42 The Bulletin. 



children, may enjoy the fruits of the earth and the fullness thereof. The 

 object of the Women's Institute is to so touch the home life of the people as 

 to make for a higher standard of manhood and womanhood, that in the years 

 to come this State of North Carolina shall bring forth sons and daughters 

 that shall be leaders of men in the paths of intellectuality, usefulness and 

 helpfulness, than which there is no nobler mission under the sun. 



We want men to better comprehend woman with her hopes and inspirations 

 and devotion. We want women to understand more fully the goodness and 

 kindness of purpose that prompt men in their daily acts and to realize that 

 it is woman's place to know her business of home-making with its thousand 

 duties just as much as it is man's duty to make the money for that home ; to 

 know as much about the gluten in the flour that makes their daily bread as 

 the husband knows about the nitrogen in the fertilizer ; to know how to make 

 scraped beef when the child is sick as well as he knows how to tend the cattle ; 

 to know the cause and prevention of typhoid and to have a knowledge of those 

 little labor-saving devices for the kitchen, the most expensive of which in the 

 home are less dear than the cheapest of those used for man's work in the 

 field. The only means that the average busy, tired mother on the farm has 

 of gaining this knowledge is through the Woman's Institute, and she does not 

 get that unless she attends the meetings. 



The work of the Women's Branch of the Farmers' Institute has met with 

 warm approval and hearty enthusiasm through the State, as is evidenced by 

 the fact that in 190G there were twenty-one institutes held and this year 

 seventy-four, with requests for more from every quarter. The women are 

 just waking up to the great advantages to be derived from attending the 

 institutes. 



There are three classes of people whom we women of the State wish to 

 reach : first, the legislators, who are the husbands, fathers, brothers and sons 

 of ourselves. Our work being new it is not strange that they do not under- 

 stand its purposes. When we bring to them a knowledge of what is being 

 done in a definite, practical, first-hand manner by things learned, by lessons 

 applied, there will be no trouble in getting legislators to lend their aid in ex- 

 tending this great work. In Ontario the members of the Legislature think so 

 highly of it that where the women of a county band themselves into a local 

 Woman's Institute the government gives them a grant of money to defray ex- 

 penses. 



Secondly, there are the men whom we need to have realize that they need 

 our aid in all things, where the home and children are intimately affected. 

 We have an example of how small, narrow and short-sighted the men of a 

 community can be, right here in our own State. In one of our counties the 

 men took little interest in having a good school for their own children, not hav- 

 ing sufficient education themselves to realize its advantages, and a woman, free, 

 talented and a money-maker, came in and worked until the school was pro- 

 vided. The men were so pleased that they wrote to Raleigh asking if it was 

 legal to put her on the school board, and when the answer came, "The law 

 says 'he' and 'him,' and nof 'she' and 'her,' " they said they would defy the 

 law and put her on the school board, for it was nothing but right. They did 

 put her on and so efficient was she, so progressive, that the devil stepped in 

 and said : "She makes better use of her brains than you men, she is more pro- 

 gressive, she is trying to build your children into noble men and women in 

 spite of you, and hark, my children, she is making more money than any 

 man of you, so cast her out, cast her out" ; and these men, exulting in the 

 manly, noble privilege of a free country, cast their votes against her, and did 

 their utmost to stem the tide of progress. She was like a big toad in a very 

 little puddle; she stirred up much mud and exposed the hidden, harmful 

 germs of ignorance to the sunlight that kills. 



Let us as women, when we see any evidences of smallness of spirit on the 

 part of man, or woman either, realize that without progress our children are 

 not going to take their places in the great and ever-increasing tramp, tramp, 

 tramp of humanity. There is no such thing as standing still ; if we are not 

 going forward we are going back, for as Tennyson says, "The lives of men 

 are widened by the progress of the suns." Above all things, let us make up 

 our minds to accomplish our purposes, not by arrogance and combativeness 

 and ill temper, but by sweetness, kindness and appeal to the reason of man. 



