Chapter IX: Part 9

Another club, the Daughters of Ceres, at Bedford, Iowa, issues a calendar for the year’s work, which compares favorably with the work of any club. Country women’s clubs are usually short of money, and difficulty is sometimes experienced in securing books for study. Would it not be well for every state to supply a reading course for farmers’ wives after the example of the Cornell Reading Course? If the Government would send out a bulletin containing the essential rules of order for country clubs it would be a great help in conducting meetings. A meeting must be regarded seriously and conducted with dignity to get the best results. A little time and money expended in helping the women is well spent. When Secretary Shaw lived in Iowa he owned a number of farms. It was his practice to give to his tenants’ wives pure bred cocks and turkey toms. A neighbor remonstrated with him, saying: “You are making our tenants’ wives discontented. We cannot afford to give away pure bred poultry.” Secretary Shaw replied: “When I help the women with their poultry, I always get my rent.”

FARM ORGANIZATION.

The organization of the farmers has long been the end desired by those who are seeking to promote the country’s welfare. By reason of all his previous years of training when he has been acting on his own judgment, and working alone, the farmer is not accustomed to organized effort, and does not fully recognize its value; hence the influence of his wife in this matter is of special help. The farmer knows if he leaves home for any length of time that weeds spring up, fences fall down, cattle get off their feed and cows fail in their milk. Hence he stays at home year in and year out getting deeper and deeper in the rut unless educational and social privileges are brought to him. This the women can and will do. Through the united efforts of the women the farmer is going to think less of his taxes and more of his schools; he is going to be one of an army of country men united to secure conservation of the soil through longer leases, conservation of the child through better educational facilities; conservation of the wife through the relaxation of meeting with those of her own sex, and shall I not add: conservation of the few hard-earned dollars in the purse by parcels post? The farmer’s wife, in order to conserve to the fullest extent the best interests of the farm, must be filled with the conviction that farming is the most honorable of any pursuit for a man and is a career worthy of his best endeavors and not merely a makeshift until something better offers. Such a woman will impress upon her children the thought that no calling or profession is so worthy of their best efforts; she will see to it that the books and papers that come into the family are those that treat farming and the farmer with respect. No one thing probably has had a more invidious influence in creating a desire among farm boys to leave the farm than the funny papers and cartoons which make the farmer the butt of their jokes, portraying him as the victim of the gold brick agent and picturing him with the vacant look and gaping mouth of an imbecile.

Cato, the Censor, lived at a time when Rome was at its height as a military power. He had held nearly all of the great offices under the Roman republic, yet in his old age he left this record, that: “No occupation was so worthy of the dignity of a man as that of farming,” holding that: “Farming makes the bravest men, and thoughts.” The farmer’s wife should use her influence to see that this kind of literature is kept before her children in the farm home, in the curriculum of the school, and in the school library.

In the time at my disposal I have been able to only hint at a few of the very many and diverse problems, as well as opportunities which belong to our women of the farm. I have tried to view them as a wife and mother of the soil, where, indeed, my life is cast, and my energies have been engrossed. I have endeavored to advance no fine spun theories, but to suggest a solution which can be and is being worked out today in many localities. That these and similar organizations are bound to come in abundance and that they will work untold good to the cause of conservation I fully believe. Once the farm wives of our country are adequately organized there is no divining the power for good that they may wield. There is an old saying: “Unless a man’s mother ordains him for the ministry, he won’t make a good preacher.” When a boy’s mother ordains him for the farm there will be no lack of good farmers. (Applause)

Chairman VESSEY—I now have the pleasure of introducing to you Mrs. Matthew T. Scott, President General of the Daughters of the American Revolution, who will talk to you in regard to the “Farmer’s Wife.” (Applause)

Mrs. SCOTT—I have crossed the continent to be present today because of my interest in the farm and the farmer’s wife—the class to which I am proud to belong.

We have considered here every interest of conservation in creation—vegetable, animal and mineral, and now come to conservation of the farmer’s wife, the greatest issue before this Congress.

In the consideration of that problem which so far has baffled the masculine intelligence, i. e., that of keeping the younger generation on the farm, the key to the situation unquestionably is held by the farmer’s wife.

The call of the country rings out from garden, from forest and stream, from acres of golden grain, and tonics pure from Nature’s own laboratory. Back of all of this is the farmer’s wife, who by making the farm home attractive and interesting is the magnet which draws the boy and girl back to the farm, from the allurements and disappointments of city life. The farmer’s wife is no longer the isolated being of years ago—but with her free rural delivery, and the country’s network of trolleys for her convenience—good roads, and with the use of modern machinery, a large degree of leisure to give to her social life, music and books, are now at her command. If she succeeds in making life on the farm attractive, if she is able to add the distinctively feminine touch of home charm to the freedom and zest of country life, who can doubt that this great problem of retaining the farmer boys on the farm will be solved?

It is the farmer’s wife also, and she chiefly, who can enforce the only education that is worth while—that is real and true, that education which builds character, which educates not the intellect alone, but at the same time the conscience and the will; an education that means justice and truth and purity in this selfish work-a-day world. Moreover, few farmers succeed whose wives do not do their part to see to it that both ends meet. It is the wife of the farmer who sees where the waste and loss are eating into the profits of the farm. It is the housewife as a rule who has ideas of thrift in farm management and who, if she has the chance, will contribute more than is often realized to make the farm a business success.

Upon the farmer’s wife largely rests this great responsibility, and in this great work, with the help of the noble army of quiet, intelligent, capable farmers’ wives, we hope to develop the most splendid crop known on this fertile continent—the boys and girls, the youth of the land. Largely is this work the prerogative of the farmer’s wife amid the stress and strain which absorb the energies of modern masculine business life.

Another duty which devolves upon the farmer’s wife is to exert her influence and teaching to train her boys so that they will see to it when they are voters that in these days of political chicanery and corruption that only honest men and true are sent to Legislatures, to Congress, and the United States Government, to make the laws that are to govern this, the greatest Nation on the face of the earth.

Sociologists and agricultural professors can aid the farmer’s wife in her work, but, after all, it is upon her shoulders that the responsibility of success or failure in this great task must ultimately rest.

Today the great difficulty is that the farmer’s wife is trying heroically to fulfill the double functions—that of assistant economic producer and of housewife, mother and the organizer and inspirer of the happier and higher activities and diversions of country life.

To free the wife from the burden of money making and educate her in the more difficult and equally important task of home-making and the development of the finer and more humane and more enjoyable aspects of country life, these are the problems we must help her solve and she will do the rest.

An old Frenchman once said that farming was the only profession in which a man works in a relationship of direct partnership with God. The ministry might object to the words “only profession,” but the fact is certainly patent that in more than any ordinary occupation of life, do we coöperate day and night with the sun, and the wind and the rain, and all the other forces of Nature and of Nature’s God, and I believe that for women today there is no profession more alluring, healthful, or lucrative than that of scientific agriculture. If I had my life to live over I would enter as a student one of our great agricultural universities. I would familiarize myself with the work of experiment stations, learn to test soils, know the elements best suited to and most needed by the different stratas of earth. I would master the secrets of fertilization, which have for a thousand years made sections of the old world productive without exhaustion. I would inform myself as to the value and methods of rotation of crops, the value of dairy and cattle raising on the farm. I would also inform myself of the comparative cost of nitrogen drawn from the air in the form of leguminous crops, which imprison the nitrogen in the soil, and the cost of commercial nitrogen, and their comparative values.

I would learn the need of phosphate or potassium as applied to different soils and the comparative value of tested fertilizers. We have already an aristocracy of herds—cattle, horses and swine, but I would undertake the breeding of an aristocracy of seed corn and oats and alfalfa.

Oh! they are great the possibilities of woman on the farm—if she would only take advantage of them. (Applause)

Chairman WALLACE—We will now proceed with the call of the states, and these organizations who wish to report.

Delegate C. J. DILLON of Manhattan, Kan.—Can’t we give five minutes more to discussion by the ladies? We have a lady here I wish to propose, who has been working in this same line for years, and I would like to have you hear from her.

Chairman VESSEY—Send her up to the platform, please.

Mr. DILLON—I am glad to introduce to you Miss Frances Brown of Kansas, who has been in active work along the lines of organization of farmers’ wives. (Applause)

A DELEGATE—Have her come down on the front platform.

President WALLACE—She has a pretty good voice, and I think if you will be quiet you can hear her.

Miss BROWN—The first speaker on this subject this afternoon outlined so ably and so well the needs of the farmer’s wife that it will be my pleasure in just a very few minutes to tell you how we at the Agricultural College in Kansas have tried to meet these needs of the farmers’ wives. We have looked over the field as well as we could, and we saw that in the very first instance the first thing for us to do was to correct, as far as possible, the errors of those who had gone before us. And so while it is only morning yet in Kansas, and the department as organized is only two years old, we went out into the organization that had already existed in Kansas and began to do work on these subjects that pertained to the commonest things of life, the very household, taking up for our very first work a sort of reformatory movement on the subject of bread and bread making. Then we spread that same movement before the Farmers’ Institutes, and by visiting every one of the institutes and meetings that we could, we saw that the cause of dissatisfaction on the farm lay largely in the fact that there are not the conveniences in the farm home that we find in the town, and that was the cause of the exodus from the farm to the town. So we have begun a campaign for the country homes, and our women in the institutes are so anxious that they ask us to help them effect an organization which we call an Auxiliary to the Farmers’ Institutes. Of these during the last year we have twenty organizations, with a membership of 500, whose women have been studying the cost of putting in plants for heating and lighting and bringing water into the homes, and taking care of the waste from the home. Now we are getting letters every day from farm homes where they are actually making use of some one of these various systems.

The next step was to take care of the younger members of the farm home, and so we had to get something ready that could be used in the public schools, as well as in the home itself. We have what you may be more or less familiar with under the title of the Girls’ Home Economic Clubs, by which we reach the girls through the printed page. These printed papers are gotten up so that girls from ten to fifteen years of age can master them perfectly. They are on the subjects that we need every day, first, cooking, because you know that while man can live without poetry, music and art, he cannot live without cooks, so we are going to begin raising each one to be a cook for the future. We have these courses in cooking out all over the state, not only being used by the individual girls in the farm home, but being taken up by the public schools where the towns or the communities are too poor to afford a department in domestic science and art. During the past year 2,300 girls took lessons either in cooking or sewing or both from this department at the college, and already, as the new schools are opening, letters are pouring in every day asking for more of that work in the various sections of the state. Moreover, during the last year, due to these efforts, seventy-five high schools put domestic science or art or both into their systems where it had not existed before. Wishing to utilize or bring together the organization that already existed instead of forming new organizations, we have been getting together a course of domestic lessons, or demonstrations, if you please to call them so, that can be used by the women’s clubs that are already organized in the state. That course is almost completed; and when we have that finished, we hope to see every single organization of the women in the state adopting part or all of it, not because they need it so much, because women that have time for clubs, have more or less leisure through their added efficiency. But it will mean that they are still thoughtful along these lines, and that their efforts are going to be with us in spreading this gospel of good housekeeping throughout the state.

Now, we have a big work yet before us. We are not going to stop. We are going to work at every single channel that we have opened, and we are going to open as many new ones as can be helped, until every roof in Kansas covers a harmonious home where we will find every single thing that will tend to the highest efficiency and the needs of every member of the family in that home. I thank you. (Applause)

Chairman WALLACE—I know I voice the feeling of this audience when I say we have already highly enjoyed these addresses from the ladies this afternoon. The executive committee of this association has some business that you must transact, and the report will now be read by Mr. J. B. White, the chairman of the executive committee.

Mr. WHITE—The executive committee met this morning and adopted the following resolutions:

In view of the very effective help which the national
organizations have given the Conservation Congress and the
conservation movement in general, the members of the executive
committee of the Third National Conservation Congress feel
that the national organizations should have more adequate
representation. Therefore, at a meeting of the executive
committee of the Congress today, it was decided unanimously to
recommend that the constitution be amended so as to provide
for an advisory board to be made up of representatives of
the national organizations which have appointed conservation
committees.

To this end the executive committee respectfully begs leave
to submit the following amendment to Article 5, Section 3, of
the Constitution of the Conservation Congress, by adding the
following:

“An advisory board, consisting of one person from each national
organization having a conservation committee, shall be created
to act for that Congress and during the interval before the
next succeeding Congress. The board shall report to and
coöperate with the executive committee.”

The executive committee is also of opinion that the scope of the work of the permanent committees of the Congress should be extended so as to cover a larger field. The present sub-committees are those on forests, waters, land, mineral and vital resources.

The committee, therefore, recommends that the constitution of the Conservation Congress be amended as follows:

Article 5, Section 5. The committee on vital resources shall
consist of members, each selected with the view to becoming
chairman of the sub-committee and that six sub-committees be
created subordinate to the committee on vital resources as
follows: Food, homes, child life, education, civics, general
(including wild life, domesticated animals and cultivated
plants). The chairman of each committee, with the approval of
the chairman of the executive committee, shall be authorized to
appoint as members of these sub-committees, such members as in
their judgment will best accomplish the object sought.

Delegate BRUCE DODSON of Kansas City—I move that the report of the executive committee be received.

Delegate WM. H. DYE of Indianapolis—I second the motion.

Chairman VESSEY—All in favor of them will say aye. Contrary minded. The amendments are adopted.

Mr. WHITE—Mr. President, we invite all those who are here and are delegates of the different national associations that have conservation committees to come on the platform, that they may choose their representatives, if possible, and confer with the executive committee immediately after adjournment.

President WALLACE—What now is the pleasure of the Congress? We have filled up the program of today. I take pleasure in introducing Miss Mame E. Weller of Nathan, Iowa, of the conservation committee of the Iowa Federation of Women’s Clubs.

Miss WELLER—I bring greetings from the Federated Club women of Iowa, who today stand ready to help in all lines of conservation.

We have been and are working for the conservation of child life, health and happiness. We have done much toward procuring sanitation in schools, and especially pure drinking water. We are trying to have our bird laws enforced and shall petition our Legislature at its next session to prohibit spring shooting of ducks and all shore birds, who are our sanitary commissioners of lake, shore and stream borders.

We have caused many hundreds of trees to be planted in Iowa, and the coming year we are to work for state control of the banks of our streams and shores of our lakes.

We have done much to prevent the wanton mutilation of trees and destruction of our wayside trees by telephone companies. Yet much remains to be done. We have in Iowa a statute that exempts from taxation almost entirely all woodlands, native or planted, when kept and used for timber purposes only.

President WALLACE—We expected until today to have a paper or address by Dr. Knapp of Washington, D. C., but I am very sorry to say that he cannot come, but the Department of Agriculture has a gentleman that can take his place, and I would suggest that Dr. W. J. Spillman come forward and tell us about the wonderful demonstration work that is going on in the South.

Is Dr. Spillman in the audience? If not, we would be glad to hear from Mr. F. A. Guthrie, a member of the Congress representing the city of St. Paul, Minn. Five minutes, and then I promise you we will adjourn.

Mr. GUTHRIE—As indicated in the announcement, my work is on a line somewhat different from almost anything that has been presented. In connection with charitable and correctional institutions, we have found that it is necessary to go to the country. This presentation this afternoon relates to charitable and correctional work. The dreariness of the country home is very important and has to do with most of that which we have to treat. The national conferences on this matter have come to the conclusion that it is necessary for leaders in the country to engage some person specially qualified to advance social interests, to organize country meetings of various kinds, or organize musical entertainments, organize social entertainments, and organize educational work. We present that to the national conference as something to which we will have to come in order to bring about agreeable healthy country life, a life which gives joy in living, as was presented by the President at the opening. I thank you.

President WALLACE—We are ready to entertain a motion to adjourn. Ladies and Gentlemen, remember that the meeting is at 8 o’clock sharp. We are to have a great program tonight. Mrs. Moore, Dr. Wilson, and Dr. Wiley.

The Congress stands adjourned until 8 o’clock this evening.

_SIXTH SESSION._

President WALLACE—The house will come to order. The secretary has a telegram to be read:

Returning from two weeks on the firing line of conservation
with Secretary Fisher. I send through you the accredited
representative of the American Civic Association hearty good
wishes for the great movement now being considered and promoted
by those who believe in a continuing and improving America.

J. HORACE MCFARLAND,
President American Civic Association.

President WALLACE—We are to be privileged this evening to have an address on the Community Club, by Mrs. Phillip Moore, St. Louis, president of the General Confederation of Women’s Clubs. (Applause)

Mrs. MOORE—Members of the Conservation Congress: I have already said to the officers of the association that we very much prefer “Community Center” to “Community Club.” It will cover the ground much better, as you will see, from my viewpoint:

It may be a question in the minds of many present why this particular subject has been assigned to a representative of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. I am glad to present the very best of reasons: because we have studied it for years, and have worked on the findings of such study.

At the Second Conservation Congress in St. Paul our honored ex-president gave in some detail the history of the Country Life Commission in which he had become much interested. Economic and social questions engaged his attention; he had given thought to the economic strengthening and social elevation of the Irish farmer, in connection with the policies of conservation and country life in our own country.

The results of the Country Life Commission were of the widest import, but were never made public, inasmuch as Congress did not appropriate money to print the findings.

It was about this time that our interest was specially centered on the life of the women of rural communities; one of the Eastern publications supplemented the existing inquiries from the Government by sending out letters to approximately 700,000 readers. There were answers from nearly every state in the Union which would have required a large office force to read and tabulate. The majority of these letters was given to our general federation board members, representing through their own and advisory states all the community interest which we wish to bring to you today.

The result was extraordinary—answers from a thousand women, with facts, feelings, hopes, ambitions, possibilities and probabilities. The bulk of correspondence came from women, whose letters showed that they are not having for one reason or another what Mr. Roosevelt called a “square deal.”

The letters were distributed among the board members, were carefully read, and they frequently gave an opening for further correspondence—with most interesting, personal results. The letters were not illiterate; many of the women have been school teachers and nearly all have had a good education; many were eloquent in deeper modes of expression than rhetoric.

The volume of data which these letters presented is of high value industrially, from a sociological point of view, and with reference to sanitary conditions; the study of public schools and country churches would gain largely from this material.

Our board members represented, and naturally for that reason understood, the New England and Eastern states, the sandy shores, the Pennsylvania settlements, the sunny South, the mountain regions, the near West, the river states, the Northern plains, the prairie stretches, the Rockies and the Pacific shores.

Only a fraction of the answers returned could we utilize to assort and digest; we believe it is beyond the power of any but a commission to recommend, and such commission might well give its entire time to the work.

We have, however, as I said in our reports, made further inquiries, have come into closer personal relation, have assisted wherever possible, and have certainly recognized the needs of many outlying, lonely homes.

You will allow me to give from the experiences of these letters through our members some few generalizations:

Iowa and Nebraska happened to be grouped together. The eastern and southeastern part of Nebraska are geographically one with Iowa in soil, surface and products, and the two states are allied as to their inhabitants. Except in isolated colonies, the farmers of Iowa and Nebraska came from the Eastern and Central states. The foreign born settlers come almost exclusively from Ireland, the north European countries and Bohemia. The northwest portion of Nebraska, embracing the “big Sixth” congressional district with the far western part, is grouped geographically with eastern Colorado and Wyoming, and the problems of the farmer there differ materially from those of the farmer in the fertile and populous eastern division of this section.

THE DRAWBACK TO RURAL LIFE.

Everywhere the isolated and primitive character has been the greatest drawback to rural life. To those who have depended always upon companionship and society for their interests and enjoyment, this loneliness is intolerable. Physical conditions are changing this, the telephone, the rural mail delivery, the automobiles and the interurban are bringing the comforts and companionship of the town to the farm. There are farmers’ families who planned ten years ago to move to the town as soon as a competence had been accumulated, but who now, with more than the hoped for income, are content to remain on the farm, the active management having been turned over to a tenant or a son, and to enjoy the comforts of the country.

In the older settled portions of these states the farms are being divided. The high price of land is driving the farmer to more intensive cultivation and this will continue to eliminate the more disagreeable features of rural life.

Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota were grouped and the interesting items were as varied as they might be in more widely separated regions.

There is no “hard luck” tale to tell of poverty and squalor in this region, although the conditions differ widely from very poor to very good. Everyone is already familiar with the stories of the poor wives who have not been away from the farm for five or ten years. There are too many such in the Northern plains; these pitiful tales are all too true, but they are not the whole truth. To get at that it is necessary to know not only the worst, but the best conditions. The best are especially worthy of mention because they indicate possibilities, and are an example and inspiration to those not already arrived at prosperity.

While there are still to be found one-room sod houses sheltering whole families, there are others with all the modern conveniences of steam heat, good plumbing, electricity for light and power, telephones, and the rural postal delivery bringing each day from the outside world papers, books and magazines. And these are the fruit of industry and frugality; and between these two extremes are many homes of moderate means where conveniences and luxuries are not yet possible, but where there is wholesome, normal living.

The great factor in improving rural conditions is education in scientific farming, and in these states there are excellent educational advantages offered to the young men and women who wish to make this a business. Each state has its agricultural college, which is usually a department of the state university, a school where agriculture and its kindred subjects rank with the technical or professional courses; the tendency is to dignify the business of farming, to make it attractive from both the pleasurable and the practical standpoint. There are traveling libraries equipped not only with books for entertainment, but books in various languages for instruction on subjects of rural interest, and these libraries go to the very remotest corners of the state.

The women who have answered the questions in the rural conditions inquiry are agreed that the farm presents great possibilities for happiness, if they could only have a little more help with the farm work, and more frequent chances for change and recreation. They rarely complain that their work is too hard, but only of its dreary monotony.

Fraternal societies afford the greatest opportunities for social intercourse for our country people. Clubs—as we know them—are infrequent. The varied nationalities represented in new states present no common ground on which people of widely differing habits of mind and modes of speech can meet, and this condition and the lack of help enhance the difficulties of social gatherings.

It is very evident that each section of this great country must present its own problems. In the part of the country included in “The Rockies” we find four types of rural life—the small town, the farm, the ranch, and the mining camp. Answers came from all of these. While the last is not, strictly speaking, a rural community, it must be so considered in any effort to brighten the lives of the women who are removed from the advantages of city life.

THE BUILDERS OF THE WEST.

These people, who are in large measure the builders of the West, have come from the more thickly settled states, to try their fortunes under greatly changed conditions; and one of the great hardships that face them is the fact that their means will not permit their first experiments at farming—either dry farming or irrigated farming—ranching, or mining to be a failure. And in the very nature of things, a failure is too often made the first year. If the family finances permit the partial loss of the first year’s work, and if the family adopts the methods proved to be successful, the after years are brighter and not shadowed by poverty. Poverty in the West is a removable cause.

Loneliness is a second problem which is being rapidly met in these states by the organization of women’s clubs and the foundation of local libraries in the towns, and traveling libraries for those outside. Colorado has done especially good work with her traveling library boxes.

For the most part the people are hopeful and happy. They came into this mountain region expecting difficulties and they have no complaints to make that their problems are not all solved. They had the grit to come into a new and unsettled country, and they desire to stay. Every letter from the “farm women” of Colorado, Montana and Wyoming was a happy letter. Such rural problems are hopeful.

The North Pacific shores offer a diversity of agricultural and commercial interests, and the farmer here differs somewhat from the Eastern farmer in that he is more of a specialist. He is either a wheat, cattle, fruit or dairy farmer. He specializes on one thing, and does his work with the most improved machinery, or under the latest and most modern methods; he seldom attempts to derive revenue from the hundred and one little things that, in many districts, are made by the farmer’s wife and hauled to the corner store to exchange for groceries. In other words, his farming is more of a business than the old idea of making it a semi-domestic arrangement. This relieves the wife of much of the drudgery of the farm and puts her on the same business footing in the home, as the professional man’s wife.

With rare exceptions, the farmers have rural mail delivery, farmers’ telephones, and very often electricity for light and other purposes. The roads, as a rule, are good, and the automobile is fast displacing the farm horse.

The schools of higher education are filled with the children from the rural districts, and many farmers move into town in the winter, that their children may have better educational advantages.

In the smaller towns many farmers’ wives join the women’s clubs. While this is commendable, it is not necessary to the life or happiness of the women, for in these states the grange is a great educational factor. It is perhaps the only secret organization in existence where men and women meet on an exact equality. In it some of the best legislation originates, and the probe sinks deep into every proposed measure that affects the farmer; here the conservation of every resource is discussed, and, knowing that they must enter into these deliberations, the farmers’ wives read and keep abreast of the times. The grange meetings are all-day sessions, with a goodly proportion of the day given over to social pleasures; the young people enjoy all sorts of healthful sports, while their elders discuss the prospect of parcel post delivery, the threatened increase of postage on magazines, or the postal savings bank and many other things that bring comfort or enlightenment to the rural home.

The suggestions that came in the letters from New England will be very helpful whenever needed, and have already come into some recent government policies.

The advantages and disadvantages of farm life, in the many letters from the Pennsylvania settlements, would give thought to the most logical mind. They have been culled, however, from a more than usually large number of replies, and due somewhat to the fact that 180 sessions of farmers’ institutes were held for women in one year throughout Pennsylvania.

I think I need not enter further into the details of all parts of the country, or even give recommendations, which a special committee might better bring to a future meeting; but there are certainly two policies which are closely allied—conservation and rural life. When public opinion is thoroughly aroused, it is but a question of time for the will to find a way. There must be a voluntary effort, and such volition must be aroused by education.

One of the most vital items to those who are specially interested in the educational progress of a country is the awakened public opinion in the Middle West shown by the development of the agricultural courses in all of our great universities and colleges.

Even public schools in some parts of this region are giving practical instruction to old and young. Meetings are being held upon the farms; lectures, experiments and demonstrations are being introduced.

The church has quickly realized that there must be a combination of emotion and sanity; the practical and ideal have come into closer relationship; clubs of young men and of women, sometimes of the two together, are taking up all subjects pertaining to the farm life; and wherever these subjects are alive, and the social element is not forgotten, we find distance makes no barrier. At once means of communication are increased. The telephone is in every home; the trolley line goes by the farm—even the automobile becomes a necessity, and good roads are at once established. Distance is therefore annihilated, and the lonely life is a matter of the past.

How short a time it is since insanity was a large concomitant of the farm life for women! Recently, at a session of the Charity Conference in Boston, there seemed to be very little reference to the need for prevention of insanity among isolated farm women. I found it to be largely a sorrow of the past; but I do not agree entirely with such statements, when I recall the letters, from the immense prairie farms. Woods Hutchinson, in speaking of the change that had come into the homes of all women—the removal of much of the old-time work from the home to the factory—says that it is a convincing proof of the stability of woman’s mental powers that generations of that semi-solitary confinement at hard labor known as “home life” have not made her a candidate for the insane asylum. “Man would have gone raving crazy long ago.”

IDEAL CLUBS.

A community club, as we would call a club, must be composed of men and women, for they must, under ordinary circumstances, go together to their meetings. The Farmers’ Institute is more in the line of this particular thought, but the community center or grange covers the ground fully. The institute comes but once or twice a year, while the club might be regularly intermittent.

This must mean a central meeting point with the very best and appropriate reading matter pertaining to equipment of both home and farm; the solution of the help question (shall we ever reach this millennium?), certainly demonstrates in cooking and pure food, discussions as to education of children, and the way to obtain better lighting and heating, and good roads should be a part of these meetings.

Where shall this center be—the school or the church?

The women’s clubs of the nearby towns have attempted in an entirely friendly spirit to maintain rest rooms for farmers’ wives when on shopping bent, with a possible creche for the babies and a caretaker and amusements for young children. This is excellent, but will never take the place of the community center.

A change in the attitude of public opinion towards the old question of town and country means some practical outcome to all this discussion. The interdependence of the two is real, each having its influence on the other, the main consideration being human rather than material. The town representative can talk out his grievances, political and economic; the farmer has a full stock of grievances, but rarely gives formal expression to them; and the farmer’s wife acknowledges that her social life is barren. The two need to bring their problems to each other; and a community spirit will surely lead to forms of organization for mutual economic and social advantage. There must be in the rural community such social life as shall withstand the attractions of the city, if we wish the farms to remain in the control of their owners, instead of in the hands of renters.

What can be done to give the farmer’s wife a little leisure in which to enjoy the advantages that might be hers?

The answer to this is the answer to the question which confronts every one who is striving to improve social conditions anywhere. It is the great problem of work and the “out of works,” which city and country are trying alike to solve, working from opposite horns of the dilemma. With thousands of hands begging for employment at one end, with thousands of jobs begging to be done at the other, it is not creditable to our initiative that we have not discovered some way to equalize the supply and demand of labor. We are already educating our country youth to stay on the farm; what we need further is a campaign of education to destroy the lure of the city, to teach men and women that there is plenty of work under wholesome conditions awaiting anyone who will take it, that those who cannot go the pace of the city can find pleasant, profitable living where there is time enough, and work enough for every one, if they will but go back to the soil.

The conclusions drawn from the investigations into rural conditions, which I have been able to make, have changed my opinion very materially. Life is not so sordid and hard, poverty is not so pinching as I had thought. That it is narrow and unnecessarily colorless is evident, and that much can be done to brighten it is certain, but just what form of help to offer is a grave question.

There is always needed a plan and the machinery to carry it through. I am not sure of name or method, but a central force there must be, whether of men or women—possibly it might be well to appeal to the woman, who makes the home life, to whom it is of so much importance.

From all our letters we note that the women love the country life, both for themselves and their children. They would doubtless be ready to take up any coöperative plan that might be suggested. Certain I am that no committee should be appointed to consider ways and means that did not have in its membership some thoughtful, progressive farm women. Towards this common end should be included also representatives from all the agencies making the community life educational and religious.

It is not difficult to draft a scheme, but it is essential that the elements most needed to carry it out should feel themselves vitally interested.

Horace Plunkett suggests “an institution which shall be scientific, philosophic, research-making.” His arguments are so entirely to the point that I quote some few sentences:

Every social worker knows how the knowledge of what others are
doing will help him. It is strange how little the problems
of the rural population have entered into the study of
sociologists. At leading universities I have sought in vain
for light.... The fact is the subject must be treated as a new
one, and it is urgently necessary, if the work of the Country
Life Movement is to be based on a solid foundation of fact, to
make good the lack of information, which has resulted from the
general lack of interest.... An institute is wanted to survey
the field, to collect, classify and coördinate information
and to supplement and carry forward the work of research and
inquiry. The rural social worker requires as far as possible to
carry exact statistical methods into his work, so that he may
not have to depend on general statements, but may have at his
command evidence, the validity of which can be trusted, while
its significance can be measured.

In agreeing with his desire for absolute data, let us not forget the human side, the personal evidence, which can never be obtained through an institute.

May we hope that the Conservation Congress, which has ever shown a human interest in the conservation of vital force, will be the leader in bringing to its own the vital center of the country!

President WALLACE—You will all agree with me, Ladies and Gentlemen, that we have had one choice treat tonight. There are two more coming. The Presbyterian Church of the United States has taken a very great deal of interest in the country church. Do you know that if the Presbyterians do not revive their country church there won’t be a Presbyterian church in the next generation, for this reason, that the town, while it can get all the lawyers it wants, can grow them, and all the doctors, can’t grow preachers enough to supply their own pulpits. (Applause) Now, we are to have before us here tonight Dr. Warren H. Wilson of New York City, the superintendent of the Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church, and he will give us a new phase of conservation.

[Dr. Wilson’s paper will be found in Supplementary Proceedings.]

President WALLACE—Here endeth the second lesson. (Applause) We have been told about society. We have heard about the practical everyday religion of feeding men. And now we are going to be told by Dr. Wiley how to keep healthy, so that we may enjoy our religion and feed more men. (Applause)

Dr. WILEY—Mr. President and Delegates of the third National Conservation Congress, Ladies and Gentlemen: My sermon is going to be short. I think a great many of these country churches were vacated by two and a quarter hour sermons. (Applause) I want to insist, however, that in this sermon I am going to preach I want to follow the steps of my illustrious predecessor. I have been preaching sermons for a number of years, and I think it is about time I was ordained. I believe in all the principles of conservation that you have taught this week and many previous weeks. I was an early and insistent and persistent conserver. I believe I have the honor of having delivered the first public address that ever took the term “conservation” as a text. In 1894 I delivered an address on the conservation of the fertility of the soil, and so, as well as my dear friends, the Presbyterians, I am a little bit conservative, too. (Applause) I am sorry that that condition has obtained which he described here, the empty country churches. But let me tell you they are no more empty than the country houses of this country. Everybody has been going to the town. They have taken the greater part of country boys who would have made good farmers and made pretty poor preachers out of them. On the whole the country boy thinks it is easier to preach once a week than it is to plow corn every day and feed the stock on Sunday. And naturally he chooses the line of least resistance to make a living. That is the reason that the country is becoming deserted, and just as long as it is easier to make a living in the city than it is in the country, the country is going to be empty, and all you preachers can’t fill it up, and the object of these meetings is to make it easier to make a living in the country than in the city, and then you will see the tide flow the other way, and not before. (Applause) One reason people ought to live in the country is because they can be healthier there. I would rather be a healthy boy in the country than a sick boy in town. If I have equal health, I think I would rather stay in town, for a boy has more fun in town. If you take fun away from the boy you deboyize the boy. Another thing, there is too much demanizing, and dehorning, in the country life. I know about this Pennsylvania Dutch people, why they are so prosperous, because their home life is in their life in the country. It follows the Pennsylvania Dutchman to the grave. It is a pleasure to go to a funeral in that community. (Applause) It has got to be a burden, every time I am invited to a funeral, I don’t want to go. When I was a boy I loved to go to a funeral. (Applause) They have a good custom up there among the Pennsylvania Dutch, too. They all go to the funeral, and nobody begins to cover up the grave until some neighbor goes up, takes off his hat and says a good word for the departed. Then they can fill up the grave. When old Jacob Shaffer died he was the meanest man in the community. He was buried on a cold, rainy day in November, when it was half rain and half sleet. They stood for ten or fifteen minutes, or half an hour, and nobody said a word. They had to stay there, and could not leave until the grave was filled up. Finally one neighbor, in despair, went up and took off his hat and said, “Well, I can say this about Jake: he wasn’t always so mean as he was sometimes.” (Applause) Now, I want to say this about the preacher. He is not always so inhuman as he is sometimes. When I heard this sermon tonight I almost concluded that a minister of the gospel was a real human being. (Applause) I want to tell you that he was not that to me when I was a boy. I did not look upon him as the friend that he ought to have been to me. And that is the reason one boy did not go to the country church oftener.

CONSERVATION AND UTILIZATION.