Missouri Home Makers' Conference. 545 



WORK OF THE HOME MAKERS' CONFERENCE. 



(Miss Alice Kinney, New Franklifi, Mo.) 



Many of you will recall the interesting item that went the 

 rounds of city and country papers last summer in which it was 

 stated that Secretary Houston of the United States Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture was sending out 50,000 letters to that many 

 farm women throughout the country requesting them to write 

 to the Agricultural Department at Washington the true con- 

 dition of their homes and suggest the solution that they thought 

 would meet these conditions. We have not been able to locate 

 a single letter, although we hear that a deluge of replies went 

 to the department, and in due time we shall be given a summary 

 of these letters. 



If you were conjecturing the nature of these letters what 

 would you assume the dominant key to be? Would it be one 

 of utter loneliness and separation, would it reveal a life of end- 

 less drudgery and no personal change ahead in the road of life, 

 or would the dissonant tones tell of the deprivation of equal 

 privileges for the farm woman's children when compared with 

 what others are receiving in the great world? Unquestionably 

 all of these and many others will be put into the great melting 

 pot of justice and emerge a great potent power for the better- 

 ment of the woman on the farm. 



While we are willing to admit that these conditions are 

 not always what we should desire, yet it is far from just to either 

 women or farm life to acknowledge that it is a necessary factor 

 of this life, and that it more frequently arises from the lack 

 of some mental quality to meet and overcome conditions rather 

 than from its natural environments. Some of these women 

 would not meet other conditions of life any better as is shown 

 daily in small towns and cities. 



Many women have given all that is dear to the human 

 heart to brave the wilds to make successful homes, but they 

 carried with them that inherent power to conquer conditions, 

 and though the homes were crude yet their children and every 

 phase of that isolated life radiated their mental influence. On 

 the other side, there are thousands who have been denied the 

 opportunity whereby this power could be developed and have 

 gradually sunken deeper and deeper into this hopeless mental 

 outlook, passing the same conditions onto their children. If 



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