CAN WE MAKE IT PAY? 269 



by puncturing ; they eat only where orioles or hornets 

 have done the mischief. Bees and chickens fall 

 easily to the women's side of the work. In Florida 

 I have a neighbor who has over one hundred hens and 

 they are all named. Her forty turkeys obey her 

 orders like trained soldiers. Her bees, however, are 

 over my side of the fence. With fowls and bees and 

 mushrooms and flower gardens and a vegetable 

 garden, a woman can make a fair living, all alone. 

 As a rule she finds less trouble with help than a 

 man. 



You will observe that I am dodging around this 

 question of help constantly. It has become a ter- 

 rible problem in the country, provided we are not 

 able to furnish a good deal of home work and do a 

 good deal ourselves. Still I know some of the best 

 vegetable gardeners who plant for succession, as I 

 have suggested in the orchard, and get on with very 

 little outside assistance. In Texas the women are 

 running dairies, while others are goose farmers, and 

 in the fruit sections not a few have canneries and 

 make money at it. I know at least one who bakes 

 for a half dozen neighbors and, with the addition 

 of a small cannery to use up wasting fruit, furnishes 

 her own food and something of a surplus. 



Just here let us consider. You can, if you prefer, 

 with the garden and table waste feed one pig, or a 

 calf, or a dozen hens, but not all of them. A cow 

 will require house slops once a day and that will 

 take about all the daily table waste. She will need 



