172 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



educate the father and mother side by side with the boy and 

 girl. Thus the family will go on as a unit and mature to a good . 

 old age. Why not do it? 



That is how we began our organization. The people inter- 

 ested in the community development, the progressive citizens, 

 all helped us out the best they could and we started this organiza- 

 tion. We have between nine and ten thousand farm women 

 today on our mailing list. I mean by that members who have 

 paid their twenty-five cents a year, but they pay that into their 

 own local treasury of the Farm Women's Institute and use that 

 money as they see fit. More than nine thousand farm women 

 today are having the bulletins and doing the work outlined in 

 the course of study. They write to our office and say, "May 

 we have a trained nurse on a certain day." I write back, "Can 

 you guarantee a crowd? What arrangements can you make?" 

 She must have a place to speak, a public place, not a private 

 home, if we can help it, because they can come to us easier than 

 we can go to them. I have seventy-six counties to look after 

 and quite a few women. If I go into the home of one the homes 

 of all the others are neglected, and maybe some woman does not 

 know the lady at whose home the meeting is called and does not 

 feel like going. I have my first time yet to go to an exclusive 

 woman's club where the doors were not open and anyone per- 

 mitted to come. The Woman's Institute is "democratic as can 

 be. Often I have men, women and children of the state who 

 want to come. We have kept it open, and I hope it will always 

 remain so. 



We started out with yearbooks, outlining courses of study, 

 including courses in foods and their preparation, making of gar- 

 ments, study of carpets and rugs, study of silverware. We had 

 a special program on silverware, and I have had reports from 

 almost hundreds of them in which those women had old spoons 

 that their grandmother Smith had, or somebody else had, or a 

 a set of knives and forks, and they went home and got those old 

 things out and took a greater pride in them, in the things they 

 had, because now they had some interest in them. 



The country woman loves the bright colors. You can tell 

 that by the sometimes gaudy wall paper and the large flowered 

 rugs. They are not always there; I don't mean that, but you 

 do not find the sober colors. that you find in the city home. I 

 want just here to make a distinction. Our country is graded 

 by its mediocre, by the common run, and our city by its best. 



