TWENTY-FIRST ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART V 425 



those farm women. Other business men can close their doors after office 

 and shop hours and go to their homes. The farmer's wife knows just 

 exactly the things that have confronted you all the day, for she lives in 

 the "oflace," she boards the men that work for you, she knows when the 

 storm sweeps across the prairie and destroys the growing heads; she 

 knows what it means to you and to her and to the children; but I ask 

 ycu men, how many times has that little woman put her hand in yours 

 and said "Never mind, dear, we will weather it, somehow." She has had 

 tc have the patience and the strength to bolster you up in time of ad- 

 versity. 



Over in Indiana we have inimitable Abe Martin, that happy philosopher 

 whom you all know, and in one of his line he says "A rich farmer's wife 

 usually has a stylish funeral." And have you yourselves not 'seen the 

 casket of a farmer's wife covered with costly hot-house flowers — when 

 she couldn't smell them — while in life she couldn't even have a flower-bed 

 because you fellows wouldn't repair the chicken-yard fence. 



So that I am urging that you give the farmer's wife a vacation; that you 

 take her with you to this sort of a convention. If you do, next year you 

 will have to hire a larger auditorium to hold your convention, because 

 you will want with you, in close co-operation, just as you have in all of the 

 lines of your home work, the farm-wife, the up-to-date woman, to help 

 you. (Applause). 



Now, very recently women have been given the right of suffrage. Some 

 of you wondered what we were going to do with it. In some instances 

 what we did with it suited you all right; in others, perhaps, it didn't; but 

 I wonder some times if the farm women have gotten the idea that the big 

 job is all done when we have elected, or we haven't elected, the president 

 of our choice. There are duties that come after war, it is just as much a 

 matter of heroism to be a live hero and live for your country, as it is to be 

 a dead one and have a statue erected to your memory. 



And so, as time goes on, farm women, especially, are going to be inter- 

 ested just as their husbands are in those things which are before the 

 national congress of the day. You are very much interested in the pas- 

 sage of the "Truth-in-fabrics" bill. So are the farm women. The un- 

 scrupulous manufacturer is also interested in that bill, but his interest is 

 to defeat it, for he knows, for instance, as regards silk, that oftentimes 

 the heavier silks are weighted with metallic salts which destroy the fibers 

 in a very short time. So we are interested in the passage of the Truth-in- 

 fabrics bill. We are also interested, of course, in the Shephard-Towner 

 bill. We are interested in the bill that is an enlargement of the Smith- 

 Hughes bill, which will make it possible for the state extension depart- 

 ment to spend as much money for women's work as it spends for men. I 

 have known extension directors — fine fellows — who talked long and loud 

 about not giving the wives a fair share, and yet were spending most of 

 the money on men's work, saying "You women will have to get along, in 

 some way," and we did, because women are resourceful, naturally. 



S^me of us are scared of politics. The definition of politics is this 

 "Anything that is adapted to public welfare." I agree with Sam Jones 



