98 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



rest for the morrow. And what do most of you do in the 

 meanwhile? Do we read to her, and make this time pleasant, 

 or do we get hold of a newspaper and bury ourselves in that? 

 We don't hear her stitch, stitch, stitch all the evening until the 

 time comes when she cannot keep awake any longer, and 

 then with the work only half done, and she knows there is 

 that breakfast to be got early in the morning. She has 

 worked steadily all day; she has hardly had a minute to 

 herself to rest. I tell you it is one of the very worst things 

 in our American life, and it ought to be remedied. The farm- 

 ers have got to remedy it. There is some improvement. The 

 race is rising; it is improving. Men and women are stronger 

 and better than they ever were before from the creation of the 

 world. There is no record in history where men ever did 

 more, or women ever did more than they can do in these days, 

 but statistics show that that improvement is going on more 

 rapidly in the villages than it is in the country. A record has 

 been kept of all the young women who go to college. I hap- 

 pen to know about this because I happen to be a trustee in 

 one of the largest female colleges in the country. Study these 

 records, and what do you find? Why, that the girls are 

 bigger and stronger and better than they ever were before in 

 the world. 



Now, then, there is something more to the family than 

 simply the husband and wife; the idea of the family pre- 

 supposes children. And, do you know, it is one of the saddest 

 things about our American life, along with this other thing 

 that I have been talking about, and one of the very worst is 

 the fact that our American families do not have the children 

 that the law of God and the interests of the republic demand. 

 There is something wrong about it. When we take the 

 statistics of births and deaths we find the families of children 

 that are growing larger are the families of foreigners; that is 

 not so on the other side, it is not so in England. I remem- 

 ber very well being at dinner at a gentleman's house in England 

 some years ago, and the hostess asked my wife how many 

 children we had. She told her, and our hostess remarked that 

 that was a very small family. My wife said in bringing them 

 up she thought it was a pretty large one. (Laughter.) Our 

 hostess did not agree to that. She said: " Why, we have 

 fifteen, and so-and-so has ten, and so-and-so has twelve, of 



