1905.] THE RESERVE POWER IN HOUSEKEEPING. IO9 



and the culture of fruit, why not give the women a study which 

 shall make them better homekeepers? Then they said: You 

 cannot, in a university, tell women how to do housework ; they 

 are doing it every day, over and over again. They can make 

 better doughnuts than you can, they can make better pies than 

 you can. Nevertheless, we sent a letter to the women of the 

 State, assuming that every farmer who was enrolled in the 

 farmers' reading course had a wife. We sent in that lesson to 

 the farmer a letter to the farmer's wife and said, " Would you 

 like a parallel course with that of your husband, in domestic 

 economy?" About two thousand replies came saying, "Yes, 

 we want to study along those lines," and there came at once a 

 large number of letters, because we had asked in that lesson. 

 "Are there any ways by which you can save steps in the 

 home ? " We found we had touched upon the vital question ; 

 that women were not asking for less work to do, but to be able 

 to do more work, to conserve their strength in such a way that 

 they might be able to accomplish more work. They needed not 

 a recipe for making doughnuts, they wanted to be in sympa- 

 thetic touch with other people. The healthy woman upon the 

 farm is not complaining of the drudgery, neither is she com- 

 plaining because she has so much work to do, but the thing 

 that wears upon her, and the reason, perhaps, why so many 

 sfirls do not want to remain on the farm is on account of the 

 monotony of the life. When you give them something to think 

 about, when you lead them to look beyond the kitchen sink to 

 the sunset, or, if necessary, to the sunrise ; when you lead them 

 to look beyond the kitchen work to the time which they have 

 for reading ; when you lead them to become interested again 

 in the music they had forgotten, to the book they had put upon 

 the shelf, you bring them into touch with life and give them 

 something to lift them out of the drudgery — the work doesn't 

 seem so much like drudgery. 



We began by asking about steps, steps that they were taking 

 in the home. Several women wrote that they had been read- 

 ing the lesson we had sent them upon saving steps to their hus- 

 bands. In some cases the husbands objected and said, " Don't 

 tell me about that ; I am so driven I can't talk about extra 

 steps." On one occasion a man said, " You are making some 

 expense on my farm, but it is a good thing. I had to put ice 

 in the house and bring water into the kitchen." We found in 



