1902.] THE FARMER AS A CITIZEN. 97 



the kind of talk I like to hear: " I would court and marry 

 Polly every time." Now, while I am talking about being 

 good husbands, there is one thing that I want to talk to your 

 farmers right here: I have been a good deal over the world, 

 and a good deal over the United States of America, and one 

 of our greatest evils todav is the fact that our farmers' wives 

 work too hard. Come right down now to sober business, it 

 is a fact that our farmers' wives work too hard, and they are 

 injuring their children by being overtaxed in work. It is 

 one of the serious facts connected with our American life. Go 

 where you will, as a rule you will find the American woman 

 living on a farm overtaxed by work. She is working beyond 

 her jtrength. Her life is shortened by it. The good citizen 

 ought to look out for that thing. You will say, of course, 

 that the situation on the farm is such that she cannot lead a 

 life of ease; that this work must be done. Let me say to you, 

 if you are intelligent enough to run a farm these days you are 

 intelligent enough to find some way to run it without killing 

 your wife. If you cannot find some better way than that you 

 had better give it up. Success in farming is not worth while 

 if it is to be obtained at that cost. We must always sit 

 down and count the cost of what we are doing, and if the cost 

 of success in running the farm is the premature death of 

 your wife it costs more than it's worth; it does not pay at that 

 price. There is an old English proverb that runs something 

 like this : " Man's work is from sun to sun, but w^oman's 

 work is never done." It is three meals a day, the dishes to 

 wash, the house to keep in order, and the house to clean once 

 in so often. And by the way, there is where I have a little 

 sympathy for the farmer; in those two instances, in the spring 

 and in the fall, when the house is all pulled up and in dis- 

 order; it's terrible; better stay in the barn. But, at any 

 rate, there is this continual round of work for the woman, be- 

 ginning with breakfast in the morning for the family, and 

 getting breakfast and coffee for the hired men. And right 

 there, do you know, I would have to be pretty poor to make 

 my wife run a boarding-house for the hired help; do not do 

 it. I cannot conceive of being poor enough for that. And 

 then there is dinner and supper to get, and those miserable 

 stockings to be darned, which keeps her busy until away into 

 the night before she can retire to obtain the much-needed 



Agr. — 7 



