THE FARM MOTHER AND HER FLOWERS. 465 



I had to get up yesterday and defend the fanners when they said 

 that nine-tenths of the trouble about the farmers not getting any 

 fruit was due to the fact that they did not know how to take care of 

 their trees. Now brother Bush gets up (I don't know where he has 

 been) and says because a farmer does not have labor saving ma- 

 chines in the kitchen it makes work so hard for the ladies. I believe 

 we live in a pretty good country where we treat our women as well 

 as they do anywhere on the face of the earth. I believe the farmers' 

 wives have more privileges, in the country where I live at any rate; 

 they have more time to attend to their gardens and flowers than the 

 working people have in the villages. By reason of the farmer hav- 

 ing so many labor-saving machines and devices, it really saves the 

 ladies a great amount of work. On a certain farm I pass every day 

 it used to take fifteen men to do the harvesting, and now there are- 

 only two men to do that same work. It takes only half the men to 

 do the threshing, and it is done in half the time they used to do it. 

 It does not take a lot of men a month to cut and husk the corn ; 

 it is all done in a few days. They have money enough so they can 

 afford to keep a hired girl, and she does the cooking, and this is the 

 condition you find in thousands of farm homes. If you are looking 

 for trouble you can find it everywhere. The farmer's wife has no 

 more trouble than the rest of them. You people always talk about 

 how selfish the men are in getting everything that will lighten their 

 own labor, but the poor women still have to go through the same 

 drudgery; but I tell you just as the farmer lightens his labor his 

 wife's burden is lifted accordingly. See what a drudgery it used 

 to be for the women of the farm to take care of the milk and make 

 the butter. How many women on a well regulated farm do you 

 find that have anything more to do with making the butter? Does 

 not that take off a big burden? There is hardly a farm where I 

 live where are more than two men constantly on the farm. 



The women are not always in favor of saving work themselves. 

 The first oil stove I ever saw in my life I saw at Mankato A man 

 was looking at the stove, and the agent was explaining to him its 

 advantages. I guess he was a lazy fellow because there was no 

 wood to cut, and he thought it was a fine thing; and he said he 

 guessed he would buy one, but he first wanted his wife to see it. 

 He found his wife and showed it to her, explained how nice a thing 

 it was, how it saved cutting wood and that it was not expensive, 

 and when he got through she asked, "But where do you build the 

 fire?" He told her she didn't have to build a fire. "Well," she 

 said, "I would not have a thing in my house I could bake a batch of 

 biscuit with unless I could punch up the fire." (Laughter.) 



Talking about starting flowers, you start some once, and you will 

 have them forever. I never went to but one place in my life where 

 I was asked to speak and hardly knew what to say. I had a neigh- 

 bor, a Norwegian, who died, and the funeral was set for a certain 

 day. I said to my wife that I was going to that funeral, and she 

 said I had better stay at home because I could not understand what 

 was said, and it would do me no good to go. I told her I knew 

 that, but I liked the old man, and I was going out of respect. At 

 that funeral they did not do as Mrs. Underwood said they did at 



