174 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



Another thing I want to speak about as one of the vital 

 things in organization among country women is a rest room. 

 Where do the women of the community surrounding Columbia 

 rest when they come to town? Where are they? Where do 

 you fmd them in your little town? Where do you rest when you 

 go to tow^n? You know you go to the grocery store and sell your 

 butter and eggs, then you go to the dry goods store and get the 

 rest of your supplies and you are ready to go home. Perhaps 

 your husband is not yet ready. He meets some man and sits 

 and talks; he could stand on the street corner, but you could 

 not. The children cried at your skirts and you wanted to 

 hurry away. 



I made a special investigation in one of the leading towns of 

 Oklahoma before I took any definite steps along this line. I 

 went to the big dry goods stores. The women came in and went 

 out, and for four months and one week, over seventeen weeks in 

 all, I made the Saturday canvass in this town. I never saw the 

 women stay in the dry goods store. Things were orderly there 

 and they felt in the way, so they went and sat at the grocery 

 store, where there were extra boxes to use for seats along the 

 walk, where there were boxes piled and confusion reigned, and 

 there were the women with the children and their lunch. I 

 found them averaging nineteen women each week for the seven- 

 teen days that I had a definite account kept. Nineteen country 

 women came to those stores each week and ate their lunches 

 with their children. 



What did it say to me? Definitely, that the purpose of the 

 country women should be centered for one thing, on an organiza- 

 tion for a rest room that was their own, where they could go when 

 they came to town, could go and sit down and rest and feel 

 things were comfortable, and more than that, that they belonged 

 there. Today there are seventeen rest rooms in Oklahoma 

 kept up by country women, furnished by country women, with- 

 out any feeling that they are under obligations to the woman of 

 the town. Seventeen towns have those rest rooms maintained 

 for the country women, by those women themselves, but the city 

 sisters are welcome. Often I go to them, and I want to tell you 

 a story of one or two of those rest rooms. One of them has 

 become a little market. A matron has charge. Over here is 

 her butter stand, over there an egg stand, using these little 

 dozen egg cartons, and those women of the town when they 

 want good country butter no longer go to the grocery store for 



