DRY-FARMING CONGRESS, WICHITA, 1914 



45 



agricultural community that turns out only stenographers, typewriters, 

 clerks, bookkeepers, motormen and engineers. 



There are still many good people who believe strongly in the old order 

 of things and who say, "Let well-enough alone." But this motto never 

 made a single step in progress. "Make well-enough still better" is the 

 motto for every school-boy and school-girl to write in the copy-books. 

 It is the awakened desire of the rural people manifest everywhere — North, 

 South, East, and West, to make their schools better that marks the real 

 progress in rural education at the present time. 



The average education of the American citizen in 1800, according to 

 Dr. E. A. Ross of the University of Wisconsin, was only 80 days; in 1900, 

 according to the Bureau of Education, it was less than six years of 200 

 days in each year. It is now 1,057 days — still less than six years. Not 

 until the average education of the rural American has reached 12 years — 

 education fitted to his life and that prepares him for his duties as a citi- 

 zen, — can we boast of our progress in rural education. 



But farm boys and farm girls who are industrious enough to secure 

 such an education as this will be too industrious and ambitious to stay on 

 the farm, unless they are taught how to provide the farm home with some 

 of the modern conveniences of the city home. The telephone, the free 

 rural delivery of mail, and the automobile have done much for thousands 

 of farm homes, but isolation, lonesomeness and drudgery are still the lot 

 of many thousands of farmers's wives. President Waters and myself can 

 testify to the drudgery we have witnessed as the lot of some farmers's 

 wives in the Ozark Mountains, who, on washday, carried a pail of water 

 in each hand and a piggin of water on their heads to the washing place, 

 sometimes a quarter of a mile or more in distance. This was some years 

 ago, it is true; but, only last December, in company with a state farm 

 demonstration agent, he told me that within seven miles of the capital of 

 one of the Southern states there were several farmers living with the third 

 wife. I asked if the divorce evil was the cause. He replied that it was 

 over- work, neglect and excessive child-bearing that had taken off in un- 

 timely deaths the first and second wife. Only this summer, a vice-presi- 

 dent of one^of the State normal schools of Illinois stated publicly in my 

 presence that larger percent of farmers's wives are in the asylums of 

 that state than any other class of women. I do not mean this as a criticism 

 of my sex, except where it should apply. I consider it my duty with my 

 knowledge of the situation to raise my voice in behalf of the long-neglected 

 and much over-worked farmers's wives. 



You may ask what this has to do with rural school problems. It has 

 just this^much to do with it: Every rural child has the right to be well- 

 born, to have a mother who is in proper physical and mental condition 

 during its pre-natal period, as well as during the years of its home training 

 under its mother. A condition precedent to better rural schools is better- 

 born and better-trained rural children. 



The greatest of all factors in the proper solution of the problems in 

 rural education is the teacher. As is the teacher, so is the school. The 



