226 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



Although it is not expected that they are going to take 

 an active part in the dry details of your business opera- 

 tions, I do say, and I say it with the utmost seriousness, 

 from the strong convictions of experience, that one enter- 

 prising woman engaged in our cause, will do more to 

 promote the objects which this Society has in view, than 

 ten ordinary men. 



And certainly there is no part of the community more 

 deeply interested, than the wives and daughters of farm- 

 ers. We wish to make them feel the importance of their 

 station in society. We wish to elevate the whole agri- 

 cultural community to that degree, that they shall feel 

 proud of the name of "farmer's wife." We wish to see 

 our girls so educated that they never will blush to hear 

 themselves called "farmer's daughters." 



Let it be an object dear to the heart of every member 

 of this Society, to weed out every vestige of that feeling 

 which sinks the farmer below the very first grade of 

 society. Let us constantly impress upon their minds that 

 they hold the same relative position to all other classes 

 that yon climbing orb does to the rest of our planetary 

 system. 



Withdraw the genial rays of the sun from our earth, 

 and what a cold and useless world would it be. Let the 

 humble tillers of the soil cease their operations, or let 

 them cultivate only what would be barely sufficient for 

 their own subsistence, and what would be the condition 

 of all other classes of society? Can you not perceive 

 that they are as dependant upon us as we are upon the 

 sun? Can you not perceive that we are, and of right 

 ought to be considered, the pillars and support of civilized 

 society ? 



Why is it then, that such a false and unnatural state 

 of things has existed, and does now exist, though to a 

 less degree than heretofore, that makes us ashamed of 

 our honest employment? Why do the farmer's daughters 

 seek to connect themselves in that most holy of all con- 

 nections, with those who are strangers to the ways of 



