American Agriculturist, May 5,1923 
393 
The Abiding Place of Little Children 
I _ 
American Agriculturist Radio Address on Home Making and Home Bureaus 
I N these days of unrest and dissatisfac¬ 
tion, too much insistence cannot be put 
on the value of the home and of the 
home-maker’s place in the scheme of 
life, in the community and in the nation. The 
finest palace filled with every luxury does not 
constitute the home, while a tent and un¬ 
selfish love is the abiding place of happiness 
and a safe place for little children. As never 
before, home making needs to be dignified as 
a profession, and it will be only when the 
women themselves realize the importance of 
their own calling. 
Eighty-five per cent of the girls in our 
schools will follow the occupation of making 
a home. Ninety per cent of men’s earnings 
is spent by women dependent upon them, 
most of whom have never had any real train¬ 
ing on how to spend money advantageously. 
Ninety per cent of legacies left to women 
is lost to them in seven years because they 
have never been trained in business habits. 
It seems a tremendous economic oversight 
that remedies have not been provided for 
situations like these upon which the Success 
of the home is dependent. 
Have Brought the Home Bureaus Into Being 
These are some of the problems of concern, 
not only to those living on the farms, but 
to women wherever they may be, and it is 
problems such as these that first brought the 
Home Bureaus into being. The Home Bu¬ 
reau is not necessarily a rural organization, 
for it is concerned with the problems of home 
making which are fundamentally the same 
in both city and country. There are already 
three splendid city Home Bureaus in New 
York State, one of which is the largest or¬ 
ganization of its kind in the United States. 
The Home Bureau is the partner of the 
Farm Bureau, and, being composed of women, 
it surely will never be a “silent partner.” 
Indeed, as time goes on, one may expect to 
hear its voice more and more, calling atten¬ 
tion to the importance of home making and 
its problems, the greatest profession in all 
the world. 
Farming as a business is very intimately 
related to the farm home. No other busi¬ 
ness has such a peculiar relation to the home 
life. A man in the city may have his busi¬ 
ness in the most undesirable surroundings, 
but still have his home where life is full and 
rich. But on the farm the barn and the 
home are side by side, and cannot be sepa¬ 
rated. Hence, since the home cannot be 
moved to where fit living conditions exist, 
then such conditions must be brought to 
the farm home where they are not already 
present. 
The Farm Home and the Farm Business 
The thing of supreme importance to the 
welfare of the farm home, and therefore to 
the nation, is that farming be made a pay¬ 
ing business. One class in society cannot 
expect to work eight hours a day at a living 
wage when another and important group 
work fourteen to sixteen hours for a bare 
existence at a business that requires skill and 
training, especially when that business is so 
closely related to the very future of our 
nation’s existence. It is fundamental that 
farming be made to pay if the farm home 
is to be a permanent one and the right sort 
of people kept on the farm, for it is from 
the farm home of the past that the cities and 
the nation have drawn some of their best 
blood. 
If living conditions on the farm are not 
such to make the farm a desirable place to 
give farm children their preparation for life, 
farm women pledged through organiza¬ 
tions like thi^fcame Brueau to see to it, as 
nen ^e pl( 
m 
By MRS. A. E. BRIGDEN 
far as it lies in their power, that those con¬ 
ditions are changed. So wonderful is the 
contribution of the open country to living, 
however, that, in spite of all handicaps, it 
must still remain the best place for a real 
home and the best place to rear children. 
The Primary Interest of the Home Bureau 
In the Home Bureaus, as well as the Farm 
Bureaus, the primary interest is to bring 
about a better economic situation in rural 
life, for the first problem in raising the 
standard of life of any people is to give those 
people adequate pay for the service they ren¬ 
der. But the Home Bureaus go beyond the 
economic situation to those problems of coun¬ 
try life like the rural church, the rural 
If You Like These Talks, Write Us 
F you like to read something that gets right 
down to where you live, you will like the splen¬ 
did address of Mrs. A. E. Brigden, President of the 
New York State Federation of Home Bureaus, 
which is printed on this page. Mrs. Brigden 
broadcast this talk from the WEAF station at 
6:30 standard time, Wednesday evening. May 2d. 
In our opinion, Mrs. Brigden’s talk on the farm 
home and its problems brings out some of the best 
things that have been said and read about the 
home in a long time. 
This address is another one of the series of 
talks by farm and home leaders which is being 
given farm people through the cooperation of 
of American Agriculturist with the American 
Telephone and Telegraph Company through the 
broadcasting station WEAF. We are receiving a 
lot of letters. The questionnaires which we asked 
you to fill out about radio are being returned in 
good numbers. Folks all through our territory 
are talking about our radio service. All of which 
shows that farm people are tremendously inter¬ 
ested in the possibilities of the radio and are will¬ 
ing to cooperate with us and with the broadcasting 
station to get radio programs which will be of 
special interest and value to country folks. — The 
Editors. 
school, rural health conditions, rural libraries, 
and rural recreation. Most of these prob¬ 
lems have already been solved in the city; 
they yet remain to be done in most country 
communities, and the rural women, through 
organization, are just beginning to set their 
shoulders to the task. 
Not the least of the problems of rural 
women is that of isolation and loneliness, 
and the Home Bureau has helped to bring 
them closer to each other. Already in its 
early history it has developed initiative, 
latent talent for leaderships, and afforded 
opportunity for self-expression and a chance 
to voice efficiently opinions where such op- 
Dortunity is desirable. 
Three Years of Effort for Better Schools 
The Home Bureau, through its representa¬ 
tion on the Committee of Twenty-one, has 
worked for three years to bring about plans 
for the betterment of rural schools. The 
bureaus have rendered valuable service on 
this committee and are satisfied that there 
is no reason why a child in the country should 
not have the same educational facilities as 
the child in the city. For forty years the 
betterment of rural schools in New York 
State has been under consideration without 
any very special accomplishments. The 
women on the farms are insisting to-day 
that there should be no longer delay. They 
are urging with a greater persistence than 
any other farm organization that the 
Downing-Hutchinson Bill, containing the 
suggestions for rural-school improvement 
made by the Committee of Twenty-one, shall 
be passed immediately. 
Possibly all that I have tried to say about 
the home and what the Home Bureau is try¬ 
ing to do for it is summed up in the Home 
Bureau creed, which I wish might be hung 
on the wall of every home maker. This 
Horne Bureau creed is: “To develop the high¬ 
est ideals of home and community life; to 
count children the most important of crops; 
to so nourish them that their bodies may be 
strong, their minds clear, their spirits happy, 
and their characters generous. To place serv¬ 
ice above comfort, to let charity supplant 
hatred, to let loyalty to high purpose silence 
discordant notes, to be discouraged never, 
to believe one’s community may become the 
best of communities, and to work together 
for a more abundant home and community 
life.” 
_ This creed visualizes some of the ambi¬ 
tions of the State Federation of Home Bu¬ 
reaus, which is simply a union of home 
makers, pledged to the enrichment of home 
life and to the betterment of that larger 
housekeeping which reflects itself in the home 
of the community. It has been said that the 
only difference between the difficult and the 
impossible is that the impossible takes a little 
more time. Then I suppose that the best 
thing that women can do as a factor in bet¬ 
tering living conditions on the farm or in 
the city is to attempt the impossible and 
work together to bring in the golden age 
when every home will be developed “into an 
institution economically sound, mechanical¬ 
ly convenient, physically healthful, morally 
wholesome, mentally stimulating, spiritually 
inspiring, and socially responsible—a center 
of unselfish love.” 
Quotations Worth While 
L et us try to remember through the whole 
j course of this inquiry into the relations 
of States to States . . . that the prospect 
of improving the relations of States and 
peoples to one another depends ultimately 
upon the'possibility of improving human na¬ 
ture itself. Communities are nothing at all 
except so^ many individual men and human 
nature will advance no further in communi¬ 
ties taken as a whole than the members of 
the communities themselves advance. Hu¬ 
man nature in the civilized nations—and in¬ 
ternational advance can only go on if it goes 
on simultaneously in many nations—human 
nature can only be raised and sustained by 
the efforts of individuals. The citizens of 
a democracy can do everything if they ex^ 
press their united will. The raindrops that 
fall from the clouds unite to form a tiny rill, 
and, meeting other rills, it becomes a rivulet, 
and the rivulet grows to a brook, and the 
brooks as they join one another swell into a 
river that sweeps in its resistless course down¬ 
ward to the sea. Each of us is only a drop, 
but together we make up the volume of pub¬ 
lic opinion which determines the character 
and action of a State. What all the nations 
now need is a public opinion, which shall 
in every nation give more constant thought 
and keener attention to international policy. 
. . . All nations are the children of one 
Father in heaven.— Viscount Bryce. 
* * ♦ 
“The restoration of thrifty forests to our 
unproductive hillsides is the only thorough¬ 
going remedy for a scarcity which is already 
serious and may soon become critical.”— 
Gifford Pinchot. 
