly and

will answer the demand for still more. The girls of the country, where

this education is needed far more even than in the city, must be

prepared to answer this need.

We cannot be expert in the new housekeeping unless we have some

comprehension of the chemical processes that constantly go on under our

hands. One young woman took for her master's degree a study of the

bacterial flora found in spoiled canned peas and string beans. She found

that there are some organisms that only grow all the better after they

have been boiled one hour. She found that the strongest acids do not

inhibit the growth of some other kinds. She has been a good year working

on that theme. If she should include one or two other kinds of spoiled

foods her work would extend over another year.

How many kinds of bacterial life are there? How many fruits, vegetables,

foods of all sorts, are made the home of these various kinds? What

processes will protect each kind from becoming harmful to human life?

How many hours will it take to show that certain processes will render

each variety a safe food? How many young students must give years to the

business of finding out what we may use and what we may not? How long

will it take us to realize that the detail of preparing the food for the

table is a great scientific study, one deserving our highest expertness,

meriting our highest honors, to those who work in the laboratory of the

university and to those who labor in the laboratory of the house? Every

young woman should consider herself a licensed observer; she should

watch every process to see what she may learn of nature's secrets, that

she may compare it with what she has read and thus make additions to the

sum of knowledge that may be beneficial to all.

It is not alone because foods have as close a connection with our

well-being that we should study them. They have in themselves an

extraordinary fascination. The daily and hourly companion of the worker

in the household should be the magnifying-glass. The dissecting

microscope is a form of magnifier that is especially adapted for

household use and should be within the reach of every one. To get into

the habit of putting all foods to the test of this infallible little

instrument gives one a great feeling of safety and comfort. Every bag of

oatmeal should be examined, all cereals, especially cornmeal, all

products that have been kept in any storehouse, should be thus tested.

If all the women of the country would use the magnifying-glass on

everything that comes into the house, and promptly reject what is not

perfectly clean, the level of good health and long life would rise

suddenly by perceptible degrees among our people.

If the prospective household administrator cries out that she cannot be

bothered with such little things as these, she will be one of those that

will be left behind. Those that can be bothered are the people that are

to win. The value of the little thing, when it is the pivot for greater

things, is one of the discoveries of modern science; and, strangely

enough, there is no little thing that is not a pivot for greater things.

Our part is to train ourselves to realize this. In the household of the

future there will be nothing that the microscope can reveal or the card

catalog record that will not be of importance to the success of the

whole.

It would be amusing--if it were not so tragic!--to see the utter

serenity with which some of the older women will say, "But I have no

scientific turn of mind, I do not care for the microscope!" It is as if

they said: "But I prefer to murder the members of my family; I do not

care to give them the key that will let them out of imprisonment where

they have been carelessly but dolorously confined; I have no

predilection for dashing away the poison from their lips when

unwillingly they are about to drink it!" To such a woman either the word

"duty" has no meaning or else she is lacking in instruction as to what

duty is. But the coming Country Girl will avoid the mistakes of the

past; she will do everything in her power to gain the training that is

necessary for her to meet successfully and inspiringly the duties and

privileges of the new era.

CHAPTER XV

HEALTH AND A DAY

No one can be the highest type of philosopher unless in exuberant

health.

_Epictetus._

CHAPTER XV

HEALTH AND A DAY

"Give me health and a day and I will make ridiculous the pomp of

emperors!" cried Emerson.

The ultimate use of health is to make us happy, and the deepest hurt of

sickness is that it destroys our power of enjoyment. Moreover, since our

happiness when we are at our human best, consists in adding to the

welfare and happiness of others, our highest in life is sadly crippled

when we allow disease to get the better of us. If we desire to be happy,

we should, as the Camp Fire Girls' law says, "hold on to health" and

with a tight grip.

It used to be thought that health was a gift of heaven bestowed on

certain of its favorites. You had it or you did not have it: that was

all there was about it. By pious behavior and prayer perhaps we might

gain this benefit from the partial hand of heaven--perhaps not! And if

you did anything to help yourself directly to a larger portion of vigor,

ate heartily, or took an invigorating walk, you were in danger of

indulging a selfish spirit that should be curbed.

We have now changed all that belief. We do know that we may inherit

certain disproportions, certain maladies, that interfere with our

soundness; these we have to fight against. Knowing them, we can fight

intelligently. Our duty lies in taking the resources of strength that we

possess, and making the most of them. We are to give ourselves the

largest opportunity to make ourselves useful to our friends and to our

world in general as much as we may with the portion of vigor that we

receive by inheritance, and we are to develop that portion as much as we

possibly can. Doing something for ourselves will sometimes be the

greatest unselfishness.

This teaching the Country Girl should take to heart. It is her duty to

recognize the great value of her physical vigor to the life of her

realm, and to do all in her power to conserve it and to increase it. She

should think of this not only because she is of tremendous importance in

the home of to-day and because its happiness depends in large measure

upon her buoyancy and cheer and hopefulness, which may so easily be

increased or diminished by her physical state, but also because she has

so great a part in bearing the torch of life to another generation. Let

me repeat the words--it is her duty; and again, and yet again let me say

it--it is a duty!

It is a duty to exercise every part of the body, the hands, the wrist,

the fingers, each finger! Every part of the body has a function and

should be prepared for its uses. The lifting muscles, the straightening

muscles, the apparatus that pulls and that pushes, that bends and that

twists; the machinery for stepping with vibrancy, for going uphill, for

going downhill, for walking on the grass, on irregular stony paths, on

cement walks; every kind of movement has its special apparatus in this

wondrously varied human body and all should be developed and rounded

into perfection.

Housework affords a training for more of the body's needs than perhaps

any other occupation. The household administrator has an advantage

there, and the physical vigor of women in this country ought to increase

as they more and more have the opportunity to take up this work in their

homes. Probably when every house in the country has mechanical

appliances so that there will be enough work in the household and not

too much, the health of the nation will increase by leaps and bounds.

At present housework, especially in the country, affords wearying labor

which is not so well adapted to the development of physical strength as

it might be because it is not systematic. Certain parts of the body are

overexercised and certain parts are neglected. The result is frequently

a body with a semblance of strength but with, as you might say, strands

of weakness, rendering it liable to fall at the least onslaught of

infection or unusual strain. These lacks should be made up for by

consistently arranged exercises, by carefully studied diet, and by

proper sleeping plans, so that there may be rightly developed muscular

force--not too much and yet enough; so that there may be perfect

circulation; fat enough and not too much; and that there may be a full

supply of energy. If the young woman is vain enough to wish not to be

portly when she is forty, she must not wait till she is forty-five to go

to work at it; she should begin at twenty to train for that special form

of beauty; if she does this she will soon express it in trimness, in an

energetic and graceful step, in the exact curve of the spinal column at

the small of the back, the right lift of the chest beneath the neck, and

the perfect position of chin, elbows, shoulder blades, hips, feet, and

all the parts of the body, for walking, sitting, standing, running,

sleeping, and for every possible activity. Beauty is a thing to be

valued and worked for; but a greater motive for the attention necessary

to the full development of our physical powers is that we should be able

to give to our children the greatest allotment of beauty and vigor that

we can possibly command.

Miss Goldmark in her valuable study, _Fatigue and Efficiency_, says that

the results of overstrain in the labor of women are manifest in a

heightened infant mortality, in a lowered birth rate, and in an impaired

second generation. We should take this to heart. Not to make a struggle

to increase our store of vigor for the sake of the children that are to

be is to do them a great wrong.

For girls under twenty the responsibility of the mother is greater

because so much depends upon the establishment of the daughter's health

during these earlier years. But girls themselves should take it upon

their own responsibility to a large extent also. In the appendix to

this volume will be found a bibliography where among the works published

by the Young Women's Christian Association, the girl may find some that

will answer many questions that perhaps have puzzled her in the period

of swift growth between fifteen and twenty.

Every mother should be in her daughter's confidence in regard to all

questions of health and physical well-being. And now and then the father

should stand his daughters up in a row before him, look them over, and

see for himself whether they are sound, blooming, well developed and

rosy. Do their chests stand up good and strong? Is the chin well down

and back? Are the shoulders well back? Can they take full, deep, long

breaths? If they were set back against the wall, would the hips be close

to the wall, the shoulder blades nearly flat against the wall and would

the girls be perfectly comfortable in that position? And can they then

walk off, holding the frame in this way, and keep the position firmly

and gracefully? How hard can they hit, how fast can they run, how high

can they jump, how much can they lift, how free are they from pain, and

how happy are they? If the answers to these questions are not

satisfactory, that farmer's crop of humanity does not take a prize! And

he should try to know the reason why. It is not a lightning streak of

divine disfavor that has destroyed this crop. It is just as impossible

that a woman should have a beautiful child if she has been the victim of

overstrain for ten years before that child is born, as it would be to

get a good crop from absolutely untilled ground. The home is the field

for the harvest of children. That ground must be cultivated as carefully

and assiduously as any other, or the harvest will bring no honor to the

family.

If the young girls in the farmstead do not measure up to the standard,

will they try to do what is in their power to make themselves more

strong, fit, and beautiful? It will take six weeks of hard, unremitting

work, by night and day and every hour in the day, to turn a

round-shouldered girl into a well-shaped, straight-shouldered, elastic

figure. Is it worth while? The result will be a girl with better

breathing capacity, more vigor, more beautiful carriage, and in every

way better prepared for a happy life. There are some wrongs that are

done to the young people by neglect of the laws of health that never can

be made up to them. But there is much that can be done, and perhaps it

is not too late to correct some errors and to make up for some losses.

Health conditions on many farms are not up to the mark and among the

causes of this the Report of the Commission on Country Life mentions the

too long hours of work. There are of course other causes. Three meals a

day of pork and bread, seven days in the week, fifty-two weeks in the

year, year in and year out the same, will never produce blooming

youngsters, especially if we are speaking of the delicate constitutions

of girls. Nor will bedrooms hermetically sealed from air during half of

the breathing time, favor development of lung-capacity.

Theoretically, the farm should be the most healthful place for the

growth of human beings; and wherever sanitary conveniences are

installed, health conditions need no betterment. The point is not that

the rural people have declined from a former better condition, but that

they have not gone forward so fast as they might. While the residents of

cities have at the command of new science been making swift progress in

sanitation, working vigorously on the problems of pure food, good water,

the suppression of tuberculosis, pellagra and other diseases, the

country people have not so swiftly answered the call.

Such movements as, for instance, the one to provide pure milk for

babies, lower the death rate in the cities, while the health rate in the

country has not shown a corresponding rise. This is simply because the

country towns have not waked to the importance of these endeavors toward

betterment. The country may be the home of abounding physical vigor;

but many an unsanitary farmstead and many an unregenerated village is

still in a decidedly unmoral state of ill-health.

In this matter a recent investigation in New York State has aroused

serious apprehension. Statistics were made public showing that the death

rate in so-called rural districts was increasing as compared with that

of the large city, New York, the conclusion being that the country would

have to give up its world-old claim to being a supremely healthful place

to live.

If, however, we look into the matter more closely, we may find a ray of

hope. The investigation included under the word "rural" towns of over

eight thousand inhabitants, the division being no doubt made because of

the fact that the United States reports were, up to 1810, made on a like

basis, and other statistics could be more conveniently compared if these

were included. But the census of 1910 makes the word "rural" cover towns

and villages of 2500 and under, and what we understand by rural

conditions pertains to this smaller grouping. The larger grouping

includes a number of towns that are manufacturing in character, that

sometimes contain a large foreign element, that have the beginnings of

congestion without the open air to offset them, and that have

notoriously not followed in the steps of the larger cities in

sanitation. Thus these very unrural towns bring down the average.

We feel, then, that we have a right to take heart of grace and tell

ourselves that the open country is as good for health as it ever was.

Moreover, farm houses are rapidly acquiring the principal appliances for

sanitation. The wells are being looked out for and the pure condition of

the water supply being insured from contagion; and the level of

education in regard to sanitation is being rapidly lifted. At present,

the small towns and the larger villages are about on a par in regard to

indifference to the laws of health, and to the necessity for framing new

ones to meet new demands. But in the smaller villages and in the open

country the necessity is not so pressing because the congestion has not

been so immediate as to cause depression of the death rate there.

Therefore we may say that the girl who is born in the open country or in

the small village is more likely, all other things being equal, to keep

her hold upon life than any other girl in the land.

It is said that sixty per cent. of the school children in the country

suffer from removable physical defects. The countryside has its share of

these. Fortunately for girls, life force is more persistent with them

than with boys, and women are longer-lived than men.

Sometimes fate deprives the home of the mother, and then heavy burdens

fall to the daughter, too heavy for her young and undeveloped body. It

is then that the young girl feels the necessity for a better

understanding of her physical needs. Wanting this, life-long suffering

may be the result of undertaking severe labor ere yet her health is

thoroughly established or her maximum growth has been gained.

There is much, then, for every young woman on the farm both to study and

to practise. The following code of rules is suggested as an aid and as a

reminder:

CODE OF RULES FOR MAINTAINING HEALTH

_Bodily carriage_

Hold the head erect.

Keep the chest high.

Hold the abdomen in.

Rest the weight of the body on the balls of the feet.

Keep this position constantly, by day and by night.

When lying down, stretch out; do not curl up.

_Exercise_

Make a special study of the proper times for exercise and take a

normal amount of it at those times.

Let nothing induce you to undertake severe bodily work or strain

when the body is not in a condition to sustain the strain.

When all conditions are right for it, take a good deal of joyous

exercise. (No one can regulate this for any girl but the girl

herself.)

Learn some systematic exercises and practise them every day.

Systematize the exercise in housework as far as possible and

supplement it when needed by long walks and hill-climbing.

_Correct breathing_

Take long breaths of fresh air on rising and frequently through

the day.

Breathe always through the nose and from the diaphragm.

Keep the air in the room fresh by day and by night.

Breathe deeply to keep the mind clear, the blood pure, and the

spirits buoyant.

_Clothing_

Let the weight of clothing hang from the shoulders.

Have the clothing loose enough to allow free play of the diaphragm

in breathing and of the limbs in exercise.

Protect the feet and ankles from exposure to wet and cold.

Keep the chest well protected but do not over-wrap the neck.

_Food and eating_

Have meals absolutely regularly and at proper intervals.

Choose foods adapted to present needs. Study adaptation of foods

so as to know how to choose.

Drink at least six glasses of pure water daily, between meals.

Always think and speak of something pleasant while eating.

_Elimination of waste_

Free the body from poisonous waste by keeping the bowels active.

By keeping the pores of the skin open.

By using a great deal of well-planned, vigorous exercise.

By general cleanliness.

_Cleanliness_

Take a cold tonic sponge or shower bath every day when in good

health.

Take a warm cleansing bath once or twice a week.

Keep the mouth and skin free from dirt and germs.

Give perfect care to the hair and the finger nails.

Wash the hands before eating or serving food.

Brush the teeth at least twice every day--on rising and on

retiring; after every meal is better still.

Avoid gathering or spreading disease germs through any form of

contact.

_Amount of sleep_

Ten and one-half hours (8:30 to 7:00) for those 10 to 14 years

old.

Ten hours (9:00 to 7:00) for those 14 to 16 years old.

Nine and one-half hours (9:30 to 7:00) for those 16 to 18 years

old.

Eight hours (10:00 to 6:00) for those 20 to 30 years old.

Lost sleep must invariably be made up.

Try to go to sleep happy.

_Rest_

When you work, work efficiently; when you rest, rest efficiently;

whatever you do, do it with all your might.

When resting, relax perfectly; let go.

Stop worrying; think of something else; think of something

cheerful.

Do not yield to impatience or to anger; they shorten life.

Think pure and beautiful thoughts; learn the beautiful thoughts of

others and say them over till they become your own.

Cultivate a well balanced mind; preserve courage and cheer.

_Prevention of illness or of a depressed state of health_

Study the laws of hygiene and of sanitation.

Avoid patent medicines of all kinds.

When ill, consult a reliable physician.

Prevent illness by following the laws of health and by regular

health examinations.

CHAPTER XVI

THE COUNTRY GIRL'S WAGE

"To preserve as things above all price

The old domestic morals of the land,

Her simple manners and her stable worth

That dignified and cheered a low estate,

... the character of peace,

Sobriety, and order, and chaste love,

And honest dealing, and untainted speech,

And pure good-will, and hospitable cheer;

That made the very thought of country life

A thought of refuge, for a mind detained

Reluctantly amid the bustling crowd."

_Wordsworth._

CHAPTER XVI

THE COUNTRY GIRL'S WAGE

A vision had certainly visited the soul of a certain fifteen-year-old

Country Girl of New York State who claimed that the girls of the present

day have a progressive spirit, and that if this spirit of progress is

not found on the farm, they will seek it in the city. The bearing of

this spirit on the question of the Country Girl's wage has made her

think more deeply and feel more keenly than words can express. She

cannot resist the conclusion that unless the young people are paid

definite wages for the work they do on the farm, it will not seem to

them that they are getting on so well as they might in a city office.

This is a delicate diagnosis of a very painful trouble.

Many of the girls realize that the tenure of industry in the city is

light for the person that comes unprepared for it; many realize that the

dangers are thickly set about her path; many know well that the lure of

the city is to be valiantly resisted; but the majority, being but little

accustomed to the handling of money, and having sadly little instruction

as to real values, cannot see why eight dollars a week gained in some

city industry does not represent a fortune. In making her budget at home

the cost of rental and food have not been taken into account, and she

has never been made to realize what these items mean in the new

environment. Parents and teachers and ministers and all sober people in

the farming community are cruelly to blame for the ineptitude of their

neglect in leaving these things unimpressed upon the mind of the young

women in the community and for not watching out for the strangers who

may fill their minds with glowing descriptions not founded on fact

about the abundant opportunity and the free and enjoyable life to be

found in the walks of city work and play. "Let the child earn money,

have money, spend money, save money," advised a country mother; and if

this were done, wisely and all the time, from earliest years up, the

boys and girls would not come to the age of question and desire with so

little preparation for its responsibilities.

From a wide correspondence with Country Girls in many parts of America,

the conclusion is forced upon us that very few of them, even when mature

and hard-working young women, are receiving definite pay for their

service to the household. They are doing a wage-worthy work but they are

not paid for it. Instead the fathers think their duty is done when they

give to the daughters as a benevolence what they, the fathers, think the

daughters should have for their needs and pleasures. Meantime there is a

new thing under the sun, namely, an awakening of the desire for economic

independence in the soul of woman, and the younger women on the farms

are partaking of this spirit. Result, the cityward procession! Some

medieval daughters have not heard of this new spirit, but they will hear

of it and they also will be stirred with a divine discontent.

Many girls gain time and permission to enter into some earning work

outside of the home. The money that they thus gain they generally feel

that they may lay claim to and use it as they think best. At any rate,

the fear that it will not be understood that they do have what they earn

leads them sometimes to emphasize the fact that they do positively

consider what they earn outside of the home as their very own. Public

opinion is ahead of law in this respect. A father who took legal means

to take the earnings of a son under age, was quietly told that the

village would be too small for him hereafter. Perhaps we have not come

to the point where this would invariably happen in the case of a

daughter.

The daughter as she grows up should have a reasonable sum of money to

spend as she likes; this is essential as a matter of education, to

prepare her for the responsibilities that are to be hers as one of the

great body of spenders. She should grow up with a fully trained power to

spend money wisely. And when she becomes mature, if she is strong enough

to do a full-grown woman's work, she should have her self-respect

educated and cultivated by receiving the sum of money that would be her

fair wage if she were not a member of the family. Moreover, a father may

attach his children to himself in a very real and spontaneous service,

if he will allow each child, including the daughters, to be responsible

for some part of the farm business, to own a piece of land or some of

the livestock, and to control the produce thereof. This will be the best

way to train them not only to understand the problems of the farm but to

feel that interest that comes only through possession and

responsibility. The daughter will be as keenly responsive under this

method as the son.

Dr. Anna Howard Shaw in a recent address made a good point. It was in

effect something like this: She said that if the farmer gave his son a

colt, not a scrub colt but one of the very best on the farm to be all

his own and to do with as he chose, that colt would tie the boy to the

farm as nothing else could unless it was a share of the farm itself. The

same, she said, was true in regard to the girl who went out to milk the

cows because that was part of her duty, without having any heart or

interest in the result of the milking; but if she were given a cow, one

of the best of the herd as her own, she would not only be interested in

the milking of that one, but all the cows she milked would give more

milk--she would do all her work better because of the interest she took

in the work.

This is not saying that either the girls or the boys are unconscientious

in their work and will not do well unless they have a selfish motive; it

is only to say that they are human beings and all the more like grown-up

people. Dr. Shaw added as her opinion that the ownership of the boy and

girl should not end merely with the colt and the cow. Each year they

should feel that a certain percentage of the net profits of the work

should belong to them, and that they were having a chance to accumulate,

even though it was only a very small part of the income a year.

"If I had a farm and had sons and daughters on it," said Dr. Shaw, "I

would sit down and discuss the whole matter of the work of the farm with

them, and agree upon a certain share of the net and then let each one

have his or her share, and encourage them to invest it, but leave them

free to use their own judgment as to the investment. Until something of

this sort is done, I am afraid that the boys and girls more and more

will turn from the farm to the city; and who can well blame them, even

though it costs them more to live in the city than they can make?

Sometimes one feels happier in spending every dollar he has merely to

live, if he is free to spend it as he wishes, than he would to save if

he were not free."

This wisdom may sound a little Utopian, at any rate as far as Country

Girls are concerned. Very few girls are assigned any pecuniary share in

the farm. Now and then one remembers that she once had several calves

that were "called" her own; but she does not remember ever receiving any

money from that stock. A mother will share the precious egg-money with

the daughter. One girl confessed to owning a tree, and one a canary.

Another mentioned as her pecuniary share in the farm the fact that she

helped milk! Nearly all would agree with Dr. Shaw that having a share in

the ownership would make them more enthusiastic for the success of the

farm.

If the young woman in the farmstead would be more systematic in the use

of what money she can command, perhaps she would the sooner be trusted

with greater financial responsibility. It certainly is a motive in many

parental minds that the children--they still seem to be children in the

thoughts of some parents even when they have reached years of

discretion--are not wise enough to use money discretely. Often they are

not, but whose fault is it? If children were trained in the use of money

from childhood up, they would not be so foolish when the time comes for

putting this discipline into practise. Parents should remember that they

are sure to wish some time to have a wise, careful son to lean upon.

Then they will wish they had trained the child properly. The same is

true of the daughter. There is nothing more certain than that the

daughters in the wide countryside are being brought up in the main with

very little inkling of business. Now any girl that has gone as far in

her education as to spell and to compute fractions is quite far enough

to be taught the meaning of a deed. And not long after that she should

know the force of the little word "warranty" or "full covenant" or

"quitclaim" written before the word "deed." She should understand

something of the meaning of the fell term "mortgage"--something besides

the fact that when it is mentioned everybody is expected to weep. If

young women grew up with a more common-sense attitude toward this vital

subject, the word would be robbed of some, at least, of its terrors. In

just a few years those young women will be the distributors of the

income for a whole family; they are to be the conservators of the saving

for the fatal day of interest-paying. If they understood more of the

practical working of the matter, the saving would be approached with

less dismay.

Does it not seem reasonable to suppose that if a girl is made to see the

relation of "overhead charges" to the "cost of living," if she has been

taken into family confidence with regard to the business of the farm,

and has been made to understand the difference between the basis for a

girl's wages in town and that in the farm home, she will not run away

under a fatal misunderstanding of conditions there?

Moreover the girl of to-day is to be the home-conserver of to-morrow.

Since the woman is the fore-ordained overseer of the whole business of

spending, we may say that her failure to save and to plan and to adapt,

has been the cause of all our trouble. It makes no difference to the

women of the countryside that the women of the cities are more culpable

in these things than are they; their affair is their own, and their duty

is to attain not some one else's ideal, but their own.

The model home-conserver will have the budget for the year put into

shape; she will know all the items of rent, interest on mortgages (if

the family are so unfortunate as to have these troublesome things to

look after), the dates when the fatal inroad has to be made into the

cherished store of savings, the days when the various taxes are due--the

inheritance, county, village, water and other special taxes--and all

other payments that belong in the system of support that the farm or

village home requires. She must know that the thing to be aspired to and

looked forward to is that at the end of the year the financial income

and outgo should accurately balance. The young woman who neglects her

own small account will not be preparing herself for these larger

responsibilities; and she must be able to make this small one balance if

she expects to do the same with the greater one. The comfort of having

it come out right once will be an incentive ever after; and the effect

upon character of compelling one's self to keep steadily to the task of

mental accuracy, of remembering each item and of putting it down quickly

before it has escaped, will be incalculable. It is not a matter of mere

idiosyncrasy that a young girl may say, "Oh, I cannot keep my accounts

and make them come out right--it's too much trouble for just me!" To

have to confess this should be considered a disgrace. One should conceal

the disinclination to this duty, as one should conceal a disinclination

to give one's hair the thorough weekly washing which that passion for

cleanness that is the mark of the true lady calls for. It is impossible

for a young girl of right instincts to say, "Oh, I would just as lief be

an unclean person!" So it should be impossible for the young girl of

right feeling to say, "Oh, I would willingly be a lazy, ineffective and

partly dishonest person in my understanding of business!"--for slackness

and inaccuracy in business are the next door to dishonesty. In all

finances, to the remotest penny, the rightly constituted girl will be

accurate. If necessity compels her to borrow a small sum, she will repay

it at the earliest possible moment.

It is not the mark of a fine woman to be careless in spending; quite the

contrary. The young woman who has intellectuality and training and taste

to compute her expenses carefully, to use the money to good advantage

and to the best purpose, is the young woman of higher grade, not the one

who wastes, who scatters carelessly and purposelessly, and who indulges

in things costing much and affording no permanent good. Our ideal in

these respects needs some right-about-face orders from our conscience.

"Saving," says Professor Martha Van Rensselaer at Cornell University,

"cultivates self-control, imagination, resourcefulness, character." She

continues: "It is quite right to economize on some standbys and then

spend more for some esthetic object, if the esthetic better satisfies a

real craving connected with the higher life.... It is not meanness to

study economy; it is not 'near' to avoid waste. To work out new uses

that may be made of every particle of food, to get the full food-value

out of every bit of it, is scientific exactness instead."

It is possible that all the skill of the woman in the farm home will be

needed as time goes on to keep the financial foundations of the

farmstead firm. A long look forward seems to discern on the horizon a

rising necessity for greater care, and perhaps for all the skill that

the farm women and other women of the next generation can master. Why

should Nature go on interminably caring for a people who indulge

themselves so heedlessly, so criminally in waste, cutting away their

forests, throwing away good food, refusing to use the supplies of

electric power in their rivers? Of course she will not. Disciplines are

before us. It is the part of wisdom to use greater stringency and more

scientific exactness in our household systems, that disaster may not

come upon us unprepared.

Some prevision of this may be in the minds of women when they endeavor

to give themselves a bit of training for direct money-earning business.

For them, and especially the younger women, openings are being made in

almost every direction. A woman is no longer to be accused of a

tastelessly commercial spirit if she desires to know through actual

experiment the value of her labor in the commercial rating of the

community. It is only by trying that she can thus standardize her labor.

If she offers cabbage plants from her growing patch, honey from her

bee-colonies, wild fruit that she has gathered from God's free gardens,

if she takes boarders, weaves hair, embroiders, or mends, if she takes

advantage of postal service and builds up a business in fine

lace-laundering, or silk and lingerie waist cleansing, whatever she

takes in hand, she is not only earning a little money, but she has

gained skill in manipulation, developed taste, compelled herself to seek

excellence, and strengthened her character by putting her work--and that

means herself--to the test of comparison with the work of others to

stand or fall by the decision. If she has failed in this test, she has

the chance to try harder and gain more character in further struggle.

All this should be looked upon as a part of the girl's training for

life. When parents have presented to the human family a highly developed

and trained young woman as their contribution, they should expect her to

desire to be a worker and to take up some form of activity as the

beginning, in turn, of her personal contribution. Professor Nearing says

that every girl should occupy the years between the latest school days

and her marriage in some wage-earning pursuit. There should be two or

three years there that she could spend in this part of her education.

She should thus learn business law, the stringency of markets, the

balance of purchase and sale, the interchange of commercial motive, and

the art of salesmanship. Here will be a great field of training for her,

and every part of it will be useful to her when she enters upon the

duties of her own house and home.

The best way for any girl to start upon this means of discipline, is to

think over what she can already do well. What have you been praised for

doing? Take that and try to do it still better. What you best like to do

will be the easiest to start with. Do this so well that people will

desire the product. People buy what they think is most excellent:

therefore make something so excellent that people will want to buy it.

And remember this principle: the _appearance_ of anything offered for

sale has a great deal to do with whether people will take a liking to it

or not. Do up all things nicely; make all packages neat and shipshape;

use color if possible; have the box and the cord match in tint; humor

the fancy of the buyer. At a certain country fair the girls in one

particular booth had great success. Why? Their voices were sweet and

they themselves were neatly dressed. But above all, the packages were

done up so deftly and looked so beautiful when they were handed out that

it was not difficult to understand the success of this booth. Buyers

want a good product, but they do like it in a fine package.

[Illustration: This Tennessee girl is a member of a Gardening and

Canning Club. She won the cow and calves as premiums for having the best

exhibit at the State Fair.]

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:

The Tomato Club has meant more to me than I am able to tell. My

two years' experience has taught me how to prepare nice things for

the table, how to beautify the home, and how to make life in the

country attractive and happier. Nothing has done more to train my

mind than our Club work. I have read bulletins, cookbooks, books

on home-making and domestic science, and dozens of different

papers and magazines in the two years' work. I have written

histories of my crops, and compiled "Tomato Recipe" booklets, and

"The Life History of the Tomato"; and have drawn the plan,

complete, of my home and grounds. On all of the above I won First

Prizes in my State and County.

[Illustration: Springtime in the country. City children may well

envy their little country cousins the free life in the open and

the companionship with animals.]

I have as a result of my two years' work two Jersey calves, 17

Indian Runner ducks, raised from a pair I won last year, a pen of

thoroughbred chickens, a tireless cooker, a cut glass bowl, and a

great many small prizes, as well as some cash which I won at

different places. I love best of all my calves, ducks and chickens

and hope to tell you some ups and downs with them some time.

I have always been a "Benton County country girl," and love the

farm and its life. I had been out of my county but twice when I

became a Club member. In the last two years I have traveled in ten

different States--but still like Tennessee best of all. I have

also visited a great many large cities, our National Capital being

one.

Last year, Miss Moore said I could go, as First Prize Winner, with

four other girls to the National Corn Show at Columbia, S. C. We

spent a delightful day in Atlanta, a week in Columbia, and two

days in Charleston on this trip, besides stopping at several other

cities for a few hours. O how grand the Atlantic looked and how

majestic its ships! I thought then that a Tomato Club girl could

be no more highly favored than I.

But this year when Miss Moore wrote me that I had been selected to

go to Washington it seemed too good to believe. What a delightful

time we had, girls and boys from Michigan to Florida and from

South Carolina to Oregon. The greatest people in the land showed

us that they thought we too had some degree of greatness because

we were "Good Farmers and had a purpose in life." We were not

ashamed of our work, either, for I presented "The Highest Lady in

The Land" some of my canned goods, and she very graciously

accepted them and told us she was proud of "her girls." As a final

treat Miss Moore carried me to New York where we met some lovely

people and spent two days full of interest and sight-seeing. Then

home in time for Christmas.

Some have asked me how I won. I don't know, but my County Agent

says, "It's because you TRY to do everything you are told to do in

the work, and do it like you are told." That may be true. I advise

every Club girl to do no less than this anyway.

Full information about the work of Canning Cubs for girls may be

obtained by any one who will write to the Department at Washington or

directly to Mr. Benson, and ask for circulars on the subject. Many of

the State Agricultural Colleges, also, have bulletins on the subject.

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

THE DRESS BUDGET

There is that scattereth and yet increaseth; and there is that

withholdeth more than is meet and it tendeth to poverty.

_Proverbs._

Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth

alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.

_St Paul._

Even the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto but to

minister.

_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

1 suit for best for 1 year, coat for best 2 years $15.00

1 winter coat 6.00

1 winter hat for best 2.50

1 winter hat for school, a felt knock-about 1.00

1 spring coat or party wrap 6.50

1 summer hat 3.00

1 pair gloves, seldom worn here except on Sundays 1.50

1 pair golf gloves .50

4 pairs shoes 10.00

8 pairs of stockings .80

2 pairs rubbers 1.30

2 suits underclothing, winter 1.80

2 suits underclothing, summer .70

3 underskirts, white 2.25

1 underskirt, knitted .50

1 silk underskirt 1.98

2 pairs corsets 3.00

6 corset covers 1.50

4 waists (not worn much) 3.00

1 worsted skirt 1.98

1 linen skirt .98

2 gingham wash dresses 2.00

1 princess slip 1.00

Miscellaneous, per year of nine months 9.00

------

$77.79

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

2 woolen combination suits $3.00

1 corset waist .50

2 flannelette petticoats 1.00

1 black petticoat 1.50

1 waist 3.00

1 dress skirt 3.00

1 woolen dress 3.00

1 winter hat 3.00

1 pair gloves 1.00

6 pairs of stockings 1.50

2 pairs of rubbers .80

2 pairs of shoes 6.00

1 winter coat 10.00

1 spring coat 7.00

6 handkerchiefs .99

------

$45.29

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

6 undervests (summer) $.60

4 undervests (winter) 1.00

4 pair drawers, homemade .80

2 white petticoats, homemade 1.00

3 nightgowns, homemade 1.65

4 underwaists, homemade 1.00

1 gingham petticoat, homemade .40

2 short flannel petticoats, homemade .70

6 plain shirt waists, homemade 2.40

1 white percale dress skirt, homemade .55

1 gingham dress, homemade 1.00

1 muslin dress, homemade 1.50

4 gingham aprons, homemade .72

2 white aprons, homemade .60

4 pairs stockings 1.00

1 pair low shoes 2.50

1 pair high shoes 3.00

1 pair corsets .50

1 hat 2.00

1 wool skirt 3.00

1 suit 12.50

1 raincoat 3.00

1 pair rubbers .60

1 umbrella 1.00

4 collars .40

12 handkerchiefs 1.20

1 pair gloves, lisle .25

1 pair gloves, wool .25

Belts, neckties 1.50

------

$46.62

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

Neat, plain, shirt waists.

Plain, well-made, cotton or wool dresses.

Plain, short, wool skirt. Good material will last longer and prove

more economical in the end.

Clean, plain, well-mended, durable underwear. If trimmed, use

cambric ruffles, lace, or embroidery of good quality. Torchon lace

wears well and is cheap.

Clean collars and neckties.

Neckties and belts should either match or harmonize with skirt or

waist.

Hair neatly and becomingly dressed, not extreme.

Clean hands and finger nails.

Plainly trimmed hat.

Plain, serviceable coat.

Neat, comfortable shoes.

Neat gloves.

Old gloves and shoes are neat when clean and carefully mended.

WHAT A WELL-DRESSED GIRL DOES NOT WEAR TO SCHOOL

Elaborate shirt waists or dresses.

Jewelry.

Low shoes and thin stockings in winter.

Bright, gay colors.

Petticoats longer than dress skirt.

Dusty, spotted clothes.

Fussy neckwear.

Soiled shirt waist and collar.

Dresses or underwaists cut too low.

Short sleeves in winter.

Coats, dresses, skirts, or waists whose buttons or hooks and eyes

are lacking.

Holes in stockings.

Safety-pin showing beneath the belt.

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:

1 winter coat $15.00

1 suit 18.00

1 extra skirt 5.00

2 dark waists 4.00

4 white waists 4.00

2 dark underskirts 2.00

4 suits summer underwear 2.00

3 suits winter underwear 3.00

1 dozen pair stockings 3.00

2 pair corsets 3.00

4 corset covers 2.00

1-1/2 dozen cotton handkerchiefs .90

4 pair gloves 4.00

4 pair shoes 10.00

1 pair rubbers .50

1 umbrella 1.00

3 hats 6.00

1 party dress 10.00

3 white underskirts 4.50

2 summer dresses 10.00

-------

$107.90

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_--

Winter--3 union suits at 75c. (cotton and wool) $2.25

Summer--3 shirts at 25c. .75

3 pair drawers (made at home) at 25c. .75

Two outing-flannel petticoats, 5 yds. at 11c. .55

Two outside petticoats, 5 yds. at 9c. .45

One ferris-waist 1.00

One pair garters .20

Four nightdresses (estimated) 2.00

_Coats, hats, gloves_--

Summer coat 6.98

Winter school hat 1.50

Winter hat (best) 4.50

Summer hat (every day) 3.50

Two pair gloves 2.00

_Rubbers, shoes, stockings_--

One pair rubbers .75

One pair high shoes 3.75

One pair low shoes 2.50

Repairs to shoes 1.20

Eight pair stockings (estimated) 1.63

_Dresses_--

Summer--4 yds. gingham at 50c.--Trimming 23c. (best dress) 2.23

Gingham dress, 6 yds. at 9c.--Trimmings 23c. .77

White middy blouse and skirt--5 yds. material at 12-1/2c. .63

Fall and winter

Blue ratinee--4-1/2 yds. at 25c., trimming and girdle 65c. 1.78

Brown corduroy--6 yds. at 50c., trimming $1.00 4.00

Three shirt-waists--2-1/2 yds. each at 12-1/2c. .94

One pongee waist

(Made from dress of mother, estimated value of waist

to take its place) 1.00

Handkerchiefs, collars, ties, etc. (estimated) 3.00

------

$50.61

Left over for use for another year--

Winter coat,

Sweater,

White panama hat,

White dress,

Princess slip,

Corset cover,

Blue serge dress,

Black and white check dress,

Gingham dress,

House dress.

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.

8 light-weight unionsuits at 25c. $2.00

5 heavy-weight knit unionsuits at $1.00 5.00

8 corset covers (plain) at 25c. 2.00

4 corset covers (fancy) at 60c. 2.40

1 princess slip 1.25

3 white petticoats at $1.50 4.50

2 dark petticoats at $1.00 2.00

4 summer nightgowns (of long cloth or nainsook) at 85c. 3.40

3 winter nightgowns (of outing-flannel) at 62c. 1.86

6 pairs corsets at $1.00 6.00

4 waists (made at home of material easily laundered) at 50c. 2.00

4 waists at $1.50 6.00

1 heavy skirt 5.00

5 cotton dresses at $1.25 6.25

1 dress (silk) 8.00

3 dresses, woolen material at $3.50 10.50

1 suit (coat and skirt) 22.50

1 heavy skirt 5.00

1 sweater 5.00

1 heavy coat 18.00

1 light coat 6.00

1 raincoat 5.00

4 winter hats 11.50

4 summer hats 15.00

2 pairs silk gloves 2.00

4 pairs heavy gloves 4.00

4 ties at 25c. 1.00

24 handkerchiefs 4.25

9 pairs stockings at 50c. 4.50

18 pairs stockings at 25c. 4.50

8 pairs shoes at $2.50 20.00

6 pairs overshoes at 70c. 4.20

Extras: hairpins, tooth-brushes, shoe-polish, various

toilet articles 6.00

Extras: ribbons, velvet, collars, etc. 12.00

-------

Dress budget for three years $218.61

Dress budget for one year $72.87

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

FOUNDING A HOME

The woman that can in the midst of her rigid daily duties fall on

her knees and thank God for the dim, black forests which are the

eternal fans of nature, for the rain that appeases the thirst of

the birds of the air, and the newly sown seed in the fields, that

can feel amid these natural objects awe, admiration, a sense of

infinite force, of boundless life, of duration that is eternal in

its broad and human sweep, leaving her stunned with the

realization of her pigmied self in the presence of these veritable

facts, and at the same time filling her with a deep, maternal

pride that she, too, is a living, necessary factor in God's world

of Rural Life is the one that possesses the power to rise above

the common drudgeries of daily existence. She knows that the

secret of the beautiful and simple life is to make oneself a

symbol of heavenly life.

--_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

THE FARM PARTNER

Efficient housekeeping is the beginning of good citizenship.

--_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

THE COUNTRY GIRL'S TRAINING

Here in America, for every man touched with nobility, for every

man touched with the spirit of our institutions, social service is

the high law of duty, and every American university must square

its standards by that law or lack its national title.

--_President Wilson._

The object of all education is to fit men for service.

--_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.

[Illustration: A lesson in household economics, at Cornell University.]

_A Course in Household Sanitation._ A consideration of the

sanitary conditions of the house and site; the relations of

bacteriology to the household in cleaning, in the preservation of

foods, in diseases, and in disinfection; personal hygiene,

including the care of the body in health; heat, light,

ventilation, and the disposal of refuse; general lectures by

specialists, giving a survey of the field of sanitation.

Teachers' College, Columbia University, New York City.

_A Course in Household Management._ Application of scientific and

economic principles to the problems of the modern housewife--with

discussion of them from both the ideal and the practical point of

view, taking up such problems as: income as determining the type

of household, the budget and its apportionment; the choice of a

dwelling, moving, and settling; house furniture, utensils,

appliances, decoration, supplies, the menu, clothing, maintenance,

cleaning, repairs, household service, apportionment of time,

household accounts, home life.

Home Economics Department, Connecticut College of Agriculture, Storrs,

Connecticut.

_A Course in Laundry Work._ The principles and processes of

laundry work; equipment and materials required to do good work in

the home laundry, and the use and economy of labor-saving

appliances; practical work in the processes of laundering,

sorting, soaking, removal of stains, etc.; special methods of

washing different fabrics; starching, ironing, and folding;

experiments with hard and soft water, soap making, and composition

of bluing.

Simmons College, Boston, Massachusetts.

_A Course in House-planning._ The designing and construction of

the modern house; study of the plans and specifications in order

to train the student to be able to read drawings, and understand

the items of foundation, walls, plastering, heating, plumbing,

roofing, and finishing; the history of furniture, color, and

interior decoration; a consideration of fabrics, and wall

coverings.

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

_First Year:_ Hygiene, biology, chemistry, household

administration, cookery, physical training, and some electives.

_Second Year:_ English, French or German, biology, nutrition,

cookery, chemistry, physical training and electives.

_Third Year:_ History, economics, household administration,

clothing, textiles, nursing, and electives.

_Fourth Year:_ English, administration, hygiene, social science.

[Illustration: Children in a country school scoring corn. Everywhere the

country is responding to the call of Progress, and these members of a

new generation are striving to reach the best.]

The elective studies in this general course may be taken from among such

titles as these: Dietetics, household sanitation, eugenics, sewing and

embroidery, textiles (woolens, silks, cottons), clothing, laundering,

landscape art, plant breeding, poultry husbandry, bee culture, pomology,

vegetable gardening, meteorology, rural economy, marketing, cooperation,

organization, rural education, citizenship. Such courses as these are

given at Cornell University, at Simmons College, Boston, at Connecticut

Agricultural College, at the University of Chicago, and elsewhere.

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

A GREAT OPPORTUNITY

The mission of the ideal woman is to make the whole world

home-like.

--_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.

_My dear Mrs. Crow:_

Responding to your letter, permit me to enclose you herewith a

marked copy of my report which accompanied the bill from the

Committee on Agriculture. I say unhesitatingly that the problem of

the farm wife is one of the most vital of all of our rural

problems and when this bill was drawn, I had in mind the use of a

reasonable portion of the funds for the amelioration of her

condition. I think the exact division of the funds should depend

upon conditions in each individual State and may be increased or

decreased as seems wise to those charged with the handling of the

funds. I believe that the home economics feature of this bill is

one of its most important features. In my own State one-fourth of

the funds are to be used for the teaching of home economics by

means of the itinerant teacher. This may be found to be

insufficient and if it is the ratio can be changed. I would feel

greatly disappointed if those who use these funds should in any

manner get it into their minds that the home economics feature of

the law is not regarded by the author as important. Trusting this

will be of service to you,

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

THE ILLS OF ISOLATION

The fruits of modern inventive skill and enterprise have enriched

country life and have banished forever the extreme isolation which

used to vex the farm household of the past. The farm now is

conveniently near to the market. The town, churches, and schools

are near enough to the farms. The world's daily messages are

brought to the farmer's fireside. And the voice of the nearest

neighbor may be heard in the room though she may live a mile away.

--_Professor G. W. Fiske._

CHAPTER XXII

THE ILLS OF ISOLATION

"Isolation" is a word that the Country Girl does not very much use, but

still she feels the meaning of the word. This note sounds in the

unusually frank answer of one who did not speak for herself but said

that she really thought some of the other girls went away to the city

because there was no one in the village for them to marry, and in the

naive words of the girl who stated that she always said a club was a

very good thing. Where the community does not afford the social life

they crave as a part of their development, as the natural normal state

for their self-expression, and as a part of their plans for life, it is

no wonder they seek it elsewhere. This is one of the chief causes of the

cityward tendency. For this reason the girls are willing to exchange the

pure air of the country for the close atmosphere of the town; the safe

and kindly surroundings of the rural home for the dangerous conditions

of the city, its unregulated contacts, its promiscuity and its perils,

and its loneliness in the midst of the indifference of strangers. There

is a forbidding solitariness in the city that is to that of the country

as a desert to a garden. This misery attacks one even more virulently on

the noisy boulevard than along the whispering country lane. But this the

Country Girl does not know, and she seeks relief from a woe that she

does understand.

Perhaps the young woman on a lonely farm in some remote region does not

realize this. She may be too dulled and discouraged by the effects of

isolation to know either what is the trouble with her or even that

there is any definite thing the matter.

The lack of companionship is indeed a very real hardship; for

companionship is necessary to our growth as well as to our happiness.

The solitary girl on the remote farm or in the obsolescent village has

small share in this form of education and remains with her resources

undeveloped. For her natural and normal education she needs a great deal

of association with other young growing human beings; something

therefore must be devised to supply this need or the Country Girl will

not have the happy and well-rounded life on the farm that is her right.

One woman in giving reasons why she preferred the city said she would

"rather have folks than stumps!" Truly. Very few farms, however, consist

solely of what is represented by the expressive word "stumps"; and as

for "folks," it is possible to have in city life a plethora of social

contact so that leisure for thought, reading and study, or for any form

of self-development, is unknown. Besides there are "folks" and "folks";

and a neighborhood full of cousins and friends is an unsurpassed shelter

for the favorable growth of the young human being.

But ah! there is the very point. A neighborhood! If every Country Girl

had a neighborhood to grow up in, a group of homes about her to afford

her companionship, she could ask nothing better. But there are many

girls living on remote and lonely farms far away from any neighborly

environment; to such as these the isolation is a very real sorrow. It

falls as heavily upon the farmer's daughter as it does upon the farmer's

wife--even more heavily if possible, for she is generally led to realize

her need at a time when her social instincts are most insistent. To make

for the young woman in the farm home a life so interesting, so

fascinating, so full of purpose and of the possibilities of

self-expression, that the loss of "folks" will to some extent be made up

to her, and to give to her as much companionship as possible and the

effects of companionship through all known means that can be devised,

should be the object of an earnest and widespread effort.

A visit made to a country girl who lived at a farm that was on a steep

hillside in a lonely part of the world far from any town or village,

left a very deep impression. I was riding through that region with a

cousin on my way to the railroad twenty miles off.

"In that house," she said, pointing to a dilapidated farmhouse nearly

smothered in greenery and totally unkempt in appearance, "lives a

relative of ours, a second cousin. We must stop and see her."

"Oh, no," I cried out, for I was then young and selfish; "don't let me

have to see any more relatives to-day."

"Yes, we must stop," said my firm cousin. "She is a good girl and will

remember it always if you stop, and will be bitterly disappointed if you

do not."

We drew up; a figure promptly appeared on the rickety porch and came

down between the tall grasses that almost obliterated the path to the

torn gate.

"How old is she?" I whispered.

"About twenty-eight; yes, twenty-nine next December."

"She looks forty," I said.

"You must remember she has had a hard time on this farm--it's no good,

the farm, and she and her father live here alone now."

Cousin Artemisia--for that was her ironical apportionment as to

name--came down to the buggy and stood between the wheels and reached

over a long slim hand in greeting to my companion. I thought she would

never let go. Then I was introduced. Cousin Artemisia stood back and

looked at me as if she would read every thought in my whole soul. The

most devouring curiosity, the most rapt wonder, the still,

thunderstruck, hypnotized look of absorbed contemplation, were in her

eyes. All my features went, I am sure, into her memory's irremediable

printing, to stay there forever. All this--more shame to me!--was only

a bother to me, for I did not at all understand what it could mean to a

poor lonely soul to have a vision of a young relative from the great big

outside world. I will not accuse myself of cruelty--only of ignorance

and carelessness; but that, of course, is bad enough. To pay me for

this, and as a perpetual punishment, I have the memory of her last look.

After some suave and polite nothings from my lips I nudged my driver

cousin and we went on over the hill, leaving Artemisia alone with her

solitariness, stunned, it may be, for the moment by our swift passing,

as a prisoner might be into whose dark cell a ray of light had

penetrated and then been quickly withdrawn, making the darkness blacker

than before. That last long look! I cannot describe it, but I shall

remember it always. At that moment there was in Cousin Artemisia's face

the suppressed longing of the imprisoned soul, the appeal for help to

one that was believed to have had opportunity, the cry of the hopelessly

restricted longings, the desire for companionship, suppressed for years

and accumulated unbearably.

The memory of that quarter of an hour with Cousin Artemisia has driven

it home to me that the young woman in the solitary farm house wants and

needs the means of self-expression as much as little Helen Keller needed

the means to reveal herself that would take the place of the hearing and

speaking and seeing that had been denied her. What would have happened

to her if she had not had gateways opened to her mind and soul so that

she could give out and receive, is what happens to all of us unless we

have our powers developed by contact with others and by giving and

taking intellectual and spiritual goods. Dumbness is a hindrance to

growth. Excessive shyness and secrecy, bashfulness, a spirit of

seclusion, sensitiveness, and other faults that attack young people in

the growing years, are a result of the lack of the liberalizing and

purifying ministry of companionship and they are an inhibition of

development.

An account by a rural school-teacher presents a picture that is

gruesome, and any one that wishes may omit it from the reading; but it

suggests a possibility and drives home a lesson. Circumstances required

her for a time, she said, to take care of an old lady, who lived with

her husband and daughter on a lonely farm. All that they had in the

house were the old things the mother had kept house with forty years

ago. The chairs had been scrubbed till not a particle of paint was left;

and their meals were alike three times a day--pork, potatoes and bread.

Not a book was there to read except a few old school books and the

Bible. The young woman who tells the story stayed a week, and it was the

longest week she ever spent. The farmer's daughter was about eighteen

years old. She seemed a bright young girl; but two years after that,

while the father was gone to the factory, she hung herself in the barn.

The school-teacher did not wonder; she said that if she had had to live

in such a house, life would have been a burden.

Of course that is an extreme case. The suicide rate is higher for the

city than it is for the country; it is higher for men than it is for

women; the proportion of suicides over sixty-five years of age is

greater for rural districts in our country than it is for cities. This

may not especially interest the young woman on the farm; but it concerns

us to see that all the younger people should have the natural normal

life that will satisfy their physical, mental and moral needs; and that

they should realize early that they are to be supplied with the career

that their natures demand, in order that they may not despair before

they have really begun to live.

A conviction dwells in the minds of many Country Girls that the

quietness and freedom from interruptions on the farm form one of the

chief reasons for desiring the rural life. There certainly is truth in

this. The jaded city worker flees to the calm of the country for relief

from people and things. But it is also true that isolation is not a

good in itself and too much of it is directly harmful. We develop not by

it but in spite of it. No man can be a true man, no woman a true woman,

who has not been molded by human companionship. We should "live in the

House by the Side of the Road" and unite our interests with those of

humanity at large. We do not know ourselves except as we know others.

Whether we are above the level of average human capacity, or below it,

or simply different from others, or, what is more usually the case,

different in some things and like in others, we do not know except by

comparison with others. Companionship with others brings us knowledge

of our defects, our omissions, our weaknesses, sometimes of our strength

and power to give and to help.

Therefore, the normal development of the daughter on the farm depends

largely upon having the heavy weight of rural solitariness lifted. She

may not know this herself; but the quickness with which her spirit

responds to the touch of companionship between herself and a friend of

her own age, when fortunate occasion brings her this pleasure, shows

what her need is. It is now said that the young men and the young women

in college give to each other almost as much education as is given to

them by the teachers themselves. In other words the social contact

possible where many young people are brought together has such power to

quicken energy and to incite noble rivalries that it alone becomes one

of the most effective means of education.

This education and opportunity should be within reach of every Country

Girl, and she may herself do a great deal to bring this about. In

endeavoring to do her share in thus developing the social resources of

the country, the Country Girl must, however, work for a time against a

disadvantage. At present the young girl from the country makes the

impression of being less developed than the young boy. As a general

thing he has had a great deal more outlook, more responsibility, more

contact with outside influences. He goes with his father to town; the

father and the brother look upon this excursion as a task, and they

think this is work that can be done by them and save the women-folk all

that trouble. But the fact is that this going to town is a means of

getting at least some outlook into the great world beyond that the farm

circle did not give, an enlargement that would be just as good for the

sister as for the brother. The sons come back joyous and electrified and

able to work better afterward. Meantime the daughters have stayed at

home in the treadmill, unexcited and dull; and because they have lacked

the stimulus of the excursion into the outer world they get the

discredit of being gloomy and stupid. If they had driven to the village

also, or to call upon a girl friend, they would have returned joyous and

eager, full of talk and energy, and with new ideas to add to the family

discussion.

The efficient Country Girl of to-day is often as equal to the management

of the intractable horse as a man: she rides the disc-plough and she

runs the automobile. It would only be in some backward section of the

country or in some tradition-bound family, where the daughter could not

drive the horses and have the use of a conveyance to go to town whenever

it seemed to her to be necessary. It has been suggested by an eminent

authority that the farm woman should go to town once a week and should

also go to a neighbor's every week for an afternoon's visit. What then

should be the excursions of the daughter during the years when she is

growing up and becoming a young lady, entering upon her duties as

hostess and social leader? There should not a day pass when she does not

have some contact with the social world of the rural community. She

should have a large letter-writing correspondence and make it yield her

all the culture possible. She should take part in every commendable

social organization that is accessible and with her mother's cooperation

make her home a center of gracious social welcome to friends and

neighbors. With the new machinery there will be much greater

simplification possible in the household, and in the wake of this may

enter our old-time friend, Hospitality, so long and sadly missed from

our ferny lanes.

Perhaps it is not necessary to suggest that the greatest care should be

taken to place under the safest conditions the social life in which the

daughter bears a part. In order that this may be so there is no better

safeguard than that the mother should be in closest confidence with the

daughter, should be present at all the parties, should be in all the

fun. This is the scheme now most approved under the best social auspices

and is adopted in the country wherever they live up to the most refined

models. It means that the mother must never lose the thread of her

daughter's confidence; and if she has done so by the mistake of some

past day, she must leave no stone unturned, by tact and love and prayer,

to regain the lost ground. It means joining in all the games; it means

taking an interest in all the youthful plans. It means adapting her mind

to the youthful mind. It means--but why should I tell mothers what that

means? They know. And the daughters must do their part too in keeping

the confidence-thread between themselves and their mother always perfect

and golden.

When a community is really dead, we may know the fact by the absence of

sociability. The whole country problem hinges chiefly upon this social

matter; and as the woman is the essential upholder of the community the

world over in social affairs, it behooves the young woman in rural life

to prepare for these responsibilities if she will ward off from the farm

and village community a deadly and intolerable inaction.

After all Cousin Artemisia was not in such a parlous state. If those

eager eyes had had no expression in them at all, if the curiosity in

them had long since faded into indifference and a dull unresponsive look

had taken its place, then a just observer might well have had cause for

compassion for that young woman into whose soul the iron of isolation

had gone so deeply that it had hardened and deadened the best part of

her. If a life has been lived through with all its experiences and has

been one long record of unsatisfied longing for the impossible, and if

the end came without ever one break in the cloud that hid away an

imagined world of fulfilment and success, and if during it all there had

been never an instant's let-up from the momently waiting for the sun to

break through, such a life as that has been a success. Not to attain is

not failure. The only failure is to cease trying, to stop aspiring, and

to let the dream and the vision fade away from the face of the

unresponding clouds.

Some one may say, Why then touch her in this obliviousness of her

unfilled possibilities? The same fallacy lies beneath all missionary

work, all philanthropy, all striving upward. We wish every Country Girl

in the remotest stronghold of conservatism to be touched with that

divine discontent that will stir her to an upward struggle.

Among the six million Country Girls for whom this book is written, there

are many who are tremendously and honorably efficient; there are also

many who are by no means awake to their duty and opportunity; but the

vision will soon touch the eyes of all, and will reveal to them the part

they may play in the new Country Life era.

Not for her own sake alone does any girl strive. All she does lifts

everywhere as well as in her own valley. And these beneficent influences

will reach out and include other and still other circles of girls who

repose under the protection of the republic. Among these one may see the

puzzled eyes of Porto Ricans, and of Aleutian and of Philippine girls.

And there are found two larger companies: the dark-skinned girls with

the tragic remembrance of slavery in their eyes, and the aquiline faces

of the Appalachian mountain girls, dignified and quietly expectant and

our close racial kin. Among these adoptive and neglected fields there

will be hollows of stagnation and delays of progress. For the

reclamation of these we are not by any means doing what we might as a

people; they some way escape the great abundantly filled currents of

philanthropy; and if they soon become discontented and ominous, we shall

have ourselves to blame. It would be better to be beforehand with

nature's demands and arouse noble aspirations that may forestall wrong

tendencies.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE SOLACE OF READING

THE EVENING HOUR

The day is done; the clock is striking eight;

The children now are snug and safe abed;

Still on the pillow lies each little head,

Tired out, altho' they begged to sit up late.

I cover the fire within the kitchen grate,

Mix up a light sponge for the morrow's bread,

Wind up the faithful clock; with quiet tread

Depart, and leave my kitchen to its fate.

The study calls me to my favorite nook

Beside the table, underneath the light.

Here shall I joy me with a gracious book

Until at last I bid my world good-night.

O peaceful dreams beneath the homestead roof!

Ye straighten out life's tangled warp and woof!

--_Helen Coale Crew._

CHAPTER XXIII

THE SOLACE OF READING

The countryside does not sufficiently appreciate the value of its asset

in the changing seasons. The alternation of winter and summer gives the

admirable opportunity for the harvest for support, and for the fireside

evenings for culture; the two combined make the possibility of an ideal

life. Even in the busy time of summer, the farmer who scientifically

organizes his scheme of farm work, will be able to give one day a week

at least for reading and the study of the literature of farming. Perhaps

the number who compose this orderly scheme of work may at present be

small, nor has any such boon of system including leisure for reading

reached the farm woman. How that older woman on the farm has felt about

this, is one of the great complaints lying back of the Country Life

Movement. Will the Country Girl be obliged to inherit this deprivation?

From the Country Girl of to-day, the report is far more cheering than

from the older women. She has many books at hand. She feels no poverty

in this regard. Sometimes they say: "We have a very large library in our

house--as many as a hundred books," or they say, "My father left us a

large law library," and they seem to love to gaze at the brown backs of

these volumes. Certainly this pride in the inheritance is noble.

If you ask Country Girls what books they have for their very own, they

will in many cases give long representative lists. Encyclopedias will be

included and sometimes books of reference. Their library lists give an

insight into the taste in reading of the American Country Girl that is

most gratifying. The first impression is that her taste is well founded

in classics; the second, that she keeps up with the times. She shows on

the whole great catholicity.

We cannot give room to the long lists: but we may mention some of the

books that, in response to our request, some Country Girls mentioned as

favorites.

In a long list of books that are her own an Iowa girl stars the

following as her favorites:

Life of Ellen H. Richards

Shakespeare's Works

Whittier's poems

_Ben-Hur_

_Uncle Tom's Cabin_

_Kidnapped_

_Quentin Durward_

_The Woman Who Spends_

The stories she enjoys reading when she is tired; the others she takes

to study.

Another mentions these:

All of Mrs. Porter's

Several of Stewart Edward White's

Several of Ralph Connor's

Three of Fox's

Two of Churchill's

_Shepherd of the Hills_

_Johnson's Natural History_

_Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant_

Life of Livingstone

Robert E. Speer's works

She adds Dickens, Poe, Alcott, Whittier as starred favorites.

In a list of twenty books, a Colorado girl stars a large number. The

list is headed by "The Library of the World's Greatest Books." Then she

mentions:

_Laddie_

_Freckles_

_Girl of the Limberlost_

_Barriers Burned Away_

_Lady of the Lake_

_As a Man Thinketh_

_The Choir Invisible_

_Little Women_

Her list includes also the Life of John Bunyan, the Life of Christ, the

works of George Eliot and of Burns, and many more standard and popular

books. She has had a course at college and reads the U. S. Bureau of

Agriculture Bulletins.

Books starred by an Idaho girl are:

_At the Foot of the Rainbow_

_Promised Land_

_Friar Tuck_

_Treasure Island_

_King of the Golden River_

_Water Babies_

_The Crisis_

_The Varmint_

Set of Kipling

Set of W. Irving

She includes also Riley, E. B. Browning, Wordsworth, Burns.

One writer who lives sixty miles from any kind of library is so

fortunate as to have all of Dickens, Scott, Shakespeare, and a copy of

Longfellow, Tennyson and Browning. "I have," she says, "a great many

miscellaneous books, _The Promised Land_, _Laddie_, _A Girl of the

Limberlost_, _The Friendly Road_, and books of that kind. The first

three authors are my favorites; but the Bible and Longfellow are the

most comfort and enjoyment."

On the whole there are comparatively few to complain, as one did, that

the Bible and a paper now and then compose their entire means of outlook

into the world of literature; or as this one said: "When I was at home

my only book that was my own property was the Bible." Fortunately this

young girl had thus a compendium of all literature, and she is coming

out all right.

It also should be a surprise that there should be so few to include a

list like this: "_Prue and I_, some books on the economic status of

woman, and a few books on domestic science." But perhaps Country Girls

would not think to classify their interest in such studies as these

under the heading "reading."

The mothers and daughters, if requested together, would no doubt mention

some of the same interferences with the pleasure of reading; but the

daughters give some that the mothers would never have thought to state.

Work is the great interference for both. The daughters are deterred by

housework, sewing, picking blue-berries, darning stockings. Weariness,

the tired-out feeling, come in. There is so much work to be done in

doors and out, and the barn work lasts so late; the evenings are short

and when the work is finished, it is time to retire.

It is rather pathetic to see how many Country Girls will mention the

moment of getting to bed and to sleep as the happiest point in the day.

But then--no one has yet said that she was too tired to sleep--and that,

we are sure, has happened many and many times to the mothers of yore!

And when the daughter speaks of having been kept from reading by her

demonstration work duties, we certainly hear a note of the new era being

struck. But what farm woman of the old days ever gave "so many other

pleasures," or "too many places to go," as reasons for not reading?

Piano practise, too, and "friends running in" prevent the reading. There

cannot be much isolation in such a farmstead as that!

Many Country Girls insist emphatically that in spite of difficulties

they do read a good deal. Such a girl says that when she has a book the

hour of night draws nigh too soon. Another always reserves a few hours

each week for reading, though sometimes she can not make it every day. A

determined girl declares that she lets nothing interfere with a certain

amount of reading. This sort of testimony reaches a height in one who

says that she reads or studies five hours every day. Yet the girl who

wrote that does most of the housework for a small family and takes care

of a large garden.

A few lament the scarcity of books. They have no opportunity to get

books aside from the few belonging to one's friends; but these are soon

read and re-read. Lack of material is the chief interference with

reading with an uncomplaining but very important minority.

If there does really remain any girl in the country who does not know

that she can get books from the traveling libraries that are maintained

now by almost every State, the glad message should be taken to her at

once. And any girl with a fair share of energy could start a small

library in her village or her community, even as the peripatetic

librarian did in Mr. Bouck White's book, _The Mixing_, who carried the

books about to every house and pressed them upon the family at its very

threshold. In that case the house was the castle of the woman as well as

the man, but the little librarian battered an entrance with her winning

ways. After a while everybody blessed her, and her old mare and wagon

were welcomed along the roads.

Or the Country Girl might begin with a book exchange club in which each

member buys a book a year and these are handed from member to member by

the month or as shall be agreed upon. Meetings may be called to talk the

books over and fine discussions of ethical points involved in the

stories read may be held. At the end of the year the books may be lodged

in some convenient place to be used by others not members of the club.

In this way a nucleus is made for a regular library. The same can be

done with magazines. At the end of the year a "banquet" may be held;

each member may be dressed up to represent some book, speeches may be

made while good things are eaten, and literary conversation may to some

extent drive out less worthy and less interesting themes. Almost

anything can be done if there are young people enough to get together

and talk over plans. The whole tone of the community may be lifted and

many a young person may be saved from the evil things that creep in

where the mental spaces have not been forestalled by better ideals.

Many a Country Girl has laid the foundations for a regular public

library by using the country store and the schoolhouse for book

stations. In one very successful attempt of this kind, one hundred books

of fiction and travel, children's books, religious books, history, and

biography were chosen. Voluntary assistance was given by friends, and

records were carefully kept. The following were the appliances

necessary. Besides the one hundred books, there were five hundred book

labels, one hundred borrowers' cards, four record books for the

librarian, three small memorandum books for the stations, three

typewritten book lists or catalogs, and one hundred hand bills. On the

borrowers' cards were printed the directions, which were these: "Any

responsible person wishing books may borrow them one at a time; no book

may be kept out longer than two weeks; no charge is made for the use of

books; please take care of them and return them promptly." The librarian

visited the stations at regular intervals and took up the books that

were returned.

There can hardly be a more definite way in which a girl may serve her

community than by starting some such scheme as this. If her own home

were conveniently situated, she could use it as book station.

It is to be feared that the Country Girl does not make the most of one

great privilege: namely, to lead the family to indulge the luxury and

joy of reading aloud together on winter evenings from some interesting

author. Even in a family that is fond of reading, each member of the

circle will be seen when lamps are lighted to settle down to read from

the book or paper that interests himself or herself alone, and all the

good of unified thought, that might be theirs if they had read aloud, of

vital interruption and comment, of living together in mind and growing

together as the story develops, of enjoying the humor and romance

together, are entirely lost. To read great pieces of literature together

in the family is to put a personal consecration about the genius-crowned

work of the master spirit. Never can a great epic or drama mean so much

to any one of us by closet perusal as it would if we had shared it with

our next of kin. This is another place where losing our life is gaining

our life. Our treasure is doubled by giving it to others. Winter

evenings and Sunday afternoons all the year round, may be made memorable

by association with the greatest minds through their preserved works.

The complaint has been made that there is no literature of farm

life--that our literature is now completely urbanized and

industrialized. There certainly is a tendency in this direction,

especially in the realm of fiction. But it is possible to find some that

are giving the country its due, and the writings of Mrs. Porter, so dear

to Country Girls, are a proof of the fact.[1]

But if the Genius of Fiction has become absorbed with the problem of the

city, that of Poetry has remained true to its first love among the

fields and streams. It is a joy to know that the poets will always be

found among the books chosen for the happy winter evening in the country

home. There, if not in fiction and tale, countryside people find a

reflection of their thoughts. Perhaps this is because poetry is the one

art that can conveniently penetrate to the distant homes in remote rural

places. Since time immemorial country life seems to have been not only

an inspiration to poets, but also to the development of our powers of

expression in that highest of the arts. What is there about life in the

open that gives to genius its incentive? The beauty of the surroundings

ought to be a sufficient answer. But perhaps that very individuality

that we blame country life for overdeveloping may be the favorable

ground for the upspringing of this noble human blossom. At any rate it

seems that if a soul is born with the endowment of genius, the psychical

offices of country life will carry those native qualities to their

highest power. Many a city child has been born with the light of genius

in its eyes and has had this fire smothered out in the close air and

wild rush of the metropolis. But the woods still face the window where

Bryant looked out into their mysterious depths, and the brook still

sings its way down from the mountains and past the farm where he spent

his early years. To him the Berkshire groves were God's chosen temples,

first and last.

It is because of this that the poetic writers of the present day and

hour should find a sympathetic hearing in the country realm even when

the turmoil and drive of the metropolis are deaf to their music. If our

living poets may have the people of the countryside for their great and

widespread audience they need ask no greater joy.

Mr. Vachel Lindsay, a wandering poet who has traveled almost all over

this country preaching his Gospel of Beauty and Democracy, says that in

almost every ranch-house "is born one flower-girl or boy, a stranger

among the brothers and sisters," a "fairy changeling." The land, he

says, is being "jeweled with talented children," from Maine to

California. These children of to-day, though they may not be adapted to

the strain of heavy labor, yet they will be infinitely patient with the

violin, or chisel, or brush, or pen. Country people should be on the

watch for those rare wonder children who will be the poets of the

future. One of these may seem at the beginning like a simply unusual

child. Afterward it may be seen that what was thought queer or

different, may have been higher or supreme. We may not have been

ourselves sufficiently attuned to the supreme in human accomplishment to

recognize the elements in their beginning. Great genius is not "to

madness near allied," but is the sanest and most normal thing in the

whole realm of creation. The extension of human powers in the field of

what we call "genius" is what makes the benefactor of the race in any

field most successful and the reformer most influential.

Moreover, every child has the right to find forces in his world that

will make his powers, however great or however small, grow to the full

measure of which he is capable. If one has a little ability in the field

of any one among the arts, he has a right to experience the joy and the

benefit that as much training as he is capable of taking shall give to

him. Therefore artistic training should be given to every child. And

since poetry is the art that is most widely disseminated, the one most

practical in its service and cheapest to get hold of in places far

distant from picture galleries and concert halls, therefore there should

be in all the homes in the open, a great deal of poetry, in order to

satisfy the demand that is deeply imbedded in every human being for the

satisfaction of the love of beauty.

Here is indeed a great service for the daughter in the family to supply.

She is the poetic individual in the home circle. It will be readily

acknowledged as fitting that she should know poetry by heart. That she

should sing poetry feelingly and speak it effectively will be forgiven

by a business-hardened parent and a rough, deriding brother, more

readily than if any other member of the family circle should make the

attempt. And the persevering and enthusiastic girl will be repaid by

finding that the tight outer case of the father will after a time be

loosened and that he will be surprised to find himself enjoying what he

did not know he liked. She will be gratified again when the heroic

ballad, told to appeal to the brother who is in the chivalrous and

fighting era of boyhood, fulfils its mission not only by amusing him,

but by leading him up to the chivalric motives and to the conquest of

selfishness by the higher ideal of honor and devoir. If, too, she will

select for her evening reading volumes of the poets who are writing

to-day in her own country, writing out of today's life and mood and hope

and pain, she will be far more likely to find a sympathetic response in

her living audience, than if she chooses from the pages of any souls of

poets dead and gone, however classic.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] In the Appendix to this book will be found a reference to a special

bibliography made as a guide to certain works of fiction that do

illustrate country and village life in various States.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE SERVICE OF MUSIC TO THE COUNTRYSIDE

HARMONIES

The scrubbing's done; my kitchen stands arrayed

In shining tins, and order reigns supreme.

And on the table, like a fairy dream,

A row of pies and cakes, all freshly made

And full of spicy odors, stands displayed;

While from the oven, like a rising stream

Of incense, comes a fragrance, warm, supreme ...

The bread, its final browning still delayed.

Now while I sit beside the oven door

I take up my guitar upon my knee,

And singing the old songs I knew of yore,

My happy youth comes back again to me--

Music and incense rising on the air!

Courage is mine, and all the world is fair!

--_Helen Coale Crew._

CHAPTER XXIV

THE SERVICE OF MUSIC TO THE COUNTRYSIDE

Mrs. Gene Stratton Porter in her book, _At the Foot of the Rainbow_,

makes a certain Scotch character say that he does not care for better

talking than the "tongues in the trees"; for sounder preaching than the

"sermons in the stones"; finer reading than the "books in the river";

no, nor better music than the "choirs of the birds." This music he calls

the music of God; he would rather have this, every time, than "notes fra

book."

This philosophy of Dannie Macnoun's is excellent; but we must not forget

that God made the "notes fra book" also, and gave us our power to design

and to enjoy them. It is true also that there is little man has done in

copying after the ideas of God that comes so near to the divine as do

his attempts in the realm of music. This field nearly all, if they have

ears to hear and a voice to sing, can approach in some, at least, of its

aspects.

The service of music to the human soul is so excellent that it seems as

if it must be one of the necessities. Why does the shepherd invariably

possess a flute? The answer is this: some kind of music he _must_ have

in his solitary life, and the flute is the instrument that can be

carried in the pocket. The ills of isolation may be measurably

alleviated by this harmonious companionship and this fact seems to meet

a fairly widespread appreciation along our countryside. The emphasis is

however placed almost entirely upon instrumental music. The piano of

course predominates; but the organ frequently takes its place, the

violin, 'cello, cornet, flageolet, guitar and trombone are also found.

Then there comes in the phonograph, the graphophone, the Victrola, and

the Angelus music-box; the instrument that stands for "all that ever

went with evening dress" appears among country customers also, and there

seems to be room for mouth-organ and jew's-harp when nothing else

offers.

Now a jew's-harp is better than no harp, a mouth-organ is better than no

organ; and an accordeon can happify a lowering twilight. The banjo is an

all-round-the-world delight and a guitar may be almost heaven to a

music-hungry boy or girl. A twenty-dollar organ worked by foot-pedals

may be a household blessing, and a flageolet has kept many a sheep

herder from insanity on a lonely mountain. But any report on music makes

on the whole a sad impression when the human voice is not mentioned; and

a hundred will tell of having a musical instrument and some song book or

other, where one will speak of singing in the family. Almost every

conceivable collection of songs will be mentioned but the general

impression gained will be that the American countryside is not filled

with singing; that the people do not sing at their work, and that not

one hundredth part is there of the joy due them in community music.

In the art and joy of singing together our people seem to have

retrograded. Perhaps the dominant influences at the beginning were not

favorable to this art. Whatever love we had for music was cherished,

however, in the church of New England, but the advent of the soloist in

the choir loft has put a quietus upon the musical expression in the pew.

Harriet Beecher Stowe tells us how those old billowy fuguing tunes used

to be sung, with what gusto the men and women, bass, counter, soprano,

and tenor, trained in that national institution, the singing school,

would chase the melody around, racing after one another, each singing a

different set of words, until at length by some inexplicable magic they

would all come together again and sail smoothly out into a rolling sea

of song. To her those tunes, as she remembered them from her childhood,

were like the ocean aroused by stormy winds, when deep calleth to deep

in tempestuous confusion, out of which at last is evolved union and

harmony.

It is a pity that such musical impulse as this should be allowed to go

to waste. And it is not as if the primitive musical quality were

extinguished in us, but the impulse remains submerged unless something

brings it out. Professor Peter Lutkin of Northwestern University, head

of a school of music that constantly draws students from the Western

States, says that you cannot give musical culture to an acre of the

Western land without having music talent spring there.

We should follow the example of little Wales, that sturdy sister in the

confederation of the British Isles. How wonderful is the singing of the

Welsh when they come together in their great national Eisteddfod! There

they have a national contest in which many singing societies join, and a

prize is given to the victorious one. How do we account for this great

interest in singing? Why, there is a Choral Society in every village of

Wales. Between village and village, between city and city, there are

competitive tests, and this annual event is the outcome of all the

smaller ones, the crowning engagement for the highest honors. How much

must this mean to the people of the villages! What a comfort to the

isolated ones! For twelve miles about any village or town center the

people come walking in every Sunday evening, to attend rehearsals for

practise in sacred music, hymns and chorals being their mainstay. In

northern England we find the same musical feeling, and in Italy. Why

these special parts of the world should move in this direction, who can

tell? It is enough to know that those rougher, more hilly, and more

secluded regions do this service for the people. They make them feel the

impulse and the necessity for song.

That the case with us is not by any means hopeless is shown by the story

of Norfolk, Connecticut. Here a great musical movement has been led by

the Litchfield County Choral Union, a musical society that was founded

and led by an inspired man, the keynote of whose life may be found in

his own words when he said: "Had I my life to live over again, with such

slight knowledge as I may have gained, I would become an humble laborer

in a primitive and ignorant farming community where by word and example

I might perhaps help to raise its members to a higher standard of life

in material and spiritual matters; and could I but implant one better

thought into a single soul, life would not have been lived in vain."

Such was the quiet but radiant ideal of Robbins Battell, the man that

tuned all the life of the lower Berkshires to lofty music. The Choral

Union as it now stands is a federation of the musical societies of the

larger towns of the county, and includes seven hundred members. Each of

these societies has many concerts and festivals for the expression of

its own skill and joy in the compositions of the masters; and besides

this there is an annual three-day meeting and concert at the great

"Music Shed" in Norfolk.

In the festival of 1912 they gave the _Elijah_ with a chorus of four

hundred and fifteen voices, all chosen from the members of these county

Unions. The year before, the same chorus gave excerpts from Gluck's

_Orpheus and Eurydice_ and the _Hora Novissima_ of Horatio Parker; the

year before that they gave _Verdi's Requiem_ and _The Song of Hiawatha_

by S. Coleridge-Taylor. Other concerts accompanied these in which noted

soloists took part and great composers were present and conducted their

own compositions as given by trained orchestras. So, in 1906 about

thirty-six thousand people of the region were able to hear pieces from

Wagner, Beethoven, Haydn, Vieuxtemps, Liszt, Rossini, Schumann, Strauss,

and Mendelssohn--these were the names represented in the program of

1906, while selections from Goldwork, Beethoven, Tschaikowsky,

Saint-Saens, Grieg, Mozart, and Wagner, in 1912 were heard by eight

thousand persons.

It is quite impossible to estimate the effect of such musical

opportunity or the meaning of these rehearsals from January to June to

those villages. The people become consecrated to their art, like the

Oberammergauers. Personal ambition is swept away in the success of the

song or the oratorio. As there is no entrance to the concerts except by

invitation, all mercenary and selfish desire is removed. There is one

aim--to express the music perfectly and in the most lofty spirit;

therefore the festival is both a vital element in the community and a

welder of the people into a social unity. The chorus is also an

influence for democracy. There is a weekly rehearsal. Women sometimes

walk several miles to attend this and members rarely miss a meeting. One

couple came twelve miles every week for eight years. There is no expense

except for music and sometimes the sum does not go over sixty cents a

year. The possession of a voice is the one condition for entrance, and

the land does not assign tuneful voices according to man-made

aristocracies; maid and mistress, bank president and store clerk, sing

side by side. Into many lives, otherwise inert, the music brings a

motive and an inspiration. They sing with wonderful enunciation and with

a fervor that can come only from spontaneous rapture. When in _Elijah_

the prophets of Baal cried out their prayer for "Fire!" outsiders ran,

it is said, and notified the fire department!

To have a large part of the community thus trained, to have all the

community thus interested and inspired, to have every least member of

the community honored by citizenship in a village where these nobly

cultural influences are found, is certainly a great thing. And when we

remember that this could happen or rather, could be developed, in any

town or village in the land, we can but mourn our silent roadsides, our

unsinging lips, our wicked waste of the good gifts of God.

Another rare expression of musical enthusiasm comes from the Central

West. The little town of Lindsborg, on the broad high prairies of

Kansas, holds each spring during Holy Week a musical celebration called,

naturally, the "Messiah Festival." In this case a college is the

leader--Bethany College, where there are a thousand students with

regular standard courses of study besides varied and excellent choruses,

orchestras, societies, and classes for musical development. In the

spring of 1914 there was a chorus of six hundred voices; another of

children alone contained four hundred and fifty; distinguished singers

gave the solos; a week was filled with concerts of classic and modern

renderings; Brahms, Dvorak, MacDowell, Sibelius, were found together

with Beethoven and Handel, and the whole reached a wonderfully high

level of attainment.

What interests us most, however, is to see what this work does for the

people of the region. Men and women come from fifteen miles away to

attend the rehearsal, and this in winter; three generations of one

family sang in the chorus at the last Festival; they play and sing for

the pure love and enjoyment of the music. It is altogether impossible to

state in words what all this must mean to the moral and spiritual

development of the region, to the binding of the hearts of the people in

the community, and to the forging of those ties that will hold the young

people true in their loyalty to their homes.

It is not claimed that every country community can have such a concourse

as this for concert work during the winters; but something like the old

singing school might be installed, and home music might be made far more

of a joy and comfort than it now is.

That this can be the mission of music in community service is being

discerned by many. In the always forward-looking University of

Wisconsin, a plan has been made for the development of musical feeling

among the people. The desire is to make the people realize the immense

social power of music and to give a chance for this welding and

delighting influence to have its way in the home, the schools, the

churches, in musical organizations of all kinds, in all places of

amusement, and in entertainments of all kinds. No doubt other

universities in other States will follow this admirable example.

But we do not need colleges and universities to tell us that we should

do more with singing than we at present do. Here are six million girls

of the countryside--what can they do to redeem the country from this

dull silence and unmelodious tedium? What, in fact, might they not do?

Let every one of them resolve that she will wake up every morning

singing; that she will sing at her work all day long; that she will call

for songs in the evenings, with the whole family around--not one, of any

age, allowed to be absent from the circle; that she will require that

music of some sort shall be part of the ceremony of every society and

club she belongs to; that she will get the young people together to sing

once at least every week; that she will suggest that the older people

should sing together--it is unnecessary and absurd to let the singing

days disappear along with youth into the background; and that she will

persevere in this till the whole countryside shall ring with song from

east to west, and until the stigma that we are a people that do not care

for music shall be forever removed. We have some magnificent old folk

songs; we have glorious national songs; we have some religious songs

with a marching rhythm and a fervor that make them good for every day in

the week, for threshing times and for all times; we have a song for

every mood and every experience; why not use our songs and enjoy them?

The larger breadths of musical repertory are not so far away from the

remote country places as formerly, now that the victrola and other

instruments of like kind bring a knowledge of the great orchestral and

operatic passages to our very sitting-room. Every village should have

this help in order to understand the great music that without it might

be shut off from us. There should be one in every social center for

general use in the community. A good way is for some member of the

music-study committee to give a description of the opera or the

oratorio, with comments on the particular passage that the instrument

can render; then the listeners are better able to understand what is

being played and by the imagination to place the solos in their right

background as they are being heard; an impression of the work as a whole

will be thus gained that will to some extent approach the composite

scene as it is shown on the stage. "Ah! can you imagine what the

victrola means to us out here on this prairie!" wrote a friend from

western Nebraska. This may be the experience of every rural circle the

country over if it will only have community spirit enough to work

together and acquire the music-reproducing apparatus.

Another thing that can be done is to get together all the people in the

community that can play on any kind of instrument, and make them play

together. Do not despise the day of small things. There must be a

beginning. It will not be long before we can do more in any village, and

at last we can have music of a higher order to drive the ills of

isolation out of our atmosphere and introduce a healthful harmony in

their place. If a boy belonged to an orchestra that met on Monday and

Friday evenings for practise, to a class in voice on Tuesday evening,

and had engagements with groups of young men and young women to train

for concerts all the other evenings of the week and was to sing in the

church choir on Sunday, is it possible that he would feel that he could

be spared to go away to the city to live? The case of the Country Girl

will be exactly parallel. Her voice is the leading voice in the

quartette; she is necessary to the musical atmosphere of the village;

she is the hostess everywhere; she cannot be spared from any village and

country life that is full of musical and other social engagements. And

among the influences that beneficently endow human beings, the one that

is at once most welding, most unifying, and most delighting is music.

CHAPTER XXV

THE PLAY IN THE HOME

O little bulb, uncouth

Rugged, and rusty brown,

Have you some dew of youth?

Have you a crimson crown?

Plant me and see

What I shall be--

God's fine surprise

Before your eyes!

--_M. D. Babcock._

CHAPTER XXV

THE PLAY IN THE HOME

The development of musical taste and the power to enjoy the works of the

great composers is closely akin to the ability to appreciate the sister

art of the drama. The art that has grown out of that imitative impulse,

which is so deeply implanted in human nature and has reached such

heights in the hands of genius, has modest stages of growth that may be

seen in the daily programs of the home, the school, the playground, in

all the walks of children and of grown people. To be able to tell a

story, and show it up with a little dramatic imitation, is to add to the

success of the social queen, the drummer, the one who influences and

manages men or women in any field. There are people who think it well

worth while to spend much time in the study of the art of expression,

just to add to their powers of entertainment when they wish to use this

form of culture in the home circle only. It is not at all a bad thing to

do. Thus to train the voice for sweet and fine or for powerful and

striking modulations, to give the face new power of showing emotion, to

win also the help of gesture, is to add to one's resources and to make

them a greater source of enjoyment in the daily walks of life.

It is hardly possible to think of society in any age of the world since

we became human beings when the intercourse of people was not lighted up

with electric bits of humor, joking and ridicule, based on the dramatic

principle of imitation. But when the day came for our solemn ancestors

in New England to appear on the scene, they concocted a theory of duty

that was not favorable to these pleasurable forms of activity.

Yet, as we have seen, these subdued people loved music and they loved

beauty in all forms. And when beauty could be had along with what they

considered a pure and dignified aspect of expression, they winked at the

keen pleasure that they felt and said nothing against it.

An interesting story of Catherine Beecher, daughter of the great New

England theologian, Dr. Lyman Beecher, illustrates this. It is related

in the autobiography of her father that she once devised a play and

prepared, unknown to her parents, to give it in the kitchen of their

home in Litchfield, Connecticut. The unsuspicious parents, it seems, did

not notice that the neighbors were dropping in with a very unusual

simultaneousness and that after supper an unwonted fire was being built

in the parlor. Soon the door into the kitchen was opened with a

flourish, a curtain was seen to have been strung across the room, Roman

senators began to stalk across the stage--the kitchen floor--and a good

rousing dip was taken by all into the fountain of antique romance. After

it was over the stern father, who had been too greatly overwhelmed by

the events of the evening to make any objection, whispered to that

favorite daughter of his that it had all been very interesting

but--better not do that again! Catherine got off easily, considering the

repute in which dramatic representations were held by our forefathers.

Temptations to evil, at least, they were considered to be, if not the

very path itself.

Yet Catherine Beecher made many plays, devised in large part from the

plots of approved and semi-pious story-books, and these were enacted at

school and at the picnics of her large circle of brothers and sisters.

Moreover her sister Harriet (afterward Harriet Beecher Stowe) being at

about this period of her youth filled with the aspiration to become a

great tragic poet, wrote reams and reams of blank verse on a classic

theme developed in dramatic form. By this time, however, the elder

dominant sister Catherine must have seen the error of her ways, for

finding Harriet one day in the act of composition, she took her

precious play away from her, bidding her to cease this waste of time and

go to work on her Butler's _Analogy of Nature and Religion_. And Harriet

obeyed.

This story is told to afford one illustration of the fact that the

divine endowments of human genius cannot be so easily crushed out. A

theory will not accomplish it.

Catherine and Harriet Beecher were not the only possessors of glowing

dramatic inspirations in the early days. We had not been fully settled

here very many lustrums before the submerged river of artistic feeling

came to the surface in the form of vivid oratory and elaborate dialogue;

and when there began to be Sunday Schools there were Sunday School

concerts with tableaux of an unworldly sort, with dialogues and with

companies of young people who, in a small and innocuous way, engaged in

exercises that might be called acting. This was found more or less all

over New England and went with the New England migration into New York,

and Ohio, and then farther west. Many thousands of angels with tinsel

crowns and tissue-paper wings have filled the spaces between pulpit and

organ in the little white churches that have sprung up beside every hill

along what we may call the New England belt--the course of the travels

westward across the continent as the generations of descendants have

passed on and built and subdued the soil and planted schools and

churches along the northern latitudinal lines.

The story of Catherine Beecher illustrates too the fact that the

prejudice in the dwellers in country districts against the use of

dramatic forms of entertainment is based after all not so much upon the

dramatic representation itself as upon certain conditions and

associations often found connected with theatrical displays as carried

on in larger towns and cities and believed to be necessary to the

existence of theatrical life.

There is a village in Illinois with a population of nine hundred where

the majority of the church-going people--and most of the inhabitants of

the town belong to that class--have been of the opinion that it is a

wicked thing to go to see a play if it is enacted by some company of

play-actors such as might come along on their theatrical route; yet in

that town for years the townspeople have been giving plays of their own,

in which nearly the whole population of the place would join, old and

young, rich and poor, wise and unwise. The whole family from grandmother

to grandchild will sometimes appear in one play, and all the cousins and

relatives of the whole "team-haul community" will come to see. They give

many standard melodramas, and they have also tried their hand at

Shakespearean drama, to the great enjoyment and uplift of themselves,

both those that thoroughly capture the meaning of the play by training

for the parts, and those that closely if charitably attend and listen.

Why should not this be done in every small town? Why should not the

unused building, an old barn, a store-loft, be transformed into a

country theater, where the whole village may assemble twice a week or

oftener, and run through a play together, getting joy and culture at

once?

If once the ingrained, inherited prejudice, handed down from those

misinterpreting honorable ancestors of ours, could be overcome, the

plunge might be taken and the drama could become the education and

inspiring agent that it has the capacity to be in our homes, our

schools, and our towns and villages.

Especially to the remote village and to the lonely farm would this form

of entertainment be a benefit. Do we not need this also to help lift the

ban of loneliness and to supply that elasticity of spirit that means

life to us? Companionship is our lack, the impact of various lives upon

ours, the stirring of resentment against wrong or of enthusiastic

approval of the good and noble that comes from the clash of motives,

right and wrong, wise and unwise. If we are denied the opportunity to

see and feel all this in the scenes from actual life in which we

ourselves in our own persons participate, we may receive some portion at

least of the education to be derived from such impact by living for a

time in the imagined world of the dramatist's creation and by watching

the constant intricate play of emotion in the dialogue. And this we can

in no other way do so well as by taking a part in the drama and

appropriating it for our own; by living in that part, adopting the

imagined circumstances for our own and following out the problem in the

character represented and pursuing his fate to the bitter end. To do

that is to gain to some extent the effect of companionship and its

enlightening, enlarging and satisfying influence. To the extent that we

are able to do this shall we combat and overcome the stagnation and the

pain of loneliness.

As a by-product of the same exercise, we shall gain a new knowledge of

our own capacity. We shall take a long step in the direction of obeying

the old dictum to "know thyself." If, for instance, we are reading the

part of Hamlet, and are trying to adopt his life and problem for the

time being for our own, we learn how much we could suffer, how strongly

we could determine, how fiercely we could doubt and yet struggle on, how

tenderly we could love and yet resign, how all these things we could

feel if we were really the Hamlet of the great play of Shakespeare.

In this way we gain an enlargement of our own nature and receive

inspirations to heroism on our own part. This is not wasted time, for

there is no life that does not afford opportunity for heroism or that

does not need inspirations to courage and fortitude.

There are people who do not enjoy reading a play. They miss the constant

running description of movement and gesture, of scenery and color and

background, of meaning and prophecy and scope that are found in a story

or in narrative of any kind. They are not accustomed to supplying the

pictures of the story from the resources of their own imagination.

However valuable a discipline it may be for them to learn how to make up

imaginary backgrounds instead of depending upon the writer's aid, to

that form of discipline they will not give the trouble. But if such

readers will take the play into the family circle, and using several

copies of the text, assign parts to each of the family, and thus read

the text aloud, letting the words spoken by each of the characters give

the suggestion for action, and encouraging each one to give the proper

expression and gesture as he reads his part, the meaning will come clear

as the scene goes on, and the proper enjoyment of the play as a play

will enter into each one that shares the cast. If this does not happen

with the first reading, it will come with the second or third. It is a

pretty poor play that will not bear several readings; while as for the

greatest of dramatists, Shakespeare, his plays will stand many and many

a reading. It would be a good winter's enjoyment on a far away farm, for

the family to set apart one or two evenings a week to be given to

reading of the plays by the greatest poet and dramatist. Several plays

would do for one winter and the whole thirty-six of them would last for

several years, and then one could begin again at the beginning and read

them over with renewed interest and understanding. Thus the farm home

could have a theater of its own in the warm sitting-room while the soft

snow covered the acres all about, hushing every disturbing sound.

Perhaps that lofty master of the dramatic art should not be the first

one mentioned. It is quite easy to understand that some Country Girl

will think this poet to be hard reading for one who has not had the

chance to go through high school. For those who are timid about taking a

bold leap into the field of more advanced literature there are many

plays made from our present-day lives that are easy to read and to

enact, plays adapted to any number of people, plays that may include

father, mother, and the children down to the smallest; and there are

many kinds of tableaux and smaller plays that can be represented on the

lawn of the farmhouse or in the kitchen after the work is done.

Of course the greatest thing of all would be to make one's own plays out

of one's own circumstances or out of the things that one is thinking

about every day. In making a play one must first choose a hero or a

heroine; then imagine something that this hero wishes to do. After that

some great difficulty is to be planned that he must meet, some

opposition he must overcome. In constructing a drama you tell the story

of a struggle or endeavor of this kind, putting it all into the words

the people speak and nothing at all into any account of the action, the

gesture, or the dress. All those things must be seen to by the people

who take the parts. And the background may be selected that will come

nearest to being the right and fit one for the people and action

suggested by the words of the play.

There is an infinite possibility before those who will make the attempt

to let the playing of plays have part in the amusements in the farm

home. All ages can be suited with plays, the simple ones for the

smallest children, the more complex and finished for the older ones, the

great ones for the oldest and most educated among the members of the

family. As drama is one expression of the play spirit (using the word

here in its meaning of "recreation"), and the satisfaction that comes

with the feeding of this hunger in people of all ages, has but to be

once known for us to seek earnestly for its food another and yet another

time.

To show how this instinct has been made effective in one home I quote,

with kind permission, a play made by one little girl of eleven years

old. In reading it over the reader will see what the child has been

reading and where she got the material of the thoughts she has embodied

in the action and atmosphere of this naive and delightful little play.

TRUE LOVERS

A PLAY IN SEVEN SCENES

BY JULIA CAROLYN HORNE

THE CAST

KING ERIC Betsy Horne

PRINCESS ELAINE, his daughter Harriet Benger

SIR CONSTANTINE, knight, in love

with PRINCESS ELAINE Julia Horne

OMAR, a page Billie Horne

Three ladies in waiting to Jessielyn Lucas, Helen Ecker,

the Princess Helene Timmerman.

SCENE I.--COURT OF KING ERIC.

KING _seated on throne._ PRINCESS ELAINE _beside him, attended by her

three maids of honor. A loud knocking is heard. Omar goes to the door

and returns._

OMAR [_bowing low before throne_]--Your Majesty, a visitor has come.

KING--Bring him in.

[OMAR _ushers in a knight._]

SIR CONSTANTINE [_bowing low before the throne_]--Most noble King, I beg

of you your daughter's hand in marriage.

KING [_stamps impatiently_]--No! Out of my royal presence at once!

KNIGHT--Farewell! Farewell!

[_Bows low and withdraws._]

PRINCESS ELAINE [_rising_]--Alas! Alas! It is so sad! Father, if ever

thou carest for my happiness, grant him my hand.

[_Withdraws._]

KING--Come back, daughter, be not so foolish.