Report of Missouri Farmers' Week. 581 



EXTRACTS FROM ADDRESS BEFORE WOMEN FARMERS' 



CLUB. 



(J. Kelly Wright, Institute Lecturer, Columbia, Mo.) 



Ladies, I consider it a very great honor to address the women 

 farmers of Missouri. But I do not feel equal to 

 the occasion when I am called upon to discuss at 

 length the subject alloted to me: "The Future 

 of Women Farmers." In the beginning, let me 

 say that I make a distinction between farm 

 women and women farmers. I should not advise 

 young women to take up farming as a business 

 and become women farmers. To me, the great- 

 est institution that the world has produced is 

 J. K. Wright. ^j^^ American home. I know of no more enviable 



position that a woman can hold than that of mistress, wife and 

 mother in a true Missouri home out in the open country. 



However, we have in our State a great number of women who 

 by various reasons have come into possession of farm lands. There 

 are women farmers in every section of Missouri. They own the 

 land, have a right to hold it, and to do so they must pay their taxes. 

 They must bear their part of the burden of taxation. I can see 

 no reason why the widow, the sister or the daughter, just because 

 she is a woman, should sell the land that has become hers by in- 

 heritance or otherwise, or even rent it out to others. A very 

 great per cent of our women farmers were born on the farm, grew 

 up in farm homes, and had the same opportunities to learn farm 

 operations that the farm boys had. Just what their future will 

 be we can not tell. But their success or failure as owners and 

 operators of farms will in very great measure depend upon their 

 own individual and collective efforts, or in other words upon the 

 women themselves. 



Women from Iowa, women from Kansas, who have read of this 

 meeting and the Missouri organization have expressed an interest. 

 I understand that an, Iowa woman farmer has come all the way 

 from Iowa to attend this meeting. This is evidence to me that 

 from now on women farmers and even farm women are going to 

 take a more active interest in things pertaining to the farm. 



I sometimes think that one very great reason that conditions 

 unpleasant and unprofitable in the farm home exist because women 



