628 
TTHfcC KUHAL NKVV-VOKKKR 
April 24, 1913. 
WOMAN AND HOME 
W E have no doubt that among the 
families in which Thk R. N.-Y. is 
read there are 1,000 children more or less 
deaf. The writer of the article on page 
634 knows by the saddest experience what 
this affliction means. Whenever it is pos¬ 
sible to do so we would have the ears 
of children examined from time to time 
as well as their teeth. 
A 
O F course this is an old one, but some 
of these old-timers are worth repeat¬ 
ing : 
“How do you tell a rotten egg?" 
"I don’t know as I ever told a rotten 
egg. but if I ever had anything to tell a 
rotten egg I’d break it gently.” 
This is good advice, not only with eggs 
but with most humans. Many a house¬ 
hold “scrap” could be avoided if the 
“starter” would “break it gently,” instead 
of running it in and breaking it off. 
* 
A WOMAN recently advertised that 
she wanted a position on a farm. 
Within a short time after the notice ap¬ 
peared more than 45 letters offering such 
a position were received. The demand 
for competent help in the farmhouse is 
astonishing, and it is impossible to sup¬ 
ply it. Half a century ago there were 
many strong and energetic farm girls 
who were willing to work out as their 
brothers did. earning money for educa¬ 
tion or for home building. We rarely 
hear of such a thing now. Yet the op¬ 
portunity is greater than ever before. 
* 
Y OU remember one of our readers 
asked if he could use an automatic 
feeder for his horse so he could sleep an 
hour later in the morning. To our sur¬ 
prise over a dozen people have come for¬ 
ward describing such devices. They op¬ 
erate by clockwork, and at a certain 
hour open a feeder and let out a certain 
quantity of grain. They do not work 
with hay unless that fodder is chopped 
fine. It seems that many people use these 
alarm clock hired men, and save an hour 
or more of sleep. We hope they also use 
a clock to start the fire and save the 
wife's sleep, too. A fireboss cooker would 
save an hour or so in ‘preparing break¬ 
fast ! 
N EW YORK now has a mothers’ pen¬ 
sion law. The bill providing for it 
passed the Senate unanimously and the 
Assembly by a vote of 129 to S. Under 
this bill a dependent widow with chil¬ 
dren may obtain a pension from the State 
to enable her to keep her family togeth¬ 
er. The pension will not be larger than 
the amount required to maintain such 
children in an asylum. A .few members 
of the Legislature opposed the bill on the 
ground that it discouraged thrift and 
would pauperize women. The great ma¬ 
jority of the Legislature took the other 
view—that child training is the most im¬ 
portant business in the State and that 
the mother is the proper person to raise 
her child. We think the law safeguards 
the family and the State. We shall have 
it analyzed and explained so as to make 
its purpose clear. 
T HOSE articles by the Rev. Geo. B. 
Gilbert promise to give us all a 
glimpse of a side of life not often put 
fairly into print. Here is a wise and 
sympathetic man whose life is spent 
among the hills where hard and bitter 
home struggles are being fought out. It 
is probably a fair criticism of much of 
our college extension work and domestic 
economy that the leaders do not know 
how country people live. Most of the 
plans for “uplift” and help are based 
upon life in town or in well-to-do homes 
where conveniences are easily obtained 
and where the bitter struggle for exist¬ 
ence has been eljminated or softened. 
Thus it is that earnest and well-laid 
plans often do not lit into the lives of 
farm families who most need help. Mr. 
Gilbert knows the life of the hill farm¬ 
ers. and we shall have from him the 
facts which ought to make us all more 
thoughtful and helpful. Perhaps you 
realize that prosperity and knowledge 
often breed a line of impatience and self¬ 
ishness toward those who have fallen be¬ 
hind. 
D u women want to vote? The only 
way to answer the question is to ask 
the women! Of course they cannot an¬ 
swer it fairly until they have the chance. 
In Chicago the women evidently wanted 
to vote. A larger proportion of those 
registered voted than was the case with 
the men. If. however, the women want 
to show their desire to vote why do they 
not use the school vote, which they now 
have a right to do? That is one ques¬ 
tion which the “antis” bring up. The 
answer to it is easy. Let women turn 
out at school meetings and influence the 
school elections. 
* 
T HE city women seem to be the worst 
drag upon the efforts to increase po¬ 
tato consumption. The servant girls do 
not like to peel and prepare potatoes. 
The grocer finds it easier to sell some 
package of prepared food and the ser¬ 
vants willingly take it. The “lady of 
the house” has been told that potatoes 
will make her fat, and her “willowy 
form” must be preserved. Therefore it 
is well jammed into tight clothing and 
the lady continues to eat starch, sugar 
and candy. One of our potato men sends 
ns the following: 
Hope you will stand by your guns and 
continue to boom the potato. I think 
that they would be a first-class article 
of diet for some of the thin women we 
see around New York, if there is any 
truth in their fat-producing qualities. 
Of course these thin women would be 
far better off if they would eat more pota¬ 
toes. This diet would not of necessity 
make them fat. but it would put their 
thin and acid blood in better condition, 
and improve their appearance. From 
earlier times all sorts of lies have been 
told about potatoes. At first it was 
claimed that they caused leprosy. The 
present prejudice against them is part of 
the old superstition. Let us encourage 
potato eating in our own homes and help 
make it fashionable. 
* 
I T is a good time now to talk about 
heating the house. Those who have had 
a good heater can appreciate what it 
means now that Winter is over. Those 
who have suffered from cold, should be¬ 
gin now to plan for next Winter. If we 
had our way every country home would 
have heat to the last corner, good light 
and hot and cold water to some extent 
at least. We can think of nothing surer 
to make farm life what it ought to be 
than the power to put these things into 
tin 1 farm home. When it is possible to 
do so this work should be done. The 
woman who writes on page 635 of tin* 
pleasures of a heated house says: 
“We might have done so gears before, 
but conservative members of the family 
were not convinced it was the proper 
thing to do.” 
Probably the same thing is true in 
many well-to-do families where The R. 
N.-Y. is read. If the funds are available, 
comfort should come first. 
W E are able to announce one of the 
most remarkable series of articles 
The R. N.-Y. has ever presented. .Tust now 
the hired help question is about the tough¬ 
est problem our farmers are up against. 
The women are especially interested in 
it We have found a man who decided 
that he did not know all sides of this 
hired help question, and thus did not un¬ 
derstand it. How did the hired man feel 
about it? The way to find out was to 
“ask the hired man!” .So our friend left 
home and lived for three years as a gen¬ 
uine hired hand in several States and in 
many different families. Now he knows 
what the hired man thinks about the boss. 
We shall have the full story, and it will 
be a “human document" without any 
doubt. The boss and his wife in the farm 
home will see themselves as others see 
them, and we hope this story will give 
the hired man a fairer show on some 
farms. Dr. Wiley’s book, “The Lure of 
the Land” has a study of the hired man 
question that is worth studying. 
* 
T HE story on page 631 of that woman 
alone in the stage with those drunken 
men will appeal to most women and girls 
who may be forced to take such lonely 
journeys. Every man, too, can imagine 
how he would like to have his wife or 
daughter exposed to such indignities. 
This case ought to be pushed to a fin¬ 
ish, and these drunken rascals should be 
made examples of. well rubbed in at that. 
The county attorney will be asked to take 
this matter up and we will try to see 
that he does it. 
* 
You reeutly said this subscription get¬ 
ting was something in which the whole 
family could take part. That is the 
ease with us. My little sister, aged six, 
helped to obtain some of those sent in 
before, and now Grandmother Story has 
helped me. She came to visit us a couple 
of weeks ago. When she saw some of the 
small envelopes sin* wanted to know what 
they were for, so I told her to help peo¬ 
ple get acquainted with The R. N.-Y. 
She took some of tin 1 sample copies and 
envelopes home with her. While looking 
after the express office for her sons she 
often meets people who are interested in 
farming and country life. Some of them 
are folks who are thinking of selling out 
in the city and taking up farms. She 
sent some of the envelopes with 10 cents 
enclosed back to me. mahiox haxta. 
New Jersey. 
HERE is not a paper in the world 
which has more family friends than 
The R. N.-Y r . Some of the instances where 
our people have gone out of their way to 
help are pathetic in the genuine affection 
they show. Hundreds of women come 
and tell us how “ father used to take it.” 
When these women were girls the old 
Moore’s Rural New-Yorker was the 
great family friend. The most gratifying 
thing about our business is the fact that 
the grandchildren of today are as much 
interested in helping as their grand¬ 
mothers ever were! It speaks well for 
grandmothers as well as for children. 
“Wealthy Hall.” 
“Wealthy Hall.”—How many peo¬ 
ple who have enjoyed the Wealthy apple 
know that it was named for a pioneer 
woman? Breeze Boyack of the Colorado 
Experiment Station gives this brief 
sketch of the way this famous apple was 
produced : 
A pioneer of Minnesota is responsible 
for the discovery of the Wealthy apple. 
To his courageous efforts in the face of 
the greatest difficulties we owe an apple 
that is fast becoming prominent in all 
cold countries. Peter Gideon was es¬ 
pecially interested in the growing of ap¬ 
ple trees from seed. Once he had a fine 
lot of promising trees, when along came 
a cruel Minnesota Winter and destroyed 
them all. Not disheartened, however, he 
borrowed money and sent to Maine for 
seeds, and this against the will of his 
wife and in spite of their poverty which 
was depriving them of many of the bare 
necessities. The Wealthy apple came 
from just one of these seeds. It was 
named after Mrs. Gideon, whose maiden 
name was Wealthy Hall. 
Mrs. Gideon was a practical woman 
who had faced the hardships and terrors 
of a Northern Winter. Who could 
blame her for feeling that the struggle 
was too hard, and that home necessities 
should come first? The wife of the 
dreamer and idealist has a double burden 
to carry in the home life. 
Feminine Scarecrow. 
Women are certainly entering all kinds 
of occupations. The census shows that 
there are one or more women in prac¬ 
tically every line rtf occupation, includ¬ 
ing blacksmiths, steeple climbers, miners, 
and baseball players. The latter occupa¬ 
tion may seem a strange one for a wom¬ 
an to those who have seen her throw a 
stone at a hen and break a window. 
Nevertheless, there are women in the 
country who can pitch a curved ball and 
hit. a mark at a good distance. The pic¬ 
ture on this page shows a new farm job 
for woman or her substitute, and that is 
playing the part of scarecrow. Travelers 
say that in Europe most of the figures 
put in grain fields to scare away the 
birds represent women, because a very 
large share of the Work in field and gar¬ 
den is done by women and girls, and the 
birds recognize these workers in the 
scarecrows. Whether an intelligent bird 
would be frightened by the figure on 
this page is a question, but at any rate 
the little girl at the left of the picture 
is having fun out of it, if she doesn’t 
scare any crows. There are grown-up 
men who will appreciate this picture, 
when they remember some of their own 
boyhood days passed in the cornfields 
with a tin pan and a stick, or a handful 
of stones, scaring the crows away. That 
was before the wise farmers learned to 
put tar and ashes on the seed, and usu¬ 
ally the youngest boy was introduced to 
agriculture through this job of living in 
the cornfield to chase out the crows. 
Those who have seen a woman shake her 
apron at a flock of hens in her garden, 
and send them fluttering over the fence 
elsewhere, will say at once that on gen¬ 
eral principles she could do more effective 
work in the cornfield. And in a way 
this picture may be an indication of 
what is coming in the larger cornfield of 
society. In spite* of man’s best efforts 
the crows still come and pull up the 
corn, and rob the* producer. Man seems 
to have failed as a scarecrow, as the 
forces of evil have him pretty well sized 
\ip and generally know that it is safe to 
roost on his shoulder and pick at the 
political stuffing inside his coat. It is a 
pretty safe thing to say that when our 
intelligent and loyal women take their 
turn in the cornfield at full duty, the 
political crows will give the crop a very 
much wider berth. 
* 
I GO to my card club, laden with eggs. 
cottage cheese or cream-; anything 
they want. Women in business can’t 
nurse wounded feelings. 
That is from a woman who lives in the 
suburbs of a town and conducts a little 
farm with cow, hens and garden. She 
sells all sorts of produce to her town 
friends, and as she says, makes a business 
of it. “No time to nurse wounded feel¬ 
ings” is very good. They should not 
need anv nurse. 
¥ 
Shall We Introduce “Lady” Scarecrow? 
