abused word, but which expresses our meaning best of all, "Efficiency." You 

 know they have told us we have all of everything here, all the sunshine, all 

 the food, all the milk, all the water, everything that is good out in the 

 country, and the only difficulty is we don't know how to use it. I sometimes 

 think there is something in that. We have with us this evening one of those 

 individuals who has learned how to use some of the good of life and how to 

 get most out of that which is around us. It is with great pleasure that the 

 Department of Household Science presents Mrs. Clara Ingram Judson from 

 Chicago who will speak to us on the subject "Leisure a Liability or an 

 Asset." Mrs. Judson: 



LEISURE A LIABILITY OR AN ASSET. 

 (Mrs. Clara Ingram Judson.) 



The teacher was talking to her children about heredity and had ex- 

 plained something of what it meant. After she thought they understood, 

 she asked each child in the class what he would rather be if he could be 



anyone he choose. One pupil after the other 

 chose famous people, until she got down to the 

 little Irish boy at the end of the class. He 

 said, "Teacher, I would rather be half Nigger 

 and half Jew." The teacher thought she had 

 not heard right so she said, "What did you 

 say, Mike? I asked what would you rather 

 be if you could be anybody you choose." Mike 

 said, "I heard you, Teacher. I said 1 would 

 rather be half Nigger and half Jew." "Well", 

 said the teacher, "I don't understand, Mike. 

 Why would you like to he that?" He rep'ied, 

 "That's easy. A Nigger is always happy if he 

 has a dollar and a Jew always has one." 

 [Laughter.] I feel like that, because you 

 know I am always happy if I have a speech 

 and an audience, and now I have both. 



I am going to talk about leisure. When 

 I wakened my husband last night about two 

 o'clock, and I told him I was going to talk to 

 the Farmers' Institute about leisure, he said, 

 "That will be a real joke! If you can talk 

 about leisure to the American farmer and his 

 wife without being run out of town, you will 

 do more than I think possible!" It does seem 

 a little strange, perhaps, to talk to the over- 

 worked farmer about leisure, you and I are busy people, and if we have very 

 much leisure we certainly don't realize it, do we? But I wonder if we 

 haven't more leisure than we do realize. 



What is leisure? The first thing we think of when we speak of leisure, 

 is the man who sits at the roll top desk, and by the way, they don't have 

 roll top desks any more, they have smooth desks that somehow never get 

 piled up because things are shoved into the drawers, this man locks up his 

 drawers and goes away in a lovely limousine about four o'clock on a work 

 day afternoon. I have heard that that is the way the Chicago business men 

 do. But the Chicago business man that I am best acquainted with doesn't 

 do that way at all! There are so many things Chicago people are supposed 

 to do that, although I have lived there a good many years, I have never 

 seen them do. Just a little bit east of here, I was at an institute last winter, 

 and I heard one friend say that everybody who lived in Chicago was a mil- 

 lionaire, so you see where I am! It places me very effectively! 



Yes, when we think of leisure we think of being through work at four 

 o'clock and driving away in a Rolls Royce, or some other grand-sounding 

 car, going off to play golf. Isn't that our first thought of "leisure?" And 



Mrs. Clara Ingram Judson. 



