40 MAINE STATE SOCIETY. 



vend, behold all the improvements in machinery, designed to take 

 the place of human muscles and sinews ; and all the results of wis- 

 dom and experience collected by its fairs, in order to enlighten the 

 farmer as to the best means of getting the greatest reward for the 

 smallest amount of labor. "When machinery aad skill shall so far 

 relieve toil, that the body need not be overtasked by farming, and 

 leisure, and wealth, shall flow from the occupation, then there will 

 be little need of specially supplying the "intellectual wants of 

 farmers." The Press is already a giant in the production of intel- 

 lectual food, and reaches every one who has even but a little leisure 

 and a little money : but, where that little is wanting, as the last too 

 often is Avith farmers, we do not believe that any system of " farm 

 schools," or "societies for the diffusion of useful knowledse ," will 

 effect much in the way of supplying those wants. But while this 

 society in its whole aim designs to supply them, let us consider 

 a part of its work, which it has comparatively overlooked, and which 

 we hope to show, is so important, that until remedied, no intellectual 

 class, as a class, will resort to the cultivation of the soil for a sub- 

 sistence. "We mean the domestic, in-door work of the farmer's 

 house — the woviari's part in the fanner^ s life. We trust this 

 society will turn its attention to this portion of its work, which now 

 lags far behind, and like a dropped stitch in a stocking, needs to be 

 taken up and made even with the rest of the fabric. This dropped 

 stitch, of the house and kitchen, is our theme, and we propose to 

 describe the evil, in part, with some of its results, and then to sug- 

 gest a remedy. 



The hard work of the house and kitchen, seems to many an evil 

 of that giant and pervading nature, that complaint appears hopeless, 

 and where no remedy is attainable, to endure in silence, seems the 

 ■wisest course. But this is an age of progress, and the better way 

 is, to believe no evil of necessity perpetual, but rather to be j^ro- 

 claimed and removed. Particularly, let not the Maine Agricultural 

 Society seek to elevate the farmer and forget the farmer's wife, for 

 the two cannot be separated in culture ; for if farmers, as a class, 

 could be cultivated, and farmer's wives remain coarse and ignorant, 

 it could be so only for one generation ; and the sons of such mothers 

 would need the work of refining repeated again for them. All 

 efforts, therefore, for the el^^ation of the farmer, must take in the 



