402 WHEAT AND WOMAN 



up from their dream of resource and set to work 

 for the living of two or three more in place of the 

 original one ; but I also knew that, happily for the 

 race, there is another and increasing group of women 

 who, if they cannot have marriage as an inspiration 

 in their lives, refuse it as a mere resource. I met 

 women forced by circumstance into business or 

 industrial life the monotony and routine of which 

 starved those very faculties which would have found 

 full scope in the care of grateful animals and the 

 varied labours on the land, and, having arrived 

 myself at the place where I knew how to succeed, 

 through having learned what to avoid, in farming 

 on the prairie, it seemed to me that, through the 

 untidy gap I had made in scrambling through a 

 blind fence to get that knowledge, others would 

 make a gate if they once realized that what men 

 had done for themselves in agricultural pursuits 

 on the prairie, women could also do for themselves. 

 Woman can earn for herself independence and in 

 time wealth. The minimum sum of independence 

 I defined then, as now, in the sum of ;£5ooo, and 

 I consider that a woman should be able to command 

 that amount at least after twenty years' work on 

 the land, providing she has a fair start. 



It is impossible in a world practically governed 

 by " the symbol of C^sar " to avoid individual 

 registration of one's direct relation to money. If 

 you cannot control it it will control you. In the 

 past it is an open secret that conditions have driven 

 Woman into the bondage of money ; the symbol 

 must be forced to serve, or sooner or later it rules, 

 and it rules with a rod of red-hot iron. The 

 strongest point pressing forward the coming of 



