Report of Missouri Farmers' Week. 165 



ideas of their family that they should work. He could not allow his 

 own daughter to get in the same condition. 



I suggested that Margaret be sent to a near-by school of 

 domestic science, and that she take the teacher's course. Then, if 

 need be, she could be self-supporting, and in the meantime she 

 would be getting the training she could not get at home. 



If the father had not been so outspoken against college 

 education for women, the problem might have been postponed by 

 sending her there for four years. It used to be that only girls 

 with strong scholarly bent went to college. But now the number 

 is rapidly increasing of those sent there by their parents who do 

 not know what else to do with them while their natural mates are 

 preparing to support them. And although many colleges and uni- 

 versities now offer courses in home economics, the parents and 

 home friends of these girls surprisingly often fail to suggest to 

 them any responsibility for making preparation for the life they 

 hope to live, and they fail to elect home economics ; they play with 

 the college curriculum as idly as the girl in the Dream with the 

 sand and shells at her feet, waiting, just waiting — a serious 

 problem to their instructors. 



If there is less money, the problem of what to do while she 

 waits is generally easily settled. The girl and her family more 

 quickly realize that she must work. However, it is generally tacitly 

 understood that it will not be for long — and it hardly seems worth 

 while to spend much money getting ready to work when — well, 

 "when she may not care to do that kind of work long." She may 

 not care to, but men hesitate these days — and many a girl finds 

 herself in middle life doing work she doesn't like, for which she is 

 poorly prepared, and with the prospect of continuing it the rest 

 of her life. 



This condition is bad enough, but it is not as bad as that of 

 many another girl whose partner came early, but found her un- 

 prepared for her life work. Housework, as well as any other 

 work for which one is unprepared, is a hard drudgery. But so ac- 

 customed are we to the myth that women instinctively know how 

 to keep house that we often fail even yet to realize that the lack of 

 preparation may be the cause of the trouble when the work seems 

 unduly hard. We forget that through all the ages until very 

 recently every girl prepared for marriage by a thorough apprentice- 

 ship at home. The girls of a few generations ago, having no 

 schools to attend, had time not only to gain housewifely skill, but 



