60 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1899. 



rewjirds to keep better cows and raise finer fruits ; thereby he 

 can cater to a critical or exacting market and get more money. 

 His wife, in moments taken from household duties, has spent 

 some of her energies over passing fads, usually without merit, 

 or has followed a rut in which she has learned little of market- 

 able value. The agricultural fair has been no help to her. 



A somewhat extended movement is being started in the 

 Middle \A"estern States to make woman's work done at home in 

 her spare time more remunerative. The marked preference for 

 good hand work over machine-made products favors such a 

 scheme. It originated with Mrs. Candace Wheeler of New 

 York city who has no superior in her success in applying deco- 

 rative to industrial art. She has established as a paying occu- 

 pation in isolated or village homes in certain parts of her own 

 State the making of portieres woven from scraps and pieces ; 

 these are a sort of artistic rag carpeting converted into dra- 

 peries. I do not remember having seen a premium offered for 

 these portieres yet they are found in the most elegantly fur- 

 nished houses, bring a good price because they are hand made, 

 and cater to the exclusive taste because it is about impossible 

 to repeat the design exactly. 



Rag carpets are among the old fashioned things which are not 

 gone-bys, and through correspondence with Mrs. Wheeler I 

 find that she agrees with me that premiums should still be 

 offered for them, especially when woven in the mixed pattern 

 and where no gaudy cheap dyes are used. There is a limited 

 demand for this floor covering in houses which have one old- 

 fashioned room ; artists like it for studio floors when it is not of 

 aggressive pattern ; and in the country house it is always in 

 keeping. 



Mrs. Wheeler also writes to me of women who are making 

 and weaving blue and white washable rugs for bathrooms and 

 sleeping-rooms, which are excellent in every way and are 

 salable. Braided floor mats, if well made and sul)dued in color, 

 are always worth a premium, as they are serviceable and assume 

 to be nothing more than what they are. With apologies to the 

 one-fifth, what can be said of four-fifths of the drawn-in or 



