1569 
WOMAN  AND  HOME 
We  have  all  sorts  of  letters  from  peo¬ 
ple  who  want  to  locate  in  the  country  as 
owners  or  helpers.  The  following  plan  is 
a  new  one : 
What  my  wife  and  I  want  is  to  get 
back  to  the  laud,  i  know  what  farming 
is;  have  had  experience  that  ought  to  be 
worth  something,  b  f  what  little  capital 
1  have  is  tied  up.  Now,  e  I  have  to  re¬ 
main  away  from  home  this  Winter  I 
would  like  to  locate  something  that  would 
lead  up  to  something  worth  while  later 
on.  1'f  I  were  in  some  good  farming  sec¬ 
tion  where  help  is  scarce  and  I  could 
rent  a  little  place  where  I  could  grow 
enough  for  home  use,  and  work  the  re¬ 
mainder  of  the  time  for  someone  else  it 
might  work.  E.  D.  C. 
This  is  a  new  one — from  a  man  evi¬ 
dently  in  earnest.  Are  there  not  loca¬ 
tions  where  such  a  family  could  work  in? 
# 
The  following  advertisement  among 
others,  appeared  in  a  New  York  daily 
paper : 
POTATOES  direct  from  the  farm  ;  10 
qts.  select  Long  Island,  $1  Delivered. 
Home  Hamper  Farms,  Long  Island. 
With  32  quarts  to  the  bushel  this 
makes  quite  a  price.  These  potatoes  are 
carefuly  selected,  uniform  size  aud  of  ex¬ 
cellent  cooking  quality.  As  you  see  the 
price  runs  about  even  with  the  highest 
grade  of  boxed  apples.  This  shows  the 
possibilities  of  advertising  for  a  direct 
trade  in  farm  produce.  It  takes  time  to 
develop  such  trade,  and  even  move  pa¬ 
tience  and  tact  to  handle  it  properly. 
Many  people  try  it,  but  become  discour¬ 
aged  and  give  up  at  the  obstacles  which 
are  sure  to  arise.  A  few  keep  on  and  win, 
❖ 
Prof.  W.  F.  Massey  writes  from 
Maryland : 
It  is  rather  curious  here  that  our  dry- 
goods  stores  get  more  eggs  than  the 
grocers.  The  farmers’  wives  seem  to  use 
their  eggs  largely  for  drygoods,  and  as 
the  drygoods  stores  always  ship  out 
every  week,  we  can  get  fresher  eggs  from 
them  than  at  the  grocery  stores.  The 
heaviest  egg  shipper  here  is  our  largest 
drygoods  store. 
That  looks  as  if  the  farm  women  were 
doing  as  they  please  with  ranch  of  the 
egg  money. 
❖ 
One  by  one  the  men  learn  that  the 
women  of  their  household  are  to  he 
trusted  with  the  most  important  matters. 
Not  all  who  lind  this  out  are  willing  to 
trust  the  women  with  the  ballot.  Here 
is  what  the  editor  of  the  Schuyler  Co., 
N.  Y„  Chronicle,  says ; 
Who  Would  Be  Missed? 
Who  would  be  missed  from  among  his 
fellowmen,  and  for  how  long?  We  all 
think  that  we  are  "It,”  until  we  drop  out, 
but  the  truth  is  that  we  are  all  “it”  with 
a  little  “i.” 
These  thoughts  arise  from  a  little  ex¬ 
perience  of  the  writer  last  week.  For 
eight,  years  we  have  never  missed  conduct¬ 
ing  the  Chronicle,  but,  recently  we  were 
called  away  from  October  11th  until  Octo¬ 
ber  20th,  and  everything  of  the  Chronicle 
of  last  issue — selections,  editorials,  locals 
mnl  proof-reading — was  done  by  one 
whom  the  law  says  should  not  vote  be¬ 
cause  she  is  a  woman.  We  are  more  than 
ever  convinced  that  our  «vife  knows 
enough  to  exercise  the  right  of  suffrage, 
and  moreover  has  a  mind  of  her  own. 
The  woman  in  the  case  this  time  is 
Medora  Corbett,  a  well-remembered  con¬ 
tributor  to  The  R.  N.-Y. 
* 
Wiiy  should  we  try  to  plan  our  lives, 
our  food,  our  dress  aud  our  ways  of 
thought  after  the  town  and  city  pattern? 
Who  will  say  that  town  life  or  forms  of 
living  are  of  necessity  the  best?  One 
great  trouble  with  farm  life  during  the 
past  10  years  is  the  fact  that  we  have 
tried  too  much  to  mix  it  up  with  town 
living.  Let  us  try  to  get  away  from  that, 
and  develop  true  country  ideals  and  plans 
which  tit  right  into  farm  needs  and  farm 
circumstances. 
* 
A  city  minister  started  a  collection  for 
the  poor,  and  asked  each  member  of  the 
congregation  to  bring  a  big  potato.  Bas¬ 
kets  were  left  at  the  church  doors  aud  the 
potatoes  were  dropped  in.  In  those  high- 
priced  days  a  good-sized  potato  is  a  costly 
contribution  for  a  city  person.  Few 
country  people  realize  how  food  prices 
have  soared  during  the  past  month.  Two 
years  ago  you  could  hardly  give  potatoes 
away — now  they  are  classed  among  the 
"Ehe  RURAL  NEW-YORKER 
luxuries.  In  thousands  of  city  families 
rice  and  cornmeal  are  being  substituted 
for  potatoes.  Rice  is  the  best  substitute, 
and  it  is  excellent  food.  Y’et  in  all  this 
trouble  about  food  scarcity  you  will  find 
in  many  garbage  cans  potato  peelings  at 
least  half  an  inch  thick  ! 
* 
Some  25  years  ago  you  could  hardly 
pick  up  a  daily  paper  without  finding 
some  joke  about  “rube,”  a  whiskered  far¬ 
mer  who  came  to  town  and  blew  out  the 
gas !  That  old  joke  has  passed  on.  Time 
is  teaching  the  city  that  the  countryman 
is  no  longer  a  joke  but  a  solid  proposition. 
Now  comes  a  new  one : 
Marie:  ‘‘At  the  place  where  I  was 
spending  my  vacation  this  Summer  a 
fresh  young  farmer  tried  to  kiss  me.  lie 
told  me  he’d  never  kissed  a  girl  in  his 
life.” 
Ethel:  “What  did  you  say  to  him?” 
Marie:  “I  told  him  I  was  no  agricul¬ 
tural  experiment  station.” 
They  say  that  when  an  idea  or  a  thing 
can  work  into  popular  thought  that  its 
future  is  secure.  At  any  rate  the  experi¬ 
ment  station  is  becoming  popular ! 
* 
We  learn  of  a  town  in  -the  Central 
West  where  the  women  thought  it  would 
he  a  fine  thing  to  organize  a  society  for 
men  folks  were  influenced  by  them.  We 
have  some  facts  about  the  way  these 
women  voted  coming  which  will  surprise 
most  of  our  readers.  A  woman  for  con¬ 
stable  !  Well,  why  not?  For  many 
years  they  have  kept  the  peace  in  thou¬ 
sands  of  families. 
“’Efficiency” 
We  hear  a  great  talk  about  “efficiency” 
nowadays,  and  as  my  mother  used  to 
teach  me  to  “let  your  head  save  your 
heels,”  I  do  not  think  it  so  new  as  it 
seems.  When  my  son  was  two  and  a  half 
years  old  I  gave  him.  a  grape  basket  ami 
sent  him  to  get  the  silver  from  the  table, 
then  the  cups,  etc.,  and  he  soon  learned  to 
brush  and  set  the  table.  For  years  I  have 
sat  down  to  wash  dishes,  having  the  chil¬ 
dren  do  the  rest.  We  very  often  time  our 
work.  The  nearest  efficiency  I  ever 
reached  was  to  train  my  left  hand.  A 
burn  on  my  right  hand  showed  me  that  I 
could  scarcely  move  my  left,  and  I  de¬ 
cided  to  train  it  to  make  the  same  mo¬ 
tions  as  my  right,  so  now  I  use  either  one, 
which  certainly  is  a  help.  I  trained  my 
left  foot  years  ago  to  run  the  sewing 
machine  and  simply  change  when  I  get 
tired,  and  have  never  found  it  tiresome  as 
formed  in  September,  and  meet  once  a 
month.  We  took  up  that  water  question 
first,  reported  it  to  the  State  Board  of 
Health,  and  now  the  water  is  under  in¬ 
spection  and  will  be  attended  to.  We 
intend  when  the  election  of  the  school 
board  takes  place  to  have  our  candidate 
elected,  and  not  one  who  has  a  daughter 
or  some  other  relative  he  wishes  to  place 
in  the  teacher’s  chair,  without  the 
slightest  particle  of  professional  train¬ 
ing.  Our  candidate  will  understand  that 
our  next  teacher  will  hold  a  normal  cer¬ 
tificate,  qualified  to  teach  and  to  dis¬ 
cipline,  that  our  children  have  the  same 
rights  as  the  city  child.  Needless  to  say 
the  board  of  education  now  existing  pays 
no  more  attention  to  the  “wants”  of  our 
school,  than  if  the  school  was  at  the 
North  Pole. 
We  expect  to  have  a  social  side,  too, 
and  hope  that  some  of  our  sister  associa¬ 
tions  who  are  older  than  we  are  will 
give  us  some  hints.  o.  R. 
* 
Boarding  Farm  Help 
I  wish  to  correct  an  error  in  my  letter 
in  a  recent  issue  of  your  paper.  The 
price  paid  for  meals  served  to  extra  men 
by  our  employer  is  20  cents  per  meal. 
I  evidently  omitted  a  decimal  point,  mak¬ 
ing  it  read  $20.  Twenty  cents  may  seem 
like  a  small  sum,  and  would  be  if  one 
had  to  buy  all  supplies,  but  when  you 
consider  that  nearly  everything  is  grown 
on  the  farm  aud  is  furnished  free,  you 
can  see  that  it  is  a  very  liberal  priee.  I 
always  feel  as  though  my  board  money 
was  nearly  all  profit  for  it  costs  little 
except  the  extra  labor,  and  when  one 
must  get  meals  anyway,  two  or  three 
more  make  little  difference.  For  silo 
filling  and  thrashing,  a  little  extra  help 
in  the  house  is  needed,  but  that  is  only 
twice  a  year,  and  if  one  is  satisfied  to 
serve  a  plain  dinner  of  meat  and  potatoes 
with  one  or  two  extra  vegetables  that 
are  easily  prepared,  and  one  kind  of  pie 
or  pudding  for  dessert,  one  person  could 
manage  alone  if  help  could  not  he  ob¬ 
tained. 
Supper  is  always  the  most  difficult 
meal  for  me,  for  one  likes  something 
fairly  substantial  for  workingmen,  but 
meat  substitutes  are  limited,  and  in  hot 
weather  meat  more  than  once  a  day  is 
not  usually  relished.  I  wish  some  of  the 
farm  women  would  tell  us  of  some  of 
their  favorite  supper  dishes. 
HIRED  MAX’S  WIFE. 
Mother’s  Apple  Pie  in  the  Making.  What  do  you  imagine  she  is  thinking  of  as  she  works  out  this 
delicacy  ? 
helping  the  poor  at  Thanksgiving.  So 
they  called  for  food  and  money  and 
clothing,  and  were  able  to  collect  a  large 
supply.  When  the  time  came  to  “deliver 
the  gifts,”  they  were  absolutely  unable  to 
find  any  poor  people  who  needed  help  !  It 
was  a  fact  that  every  family  in  the  town 
was  able  to  provide  its  own  Thanksgiving 
dinner  and  keep  warm  and  well  clad. 
These  good  women  found  it  necessary  to 
send  their  supplies  to  the  large  cities  or 
to  towns  in  the  Far  West.  We  are  told 
of  hundreds  of  towns  in  the  agricultural 
districts  of  the  Middle  West  where  this 
same  curious  tiling  would  he  found. 
There  are  apparently  no  very  rich  and  no 
very  poor.  Will  this  he  true  of  your 
town  at  Christmas?  Answering  that 
question  will  he  a  good  way  to  decide 
about  your  charity. 
* 
For  the  first  time  in  the  history  of 
Kansas  women  are  being  elected  to  town¬ 
ship  offices.  We  have  been  unable  to  find 
any  other  in  Kansas  this  time,  but  our 
own  township  of  Grant  aud  the  voters 
wrote  my  name  in  on  the  ballot  and 
elected  me  constable. 
Kansas.  may  barctxs  tayi.or. 
The  women  in  some  of  those  Western 
States  seem  to  have  voted  just  as  they 
pleased.  They  were,  apparently,  no  more 
influenced  by  their  men  folkv.  than  the 
so  many  do.  I  spend  much  time  in  plan¬ 
ning  my  work  aud  certainly  do  it  in  less 
time  than  formerly.  MRS.  LILLIAX  MOREY. 
* 
A  Parent  Teachers’  Association 
I  write  concerning  a  Parent  Teachers’ 
Association  we  have  started  in  our  vil¬ 
lage.  Conditions  existing  in  our  school 
were  really  the  incentive  for  forming 
the  same.  Of  course  the  idea  of  the  as¬ 
sociation  is  to  bring  parents  and  teach¬ 
ers  together  for  the  welfare  of  the  child. 
I  had  an  interview  in  the  early  Summer 
with  our  county  superintendent  (who  by 
the  way  was  a  new  man,  having  been  ap¬ 
pointed  only  a  year  ago)  on  the  ques¬ 
tion  of  the  water  supply,  wretched  dis¬ 
cipline  existing  in  the  school,  caused  by 
employing  inefficient  teachers,  and  var¬ 
ious  other  matters.  Having  been  a 
teacher  in  the  public  schools  of  New 
York  city,  these  conditions  to  me  seemed 
far  more  appalling  than  to  my  country 
neighbors.  To  our  county  superintendent, 
who  had  been  a  principal  in  a  large  sub¬ 
urban  school  near  New  York,  things  ap¬ 
peared  about  the  same  as  they  did  to  me. 
He  expressed  a  desire  to  have  this  asso¬ 
ciation  start,  saying:  “If  I  can  get  the 
mothers  interested,  I’ll  get  what  I  want, 
for  I  never  saw  a  woman  yet,  who  did 
not  get  what  she  started  after.”  We 
Milk  and  Iron 
On  page  1504,  in  a  report  of  the  New 
York  State  Dairymen's  Association,  Dr. 
,T.  II.  Kellogg  is  quoted  as  saying  “milk 
is  a  complete  and  perfect  food  containing 
everything  needed  to  “nourish  the  body.” 
I  am  a  nurse,  registered,  in  the  State  of 
Now  York.  I  have  heen  taught,  and  my 
experience  upholds  the  teaching  that  milk 
is  deficient  in  iron.  In  case  of  infants 
nature  provides  for  this  deficiency  by 
suplying  the  child  before  birth  with  a 
store  of  iron  to  draw  upon.  The  redness 
of  the  new-horn  child,  aud  the  pink  ness  of 
its  flesh  during  the  nursing  period,  is 
due  to  this  stored-up  iron.  The  pallor  of 
many  a  mother  of  a  new-born  child  is 
due  to  the  fact  that  her  diet  has  not  con¬ 
tained  a  sufficient  amount  of  iron  to  sup¬ 
ply  the  child  and  herself  and  nature  has 
robbed  the  mother,  who  should  have 
known  better,  to  supply  the  defenseless 
child.  Alas;  often  when  nature  has  done 
her  host,  even  the  child's  supply  is  de¬ 
ficient.  This  pallor  of  the  mother  is 
made  much  of  ns  an  indication  of  the 
rigors  of  child-bearing.  Child  bearing  is 
a  natural  function,  not  a  disease.  If 
there  are  rigors  they  are  due  to  faulty 
living.  Those  who  eat  freely  of  milk 
should  supplement  their  diet  with  foods 
rich  in  iron.  The  bran  of  wheat  is  one 
such  food.  The  American  people  are  pay¬ 
ing  dearly  for  their  neglect  of  this  in¬ 
vigorating  food.  j.  f.  CLOSE,  R.  x. 
+ 
The  Schoolhouse  a  Social  Center 
The  farmers  of  this  country  are  getting 
well  organized.  The  school  house  is 
made  a  neighborhood  center  where  the 
farmers  gather  to  hear  a  program  by  the 
sfehool  children,  and  a  discussion  bv  a 
committee  appointed  by  the  chairman, 
after  which  the  county  agent  gives  a  talk 
on  the  work  being  done  in  different  parts 
of  the  country.  Sandwiches  and  hot  coffee 
are  then  served  by  a  committee  of  farm¬ 
ers’  wives  (a  committee  being  appointed 
by  the  chairman  for  each  meeting)  while 
everybody  enjoys  a  social  chat,  and  gets 
better  acquainted.  These  meetings  are 
held  in  nearly  every  schoolhouse  in  the 
county.  These  sehoolbouses  are  all  con¬ 
solidated  and  are  fine  modern  buildings 
costing  from  $7,000  to  $12,000  each. 
OXE  OF  THE  FARMERS. 
