RURAL NEW-YORKER 
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Why the Girls Leave the Farm 
We often read articles on the subject 
of “AVhy the boys leave the farm,” and 
“AVhat is a farm without a boy?” but not 
very much on the subject of “Why the 
girls leave the farm,” and “What is a 
farm without a girl?” Why are such 
things true? Do you expect the boys to 
stay on the farm if the girls will not? 
No indeed. Then do you not thinh that 
it is worth investigating the reasons 
why the girls leave? All of the articles 
I have ever read have shot wide of the 
mark. It is thought that if you give a 
girl a garden and a canning outfit, she 
will be sure to stay. Not by any means. 
That is no way to keep the girls happy 
and contented on a farm. I will say here 
that 1 have no girl. All that I know on 
the subject has been gleaned in three 
ways: from my boy, from my talking 
with girls and my own observation. If 
girls are one-half as restless as my boy I 
don't wonder they leave the farm. If a 
girl goes around at night she must de¬ 
pend on her own family or beaux. When 
niy boy wants to go he hitches his horse 
or starts the auto and goes. We hear 
him come home almost any time of the 
night. He is satisfied with a farm, and 
you could not coax or drive him off it. 
Big wages in town are no inducement to 
him. Rut can any girl go as he does? 
Do parents want her to be out on the 
road with young men to a late hour! 
Of course not, and that starts a dissatis- 
tiou in them for the farm. 
The greatest thing in all is the idea 
which they have got in their heads and 
that is, that a girl who marries a farmer 
is an old woman by the time she is mar¬ 
ried five years. Now look about in your 
own neighborhood and see how many 
women who are 40 look to be only 2i) years 
of age. Then see how' many who are 2.5 
who look as though they are 40. There 
are two reasons for this, the dressing of 
the farm w'omen and their work. Roth 
should be changed. The w'omen on a 
farm have a chance to be just as well 
dressed as those living in the city, for w'e 
can shop in the city stores while we are 
sitting in our easy chairs at home, and 
take our time to make our selections 
from a modern up-to-date style byook 
from same reliable dealer. I do most of 
my shopping from a firm in New' York 
City, and I have found firms to be just 
what they represent themselves to be. 
My clothes bought there are cheaper than 
I can buy the goods and hire them made, 
and in far better style than I can make 
them myself. Then if we take more 
time to dress, and take care of the little 
tilings of our dressing, we can look fairly 
w'ell groomed. 
The work on the farm should he les¬ 
sened and it is right here that the farm 
jiapers fail. We take quite a number of 
them, and from reading them I have come 
to this conclusion : that most of the farm 
papers make just four money ma¬ 
chines on the farm : the women, the 
cows, the hogs and the chickens. The 
only difference that I can notice is that 
they do not advise selling us to the 
butcher when w'e do not earn the proper 
amount of money. I am not exaggerat¬ 
ing this. Last Summer one paper came 
to our house with four full pages on the 
subject of tractors for farm work, and 
two medium-sized paragraiihs down in a 
corner about things to lessen the farmer’s 
wife’s work, and that was far better than 
some papers. They are full of how the 
w'omen can earn money on a farm and 
even one w'ent* so far as to advise the 
women to gather medicinal weeds to sell 
in order to add to the family income. A 
man w’ho has a thou^iand chickens makes 
that liLs business, and has some one to 
help him, W'hile a woman is supposed to 
raise 200 and ,300 in addition to all her 
work, and it is all to add to the family in¬ 
come. Last Spring a farm woman wrote 
that she kept a maid to help her, and 
her house was electrically lighted and 
cleaned, and she had an auto to go where 
she wanted to go. The men took it up, 
and the editor allowed it to go in without 
a comment against it. They told her 
that she was too II. I*, for a farm. Now 
H. P, means horse power, so I failed to 
catch his point. Another one said that a 
speedometer was needed, and she was 
going towards the poorhouse. etc. Now 
this woman had nothing but what any 
woman in town with her income has, also 
not very much more than the average 
women in town has. It is hard for a per- 
.son to rent a hause unless it has either 
gas or electricity, water, bathrooms and 
sewerage. I believe that every woman 
on a farm has a right to every one of 
these improvements that are in the town. 
Also that no farmer has a right to buy .a 
tractor to make his work lighter until he 
has put these improvements in the house 
to help the wife with her w’ork. It is the 
improvement in the city woman’s house 
that is attracting the girls to the town, 
and if we want to keep them on the farm 
we want to make the farmhouses attrac¬ 
tive and lessen the wife’s work. 
There are several things that should be 
done to lessen the housewife’s work. Un¬ 
less they are trying to buy a home, a farm 
should never have more than 100 chick¬ 
ens, 50 is better. I never knew how much 
work there was in raising chickens, until 
two years ago, when I was forbidden on 
account of health to raise any. 
The garden work should be done with 
a cultivator, not a hoe. A man with a 
cultivator will do more work in two 
hours than a woman with a hoe can do 
in two weeks working two hours every 
day. My husband said last ^Ipring that 
he would hoe the garden and leave the 
boy in the field, but after several days’ 
hoeing he threw up the job and the boy 
cultivated it. 
There are quite ,a number of things 
that are not really expensive that ought 
to be done to make the housewife’s work 
easier, and it is the duty of every farm 
paper to advocate the use of them on 
every farm. It wants to be written for 
the men, for we can never have these 
things unless the men allow it. I have 
not said half of what I know on the sub¬ 
ject. 1 have just started the subject on 
the right track, hoping that The R. 
N.-Y". will work for the keeping of the 
girls on the farms. HRS. E. M. w. 
Trumbull Co., Ohio. 
Cold Pack Sweet Corn Canning 
At this time, when so many people are 
preparing to can fruit and vegetables, pos¬ 
sibly the way I prepare and can sweet 
corn may help some one who is going to 
do it for the first time this year. Cold- 
pack canning is the best, as the real 
flavor of the articles canned is retained, 
not escaping in the steam of the open- 
cooked fruit. I use for many things the 
method sent out by the United States 
Department of Agriculture, but for can¬ 
ning sweet corn off the cob I prefer the 
way I was taught several years ago. 
Have the cor i iu good condition to eat. 
cut it from the cob and pack the cans 
full into the neck of the can. pressing 
the corn so that the milk stands on top ; 
place rubber and top on can, put up the 
upper clamp, or, if using Mason jars, 
screw lightly down. I have a rack of 
heavy wire the size of my wash boiler,' 
which I place in the bottom of the boiler, 
putting the cans thereon. Fill to the neck 
of the cans with cold water, and after 
bringing to the boiling point, boil steadily 
for three hours, then without removing 
the, cans from the boiler push down the 
lower clamp, add boiling water to cover 
<,“ans and boil 15 minutes longer. Re¬ 
move boiler from fire and let stand till 
cold, take out cans, wipe dry and put in a 
dark, cool place. I usually keep the 
cartons in which the cans are bought to 
store them in for \Vint('r. I i)ut in 
neither salt nor water, and when I open 
the can to use I sea.son as needed. I can 
peas and string beans iu the same way, 
only after filling the cans with all the 
peas or beans I can crowd in I pour cold 
water in until there are no air bubbles 
to be se ■-», and the water flows over the 
tops of the cans. I have not lost a can 
for the past 10 years, only twice, and 
then I found the cans were cracked close 
to the neck on one and across the bottom 
of the other. r.. f. b. 
Connecticut. 
In .a big elementary school a teacher 
had given a lesson iu an infants’ class 
oil the Ten Commandments. In order to 
test their memories, she asked: “Can 
any little child give me a commandment 
with only four words in it?” A hand 
was raised immediately. “You may an¬ 
swer. ,Tohu.” said the teacher. “Keep off 
the grass.” was the reply.—Credit Lost. 
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