TWENTY-FIRST ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART V 413 



The farm house wasn't planned very carefully a few years ago. No- 

 body's house was really planned — they just happened in some way or 

 other, and many of our farm women have fallen heir to a kitchen that 

 has not been planned carefully, and as a result she must take ever-so- 

 many unnecessary steps in the course of a day; she must do so many 

 things that are really too hard for women to do. I like to watch the Pull- 

 man chef on a dining car prepare the meal for the m.any people who come 

 in and out of the dining car every day. You remember, it is just a little 

 place in the wall, and he just simply stands or sits in one place and 

 reaches here and there, and hardly stirs out of his place — but you must 

 remember that it is a man that is doing the work, and he has planned it 

 out carefully. (Laughter). If you were to make a diagram of the kitchen 

 that many farmers' wives occupy and work in, you would see how in- 

 convenient it really is, because the kitchen is the workshop of the farm 

 home, and I believe, after you had contemplated it and looked it over and 

 seen the unnecessary steps you had to take, you would be willing to 

 change the location of a door or a window, put in a new chimney if 

 necessary, and do other things that don't cost very much, after all, and it 

 would make a wonderful saving in the time and strength of the farmer's 

 wife. 



I really think there are kitchens in the United States over which farm 

 women preside, where, if you could attach a pedometer to her, as you 

 attach a speedometer to your car, it would register on the farmer's wife 

 more miles at the end of the year than it does when you leave it on the 

 car driven by the county agent. (Great laughter and applause.) 



In the building of a new home, or the remodeling of an old one, because 

 that is what a great many of us will have to do (and right here I want to 

 say that I am heartily in favor of remodeling old houses), I have heard 

 many people say "Why didn't you wait and build a new one?" and I have 

 always given this answer "Because, for one reason, if I had waited for the 

 money to be all collected in at one time, there might have something hap- 

 pened that happens sometimes, or I might have been much grayer-headed 

 than I am now; and another reason is we have had the conveniences 

 that we did have while the children were in the home nest and enjoying 

 them, and that is no small item." (Applause). 



But in that planning, let us give a great deal of time to the planning 

 of the kitchen. The kitchen is the housewife's workshop, and the laborer 

 is judged by the tools that he has. It goes farther than that, it is the 

 laboratory, if you please, where the food for the farm family is prepared. 

 Most farm women see the color-scheme in their kitchen oftener than 

 they see it in their parlor or drawingroom, and I am much more con- 

 cerned with having my kitchen a pleasant place than I am in having new 

 curtains for the parlor — if I had one. But it seems to me that a great 

 many women, if I could ask you the question here personally and not em- 

 barrass you too much, "What part of the housework do you dislike?" 

 would say, "Oh, the dish-washing." I believe that has come about, in a 

 large majority of instances, because the mother, who is the big-girl of the 

 home, has made the little-girl wash the dishes, chained her to the dishpan 

 on some hot morning in a dark, stuffy, illy-ventilated, ugly kitchen, when 



