314 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



thought of the awful labors of the farmers of old who dug those 

 stones, carried them off the land, and aligned them in those old 

 fences. But progress came along and emancipated the man. He 

 found that it paid to abandon the stonefields and work the richer, 

 kinder Western lands with machinery. He could make more 

 money by the use of tools on which he rode. It became profitable 

 to thresh by steam, harvest by horse-power, put the corn in the 

 soil by machinery, bind the grain with twine and hoe with a horse- 

 drawn machine. To handle manure with a fork does not pay 

 when it can be spread by means of a machine. Potatoes are 

 sliced, dropped, dug, cleaned, and elevated into wagons by ma- 

 chines. Tomato plants, cabbage plants, and the like are planted 

 by machines. 



The farmer has come to be a man who operates machines, and 

 his life is made more interesting and easeful thereby. There is 

 still a great deal of hard drudgery in his life, but progress and 

 invention have been busy in relieving him of that dreadful bur- 

 den under which our farming ancestors bowed, grunted, and 

 sweated. The internal-combustion engine, while it has trans- 

 formed the lives of so many city people through the motor-car, 

 has become the chore-boy and handy-man of the farm. 



But all these improvements have come into the life of the man 

 on the farm because they have been profitable. I do not know 

 of one which the American farmer has generally adopted merely 

 because it gave him ease. He has not spared himself. He has 

 been emancipated in large measure because the easier ways of 

 doing things have promised better pay for his labor. 



And here is where the farm woman has not received a fair 

 deal in the partnership. Not that she has been entirely without 

 relief from the march of progress. The wind-mill, or the gas- 

 engine which pumps water for the live stock, also saves her the 

 back-breaking carry from the spring-house which sent our mothers 

 to town invalids, or made their lives a burden. The invention 

 of the cream-separator and the establishment of the creamery 

 have freed woman from some of the drudgery of the old-fashioned 

 dairy. 



The farm woman no longer makes cheese, because the cheese- 

 factory can do it better and more cheaply. The introduction of 

 labor-saving machinery has decreased the number of ravenous 



