Chapter XII. 

 WOMAN'S PART IN THE WORK 



If we are to have genuine rural reconstruction, it is indispensable 

 that we should have the co-operation of women to effect it. We 

 cannot do without that. For, for thorough reconstruction, we 

 necessarily must have home life. In President Roosevelt's words, 

 " We cannot, as a nation, get along at all if we have not the right 

 sort of home life. Everything," so he goes on, " resolves itself in 

 the end into a question of personality ; in the development of 

 character the home should be more important than the school and 

 than society at large." And there can be no home without woman. 



At the present time we can scarcely be said to have rural homes 

 for our labouring folk, who, whether labouring for themselves or for 

 others, make up the bulk of our rural population, and whom above 

 all things we have to think of under our present aspect, since it is 

 they, and they only, who require to be " helped to help themselves." 

 We have not even houses for a large part of these people, and what 

 houses there are can for the most part not count as, or be converted 

 into, homes. They are insufficient in space, in conveniences, in 

 equipment ; and, above all things, for the most part their tenure 

 is absolutely insecure — dependent, at the shortest of notices, on the 

 will or caprice of another. It was a slur upon our country, and upon 

 its institutions, to say, as a Minister of Agriculture is reported to have 

 done a year or two ago, that if we want to do away with far^n-tied 

 cottages for labourers, the only alternative is to have landlord-tied 

 cottages. 



However, that is another question than that which we have to do 

 with here. We are trying now earnestly to fill a painfully revealed 

 void, and in doing so we discover how hard it is to make up for past, 

 too long-continued neglect, and what a heavy price we have to pay 

 for doing what would have cost us very much less if we had addressed 

 ourselves to the task in proper time. 



Of course the existing blank will have to be rilled — cost what it 

 will. And the nation is not in a mood to stand still at the Minister's 

 alternative quoted. House room there is sure to be provided, and 

 it will be better house room than our rural working folk have had to 

 put up with in the past — house room independent of another's 

 caprice, house room with accommodation permitting of the obser- 



