SOCIAL LIFE OF THE FARMER. 113 



avarice, or from sheer ambition of work, when necessity has 

 begun to relax somewhat the sternness of its grip ? I have 

 known many farmers, who could amply afford to lead lives 

 of comparative ease, still continuing their labor in the fields 

 with their workmen, beginning as early, working as late and 

 as hard, as the best of them. It was thought to be neces- 

 sary, to get the most out of help and to get the work prop- 

 erly done, that the employer should thus lead the field. 

 The master-mechanic does not find it necessary to lead his 

 journeymen in this way in their rougher work, but confines 

 his activity to direction and supervision ; and why cannot 

 the farmer of means do the same? He is unconsciously 

 doing a double wrong by pushing his ambition of work so 

 far beyond the bounds of necessity, — first, to liimself, in the 

 loss of that refinement of mind and character which his pros- 

 perity has brought within his reach ; and, second, to poorer 

 men who need employment in order to a livelihood. 



farmers' wives. 



And what is true of farmers in this respect is equally true 

 of their wives, with whom the necessity or the ambition of 

 work not only stands in the way of their social and intellec- 

 tual culture, but is often fatal to health, to happiness, and 

 to life itself. They are on the whole, I believe, the hardest- 

 worked class in the community. It was, I imagine, a worn- 

 out farmer's wife who wrote, or suggested, a recent poem 

 entitled "A Tired Woman's Wish," in which she gives ex- 

 pression to her highest idea of heaven as a place where 

 she might " do nothing for ever and ever." But, severe as 

 woman's lot is on the farm, it is doubtless much less severe 

 than it was in former times ; the cheese-factor}', the cream- 

 ery, and the milk-train serving to relieve her from some of 

 the burdens that pressed so heavily on the mother and 

 grandmother before her. And the same amelioration has 

 been efi:ected out of doors by the use upon the farm of 

 labor-sa\dng machinery, in which the use of horse-power and 

 steam-power are put in the place of the wear and tear of 

 human muscles. We are not likely, I think, to over-rate the 

 elevating effect which these means for savins^ labor will ulti- 

 mately have on the life of the farmer and his household. I 

 never see a farmer on his mower or reaper, riding like a king 



