Report of Missouri Farmers' Week. 579 



an opportunity for the fullest exercise of their business and ad- 

 ministrative capacities as can be found in any city. There is no 

 reason, as I see it, why certain women with business energy cannot 

 run a farm as successfully as other women, with a different type 

 of business capacity, run a millinery shop. 



There have to be pioneers in every great movement, and the 

 work of pioneers is not so evident to the onlooker as the work of 

 those who come later and build upon the foundation which has 

 been laid. It takes courage and persistence to play the part of a 

 pioneer in the movement you have started. It is easier to start 

 an organization of this kind than it is to continue it and make it 

 worth while. I doubt not but that with the persistence you are 

 putting into the work, in ten years time you will have changed the 

 attitude of women toward agriculture to the extent of showing 

 people that farming is not by any means an impossible or an im- 

 practicable vocation for women who have been raised on the farm. 

 The women who are now actually successful in conducting farms 

 are so far separated and so isolated that they are in most cases 

 overlooked entirely. Consequently, people have never caught the 

 idea that women can be farmers. • Your organization should do 

 much to popularize this sentiment and to set the fact clearly before 

 the world that there are in Missouri a body of women who are suc- 

 cessful in this vocation, and who are sufficiently progressive to 

 want to let the whole world know about it. 



All this movement needs is leadership. There are plenty of 

 women looking toward the country today who will be glad to follow 

 along the way you have blazed. 



Your president has asked me to speak specifically upon the 

 subject of a proposed scholarship offer, concerning the purpose of 

 which you all have a general idea. This scholarship was offered 

 last year, but failed to elicit a large response. A different plan is 

 needed. I believe that one of the first essentials in a scholarship 

 offer is that the award shall be based upon some kind of a contest. 

 Your purpose is to offer a scholarship for students who will study 

 agriculture. Consequently the contest should be a real farm con- 

 test. We have in Missouri a highly successful boys' corn growing 

 contest. In some other states girls participate in similar contests, 

 matching their efforts against the efforts of the boys. I do not 

 know that this is the kind of a contest we want in Missouri, for it 

 is hardly possible to exact the same conditions from girls that 

 we demand from the boys, but I see no logical reason why this 



