414 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



all nature and outdoors was crying for her to come out and play; and I 

 am urging, whenever I have the opportunity, do not make one little girl 

 v/ash dishes all by herself — get somebody, sister or brother, to help her, 

 but do not make the little girl wash dishes all by herself — let's make of 

 that kitchen a pleasant place. 



Now, you understand that all of the things we are building and planning 

 have their place as regards the convenient farm home, and one of them is 

 that problem of running water in every farm home. Last year in Indiana 

 we had our special train running over the New York Central lines giving 

 home demonstrations, and in that campaign every one on that train was 

 emphasizing the necessity of installing labor-saving devices, and especially 

 running water in the farm home. It is surprising how easily and how 

 cheaply, when you value the thing all up in relative values, that that can 

 be had. I have in mind a man over in Indiana who is prominent in Fed- 

 eration affairs whom I heard make this statement: For a number of 

 years his wife had plead with him for the installation of running water 

 in the farm home; there were four little children in that home, and she 

 had to carry all of the water in, to say nothing of what she had to do with 

 it after she got it in, and had to get it out again, in the ordinary care of 

 the family. You know, it has been estimated that to do the work for a 

 family of five it takes a barrel of water a day. Now, how far would a 

 young man get in his matrimonial pursuit if he should ask the girl of his 

 choice to carry a barrel of water a day for him every day? And when 

 this farm wife asked for this convenience, her husband would reply "I 

 can't afford it; can't afford it." And finally he came to see that the health 

 of the wife was failing under this drudgery and he decided that he would 

 go ahead and put in the water system, and that big farmer, with a shamed 

 face, said "When the bill came in, it didn't amount to any more than the 

 cost of my self-binder, and I had had three of them during the time my 

 wife and I were keeping house." 



A good many times, if we had a partnership affair, giving the farmer's 

 wife a share in the profits and pleasures as well as in the sorrows and 

 burdens and the losses, we could make an improvement on the inside of 

 the house for a great deal less money than we can put it on the outside, 

 and yet it would go far towards solving the unrest among farm women 

 today. 



Statistics tell us that young women are leaving the farm homes more 

 rapidly than the farm men. When I was in high school we had a little 

 saying like this: "If all the girls went to Hongkong, where would all of 

 the boys go?" If you were genius enough, you would say "To Pekin." 

 (Laughter). You cannot hope to keep the boys on the farm unless you 

 can keep the girls there. 



I have heard the story told of how Clinton Norman Howard rode in the 

 cab of the engine that draws the Twentieth Century Limited between 

 Chicago and New York, and after he had reached the terminal and 

 climbed down from his seat in the cab of the engine, the engineer said to 

 him, "What were your sensations as we came rushing along thru the 

 darkness?" "Well," Mr. Howard replied, "perhaps the thing that im- 



