The Bulletin. 9 



Any locality wishing an institute writes the director and he fixes date 

 and location at the most suitable point. Institutes are not held if not 

 requested, but the larger number does not always prevail. A few inter- 

 ested people in a community can exert an influence and soon have in- 

 creased numbers, or by their demonstration of the ideas received uplift 

 and advance the agricultural interests of their neighborhood. 



Woman's Work. 



The latter part of the sentiment which was carried on the front of 

 Turner's Almanac fifty years or more ago, viz., 



"A good husbandman without there is needful to be, 

 A good housewife within is as needful as he," 



has always deserved much more attention than it received. The farm- 

 ers' wives and daughters have received but little consideration or re- 

 muneration in the management of the farm. They have been stock- 

 holders but not directors. The following anecdote represents the case: 

 Five boys having each a penny organized to buy a cigar — probably the 

 first tobacco combine. Jim was elected president and given the funds. 

 He bought the cigar and returned pompously smoking. Tom applied 

 for a smoke, as he Avas a stockholder. Jim replied, 'Tm the president ; 

 I smoke; stockholders can spit." 



Many farmers who complain of the expenditures of the women of 

 their families are about in the condition of the negro who was com- 

 plaining about his wife on this line : "Never seed a woman wanting to 

 spend so much money." Being asked how much he had given her he 

 replied, "I ain't never gi'n her none yet." 



The object of the Department is to end this state of affairs. You 

 cannot keep the girls on the farm unless you keep the boys there; to do 

 so the life must be made jileasant and profitable, and there is no reason 

 why it should not be so. Lecturers furnish suggestions along all lines 

 of housework — food, health, clothes-making, etc., and especially as to 

 canning, pickling and preserving meats, fruits and vegetables. The 

 head of the women's work is a native of the State, Mrs. McKimmon. 

 She gives directions when desired along these lines and arranges for the 

 sale of the goods, which are warranted to be true to sample as to measure 

 and quality. She operated in thirty counties last year. The girls and 

 their mothers cleared $26,000 in personal profits or $800 to the county. 

 This will be largely increased this year and a pennanent industry ad- 

 vanced. The Department desires to help produce the time that the birth 

 of a daughter shall not be regarded as the arrival of an undesirable 

 addition to the family, but the farmers' wives and daughters will show 

 that it was not ability but opportunity that they lacked to have remedied 

 matters prior to this time. Instead of having to go to the old man for 

 every dollar they need they will not only pay for what they wish but lend 

 him some money when he is in need, as they did in some places last fall 

 when the slump in the price of cotton wrought such a change in financial 



