CVic RURAL NEW-YORKER 
901 
WOMAN AND HOME 
Two years ago, in the “Favorite lien” 
egg-laying contest Mrs. II. W. Stevens 
entered a AVhite Wyandotte called 
“Tilly.” This pullet laid 254 eggs in 
i 0 y 2 months, which record stamped her 
as something of a hen! Mrs. Stevens 
saw the possibilities of this record, pro^ 
vided she could i)rove that Tilly was 
not a freak—but a fair repre.sentative of 
the entire flock. We advi.sed her to enter 
pullets in the following contests, and this 
course was followed, ^sow, this year at 
the Storrs contest Airs. Stevens has the 
best Wyandotte pullet thus far, with a 
record of 100 eggs to the thirty-first week. 
At the Alissouri contest 10 pullets from 
Mrs. Stevens averaged 102 2-5 eggs for 
the first si.K months. Surely Tilly was 
no freak or accident, and Airs. Stevens 
is likely to reap a full reward for her 
care and patience. 
♦ 
Of course we must all expect to see 
mighty changes brought about by the 
war, but who would have expected the 
following from the Kansas Agricultural 
College? 
A new belligerent is in the lists fight¬ 
ing against Uncle Sam. It doesn’t get 
out in the open and fight, but snoo])s 
around in American homes, for all the 
world I ke a German sp.y. The enemy is 
—speak it softly, especiall.v if your an¬ 
cestors came from New England—pie. 
They go on to say that pie is always 
expensive and always unwholesome, yet 
here is a gleam of hope : 
The housewife may serve pie for an 
occasional Sunday dinner, as a reward 
for a week’s good behavior on the j)art of 
her husband, but to serve it oftener will 
be regarded as giving aid and comfort to 
the enemy. 
On showing this to a New England 
man we had the following opinion ; “If 
these people could taste a reul pie. such 
as they make in the Connecticut Valley, 
they would reverse that decision and keep 
the aid and comfort for themselves !” 
* 
One thing, at least, this war is doing, 
it is setting free a lot of personal opinion 
in the papers. A number of writers have 
accused the farm women of not using 
judgment about their work. Now comes 
an opinion of some of the town women: 
Gut we may say that the majority of 
Amencan women are not yet touched by 
the war. All one need to do to realize 
this is to stand on the street corner and 
watch the women and girls going to the 
different places of amusement—perhaps 
several times during the week. The bust 
picture show or the last dance is their 
principal topic of conversation. What 
can be done to arouse these out of their 
selfish, useless lives? 
No one has thought of accusing the 
farm women of being lazy or sclfi.sh. One 
of them writes us that she has just blis¬ 
tered her hand mowing the chicken yard 
with a scythe. It is probably true that 
not all women appreciate or understand 
what this war means. It will come to 
them in time, and we shall all be better 
for a reasonable amount of fun and 
amusement. But let all sides have a fair 
showing. Here is another “society” 
item : 
“Society women of AVestchester County 
have given up entertaining house ptarties 
on a large scale, have tabooed dances 
and dinners at clubs and hotels and are 
devoting a large part of their time to 
war work.” 
AA'e would like to organize a new so¬ 
ciety. Suppose we call it the “Society 
For Compelling Society AA^'ornen to Re¬ 
alize .lust AA’hat it Aleans to Do a Full 
Week’s AA’ork as Housewife on a Busy 
Farm !” 
* 
AA'okk horses are often sick on Alon- 
day. Investigation of such cases has 
usually brought out the fact that the 
horse has been fed as much grain on Sun¬ 
day when at rest as when at hard work. 
Reducing the grain feed one-fourth on 
days the horse’ does not work prevents 
this sickness, known as azoturia. 
That comes from the North Dakota 
Exi)eriment Station, and is true. Alany 
of us have had trouble with Alonday 
morning sickness in horses, and won¬ 
dered at it. Dfttimes the farmer and the 
hired man feel dull an<l “tired” through 
Alonday. There would be great trouble 
if some one claiiiH'd that they, too, had 
“azoturia.” A’«‘t there woidd be some¬ 
thing in it. The hard-working hor.se can¬ 
not stand heavy feeding and idleness. Is 
man greatly improved by feasting to the 
limit on the day of rest? Sunday is 
usually no day of “rest” for the women, 
for it is regarded as the day for feast¬ 
ing. The usual division of labor over a 
feast is—eating for the man, working for 
the woman. “A merciful man is merci¬ 
ful to his beast”—and therefore he feeds 
light on Sunday. Are the boss and the 
hired man entitled to the same sort of 
mercy ? 
* 
There is no question about what the 
farm women in the dairy districts of 
New York did to help win the fight for 
higher milk prices last Fall. Reports 
like the following are comstantly coming 
to us: 
“I believe thoroughly in what you say 
in regard to what the women did, for if it 
had not been for the helj), advice and 
counsel of practically all the farmers’ 
wives and daughters, we never could have 
won the fight. A great amount of credit 
should be given to them, perhaps more to 
them than to the men themselves. AATien 
it comes to real sacrifice, I think the 
women have the men beaten anyway. 
Anything that you can do in giving pub¬ 
licity to the fact that the women did 
make large sacrifices and did help, will be 
giving them simple justice. At all of our 
farm bureau meetings held last AA’inter, 
we gave a special invitation to the women 
and the general spirit of these women 
toward the work which Ihe Dairymen’s 
League was trying to do was just as good 
as or better than the spirit w'hich was 
shown by the men.” e. r. 
AIany of us have practiced the old lip 
and tongue exercise of “Peter I’iper 
picked a peck of pickled peppers, etc. It 
kept us out of mischief for the time at 
least, and is good work for the tongue- 
tied. Now comes another which may 
serve as a substitute: 
“Bill had a billboard. Bill also had a 
board bill. The board bill bored Bill so 
that Bill sold the billboard to pay his 
hoard bill. Bo after Bill sold his bill¬ 
board to i)ay his board bill the board 
bill no longer bored Bill.” 
* 
AIany American womes are getting 
very tired of the comstant scolding at 
housekeepers and .sneering which fills the 
daily papers. American housewives are 
held up to scorn and ridicule, and brand¬ 
ed as spendthrifts and wasters, and 
chiefly responsible for the high cost of 
living. .lust who is responsible for all 
this foolish scolding we do not know, 
but we firmly ladieve it is a part of a 
publicity campaign to divert attention 
from the real evil of food manipulation 
in the cities. AVe would like to run 
these scolders down and make them go 
into the kitchens and feed a family for 
one solid month on a small income. AA'e 
would hold them right down to it, and 
see how much they wasted. They would 
come out of the kitchen hotter in body 
but very much cooler in language and 
advice. 
That is close to an ideal vacation— 
the story of the berry pickers on page 
897. These school teachers help in the 
berry field and are lolped in return to a 
Summer home and health. AA’o have no 
doubt there are many other places where 
such exchange coidd be made. In such 
cases both sides must be fair. It must 
not be a game of each trying to see how 
much he can make out of the other. That 
will always fail. Each should try to see 
how much he can do for the other party. 
That will surely prove a great success, 
* 
You may think we talk too much about 
this matter of women keeping their own 
l)roperty, buj; day after day we have re¬ 
ports of sad cases coming to us. They 
are usually about as follows: The wom¬ 
an receives a small legacy from her par¬ 
ents. . She is not used to business meth¬ 
ods, and turns the money over to hus¬ 
band or brother without any receipt or 
acknowledgment. The man uses the 
money for his busine.ss or pleasure, pays 
no interest, and gives no accounting. 
I.ater, when older and less attractive, 
the woman needs this money for her 
children or for herself, but she finds her¬ 
self unable to get it. Her husband or 
brother or friend has had it so long that 
he feels that it belongs to him, and there 
is no legal evidence that he ever took 
it. AVe have had many of such cases re¬ 
ferred to U.S, and some of them are pathe¬ 
tic beyond de.scription. As a rule we 
cannot help after the matter has gone 
on for years, and so we urge all our 
women readers to hold their money in 
their own name, and guard it securely 
for the sake of their children, 
“Will Power” and Obstinacy 
AATmt is the difference between “will 
power” and obstinacy, or as the people 
here say “general sotness?” Being a 
Connecticut Yankee I answer one ques¬ 
tion by asking another, AVhat was the 
difference between gasolene and naphtha 
in the days when the oil companies used 
to sell gasoline from barrels, with naph¬ 
tha on one end and gasolene stenciled on 
the other head? 
I have noticed that books relating to 
the “Cultivation of AA'ill I’ower” are be¬ 
ing sold by a very extensive advertising 
campaign in the popular magazines, and 
I assume that they mu.st find many buy¬ 
ers or the advertising could not be paid 
for. But among the old settlers in this 
region there was no need for such books, 
as the following will demonstrate: 
Recently I was purchasing right of 
way for a large corporation, and while 
negotiating with a de.scendant of one of 
the old families I impiired why he did 
not plow the 40-acre lot where we were 
.standing. He pointed to a large oak tree 
nearby, and said that under that tree 
was the moldboard of an old plow, and 
that was the reason. He explained that 
many years ago, when New la)udon was 
a whaling centre, his grandfather hired 
a man to plow that -10-acre lot, and after 
the man (call him ,Tohn), had worked at 
the plowing for some days, he happened 
to notice" across the valley a little stretch 
of Ivong Island Sound. AVhile admiring 
it he saw a clipper ship bound for New 
London. He suddenly decided that 
whaling was more lucrative than plowing 
by the year. He unyoked his oxen, leav¬ 
ing plow and yoke on the ground, headed 
the oxen for home, and he set out for 
New London. 
The owner of the land would not let 
plow nor yoke be touched nor would he 
hire anyone else to plow the field ; for he 
had hired .lohn to do it, and things could 
stay as they were until .Tohn came back 
and did it. And things did stay as the.v 
were for 42 years, and .Tohn did come 
back, now an old man of 75, but still a 
little younger than his former boss. He 
Avent straight to the old homestead and 
said : “I’ve come back to keep my word 
and finish plowing that 40 acres,” The 
other old man, his former employer, an¬ 
swered : “The plow and yoke is right 
where you left them, John,” and the two 
old men went there together and saw 
the remains of the yoke and plow. But 
God had not waited 42 yeai’s for men to 
gratify their obstinacy. lie had covered 
the field with a forest. W. D. c. 
Connecticut. 
* 
A Discussion of Living Costs 
AV"hile we r.eali-.e that conditions in va¬ 
rious localities differ considerably we do 
not full.v understand how Airs. D. B. P., 
page 725, manages to feed seven people 
for one mouth on ,$11.00. At 00 cents a 
month for meat a ham weighing 12 
pounds at .20c per pound would last her 
six mouths; comsequently she could only 
have beau soup Av'ith a ham bone in it 
once in six months. On the other hand 
if she just bought a bone how did she get 
meat for the family? AA’’hen having bean 
.soup frequently and using a half-pound 
of bacon at more than 20 cents per pound 
or salt pork at 2,5c per pound, we won¬ 
der how much other meat the family has 
from the <»0 cents allowed. With a family 
of seven at from 22 to 22 cents per 
pound, how large a heljAing would each of 
the seven be apt to get when only one 
dollar is allowed for fowl? 
AATth wheat at almost three dollars per 
bushel if she took her wheat to mill and 
had it ground she would only get about 
44 or 45 pounds of flour for the three 
dollars she allowed. This would make 
about three and one-third ounces per per¬ 
son per day, and this would have to in¬ 
clude bread, cakes and all flour used in 
cooking. 
At the present price (,$2.20 per bushel) 
for potatoes she Avould have less than a 
peck for .seven people for a month. The 
price (»f butter must A'ary greatly from 
the present prices here (40c per pound) 
for at this price 2 2-2 pounds would have 
to last seven people one month and with 
only (!0 cents worth of lard she could use 
very little for soup flavoring. 
Also we wonder how much of the 
eleven dollars and sixty cents is allowed 
for the lunches of the young folks who go 
to school, for in our locality no lunch 
suitable to give a growing child can be put 
up for le.ss than 12 to 15 cents. 
AVe do not wish to criticize Airs. D. B. 
P.’s method of feeding her family but as 
farmers, who do their best to keep them¬ 
selves and family well nourished at as 
economical a figure as possible, we can¬ 
not see how she can keep her family on 
practically 1 4-5c per person per meal. 
Indiana. MBS. J. V. P. 
* 
A Woman Farmer’s Troubles 
I thought I would have to cut my ex¬ 
penses and drop some of my farm papers, 
but I guess I can’t get along without 
2 Tie R. N.-Y. It has been quite a help 
to me. Farming is a hard problem in 
this country; help such as we can get 
want .$2 a day, teams $(>. Then they 
want somebody to wait on them, and 
think they are doing you a favor. I tried 
giving lields out; they want to hog it 
and did not live up to their contract, so 
I am just doing what I can myself this 
year. ai.ice f. wolf. 
I’ennsylvania. 
R. N.-Y.—The help problem has been 
harder this year for women farmers 
than for any other class. It has been 
nearly impossible for some of them to 
get the plowing and rougher work done. 
Such women farmers will do well to put 
their land in grass and grain and not try 
cultivated crops. 
The Department of Agriculture at 
AA’'ashington has issued an excellent Bul¬ 
letin No. 841, on drying fruits and vege¬ 
tables in the home. This pamphlet is 
thoroughly illustrated, and gives a very 
good descrii)tion of homemade outfits for 
drying. This year there will be thou¬ 
sands of tons of vegetables and fruit dried 
on our farms, and this will add wonder¬ 
fully to the food supply for next AVinter. 
Ber.sonalhv we think there will be so 
much of this done that it will have a 
considerable effect upon the business of 
commercial canning and the sale of food 
in general. 'Phis pamphlet from the Gov¬ 
ernment is one of the best we have seen, 
and every housewife who is interested 
might well send for it. 
“ Telling Fortunes ” in the Daisy Field —1 1 Love, 2 I Love, 3 1 Love 1 Say, 4 I Love with all my Heart, 
5 I cast away. Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggar Man, Thief, Doctor, Lawyer, Merchant, Chief 
