garden crops, that girls have very soon done more and better work 
than many farm laborers who are paid higher wages than they are 
worth. While many men will drop a tool the moment the time has 
come to quit, college girls are known to have finished ten or twenty 
or more feet of rows, before they would leave their work in an _un- 
finished condition. 
For untrained women in cities, many of whom may be helped to 
render service in farm work, it is imperative that they have some 
opportunity to receive certain instructions, without which they would 
be useless. Opportunity should be given such, to assemble in classes, 
when they may be given definite practical instruction upon such 
subjects as the soil, its tillage, seeds, planting, habits of growth and 
after cultivation. Instruction should be given on methods in garden- 
ing, fruit-culture, dairy work,, and care in feeding and rearing poultry. 
If women may obtain some instruction along these lines, they may 
go out to farms and take up certain lines of work far more intelligently 
and efl&ciently. An important problem is that of obtaining instructors 
who are competent to teach the most essential things in this prepara- 
tory work. Theoretical and technical teaching will not meet the 
needs. Those who have a good fund of knowledge from practical ex- 
perience will be found most valuable for this special work of teaching. 
Having had somewhat extended experience in the organization of 
Garden Clubs, and in defining policies to be followed in their work, I 
am convinced that from the working membership of these clubs, there 
are many women who are especially well quahfied to be the most 
successful teachers of working women and others who would be in- 
terested to go out to farms as wage earners. English and French 
women of high social standing have rendered most valuable and 
efficient service as instructors of other women upon whom have fallen 
the responsibility of becoming the food producers of the nations at 
war. 
In a meeting of the Woman's National Farm and Garden Associa- 
tion, where the speakers were selected from its membership, women 
who had done most successful work in gardening, poultry, and farm 
crops, we have never heard in any organization of men, scientific or 
other, more clean-cut, direct, and practical instruction and informa- 
tion given than by the speakers who gave their experiences, with the 
most practical and helpful suggestions for correcting some mistakes 
they had made in their work. 
Through educational work that may be done by Garden Clubs, 
through co-operation, with other organizations, many women may 
be helped to efficiently fit into places on many farms where their work 
may be highly productive and satisfactory to themselves, their em- 
ployers and to the present great needs of our nation. 
(Signed) George T. Powell. 
