672 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



that the women have fewer opportunities to get away from home and 

 who can blame them for losing interest in things outside the home? 



The second class is the farm folks who do take time to enjoy pub- 

 lic affairs and still attend to their home duties. 



The third class and the class as much in the extreme as the first 

 mentioned are the farmers who live in the country and stay in town. 

 Nothing happens in the way of amusements but what they are present 

 and on ordinary days can usually be found in town at the croquet 

 grounds or some other favorite loafing place, either talking about the 

 merits of their automobiles, else how unlucky they are in everything 

 they undertake. The recreation I would recommend for this class 

 would be, stay at home and farm a little. 



It is in this class that the men will have to take most all the blame 

 for when you notice a farmer that stays in town you usually observe 

 that his wife stays or has to say at home. 



Now this may not always be. When we get equal suffrage we may 

 see the women at some favorite spot in town talking not about what 

 a good hill climber their auto is, but about how handy their fireless 

 cooker is and how they can put the food in it in the morning and 

 rush home a few minutes before noon or supper time and soon pre- 

 pare a piping hot meal for the hired man, while their husband is put- 

 ting another can of gasoline in the automobile. 



I was reading recently an article in a farm paper about farmers 

 working so hard while young that they were not able to relax their 

 efforts when they became old, thus making old age a dissatisfied ex- 

 istence, instead of a contented time of life, deserved by honest effort. 



Statistics show that the average life of a retired farmer is five 

 years. This means that some farm men and women simply work 

 themselves to death. They work early and late in order to lay up 

 something for old age, but work so hard that when old age comes 

 their health is broken and the habits formed during the years of hard 

 work are so dominant that they are dissatisfied with idleness and not 

 being able to work they become an easy prey for ailments and are 

 anxious to be through with this world. 



Now, which is better? Shall farmers work so hard trying to pre- 

 pare for retirement and old age that they will not be able to enjoy 

 either when that time comes, or shall they have their pleasures along 

 with the work. It may take a little longer to acquire a certain amount 

 of property that all people should have to rightfully enjoy old age, but 

 think of the years of living instead of drudgery that they will have, 

 and if it does take a little longer to acquire this, won't the period 

 classed as "old age" be shortened, due to the physical strength be- 

 ing better preserved? 



Now the question comes, what shall be the recreations for the 

 farmer? For one thing I think that every family should get away 

 from the farm for a week or more every year. I don't mean camp 

 at the Chautauqua and go home every day to see how things are or 

 else telephone there and tell the man in charge to commence cutting 

 the hay or something like that. I mean, get away from the farm 



