Everyone is complaining of being tired, of not having time for what they wish to do. It is no wonder when they are obliged to pick and choose from such multitudes of thoughts and things.
The world is full of so many things, so many of them useless, so many, many varieties of the same thing creating confusion and a feeling of being overwhelmed by their number. It would be a wonderful relief if, by eliminating both wisely and well, life might be simplified.
The Farm Home (7)
August 5, 1919
“We are going to be late getting the hay in from the west meadow. Can’t you come and rake it for us?” said The Man of the Place.
I could and did; also I drove the team on the hay fork to fill the big barn, for such is the life of a farmer’s wife during the busy season.
“The colt has sprained his ankle. Come pet him while I rub on some liniment, and while you are there I wish you’d look at the red heifer’s bag and see what you think best to do for that swelling on it.”
And so I halter broke the colt while The Man of the Place bathed the lame ankle and then we decided that the red heifer had been bee stung and bathed her udder with salt and water.
I have finally got the weakly calf into good growing condition and turned it out in the pasture with the others, for I am by way of being an understudy for the veterinarian.
“What would you raise next year on that land we cleared of brush down by the creek? The hay on it is too thin, and it must be broken up?” This was the question for my consideration at the breakfast table, and my answer was, “Raise the same crop on that as you do on the remainder of the land on that side of the creek. One large field is better than two small ones and time is saved in working. Put it into the regular rotation with the rest.”
Not that The Man of the Place would do as I said unless he agreed with me, but getting my ideas helps him to form his own opinions and he knows that two heads are better at planning than one.
One of my neighbors is managing the farm this summer during the absence of her husband. She planted and cultivated, has attended to the harvesting and threshing and haying. She, with the children, cares for the horses and cows, the pigs and poultry. She buys and sells and hires and fires. In short, she does all the work and business that her husband would do if he were here and keeps up her own work besides.
United States Commissioner of Education, Philander P. Claxton, says that on a farm it is the “Know-All and Do-Everydumthing” that makes for success. If this is true for farmers it is much more so for their wives. A farmer’s wife is expected to, and usually does, know as much about the farm as her husband and in addition she must know her own business of housekeeping and homemaking.
A farmer to be successful must understand his machinery and be a sort of blacksmith. He must be a carpenter, a road builder, enough of a civil engineer to know how to handle the creeks and washouts on his farm. He must, of course, understand all about the care of the animals on the farm in sickness and in health; he must know all about the raising of crops and handling of soils, the fighting of pests and overcoming of weather conditions and in addition must be a good business man so that he shall not lose all the fruits of his toil in the buying and selling end of the game.
Besides being a helper in all these things with brains, and muscle if necessary, the farmer’s wife must know her own business, which includes the greatest variety of trades and occupations ever combined in one all-around person. Think of them! Cook, baker, seamstress, laundrywoman, nurse, chambermaid and nurse girl. She is a poultry keeper, an expert in dairy work, a specialist in canning, preserving and pickling, and besides all else she must be the mother of the family and a smiling hostess.
Dr. Claxton is advocating a change in rural schools so that they shall prepare farmers and farm women for their work, for as he says, “A man’s life is his work! And a woman’s life is her work!”
The Farm Home (8)
September 5, 1919
What a frightful thing it would be if we were to wake some morning and find there was no fuel of any kind in the United States with which to cook our breakfast. Yet this astounding thing may happen to our grandchildren, our children or even in our own lifetime if our days should be “long in the land.”
Men have usually supplied the family fuel in a large offhand manner, but women have always seen that the wood box or coal hod was filled at night to be on hand for the morning’s work.
If we do not intend that the stove shall remain cold and the family be breakfastless on that surprising morning in the future, it is time we were looking after the supply of fuel, for John has been careless and the wood pile is too small.
Too many of the forests of the United States have been made into lumber even tho there never has seemed to be lumber enough and the waste of timber has been great. The great woods of the East and the North of our country have been destroyed.
Three thousand saw mills are now busily at work in the South and the timber is fast disappearing before them. Within five years they will have cut out all the timber and disappeared from the South. Then only the forests of the Pacific coast will remain and they will not last long. In less than 70 years the supply of timber in the United States will be used up.
When that time comes, those of us who have permitted this destruction, if there are any of us left, will wish to hide our faces from the generations we have robbed, but we will be unable to “take to the tall timber” as certain politicians are said to have done in the past.
There will be no lumber to build the houses and no wood to cook that breakfast. I fear that even the dim mists of the past will be no refuge for the people who have permitted such a condition to come about and that we will be held up to scorn and reproach.
People then will not be able to use coal in place of wood for the supply of coal is fast disappearing. The end of hard coal is in sight. Soft coal therefore must be the basis of the country’s industrial life as well as its fuel. There is, to be sure, a great deal of soft coal left but it is of poor quality and must be especially prepared for use to be satisfactory.
Dr. Garfield, former fuel administrator, does not favor government ownership but says there should be co-operation between the government and all basic industries to eliminate waste and all needless expense. The greater difficulties and more costly equipment in mining inferior coal and also the higher wages make prices higher.
But cost alone is not the greatest problem. There is danger of a power shortage which will stop all manufacturing unless a way is found to furnish a national power supply. Two-thirds of all our coal mined goes into the production of power. Eleven million persons are working in our manufacturing plants and more than double the power was used last year that was used in 1900.
The expense of the power is from 2 to 20 per cent of the cost of an article and when we buy $50 worth of goods we can figure that about $2 goes for the coal that supplied the power to manufacture them. Quite a tax!
Electricity is the only thing that can save the situation. One ton of coal used in generating electricity will furnish power equal to 4 tons.
Secretary Lane5 has a plan for furnishing electric power thru a large central station. He urges a power survey of the whole United States, the locating of central stations and smaller supply stations.
It is known that in the territory between Boston and Richmond is situated one-fourth of the power-generating capacity of the country and as an illustration of the plan I quote Floyd W. Parsons in the Saturday Evening Post. “The logical development is a multiple-transmission line of high voltage extending all the way from Boston to Washington and on to Richmond. Energy could be delivered into this unified system by power stations located near the mine mouths and by hydro-electric plants located at the 20 or more water power sites tributary to this area.”
Thus might be created rivers of power flowing thru the country and furnishing energy and power to our manufactories at much less than half of what it costs now.
They have one such
great power line in California and another 500 miles long reaching from Tonopah, Nev., to Yuma, Ariz.
There is water power enough in the Ozark Hills to furnish power and light for that section of country and if included in the national system with the coal of Kansas and Illinois, would do its part in caring for the whole. The railroads could be electrified also and by the careful handling of our natural power and fuel, by a responsible head, that cold and dreary, breakfastless morning might never arrive. It need never arrive if we see to it that our water power and what is left of our fuel supply is handled carefully and intelligently. It is time to get busy with the wood box.
The Farm Home (9)
September 20, 1919
We all, at times, have had the longing that Robert Burns so well expressed when he said, “Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us, to see oursel’s as ithers see us.” And lately I have had a glimpse of how we, as a class, appear to strangers, not merely strangers so far as acquaintance goes, but strangers to our life and customs.
Friends from Switzerland, motoring thru from San Francisco to New York, broke the journey by a visit to Rocky Ridge Farm. Their account of the trip was very interesting, but a part of it has given me a picture of farm folks which is not at all pleasant to look upon.
“So many farm people from adjoining states were camping at Colorado Springs,” said Mme. Marquis. “And they brought so much of their work with them that I do not see how the vacation could do them any good. They brought such quantities of luggage, everything from their washboards and tubs to their talking machines. The women did the washing on those glorious mornings, rubbing away on the wrinkle boards, and they spent the most of the time left sitting around in camp talking to one another. I heard one woman say, ‘No, I haven’t been up on Pike’s Peak. It costs $2 to go up, and that’s too much money.’ And so, having come all the way to the foot of the Peak, they missed the climax of the whole trip, because it would cost a couple of dollars more.
“It seemed to me that they had worked hard all their lives, and at last they had reached the point where they were able to leave all their cares behind them, to get into their own motor cars and take a trip for pleasure and adventure. And then, at the last moment, they let their lifelong habits of pinching the pennies spoil it all. And Oh! Those farm women looked so worn and tired.”
The Man of the Place and I once went on a picnic fishing trip, with a family who were friends of ours. And listening to Mme. Marquis tell of these women on their camping trip to Colorado Springs brought back to me the feeling of disillusion and utter weariness I experienced then. I had expected a relaxation and rest, but instead there was the cooking, the care of the children, washing of many dishes and making of beds, all to be done in the most difficult manner possible. If we had stayed long enough so that I had been obliged to do a washing I believe I would have wished to feed myself to the fishes. Once was enough. It was never again for me.
M. and Mme. Marquis were making the journey across the United States in a car for the sake of becoming acquainted with the people at home, and we took them with us to camp-meeting and to an all-day singing, picnics and on short trips here and there.
“What do you think of us?” I asked M. Marquis. “How do we impress you?”
“Well, if I can explain,” he answered with his delightful accent. “You are a very nice people. I have studied the faces in the crowd and they are good faces, fine and beautiful, some of them. But you all seem to take your pleasures so sadly. You appear to be quite happy and contented, but very sad. There seems to be a spirit of sadness over it all. Do you not feel it?”
I was obliged to admit that I did, even within myself. Do we always carry our work and our sorrows with us, I wonder, as we did on the fishing party, and as the tired farm women did at Colorado Springs? Is it the constant, unrelieved carrying-about of our burdens that has caused our lives to be permeated with sadness, so that it is felt by a sensitive person seeing us for the first time?
Another thing was revealed to us about ourselves during the visit of these strangers. That is that we have grown careless in our manners. They had time always for an exquisite courtesy, being never too tired or hurried to show their appreciation of a favor or to do a kindness when the chance came. Their courtesy never failed, even when the machine broke down on rough roads, or in the rush of farm work, in which they eagerly took a part.
“We are all so careless about those things,” said The Man of the Place to me. “I think we ought to try to do better.”
“Yes,” I replied. “Let’s take time to be at least as nice as we know how to be. And after this, when I go on a vacation I am going to leave my ‘wrinkleboard’ behind.”
After all, a vacation is not a matter of place or time. We can take a wonderful vacation in spirit, even tho we are obliged to stay at home, if we will only drop our burdens from our minds for awhile. But no amount of travel will give us rest and recreation if we carry our work and worries with us.
The Farm Home (10)
October 5, 1919
“Now can we depend on you in this?” asked Mr. Jones. “Certainly you can,” replied Mr. Brown. “I’ll do it!”
“But you failed us before, you know,” continued Mr. Jones, “and it made us a lot of trouble. How would it be for you to put up a forfeit? Will you put up some money as security that you will not fail; will you bet on it?”
“No-o-o,” answered Mr. Brown. “I won’t bet on it but I’ll give you my word of honor.”
How much was Mr. Brown’s word worth? I would not want to risk much on it. Would you? He evidently considered it of less value than a little cash. Now and then we hear of people whose word is as good as their bond but far too often we find that “word of honor” is used carelessly and then forgotten or ignored.
Speaking to a friend of the difficulties of putting thru a plan we had in mind, I remarked that it was very difficult to do anything with a crowd any more, for so many would promise and then fail to keep the promise.
“I know,” she replied, “I do that way myself, it is so much easier to say ‘yes,’ and then do as I please afterward.”
If my friend had realized how weak and unkind her reason was for disregarding her word, she would be more careful for she prides herself on her strength of character and is a very kind, lovable woman on the whole.
Mr. Brown and my friend had mistaken ideas of value. One’s word is of infinitely more worth than money. If money is lost, more money and just as good is to be had, but if you pledge your word and do not redeem it, you have lost something that cannot be replaced. It is intangible perhaps but nevertheless valuable to you. A person who cannot be depended upon, by others, in time becomes unable to depend upon himself. It seems in some subtle way to undermine and weaken the character when we do not hold ourselves strictly responsible for what we say.
And what a tangle it makes of all our undertakings when people do not keep their promises. How much pleasanter it would be and how much more would be accomplished if we did not give our word unless we intended to keep it, so that we would all know what we could depend upon!
When we think of honor we always think of duty in connection with it. They seem to be inseparably linked together. The following incident illustrates this.
Albert Bebe, a French resident of San Francisco came home from the battle front in France. He had been in the trenches for two years and for four months in an advanced position, a “listening post” only 60 yards from the German trenches. Marie Bebe, the soldier’s little daughter, was very much excited over her father’s coming and objected to going to school the next morning. She thought she should be allowed to stay at home on the first day of her father’s visit. But her mother said: “No! Your father went to fight for France because it was his duty to go. You must go to school because that is your duty. Your father did his duty and you must do yours!” And Marie went to school.
If everybody did his duty as well in the smaller things, there would be no failures when the greater
duties presented themselves.
The Farm Home (11)
October 20, 1919
The American Forestry association has sent out a plea to make a great national road of memory of the Lincoln Highway,6 by planting trees, in memory of our national heroes, all along its 3,000 miles.
Besides using our native trees, it is planned to bring over and plant Lombardy poplars from France, chestnut and oak from England, and cherry and plum from Japan.
This plan for making a living memorial to American heroes, has been endorsed by councils of Daughters of the Confederacy, and the Department of the Interior and the Forestry Department are aiding in the work.
For sentimental reasons alone such a memorial would be most wonderful, for while in life our heroes stood between us and danger, their memory would in this way still hover over us and give us comfort and pleasure, linked ever more closely to us by our loving thought, in the planting and care, of the living, breathing monument, which will reach across our common country from coast to coast.
As an example, such a great, national, tree bordered highway might help us to realize the unnecessary ugliness of most of our country roads and perhaps in time they also may be tree embowered and beautiful.
Motoring on the Ozark highway the other day I passed over a long stretch of the road where the large, beautiful native oak and walnut trees had been cleared away from beside it, leaving the roadway unshaded, bare and ugly. A little farther on, I came to a place where the farmers on each side had set out young walnut trees in even spaces along the road in an attempt to put back the beauty and usefulness which had been destroyed by cutting down the forest trees.
It seems such a pity that we can learn to value what we have only thru the loss of it. Truly “we never miss the water ’till the well runs dry.”
Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farm Journalist Page 26
