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 112 
For the Week Ending August 18, 1923 
Number 7 
The Woman Who Did What She Could 
A Tribute To All Those Women Who Live, Work and Sacrifice On the Land 
W HAT I am about to write is not a 
story of the imagination. It is 
the truth—truth as simple and 
unadorned as any tale that can 
be told. It is not “sob sister stuff,” for there 
is in it nothing of heart-breaking sorrow or 
rending suffering or cruel injustice. There 
are no high spots in it for it is the story of 
a very drab and uneventful life—but in just 
this lies its pathos. If it has human interests 
or a moral, it is only because it speaks of 
the quiet heroism of 
patience and’ resigna¬ 
tion and the homely 
virtue of faithfulness 
in a round of very 
humble daily duties 
through many years. 
The story came to me 
the other day under the 
seal of the confessional 
' —told to me because I 
was the appraiser for 
the Federal Land Bank. 
I violate no confidence 
—I give no names or 
places on the map, but 
when these good people 
read this story as I am 
sure they will—if they 
chance to remember 
and note the details 
that exactly correspond 
with what they told to 
me, I can only assure 
them that I set it down 
in warmest sympathy 
and admiration aiid 
from a full heart. 
The farm according to 
that ancient, quaint and 
surely true phrase of 
our deeds contains 105 
acres “more or less,” 
and it lies by the side of a much traveled 
State Road, and every day and more on Sun¬ 
days and Holidays the world streams by in 
gay parade of cars of all degrees from bat¬ 
tered flivvers to “sport” models of world- 
famous makes, used for the pleasures of a 
summer afternoon, but whose, price is more 
than all the gross receipts from this farm 
for half a dozen years. So you see it does 
not fit the usual story setting of a “lonely, 
isolated farm.” 
Nor is the farm so poor as farms go. It 
is nearly level and free from stone and it 
has been tilled—perhaps not always wisely 
tilled—through many years. There is need 
of lime and phosphorus and drainage and 
legumes. The man knows all this but there 
is lack of labor, lack of money—most of all 
perhaps there is lack of youthful hopes and 
high enthusiasm. 0—I grant that the farm 
needs only new blood and that skillful, ener¬ 
getic management would do wonderful things 
for the soil. 
The man and his wife—already then no 
longer young, came here twenty-two years 
ago and began to make a home with some 
cash paid down and a mortgage for perhaps 
By JARED VAN WAGENEN, JR. 
two-thirds of the value of the farm. Twenty- 
two years of the best of their lives have been 
invested in their task. Always the interest 
and sometimes a little of the principal has 
been paid on the day it was due. Indeed 
they may boast that they are attaining suc¬ 
cess, for the debt is less than it was in the 
beginning, and they have made some im¬ 
provements and the buildings are better than 
they were. The wife for nearly all those 
years has kept in very primitive fashion a 
book showing every penny of farm receipts. 
During two or three years the sum total has 
been less than $600. One golden, long-to- 
be-remembered year—1919 I think—it rose 
above $2,000 and affluence seemed close at 
hand, but last year again it sank dishearten- 
ingly low. 
But always the margin between receipts 
and expenditures has been very narrow, so 
that the loss of a cow was a disaster to be 
reckoned with and the purchase of a few 
rolls of fencing meant a revision of the farm 
budget. 
It was (as the corporations say) to “re¬ 
fund” their debt and thus secure more favor¬ 
able interest rates and terms of payment 
that they sought the aid of the Land Bank. 
Perhaps it is bad form or improper for an 
appraiser to accept the hospitality of a meal 
when to a certain extent his host’s financial 
future depends upon his recommendation, 
but it was near dinner time and they were 
the type of folk who disclaimed all ability to 
do business until you had eaten with them. 
We sat in the farm kitchen at a table loaded 
with most abundant, simple, wholesome food 
and there the woman outlined for me the un¬ 
eventful, prosaic story of the years. 
In one respect the dates had dealt hardly 
with them, and this was the only hint of 
tragedy in the recital, for the years had 
brought them no babies, and so the old house 
had never echoed to the voices of little chil¬ 
dren. We who are blessed with children can 
know and rejoice in that through them we 
attain a certain earthly immortality, but to 
the childless when the 
end comes, in this world 
at least, it is like the 
blowing out of a candle 
or the breaking of a 
wave. 
Nevertheless they 
had walked what must 
have sometimes been a 
lonely way with cheer¬ 
fulness and on the 
whole content. The 
pathos of her story lay 
in this—that life had 
been so full of throng¬ 
ing labors, but had held 
for them so little of op¬ 
portunity. There is a 
fine passage in Thomas 
Carlyle’s “Sartor Re- 
sartus” in which that 
Scotsman cries: “It is 
not because of his toil 
that I lament for the 
poor,” and then goes on 
to say that what he does 
lament over is that in 
the pressing struggle 
for daily bread “the 
lamp of his soul should 
go out,” and this I take 
it is the danger in the 
long hours in the steel 
mills, the danger in the fearfully long hours 
which sometimes comes to we folk of the 
farms. 
The man, vigorous and rugged, carrying 
his years with ease, it seemed to me, has al¬ 
most alone cared for the work outside. The 
woman had cared for the home, had made 
the butter, had fed the poultry, had per¬ 
formed the multitudinous tasks that only 
women know, and in addition in times of 
need, had helped with the work of the 
farm and fields. I cannot say that it had 
broken her physically or made her old 
before her time, but I do know that it had 
left her no time for reading, for rec¬ 
reation, for day-dreaming or for those 
pleasant idle tasks of dainty needlework 
that women love to do. Life had brought 
her so little. Now and then a trip of ten 
miles to the little city—their market town: 
once in a great while—three or four times 
in all a visit to the movies. How little she 
could tell of adventure or recreation! Yet ia 
her talk was no note of repiningjncM^g| 
of discontent. So she goes om I 
years knowing that each w jji ' 
(Continued on 
“She had cared for the home, had made the butter, had fed the poultry, had performed the multi¬ 
tudinous tasks that only women know, and in times of need had helped with the work of the farm” 
