CHAPTER XII 

 A. THE RURAL HOME 

 WOMEN ON THE FARMS 1 



HERBERT QUICK 



MY explorations of the souls of farmers, backed by my own life 

 on a farm, and the lives my mother, sisters, aunts, cousins, and 

 women neighbors lived, lead me to the conclusion that the "drift 

 to the cities" has been largely a woman movement. I have found 

 the men on farms much more contented and happy than the 

 women. My mother wanted my father to leave the farm, and 

 move to a college town where the children could have "a better 

 chance." He did not accede to her wishes; and one bit of spirit- 

 ual drift was checked. But just to the degree that farmers have 

 reached the plane of letting the wife and daughter vote on the 

 future of the family, they have been pushed toward the city. 

 Out on broad cattle-ranges I have found the men and boys filled 

 with the traditional joy of open spaces and the freedom of spirit 

 which goes with it ; but in many, many cases, their women were 

 pining for neighbors, for domestic help, for pretty clothes, for 

 schools, music, art, and the things tasted when the magazines 

 came in. 



There is a movement for better things among the farmers' 

 wives of the land. There is a new organization on an interna- 

 tional scale. There are questioning and revolt and progress in 

 the rural homes. This idea is finding recognition among them : 

 that all the prizes of progress are no longer to be allowed to ^<> 

 to the man-life on the farm, while the woman-life is left to 

 vegetate. 



I spent a day in a New England neighborhood recently, and 

 at the sight of the old stone walls which divide field from field, 

 my prairie-bred back ached, and my lingers hied in spirit at the 



i Adapted from Good Hoiim /./>/// !f . Vol. 57: 426-30, Oct., l!i:t. 



313 



