American Agriculturist 
THE FARM PAPER THAT PRINTS THE FARM NEWS 
“Agriculture is the Most Healthful, Most Useful and Most Noble Employment of Man.”— Washington 
' Reg. U. S. Pat. Off. Established 1842 
Volume 114 / For the Week Ending August 30, 1924 Number 9 
Should Women Help with Farm Work? 
Their Sacrifices, Sometimes Necessary, Have Not Always Paid 
I T was a cold, gloomy day in early winter. 
Already the dusk of the long winter evening 
had come, bringing with it all the chores 
that go with taking care of a good many 
head of stock on a dairy farm. Father had 
brought in several pails of the skimmed milk 
and Mother was busy pouring it out into pans 
and placing them on the top of the large kitchen 
stove to'iwarm it for the calves. A little later 
Father picked up one of the pans of warm skimmed 
milk to dump it into the pail, found it 
too hot, and dropped the pan, milk and 
all, all over the stove and Mother’s clean 
kitchen floor. 
To this day, the smell of scorched milk 
always brings back that scene as one 
of my earliest memories which intro¬ 
duced me to the fact that the home and 
the farm are inseparable, that there can 
be homes without farms, but that no 
successful farm can exist without its home 
and without—if you please—a woman, 
whose energy and spirit is the constant 
mainspring of the whole farm enter¬ 
prise. 
Next perhaps in order of early mem¬ 
ories is the recollection of riding down 
the road, then through the old back pas¬ 
ture to a meadow on the other side of 
the woods, and there riding with Mother 
on an old-fashioned hand-dumped horse- 
rake, all through one long hot summer 
afternoon. And then I remember, too, 
those innumerable times when Mother 
was to be found doing her full share in 
helping to milk both night arid morning 
the long rows of cows that stood up and 
down both sides of the big stable. 
From the time of the earliest pioneers 
in this country, farm women not only 
have done their full duty inside of the 
home, but they have found time also to 
do perhaps a little more than their share, 
and certainly more than their health 
should have permitted, of the heavier 
work in the barns and fields. 
Nor is this outside work by the women 
confined entirely to the past. They still 
do it, and a lot of it. Particularly since 
the war when farm help has been so scarce, the 
work of the women has made it possible on 
thousands of farms to continue the business. 
A few years ago there was a farmer up in 
Livingston County who had a farm which was 
heavily loaded with debt. His creditors were 
continually nagging him and the constant mental 
strain made life for him a pretty sad proposition. 
He finally went to the director of a local bank 
and asked for help. The bank sent represen¬ 
tatives out to the farm. They found the house in 
good order, but the wife was out milking the 
cows. They went back and reported, the bank 
paid all of the debts, and loaned the farmer 
enough cash in addition to buy needed imple¬ 
ments. Today the debt is paid off, the farm is 
free and clear, and the farmer and his wife are 
prosperous. Later, the director told the farmer 
that the bank made its loan on the report of its 
representatives which read: “If a man’s wife 
takes as much i newest in the business as that 
woman does, and at the same time has her own 
By E. R. EASTMAN 
affairs in such good shape, then it is a pretty 
good indication that there is a good team at 
work and we recommend them as a good risk.’’ 
How many thousands of farm women there are 
in the hill country of the East who are milking 
cows and tending hens to help make the old 
farm go! How many other thousands through 
the fruit belts make it possible to get the fruit 
packed on time, and whose skill helps to sell the 
fruit at the best market price! 
And then there are those others lately from the 
old countries of Europe in the vegetable gardening 
districts like Long Island, whose children have to 
entertain themselves as best they can in a nearby 
hedgerow while the women folks on hands and 
knees weed the carrots or pick up potatoes all 
through the hot day. 
Perhaps we might pause to think for a moment 
that these foreign women, both in this country 
and in Europe, are nearly, if not quite, as strong 
as their men, that they are seldom if ever sick, 
even at childbirth, and that generations of out¬ 
door work and in the air and sunshine seem to 
have given them something in the way of health 
and endurance that our own women do not have. 
But if we admit this, we must also say in the 
same breath, that neither do they have the beauty 
nor the brightness and joyousness of mind and 
soul that make our own women a joy forever. 
All we naturally look for in our women folks has 
been crowded out of the lives, through genera¬ 
tions of unremitting toil and hardship, of the 
peasant women of Europe and other races like 
the American aborigines where women have been 
made the beasts of burden. 
The question I would like to raise in this little 
talk is, has all this work and sacrifice been neces¬ 
sary and worth while? Should women continue 
to help with the work on the farm that is strictly 
outside of the home? I shall endeavor to set down 
a few of my thoughts and views on the 
subject, but I shall be much more in¬ 
terested in knowing what you who read 
this article think about it, so let us have 
for publication in coming numbers of 
American Agriculturist some good 
letters from both the men and women 
folks who may read this discussion. 
Like a good many other important 
subjects, it is easier to theorize about 
them than it is to make practical sug¬ 
gestions which will help to correct in¬ 
justice. Maybe you will not agree that 
there has been any such injustice done, 
maybe it is right for the women to 
work; but certain it is that the old 
New England saying, that “it took two 
New England mothers to raise one New 
England family” had much of truth in 
it. The chief reason was that those 
mothers not only devoted themselves 
to their full duty in maintaining a home, 
and fully cared for their large families; 
but in addition, they went forth into 
the fields and in many cases, did a 
man’s heavy labor besides. 
Too many farm women grow old be¬ 
fore their time. Too many of them have 
too little recreation and too much iso¬ 
lation. Women are by nature more 
joyous creatures than men, but too often 
their environment on a farm has taken 
out of them much of the joy of living, 
so that not only have they suffered but 
the men and the children have lost that 
which God gave them in their women 
folks to cheer them in the many dis¬ 
couragements in life. 
So much for the social side of too 
much hard work for the women. 
Economically, there has, in my opinion, been 
much of wrong also. The cheaper free labor of 
women folks on the farm has been one of the 
chief reasons for the low prices of farm products. 
Our fathers have too often given away the fertile 
soil in the too cheap products which we sold to 
the cities. And to this gift, they have thrown in 
for good measure that more precious commodity, 
the free labor of their wives and children. 
Yet before we criticize, let us ask what else 
could farmers have done? They had to live and 
eat—they still have to. Prices were then, as 
now, always too low. To live and eat, crops must 
be raised, so the women had to help. Today, with 
the young folks gone, with hired labor absolutely 
beyond the reach of the average farmer, and with 
the work always crowding, what can the con¬ 
scientious wife do but try, in addition to carrying 
her own burden in the house, to relieve a little 
of the pressure on the outside? It probably has 
.(Continued on page If3) 
WHERE WOMEN STILL DO MUCH OF THE FARM WORK 
This picture was taken near Moscow, in Russia, and shows workers 
resting after the day’s work in hay harvest. Primitive methods are 
still in use in that country, and the woman has to shoulder her bur¬ 
den, ... “through generations of unremitting toil and hardship, 
the peasant women of Europe have been made the beasts of burden. 
