Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farm Journalist

by Stephen Hines

  1920

  The Farm Home (16)

  January 5, 1920

  The Man of the Place and I were sitting cozily by the fire. The evening lamp was lighted and the day’s papers and the late magazines were scattered over the table. But tho we each held in our hands our favorite publication; we were not reading. We were grumbling about the work we had to do and saying all the things usually said at such times.

  “People used to have time to live and enjoy themselves, but there is no time any more for anything but work, work, work.”

  Oh, we threshed it all over as everyone does when they get that kind of a grouch and then we sat in silence. I was wishing I had lived altogether in those good old days when people had time for the things they wanted to do.

  What the Man of the Place was thinking, I do not know but I was quite surprised at the point at which he had arrived, when he remarked out of the silence, in rather a meek voice, “I never realized how much work my father did. Why, one winter he sorted 500 bushels of potatoes after supper by lantern light. He sold them for $1.50 a bushel in the spring, too, but he must have got blamed tired of sorting potatoes down cellar every night until he had handled more than 500 bushels of them.”

  “What did your mother do while your father was sorting potatoes?” I asked.

  “Oh, she sewed and knit,” said the Man of The Place. “She made all our clothes, coats and pants, undergarments for father and us boys as well as everything she and the girls wore, and she knit all our socks and mittens— shag mittens for the men folks, do you remember, all fuzzy on the outside? She didn’t have time enough in the day to do all the work and so she sewed and knit at night.”

  I looked down at the magazine in my hand and remembered how my mother was always sewing or knitting by the evening lamp. I realized that I never had done so except now and then in cases of emergency.

  But the Man Of The Place was still talking. “Mother did all her sewing by hand then,” he said, “and she spun her own yarn and wove her own cloth. Father harvested his grain by hand with a sickle and cut his hay with a scythe. I do wonder how he ever got it done.”

  Again we were silent, each busy with our own thoughts. I was counting up the time I give to club work and lodge work and—yes, I’ll admit it—politics. My mother and my mother-in-law had none of these and they do use up a good many hours. Instead of all this, they took time once in a while from their day and night working to go visit a neighbor for the day.

  “Time to enjoy life!” Well, they did enjoy it but it couldn’t have been because they had more time.

  Why should we need extra time in which to enjoy ourselves? If we expect to enjoy our life we will have to learn to be joyful in all of it, not just at stated intervals, when we can get time, or when we have nothing else to do.

  It may well be that it is not our work that is so hard for us as the dread of it and our often expressed hatred of it. Perhaps it is our spirit and attitude toward life and its conditions that are giving us trouble instead of a shortage of time. Surely the days and nights are as long as they ever were.

  A feeling of pleasure in a task seems to shorten it wonderfully and it makes a great difference with the day’s work if we get enjoyment from it instead of looking for all our pleasure altogether apart from it, as seems to be the habit of mind we are more and more growing into.

  We find in the goods we buy, from farm implements to clothing, that the work of making them is carelessly and slightingly done. Many carpenters, blacksmiths, shoemakers, garment makers and farm hands do not care how their work is done just so quitting time and the paycheck comes. Farmers are not different except that they must give more attention to how a thing is done because it is the result only that brings them any return.

  It seems that many workmen take no pride or pleasure in their work. It is perhaps partly a result of machine-made goods, but it would be much better for us all if we could be more interested in the work of our hands, if we could get back more of the attitude of our mothers toward their handmade garments and of our fathers’ pride in own workmanship. There is an old maxim which I have not heard for years nor thought of in a long, long time. “To sweep a room as to God’s laws, makes that, and the action fine.” We need more of that spirit toward our work.

  As I thought of my neighbors and myself it seemed to me that we were all slighting our work to get time for a joy ride of one kind or another.

  Not that I object to joy riding! The more the merrier, but I’m hoping for a change of mind that will carry the joy into the work as well as the play.

  “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” surely, and it makes Jill also very dull indeed, but all play and no work would make hoboes of us. So let’s enjoy the work we must do to be respectable.

  The Man Of The Place had evidently kept right on thinking of the work his father used to do. “Oh, well,” he said as he rose and lighted the lantern preparatory to making his late round to see that everything was all right at the barns, “I guess we’re not having such a hard time after all. It depends a good deal on how you look at it.”

  “Yes,” said I, “Oh yes, indeed! It depends a good deal on how you look at it.”

  The Farm Home (17)

  January 20, 1920

  The snow was falling fast and a cold wind blowing, the other morning. I had just come in from feeding the chickens and was warming my chilled self when the telephone rang.

  “Hello!” said I and a voice full of laughter came over a wire. “Good morning!” it said. “I suppose you are busy making garden today.”

  “Making garden?” I asked wonderingly.

  “Yes,” replied the voice, “you said some time ago, in the Ruralist, that you enjoyed making garden in the winter time, beside a good fire, so I thought you’d be busily at it this morning.”

  “Well,” I replied defensively, “the vegetables one raises in the seed catalogs are so perfectly beautiful.” And with a good laugh we began the day right merrily in spite of the storm outside.

  So after many days my words came back to me and the thoughts that followed them were altogether different from those connected with them before.

  We do grow beautiful gardens beside the fire on cold winter days as we talk over the seed catalogs and our summer gardens are much more of a success because of these gardens in our minds. We grow many other things in the same way. It is truly surprising how anything grows and grows by talking about it.

  We have a slight headache and we mention the fact. As an excuse to ourselves for inflicting it upon our friends we make it as bad as possible in the telling. “Oh I have such a dreadful headache,” we say and immediately we feel much worse. Our pain has grown by talking of it.

  If there is a disagreement between friends and the neighbors begin talking about it, the difficulty grows like a jimson weed, and the more it is talked about the faster it grows.

  When there is a disagreement between workmen and their employers the agitators immediately begin their work of talking and the trouble grows and grows until strikes and lockouts and riots are ripened and harvested and the agitators grow fat on the fruits thereof.

  The same law seems to work in both human nature and the vegetable kingdom and ideas, with the changes caused by them, as well as peas and cabbages grow by cultivation, by keeping the soil stirred about them.

  Now it isn’t enough in any garden to cut down the weeds. The cutting out of weeds is important but cultivating the garden plants is just as necessary. If we want vegetables we must make them grow; not leave the ground barren where we have destroyed the weeds. Just so we must give much of our attention to the improvements we want, not all to the abuses we would like to correct. If we hope to improve conditions, any conditions, anywhere, we must do a great deal of talking about the better things.

  If we have a headache we will forget it sooner if we talk of pleasant things. If there is misunderstanding and bad feeling between neighbors we can cultivate their friendliness by telling each of the other
’s kind words before the trouble began. Perhaps a crust has formed around the plant of their friendship and it only needs that the soil should be stirred in order to keep on growing.

  In the matter of labor disputes which so nearly left the country to freeze this winter, I think everything possible has been said against conditions that would allow such things to happen. The time has come to give our attention to a better way of settling such disputes than by strikes and lockouts. One plan proposed is the establishing of an industrial court for the hearing of both sides of any dispute between laborers and their employers and a fair settling of the same. If such a court would stop the disturbances which have become so common and from which we all suffer, the plan is well worth attention. By talking about it we may help to secure it.

  The Farm Home (18)

  February 5, 1920

  Co-operation is the keynote of affairs today and our lives seem to be governed mostly by the advice of experts. These both are greatly needed, and I heartily say, more power to them. But every good becomes evil when carried to excess by poor, faulty mortals. Thrift and economy overdone become miserliness; even religion may be carried so far as to become fanaticism and intolerance, the faith of love and gentleness causing hatred and persecution.

  And if, just so, the power of cooperation and the privilege of having expert advice are not to become harmful, individual thinking and initiative must keep pace with them. We must still do our own thinking and act upon it, for even tho we make mistakes, experience is still the best teacher and thinking and experimenting develop character.

  The more we think for ourselves, the less we shall need advice and high-priced experts would not need to waste their time and government money, which is really our money, in telling us things we should think out for ourselves.

  I read an item a short time ago in a farm paper stating that government experts advised the use of oil on shoes to prolong their life and usefulness and in so doing beat the high cost of living. Full instructions were given for this treatment of shoes.

  Now the weekly cleaning and greasing of the family shoes was a regular thing with the grandparents and the parents of most of us and they charged nothing for advising and instructing us in the process. In fact, there was at times a compelling quality about their advice that is lacking in that of government experts. But at least our grandparents and their “old-fashioned notions” are at last vindicated.

  “Scrape off all that dirt and clean those shoes up good, then rub that grease into them,” said they, perhaps a bit sharply.

  “The shoes should be thoroly cleaned and warm oil then rubbed well into the leather,” say the experts smoothly.

  So you see that expert advice was given in our homes years ago. And after all that is the best place for teaching many things, first and most important of which is how to think for one’s self.

  The Farm Home (19)

  February 20, 1920

  The affairs of the world are moving swiftly and nowhere is the advance more rapid than in the field of invention. No sooner do we realize that an improvement is needed on something already in use than it comes to hand; no sooner is something entirely new and different desired than it appears as tho in answer to the waving of a magician’s wand.

  A great many of these are to the credit of Americans for Americans apparently have more inventive minds than people of other nations. No doubt this is because we are a younger nation and a people who were compelled to make a new country habitable. We were like the Yankee boy who had only his jack-knife but with it supplied himself with all the other playthings he cared for.

  One problem, which has been given to the grownup Yankee boys to solve, was a threatened shortage in gasoline. Altho there is a present abundance, scientists and chemists have for years been trying to find a substitute, for they believe that we cannot go on forever using gasoline in ever increasing quantities without coming at last to the end of the supply.

  Quite a few substitutes have been found tho nothing which combines all the various qualities, including efficiency and cost, of gasoline. The most promising substitute so far found is the benzol blend. Benzol is a by-product in the manufacture of coke from coal and was used during the war in the manufacture of the high explosive TNT. It was found that benzol could be made very cheaply but its explosive power was too great to permit it to be used in motor engines, and the problem was to so weaken its power that it would not injure the machine using it. To do this benzol is mixed with California naphthas, Oklahoma distillates, and other fractions of petroleum and is being sold as fuel for motors. The petroleum industry is making this fuel oil and it is being sold under trade names. It is said that the benzol mixture makes less carbon and gives more mileage than straight gasoline.

  The making and selling of benzol is becoming a large business. One great steel company is making 1,250,000 gallons of benzol every month as a by-product in making from coal the coke needed for the furnaces of the plant. It is said that the manufacture of benzol in this way makes the cost only a few cents a gallon, probably not more than 5 cents and it has been selling at 18. Oil companies are buying it and without doubt are blending it with their gasolines. In fact, it is said, they have been doing so for the last two years.

  Besides the invention of this substitute a new source of real gasoline has been discovered in natural gas and several millions of gallons have been made from it during the last six years.

  Dr. Cottrell, the inventor of the process of precipitating the gases and floating particles in smoke fumes, thus abolishing the damage done by smoke from smelters and factories, has become a benefactor of inventors. When his invention had become a financial success he had an understanding with his backers that when the receipts had repaid the investment with interest, a large part of the patent rights should be turned over to some institution the receipts from which should be used to advance the work of invention. This is now being done, the Smithsonian Institution handling the fund.

  The Farm Home (20)

  March 5, 1920

  When the days are growing longer and the sun shines warm, on the south slopes, with the promise of golden hours to come, my thoughts persist in arranging building plans; for always, in the springtime, I want to build a house.

  The desire for changing the surroundings may be inherited from our wandering forefathers who always moved their tents to fresh hunting grounds with the coming of summer, or perhaps mankind, in common with the birds has an instinct to build nests when spring comes, but whatever the reason, I think most persons share with me the longing to plan and build at this season of the year.

  But of late, stronger even than my love of planning has been my dissatisfaction with the usual manner of building, for when flimsy, short-lived materials are used in construction the joy of the creation is soon swallowed up in dismay at the quick process of deterioration and decay.

  Wooden buildings need a great deal of repairing and their demand for paint is never satisfied. A short time ago a “paint up” campaign was put out in the papers of the country to promote the preservation of farm buildings.

  I would like to take part in a build-up campaign to encourage the use of building materials that would be more lasting. I would like to see our farm homes built, not for the present generation only but for our children and our children’s children.

  Sometimes I wonder if the home ties would not be stronger if our homes were built with more of an idea of permanency.

  There are so many beautiful ways of building without putting ourselves unreservedly in the hands of the lumber trust and paint manufacturers.

  I have a fancy that the farm home should seem to be a product of the soil where it is reared, a permanent growth as it were, of conditions surrounding it, wherever this is possible, and nothing gives this effect more than a house built of rocks from the fields. Such a house, well built, will last for generations. Cement is another material of which lasting and beautiful buildings may be made. Even the common earth, the soil beneath our feet, can
be used as building material and will last for hundreds of years. Tamped earth is one of the very oldest of building materials. In New Mexico and Arizona are walls made of it that are 4,000 years old, and it is still being used in various parts of the world.

  This tamped earth is not adobe but is a mixture of either sand or clay with loam. It is used dry and must be tamped down in the forms until it rings. Treated in this way it becomes an earth stone that becomes harder with the passing years.

  Because of the excessive cost of the usual building materials, the use of earth in this manner has been revived in England and is proving very successful. In various localities in our own country some experimenting would be necessary to determine the best mixture of the loam.

  A house planned with loving thought and carefully built of any of these lasting materials would be a much better monument to one’s memory than a costly stone in a cemetery, because it would be their embodied idea and the work of their hands, an expression of the mind and soul of the builder.

  I never shall forget a drive thru a beautiful residence section of a Missouri town. The gentleman who accompanied me was a stone mason and builder. House after house that we passed, he told me he had built. Stone fences, with beautiful gateways were the work of his hands. Calling my attention to a fine house he said, “I built that house 20 years ago, and see how well and true it stands.” Some of the fences had been built for 20, some for 15 and some for 10 years and were still perfect, not a stone loosened nor settled. He was very proud of his good work as he had every reason to be. “There,” said he, “are my monuments. They will last long, long after I am gone.”

  The Farm Home (21)