WOMAN'S CONTRIBUTION TO THE COUNTRY-LIFE MOVEMENT

On the women depend to a greater degree than we realize the nature and extent of the movement for a better country life, wholly aside from their personal influence as members of families. Farming is a co-partnership business. It is a partnership between a man and a woman. There is no other great series of occupations in which such co-partnership is so essential to success. The home is on the farm, and a part of it. The number of middle-aged unmarried men living on farms is very small. It is quite impossible to live on a farm and to run it advantageously without family relation.

It follows, then, that if the farming business is to contribute to the redirection of country life, the woman has responsibilities as well as the man. As the strength of a chain is determined by its weakest link, so will the progress of rural civilization be determined by the weakness of the farm as an economic unit, or by the weakness of the home as a domestic and social unit.

Now, the farmer himself cannot have great influence in redirecting the affairs of his community until he is first master of his own problem,—that is, until he is a first-class farmer. In the same way, a woman cannot expect to have much influence in furthering the affairs of her rural community until she also is master of her own problem, and her problem is primarily the home-making part of the farm. In the mastering of his or her own problem, the farmer or his wife may also contribute directly to the progress of the community. Every advance in the management of the household contributes to the general welfare: it sets new ideas under way.

If the farming business must in general be reorganized, so also must the householding part of it be reorganized. The solution of the farm-labor problem, for example, lies not alone merely in securing more farm "hands," but in so directing and shaping the business that less farm hands will be needed to secure a given economic result; so also the solution of the household-labor problem is not merely the securing of more household help, but the simplification of householding itself.

So far as possible, the labor that is necessary to do the work of the open country, whether in-doors or out-doors, should be resident labor. The labor difficulty increases with reduction in the size of the family. Families of moderate size develop responsibility, and coöperation is forced on all members of it, with marked effect on character. The single child is likely to develop selfishness rather than coöperation and sense of responsibility. To a large extent, the responsibility of the household should rest on the girls of the family; and all children, whether boys or girls, should be brought up in the home in habits of industry.

It is fairly possible by means of simplification of householding and by a coöperative industry amongst all members of the family, so to reduce the burden of the farm wife that she may have time and strength to give to the vital affairs of the community.

The affairs of the household.

It is essential that we simplify our ideals in cooking, in ornament, in apparel, and in furnishing; that we construct more convenient and workable residences; that we employ labor-saving devices for the house as well as for the barns and the fields.

We are so accustomed to the ordinary modes of living that we scarcely realize what amount of time and strength might be saved by a simplified table and by more thoughtful methods of preparing food. In respect to houses, it should be remembered that the present farm dwellings are getting old. A good part of the farm houses must soon be either rebuilt or remodeled. The first consideration is so to build or remodel them that steps may be saved to the housewife. We have not thought, in the past, that a woman's steps cost time and energy. Within twenty years all first-class farm houses will have running water, both into the house and out of the house.

It is rather strange that in our discussions of the farm-labor problem, we do not realize that a gasoline engine or a water engine may save the labor of a man. Farmers are putting power into their barns. They should also put power into the house. This may be accomplished by means of a small movable engine that can be used either in the house or barn, or else by installing an engine in a small building betwixt the house and the barn, so that it can be connected either way. This can be used to lighten much household labor, as pumping of water, meat-chopping, laundering, dish-washing, vacuum-cleaning, and the like.

Eventually, there must be some form of community coöperation in the country to save household labor. Already the care of milk has been taken from great numbers of farm homes by the neighborhood creamery, or at least by the building of a milk-house in which the men by the use of machinery perform labor that was once done by the housewife. Whenever there is a coöperative creamery, there may also be other coöperative attachments, as a laundry, or other appliances. It will be more difficult to bring about coöperation in these regards in country districts than in the city, but with the coming of good roads, telephones, and better vehicles, it will be constantly more easy to accomplish.

The affairs of the community.

I have said that it is important that the country woman have strength and time to engage in the vital affairs of the community. I am thinking of the public sentiment that women can make on any question that they care to discuss thoroughly and collectively, whether this sentiment is for better orcharding, better fowls, better roads, extending of telephones, improving the schoolhouse or church or library. It is needful that women in the country come together to discuss woman's work, and also to form intelligent opinions on farming questions in general.

The tendency of all "sociables" in country and town is to bring persons together to eat, to gossip, and to be entertained. We need to redirect all these meetings, and to devote at least a part of every such meeting to some real and serious work which it is worth while for busy and intelligent persons to undertake.

Every organization of women should endeavor to extend its branches and its influence into the open country as well as into the cities and towns. Every public movement now has responsibility to country-life questions as well as to town questions.

I think it important that there be some means and reason for every farm woman going away from home at least once a week, and this wholly aside from going to town to trade. There should be some place where the women may come together on a different basis from that of the ordinary daily routine and the usual buying and selling. I do not know where this social center should develop, and in an atmosphere that is not conducive to gossip. In some neighborhoods it might focalize in the church parlor. The center should be permanent, if possible. It should be a place to which any woman in a community has a right to go. An ideal place for such a center would be the rural library, and I hope that such libraries may arise in every country community, not only that they may supply books but that they may help provide a meeting-place on semi-social lines. I think that if I were a woman in charge of a rural library, I should never be satisfied with my work until I had got every woman in the community in the habit of coming to the library once every week.

The woman's outlook.

The woman needs very much to have the opportunity to broaden her horizon. The farmer has lived on his farm; he is now acquiring a world outlook. The woman has lived in her house; she also is acquiring a world outlook. As the house has been smaller and more confining than the farm, it has followed that woman's outlook has been smaller than man's.

I think it is necessary also that the woman of the farm, as well as the man, have a real anchor in her nature environment. It is as necessary to the woman as to the man that her mind be open to the facts, phenomena, and objects that are everywhere about her, as the winds and weather, the plants and birds, the fields and streams and woods. It is one of the best resources in life to be able to distinguish the songs and voices of the common fields, and it should be a part of the education of every person, and particularly of every country person, to have this respite. The making of a garden is much more than the growing of the radishes and strawberries and petunias. It is the experience in the out-of-doors, the contact with realities, the personal joy of seeing things germinate and grow and reproduce their kind.

The means of education.

If country women are to develop a conscious sense of responsibility in country-life betterment, education facilities must be afforded them. The schools must recognize home-making subjects equally with other subjects. What becomes a part of the school eventually becomes a part of the life of the people of the region.

The leadership in such subjects is now being taken by the colleges of agriculture. This is not because domestic subjects belong in a college of agriculture more than elsewhere, but only that these colleges see the problem, and most general colleges or universities have not seen it. The college of agriculture, if it is highly developed, represents a civilization rather than a series of subjects; and it cannot omit the home-making phase if it meets its obligation to the society that it represents (page 64).

If the customary subjects in a college of agriculture are organized and designed to train a man for efficiency in country life and to develop his outlook, so also is a department of home economics to train a woman for efficiency and to develop her outlook to life.

Home economics is not one "department" or subject, in the sense in which dairying or entomology or plant-breeding is a department. It is not a single specialty. It stands for the whole round of woman's work and place. Many technical or educational departments will grow out of it as time goes on. That is, it will be broken up into its integral parts, and it will then cease to be an administrative department of an educational institution; and very likely we shall lose the terms "home economics," "household economics," "domestic science," and the rest.

I would not limit the entrance of women into any courses in a college of agriculture; on the contrary, I want all courses open to them freely and on equal terms with men; but the subjects that are arranged under the general head of home economics are her special field and sphere. On the other hand, I do not want to limit the attendance of men in courses of home economics; in fact, I think it will be found that an increasing number of men desire to take these subjects as the work develops, and this will be best for society in general.

Furthermore, I do not conceive it to be essential that all teachers in home economic subjects shall be women; nor, on the other hand, do I think it is essential that all teachers in the other series of departments shall be men. The person who is best qualified to teach the subject should be the one who teaches it, whether man or woman.

As rapidly as colleges and universities come to represent society and to develop in all students a philosophy of life, the home-making units will of necessity take their place with other units.