Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farm Journalist

by Stephen Hines

  STARTING THE CHILDREN AT HOME

  “When Glen was 7 years old and Joette 6, I started them to school ready for the fourth grade work. The superintendent could not think it possible and insisted that they begin in the third grade, but after only one day there they were promoted to the fourth.

  “The first year they went to school only two months, then finished their grades at home. The next year they went two months and finished at home. The next year they went four months and were obliged to stop because of sickness, but again they finished the grades at home. Since then they have gone regularly and at 13 and 14 years old have finished the first year in high school and the fifth set in book-keeping.

  “Violet and Ben have had the same training at home that the older children had and now at 6 and 8 years old are ready to start to school in the fourth grade.

  “Violet has been more difficult to teach than the others, because she likes to sew and play with her dolls better than to study. People said she was stupid and that I never would be able to push her as I had the others, but she was only different and just as smart if not smarter. She just would not keep her mind on her books until she found she must and would be punished if she didn’t. I know what her talent is, but she has to have her books, too, and she will sew all the better for having ‘book learning.’

  “Besides I had made up my mind that thru my children I would raise the standard of the family. It couldn’t be bettered morally but it could be raised educationally and so Violet, as well as the rest, must study her books. I knew her well and gave her special attention so she is going right along with the others.

  “I believe it would be much better for everyone if children were given their start in education at home. No one understands a child as well as his mother and children are so different that they need individual training and study. A teacher with a roomful of pupils cannot do this. At home, too, they are in their mother’s care. She can keep them from learning immoral things from other children. At home the expense is much less, for in school there are a great many expenses that are difficult for poor people to meet.

  “It was great fun teaching the children, but soon after I began I saw that if they were going to be educated, I must do something more to help, for Jess’s wages would not support us and pay school expenses.

  “I thought I could earn something raising chickens so I got an incubator from my brother to use on shares, then I did washing to pay for the eggs to fill it. Jess couldn’t see the way out on it for I knew nothing about incubators or raising chickens for profit, but I read up on it in the farm papers and I had a 90 per cent hatch the first time.

  “I bought my brother’s share of these chicks and gave my note at the bank to pay for them. Then I did washing to pay that note. I set the incubator again and from the two hatches I raised more than 400 chicks.

  “It surely took scratching to feed them but soon they were big enough to fry and I told Glen we could take them to market in his little red wagon. ‘Oh mama,’ he said, ‘people will laugh at us.’ But I told him it was our business and we would attend to it.

  “The wagon was small and we had to make several trips. People did stare as we went down street, but we sold the cockerels at a good price. The money bought feed for my pullets and I raised 200 layers from them.

  “We paid strict attention to business and did not take time to go to picnics, nor spend money for ice cream, melons and the like. Even tho the neighbors were rather offended we stuck to it caring for the chickens and teaching the children.

  “We watched every expense, too, and spent very little on the table or our clothes. Some of the neighbors thought I ought to dress better; they said I’d lose my husband’s love if I went shabby. But I said, ‘If love is only dress deep let it go.’ Not that I didn’t love pretty things for I did and before I married, when I had a good position in Springfield, I had as many pretty clothes as anyone. But I was willing to give them up for real things, for the doing of things worth while.

  “The chickens seemed to appreciate what I did for them for soon we were carrying big baskets of eggs to town. The egg money more than supported the family and we banked some of it and all of Jess’s wages. My, but he was pleased over it! He was prouder than I because he had not thought I could do it. But I’ve always found that when anything has to be done, it can be done.

  “Don’t think we sacrificed our pleasures by shutting ourselves away from the world to work and teach the children. We enjoyed so much being with them that we did not need to go out to hunt pleasure. It came to us. We had old-fashioned, happy, home times.

  “But I knew we could not always stay at home. Soon the children must take part in school affairs and go out with other children. We were going to need a car when they were older. When I told Jess about it he said, ‘We can’t buy a car, we must save our money! Suppose we should die, we wouldn’t have enough to pay for burying.’

  “I told him we had friends and they’d help him bury me, and if he died not to worry, I’d get him buried. I never did have any patience with this looking for a rainy day all one’s life.

  “Well we bought the car but it was a costly piece of tin. We worked and saved for six years to pay for it, then we kept it only three weeks and Jess sold it at a profit. I was proud of him and I’m proud of other things he has done, too. He has made an attachment for a churn that some day he’ll get patented. The little model works fine. He studies about such things in his spare time, but he hasn’t much of that, for all this time he has been working hard.

  STARTING AS A FARM HAND

  “He hired out as a farm hand for $22.50 a month the first year; the next year he was raised to $25, the next to $27.50 and then he was offered $30 a month or a share of the crop. He took the share and we had a bumper crop.

  “He is farming on shares now, and gets pay for what work he does outside of making the crop, and half the cream for taking care of the cows. Our share of the cream brings us about $6 a week.

  “You see it’s much easier not; we have a beautiful place to live and we dress better; we have another car. It’s paid for and the hens lay the gasoline. We get so much good out of the car! I’m not very strong and a drive rests me when I’m tired, while we all enjoy the beauties of nature on our little trips along the river.

  “But best of all the children are well started in getting their education. None of the family has ever graduated from high school, but my children will and some of them will go to college, too.

  IS THE AIM TOO HIGH?

  “Jess says I aim too high, but I tell him I’ll shoot straight, for when a thing has to be done, it’s done. And if people say the Jess Findley family were poor, they’ll say, too, that the children were well educated, for that is where we are putting our life’s work—into their heads.

  “We are doing something worth while, for in raising the standard of our children’s lives we are raising the standard of four homes of the future and our work goes on and on raising the standard of the community and of future generations.”

  When Mrs. Findley had finished her story I mentally took note of one thought which has escaped so many of us. It was not the old story of an education always being within the grasp of those who really seek it, but in raising the standard of the Findley home, the standard of four homes of the future had been elevated to the point which we like to think of as a representative “American Home.” Here, mother love had combined with the vision of future usefulness in the country’s citizenship, with the result the finest service, perhaps that any parent can aspire to.

  As a Farm Woman Thinks (12)

  August 15, 1922

  It has become quite the customary thing for farms to be given a distinguishing name. It adds much to the interest of a farm home, especially as the name usually calls attention to some feature of the place that marks it as different from the farms surrounding it.

  Naming the home place is an old, old custom, but the people who lived at such places used to have a family motto, also.
Families as well as farms have distinguishing traits of character, and there is always some of these on which a family prides itself. Only the other day I heard a man say, “My father’s word was as good as his note and he brought us children up that way.”

  Why not have a family motto expressing something for which we, as a family, stand?

  Such a motto would be a help in keeping the family up to standard by giving the members a cause for pride in it and what it represents; it might even be a help in raising the standard of family life and honor.

  If the motto of a family were, “My word is my bond,” do you not think the children of that family would be proud to keep their word and feel disgraced if they failed to do so?

  Suppose the motto were, “Ever ready,” would not the members of that family try to be on the alert for whatever came?

  Perhaps it would be possible to cure a family weakness by choosing a motto representing its opposite as an ideal for the family to strive toward. We might keep our choice a family secret until we had proven ourselves and could face the world with it.

  Tho, in these days, we would not put the motto upon our shield as did the knights of old, but we could use it in many ways. If carried only in our hearts, it would draw the family closer together.

  Let’s have a family motto as well as a farm name!

  As a Farm Woman Thinks (13)

  September 1, 1922

  It is said that “money is the root of all evil,” but money that is at the root of any evil in itself represents selfishness.

  The old proverb slanders good, clean money and it would be nearer the truth to say that selfishness is the root of evil and the over-valuation of money only one manifestation of it.

  Money hasn’t any value of its own; it represents the stored up energy of men and women and is really just some one’s promise to pay a certain amount of that energy.

  It is the promise that has the real value. If no dependence can be put on the promises of a nation, then the currency of that nation, which is its promise to pay, is worthless. Bank notes depend for their value on the credit of the bank that issues them and a man’s note is good or not according to whether his promise to pay can be relied on.

  So it comes to this, that, as the business of the world is done on credit, a man’s word backed by his character is the unit of value and that character is the root of good or evil, making his word, good or worthless.

  If there were only one thing of any value in this world and it were in our possession, how precious it would be to us. How carefully we would guard it from all smirching or damaging, defending it with our lives if necessary! There would be no carelessness in the keeping of it, no reckless giving of it here and there as tho it amounted to nothing.

  Listen then to this Eastern proverb: “In this world a man’s word is all he has that is of real value; it is at the bottom of all other values.”

  As a Farm Woman Thinks (14)

  October 15, 1922

  I was told to go into a certain community and get the story of the most successful person in it.

  “There are no successes there,” I said, “just ordinary people, not one of whom has contributed to the progress of the world. I can get no story there worth anything as an inspiration to others.”

  Then came the reply: “Surely someone has lived a clean life, has good friends and the love of family. Such a one must have contributed something of good to others.”

  Rearranging my standard of “success” to include something besides accumulated wealth—achieved ambition of a spectacular sort—I thought of grandpa and grandma Culver, poor as church mice, but a fine old couple, loved by everybody and loving everybody. Home meant something to their children who return there year after year. I went to see them.

  “No,” Grandma told me over the jelly she was making for the sick, “Pa and I never have been well-off in money, but oh, so very rich in love of each other, of family and friends.

  “We’ve tried to see every little submerged virtue in each other, in the children and in everybody. I had the gift of cheerfulness, Pa had patience; we cultivated these traits.

  “Every day we have tried to be of a little use to somebody, never turning down a single opportunity to help some one to a glimpse of things worth while. What we have lacked in money and brilliance, we have tried to make up in service.”

  But ever the world has let the flash of more dazzling successes blind it to the value of such lives as these.

  As a Farm Woman Thinks (15)

  November 1, 1922

  Some time ago I read an Irish fairy story which told how a mortal, on a fairy steed, went hunting with the fairies. He had his choice whether the fairy horse should become large enough to carry a man-sized man or be small enough to ride the horse as it was.

  He chose to become of fairy size and, after the magic was worked, rode gayly with the fairy king, until he came to a wall so high he feared his tiny horse could not carry him over, but the fairy king said to him, “Throw you heart over the wall, then follow it!” So he rode fearlessly at the wall, with his heart already bravely past it, and went safely over.

  I have forgotten most of the story and do not remember the name of the author, tho I wish I did, but often I think of the fairy’s advice. Anyone who has ridden horses much, understands how the heart of the rider going over, fairly lifts the horse up and across an obstacle. And I have been told, by good drivers, that it holds true in taking a motor car up a difficult hill.

  But the uplift of a fearless heart will help us over other sorts of barriers. In any undertaking, to falter at a crisis means defeat. No one ever overcomes difficulties by going at them in a hesitant, doubtful way.

  If we would win success in anything, when we come to a wall that bars our way we must throw our hearts over and then follow confidently. It is fairy advice, you know, and savors of magic, so following it we will ride with the fairies of good fortune and go safely over.

  As a Farm Woman Thinks (16)

  November 15, 1922

  Among all the blessings of the year have you chosen one for which to be especially thankful at this Thanksgiving time, or are you unable to decide which is the greatest?

  Sometimes we recognize as a special blessing what heretofore we have taken without a thought, as a matter of course, as when we recover from a serious illness, just a breath drawn free from pain is a matter for rejoicing. If we have been crippled and then are whole again, the blessed privilege of walking forth free and unhindered seems a gift from the Gods. We must needs have been hungry to properly appreciate food and we never love our friends as we should until they have been taken from us.

  As the years pass, I am coming more and more to understand that it is the common, everyday blessings of our common everyday lives for which we should be particularly grateful. They are the things that fill our lives with comfort and our hearts with gladness—just the pure air to breathe and the strength to breathe it; just warmth and shelter and home folks; just plain food that gives us strength; the bright sunshine on a cold day and a cool breeze when the day is warm.

  Oh, we have so much to be thankful for that we seldom think of it in that way! I wish we might think more about these things that we are so much inclined to overlook and live more in the spirit of the old Scotch table blessing.

  “Some hae meat wha canna’ eat

  And some can eat that lack it.

  But I hae meat and I can eat

  And sae the Laird be thankit.”4

  Reminiscences of Fair Time

  December 1, 1922

  While visiting our county fair this fall I was impressed anew with the variety of a farm woman’s duties and the good work she is doing. Thru the poultry department, past the display of garden products and cookery and the fancy work still I sauntered and, instead of these material objects, I saw exhibited the industry and thrift, the imagination and love of beauty of women on the farms of the country today.

  What endless work and patience it takes to make poult
ry keeping a paying part of the farm business, yet women are doing it in connection with gardening which supplies the greater part of the family’s living the year around.

  It is all a part of their routine, together with the wonderful cooking they do without a thought that they are practicing the finest arts of chemistry.

  Not content with all this, farm women show their love of beauty as well as their thrift, in the fancy work with which they adorn their homes.

  Looking at the beautiful quilts and rugs made from scraps, especially one rug woven from burlap bags, one could almost believe that, despite the old saying to the contrary, a “silk purse could be made out of a sow’s ear.”

  The work of grandmother’s patient fingers displayed beside the very latest in hand embroidery shows that, thru a long life, the love of beauty and habit of industry still persists.

  A farm woman who is successful with her garden, poultry and home-making has mastered several difficult trades, proved herself a good executive as well as business woman and is a link between the old and the new ways of life, preserving what is worth while from the days of her grandmother and adding to this the improvements and knowledge of her later day.

  She has good reason to be proud of her work and her place in the scheme of things.

  * * *

  1. Laura’s daughter, Rose, wrote of Albania in The Peaks of Shala (New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1923).

  2. From George Bernard Shaw’s play Man and Superman.

  3. Proverbs 22:6.

  4. From the poem “The Selkirk Grace” by Robert Burns.

  1923