TWENTY-FIRST ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART V 415 



pressed me most was the wonderful speed and endurance of the great 

 locomotive." "Yes," said the engineer, "it has great speed and endurance, 

 hut did you ever stop to think that if the tender had become uncoupled 

 at any time along the road, th,en the power and the speed and the en- 

 durance of the locomotive would not have been possible? For you know 

 that it is the tender that carries the coal and the water that make the 

 fire and the steam, and they in turn make possible the speed and power 

 and endurance of the locomotive." And after I heard that story and 

 coupled it up with my own experience as a farmer's wife, and with the 

 experience I have been able to gain as an extension worker over the state 

 of Indiana, I have come to the conclusion that the average farmer without 

 women members in his household would be in much the same condition 

 as a locomotive if it didn't have any tender. (Applause). 



Perhaps you are wondering why I consider it necessary for me to bring 

 these things to your mind; why should a woman leave her own home in a 

 beautiful state and travel so many miles to talk with you about it? It is 

 because I believe that under the roof of American farm homes there lies 

 the solution to the problems of unrest of the day. Herbert Hoover has 

 said that the farms are the source that have always supplied our country 

 with its true Americanism, its physical and moral strength. You have 

 noticed, I am sure, out here, as we have at home, that since the beginning 

 of the world war, and on thru to the present time, everything you wanted 

 to do was influenced by the fact that out beyond the farms somebody 

 was trying to do less work and get more money for it. 



You know that people are leaving our farm homes and flocking to the 

 cities, trying to get in on the ground-floor of success, and it seems to me 

 that even tho the farm life is in some respects, perhaps, a hard one to the 

 farm boy and girl — there are so many chores, it seems as tho they are 

 never done, in some places; that those very things are laying the founda- 

 tion for character that is going to mean a great deal in solving the pro- 

 blems of the next twenty-five years. 



As I came across the intervening states yesterday afternoon, and then 

 again when it got light this morning, I was interested in watching the 

 farm children. Last evening I saw them driving up the cattle and 

 horses — a boy and a dog in so many places, inseparable companions. I 

 was told, when I began to raise my boy, "You cannot raise your boy suc- 

 cessfully without a dog." You cannot have a dog in the city, and you 

 cannot have a boy in a great many of the apartment houses in the city, so 

 it was necessary for us to stay in the country. (Laughter and applause). 

 If you will allow me to become personal again, for the boy of this story is 

 a good deal like other boys, I will relate a little illustration. A few 

 weeks ago we had to have a new dog — something happened to ours, — I 

 think all farm mothers dread that sensation, — and I am raising another 

 puppy, and, much like other mothers who had gone thru that experience, 

 I said to my boy "Well, young man, you will attend to this one yourself," 

 which he faithfully promised to do. The puppy was put into the base- 

 ment at night because of the cold weather, and the tender heart of that 

 great big boy, who is now all arms and legs, was aroused because of the 

 dependence of this puppy. AH went well for a while, but in the middle 



