276 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



they don't understand the business of fax-ming. If they could take an 

 agricultural education along with the boy, their eyes would be opened a 

 great deal. When we come to study live stocli, I thinli we come to have 

 more patience with everything about us. In the school of agi'iculture in 

 Minnesota, the girls have the same instructions as the boys in the ele- 

 mentary classes of forestry. The one point is that they may be sympa- 

 thetic. When talking about forestry, its effect upon the climate, and in- 

 dustries, and in a sociological way, these women are more sympathetic 

 toward the movement than are the men. In Minnesota congress set aside 

 an immense tract of forest land, two hundred thousand acres, as a na- 

 tional park, and it was the women who originated the movement that 

 resulted in the action. We find that in cities, the women are already 

 taking steps toward originating these. 



I think that education at the agricultural colleges should be extended 

 to the girls as well as to the boys, along the lines of plant life and animal 

 life, and when the boys get their manual training in their special work, 

 let the women take cookery, laundry, etc. 



I thought there was a very good exercise in home economy In a certain 

 class talk not long ago. They had the lectures in the line of expenditures, 

 and the examination consisted of an expense account of one family for 

 one year in a certain named income. To show you how the class was 

 progressing, I will tell you about one girl. She started with a family of 

 five, and she was going to spend one thousand dollars on that family of 

 five. She thought it was a lot of money when she started, but when she 

 got about five months along she found the money was not going to hold 

 out throughout the year, so she concluded that one boy should get drowned 

 and they could not find his body, so there would be no funeral expenses to 

 pay. However, they do not all do that way. 



I suppose that the bread in South Bend today is baked by the men. 

 I suppose it is; it is in other places. Why should they not do it? The laun- 

 dries are run by men, the sewing of men's coats and trousers is done by 

 men, and why should it not be? All of these things we used to think be- 

 longed to women, and being really women's work. Many kinds of work 

 has been taken away from the women. To me, it does not make any 

 difference at all whether he makes the bread or the coat, or whether she 

 makes it. The thing we are concerned in is that the bread shall be good 

 and the coat well made. If the woman can do it better, let her do it; if 

 the man can do it better, let him do it. Above and beyond sex is ability 

 in certain lines of development of the individual, and that is what we are 

 getting at. 



Aside from every other business which women do, or which they 

 fail to do, there is certainly on the part of women an aptitude for home 

 making, which I don't think is to be taken away from them. 



So we see two kinds of economics, masculine economics, which uses 

 men toward the end of creating great wealth, and feminine economics. 



