318 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



Mother. She finds that the children are, in most parts of the 

 country, deprived of the school advantages and social advan- 

 tages which the city gives even to the slum-dweller. 



The American farm women constitute our largest class of eco- 

 nomically useful women. This is shown by the fact that mar- 

 riage is regarded as a burden by the poor man in the city, but is 

 almost a necessity for the poor man who owns and works a farm. 

 The poultry products of the nation are worth as much as the 

 cotton crop, exceed the wheat crop by four hundred millions of 

 dollars yearly, and are worth more than the combined values 

 of the oat, rye, barley, and potato crops. This enormous product, 

 if lost to us, would be felt ruinously at once in increased cost of 

 living. It must be credited mainly to the woman of the farm. 

 For she it is who produces nine-tenths of the poultry products 

 the fowls and eggs of the nation. Give her credit also for but- 

 ter, cheese, vegetables, pickles, preserves, and a thousand other 

 things. Allow her, too, her share in preparing the means for 

 men who grow the rest of the food for us, and for keeping their 

 houses. 



Remember also that she bears our sturdiest children while she 

 helps to feed us all. And then ask yourself who has done any- 

 thing for the farm woman ? She has been left to shift for her- 

 self, and must still do so. She still bakes her own bread; she 

 still scrubs her own floors. She washes her own dishes ; she cans 

 and preserves and dries her own fruit and vegetables. She has 

 bent faithful^, dutifully, uncomplainingly over these appointed 

 tasks while, to the rhythmic swing of its pounding machinery, 

 the march of modernity has borne class after class out beyond 

 her. On her rests the burden of emancipating herself from the 

 things that weigh upon her life; and she is rising nobly to the 

 task. 



There are clubs and societies already formed and forming. 

 Thousands of farm women are making up their minds that their 

 sisters who have abandoned the farm and farm life have deserted 

 the field on which they should have fought and triumphed. 

 They are studying, where they formerly succumbed ; and advanc- 

 ing, where they formerly retreated. There is revolt in the air 

 against counsels of submission and fatalistic retreat. The twen- 

 tieth century is to see a renaissance of farm life. And the women 



