The American Country Girl Part 18

Let every girl make sure that that is the kind of platform that is being built for her in the character and in the att.i.tude of mind of the destined lover. And let her make certain that she also is building and developing in herself a character that shall be worthy of her high mission, that shall be sufficient for all its needs, and that shall merit the deep reverence that all hearts give to the mother and homemaker.

In order that the founding of a successful home may be the Country Girl's happy lot, is it too much to ask that she should cherish for herself the ideal of a nature clean and pure, with so high a reverence for purity that she shall demand it in her lover as in herself? And that she shall recognize no difference in her standard for the morality of both the young man and the young woman? Should not her ideal include the fact of established health, both physical and mental, with a physician's certificate for both young man and young woman as to this, and include also a good inheritance of health in both families together with absolute freedom from alcoholism or other death-dealing diseases?

Moreover, no marriage can be quite happy and successful that is not based upon the principle that each shall respect the personal rights of the other; and this should include, not only matters of income and property, but of tastes and opinions, and of all personal relationships. Both should have a good common school education and as much more as circ.u.mstances will permit. If he is a college graduate, she should be one also; and she should never be asked to leave her college course in order to marry. A wise girl will frown upon the young man who makes plans for marriage before he has gained a thorough training in some good bread-winning occupation and also developed a fair money-earning capacity. The Country Girl may be reminded again that she herself should have the thorough training in the science, art, and business of the household that will make her a perfect house administrator and homemaker and leave it possible to adapt some part of this varied work to money earning should occasion require. The ideal for two who are to found a home together should certainly include a genuine love of home life, together with love of children and a capacity to become a wise, efficient father and mother. A home will be more interesting and therefore more successful, as years move along, if the founders are people of growing nature, if they have a disposition to keep in touch with affairs, if they indulge themselves with an avocation, something they especially like to do, something that will carry on their education to farther heights. There must be courage,--home-founding calls for heroism--there must be fort.i.tude, reserve force, patience. Ordeals will come, and trials: a buoyant faith in the spiritual realities alone will bear us through these. Then it must be remembered that we live in the community. It is well to select a socialized nature, one having ability to live among people and to meet them successfully, one that knows the give-and-take of social life. Both the young man and the young woman must be good citizens in the community.

Now what has been forgotten? The great thing that perhaps with most young people is thought of first, namely, the question as to whether these two young people like each other or not. But the phase being presented here concerns not so much the choice of a particular one who shall be companion in the founding of a certain home, as the qualities of the group of people from among which that choice shall be made.

Certainly it is of the greatest importance to decide whether the two young people do really like each other or not. It would be blasphemy to enter into the relationship without that satisfaction in each other's society that alone gives promise of happiness. There should be a strong, deep affection and love for each other; they should have a mutuality of interest, tastes and ideals; they should enjoy each other's society; and these points should be put to the test of time and absence--but not too much of either!

Homes founded by members of groups who hold ideals like these and live up to them, will be certain to carry on into the future the best the race has attained and to add to the stores of happiness and well-being of all people. Into such homes it will be the best possible fortune to be born; and if these homes are set against an unspoiled country background, they will be the places where children will have the best chance to develop to perfect human height. It should indeed be a part of the ideal cherished in the depths of every country girl's heart, that she will, if possible, make to the world a contribution of children, the most perfect that she can compa.s.s, the most complete in all their powers, the most invincible in their strength, mental, physical and moral; and that these shall go forth into the world trained for the most distinguished service among the world's great needs. This should be her ambition; and I believe that it is the desire and the ideal of the great majority of the girls of the present generation.

To present a completed, full-grown, thoroughly efficient man or woman to the world, is a contribution to the world's storehouse of power. But how much more that means than simply to bear the child! The right direction of the babyhood and youth, the full apprehension of the value of education, and the entire dynamic encouragement to both the sons and the daughters, the example of industry, the inspiration to work, the enthusiasm and self-sacrifice to help in reaching high ideals, the wisdom to guide these endeavors--these are the things that belong to the contribution of the woman. Whether or not a woman has made her due contribution is bound up in the matter of what her sons and daughters actually do for the community and the world, how wide their influence is, how serviceable they are to the general good. The mother of Edison, for instance, made a great contribution.

Let every young woman take this point of view and consider what she is now doing, even while yet only a girl, to make it possible for her children that are to be, to have large lives, useful to the whole community.

In olden time the family numbered fifteen to twenty children. Then, indeed, there were things happening in the farm home! Then was there companionship under the roof tree! The evenings were merry about the fireside--and, by the way, there was a literal as well as a spiritual fireside for the children to be merry about! Then, too, there was hospitality, the Thanksgiving dinner, the Christmas home-coming for all the cousins! In those days life was worth living and there was no country life problem.

We must look forward to larger families. The next row of fathers and mothers must live for this, plan for it, trust for it, and educate themselves for it; for only thus will the farmstead be at once a place where rafters shall ring with jollity, and the complex life offer dramas enough to be interesting. In this way we shall save the country.

The story of the home life of the Beecher family, a typical large family of old New England days, touches a high-water mark of vivid home life.

There was a perfect furor of intellectual excitement going through the house all the time. Every topic of public interest was brought to the home circle. Books were read aloud continually. Excitement of all kinds was going on in the evenings, discussions of all sorts at the table.

The children were not invited, they were required, to argue. If they did not do it cleverly the father would confound them with ridicule, or he would say: "Now present this argument and you will be able to down me."

And then he would tell them just how to manage the point in order to show up the fallacy and gain the right conclusion. So the wise father trained their minds in a sort of play.

People have talked a great deal about the value to a child of a n.o.ble mother; let a word or two be said for the value of the father in the training of the home. It should be thought of both after the home is established and before. Young women should think of this in making the choice of a partner and the young men should know that they are doing so. In fact, this may be actually happening already. Two little boys were talking in the playground not long ago, and one said to the other: "You mustn't do that, for if you do, you are not training for parentage." The new era has certainly begun!

But there is a still larger view. The Country Girl should also consider what she is now doing for the community to make it one in which her sons and daughters shall, twenty years hence, have a chance for clean, wholesome and inspiring lives. If she now forms a society for the girls in her village so that the strength of each individual girl will be multiplied by the braiding together of their efforts, to the end that better social enjoyments and more intellectual and more ethical ideals may become habitual, it may be that the years filled with these high activities will result in a state of things in that community that will make higher things the rule and lower things impossible. Then her village will be a safer place for her children when they come than it could have been without her own girlish endeavors.

The country child starts out with a better physical development than the city child. Our countryside from the Atlantic to the Pacific is full of children who are especially endowed for the highest attainments. May not the Country Girl of the next generation be expected to do something adequate and wonderful with these good gifts of heaven?

CHAPTER XIX

THE FARM PARTNER

Efficient housekeeping is the beginning of good citizenship.

--_Professor Martha van Rensselaer._

CHAPTER XIX

THE FARM PARTNER

The Country Girl of to-day may look forward to a life in which she shall serve in a double capacity. She is to be a farm-woman and she is to be also a wife-mother. The farm woman may do what she can in the work of the farmstead, but her occupations there must be in abeyance before the vastly greater importance of the work which is specially hers--the conserving of the best and highest interests of the family. She is, first, the head and link of the family. If after she has finished her contribution to the work of discipline, education, inspiration, reading and story-telling, spiritual and esthetic guidance, mending and making, and placing food thrice on the table daily; after she has supplied her own needs in self-education and self-inspiration, in recreation and social satisfaction, so that she may come to the tasks mentioned above with spiritual and mental energy and alertness; and if then she still has time, strength, patience, will, energy and taste, left for still greater demands upon her resources; then she may help in the things that concern the farm business. She may do whatever will be a joy to her to do, whatever she can do buoyantly and with enthusiasm.

No doubt in the new era this will be possible. But the woman of the next generation is going to insist upon being happy, and her happiness is to consist in maintaining efficient working power and in having her work appreciated. Her work in the home must be thought of as having the same value as any other earning work. It must be acknowledged in the home of the future that woman's skill and woman's power to save are both business a.s.sets. It should be acknowledged in the home of to-day both for the wife and for the daughter.

One may say that all business is carried on by men in order that the home--which means the wife and the children--may be sustained and that its happiness and its outlook to the future may be made to prosper. All men work for this end. The love of a man for his wife and for their children is the inspiration of his daily toil. But with all other occupations save the farmer's, the business is one thing and the home is another. The woman and her share of world's work, namely the making and the keeping of the home, are a thing apart. They are placed in a little coop by themselves and there treasured as a shrine. Sometimes, to be sure, the little coop where the woman plies her work is in the mind of the man quite other than a shrine. But in the majority of cases it is this, and we are speaking of the law and not of the exception.

But with the wife of the farmer, the woman's laboratory-machine-shop-studio is not a little room by itself. The home is a business center; it is a dynamo from which goes out the power for the whole machinery; it is itself a piece of elaborate machinery without which the rest of the cogs and bands and phlanges would all go awry and break into pieces, doing damage to the whole farm-factory.

It is because of this that the woman in the farm home is so essential a part of the farm business; it is for this reason that she is to be thought of as a partner. It is for this reason that the farm woman may have the satisfaction of knowing that she contributes more of constructive value than do the women of any other group. From these conditions farm women gain a training that no other women have. It is claimed that suffrage was carried in the Northwestern States by the weight of the women of the agricultural regions; they had been trained to the new point of view by their position in the farmstead.

Students of the conditions of living in the homes of both city and country have proposed various schemes for the practical finances in the home. An excellent scheme for a household budget appeared in the _Journal of Home Economics_ for June, 1914. It provided for three separate accounts, one called "The Man's Personal Account," one "The Woman's Personal Account," and the third, "The Family Account." Into the first went the man's clothes, traveling expenses (carfare, etc.), charities, amus.e.m.e.nts, society dues, dentist and doctor's bills--all personal expenses. Into the second went similar items for the woman, except that the bills connected with the birth of children were not recorded there. These went into the third account, together with the running expenses of living, and all expenses connected with the children, their clothing, amus.e.m.e.nts, instruction, etc. A weekly sum came from this account for the use of the wife for the household; what remained there after these depredations, composed the mutual savings, and this sum belonged equally to both husband and wife and could be used for any purpose only by consent of both. This scheme in its general features is adapted to any family, but might of course, after discussion and consent, be altered to suit circ.u.mstances.

Every difficult question in the apportionment of these separate accounts should be talked over thoroughly. Each member should endeavor to see the question in the abstract, pure from every selfish impulse. Each should try to see it from the other's standpoint, freed from prejudice, and in the dry light of reason.

By working out these problems for several years, it may be possible to bring the sums set apart for certain purposes down to fixed amounts. But it must not be forgotten that the general cost of living varies--who does not know that, alas!--from year to year. We have green years and slack years; therefore we are not to be blamed if we do not always live up to an ideal standard. Besides, we need a new cloak one year and do not need one the next. New-cloak-year cannot be always last year or always next year; it sometimes must be _this_ year!

The comfort of a family budget can hardly be imagined by those who have a family to plan for and have not tried this system. You know what you have to do with; you can plan and thus reduce expenses where they can most conveniently be shaved off and not feel it so much. The husband will have the comfortable a.s.surance that he is obeying that great principle of efficiency that calls for a "square deal" in the human group with which he has most to do. The wife knows that when she is taking a sum of money to use for herself or for her family she is not asking a favor; she knows that she will never hear the dire question, "Where is the dollar I gave you last month?" Immense quant.i.ties of self-respect are carefully preserved by a methodical arrangement of the home budget, and happiness is laid up for use both here and hereafter.

We may then ask how this general scheme may be adapted to homes in the countryside. The financial plan for the farm home ought not to present any difficulty, but it seems to, and for two reasons. In the first place the money generally arrives in bulk in connection with harvests, not scattered along through the year as in most other forms of business. But one would think that this peculiarity would aid system; to know all in a month what is to be available for twelve should be the most effective basis for a wise plan.

Second, a large part of the supplies for the farm home come directly from the farm without intervention of butcher, baker or candlestick maker. This, again, ought not to prove a difficulty. Why not record the farm-supplies on the day book at market prices, as if they did come from butcher and grocer? This is the normal, systematic and efficient thing to do. It is only the close interweaving of farm and house functions, that makes it seem difficult; but in spite of this a carefully worked out and closely followed system of bookkeeping will give aid at nearly every point.

May we, however, ask a further question? In trying to make just and equitable plans in the unique structure of the farmstead, how shall we place a value upon the labor of the house administrator? The farm home is an absolutely essential part of the farmstead, its heart and focus.

The business of the home is a part of the business of the farm. Whatever the woman does to fulfil her duty in the home, to make the output of the home a real productive contribution, is of actual economic value to the farm business, and should be appreciated as such. If by specially good management, by industry and thrift, she can make an unusually good showing in her administration, lessen expenses by saving, increase energy by a studied dietary, make children more efficient and the family happier and healthier, she should be the more appreciated as a business partner whose service is invaluable and who is well worthy of her share of the profits.

If, then, besides these duties that are the normal work of the homemaker, she is able to add such work in the farmstead as belongs to the farming business, such as the care of the cream and b.u.t.ter, providing meals for the farm hands, care of stock, chickens, bees, lambs, or the garden, she takes the part of a farm hand or a farmworker, she is a unit in the farm business as well as a partner, and should have the value of the service she performs paid to her in wages. Of course we hate the word. We want at least the mother in the home to be the final unmerchantable thing there. But there are families in the country scattered here and there who painfully need some such planning of home affairs as this. If the happier women would move on lines of economic system, even though they do not themselves feel tragic need for it, but just in the interest of scientific accuracy and efficiency, the other wives would be happier and all life in the home realm would have a better adjustment. As long as the farmstead is a combination of home and farm business, the presiding genius in this combination may work for love many hours in the day; but where work is done by the woman administrator that a house servant, if one were employed, would be doing and would be paid for doing, the woman administrator, the mother in her function of housekeeper, should be paid in money at commercial rates for those services; and this should be accurately recorded day by day and week by week and taken full account of in the budget.

The spirit that will uphold the mind and heart during the instalment of such plans is the desire to know with scientific accuracy what the annual budget of the house is and likewise what the budget for the farm business is, and what each contributes toward the success of the other.

That each inst.i.tution will be more efficiently run under such a system, and that the elastic interplay of the two will move more harmoniously, with less friction, and with a larger output of happiness for all, admits of no possible doubt. Also that the Country Girl of to-day will be anything less than fitted, disciplined and willing to act well her vigilant part in this plan is equally inconceivable.

In order to meet this situation the average Country Girl no doubt needs training in system and in bookkeeping. She needs to adopt a point of view. She must take into account two things: first, every item, however small, is important; second, every item, however small, must be recorded. The ap.r.o.n-pocket should have pencil and tiny pad in it all the time, except that every few minutes it must come out to receive a record. One of the most important principles of efficiency is that we should record our daily or momently efforts. We must know exactly what we have been able to do before we can take a long breath and try to do more. All this the Country Girl of to-day may do for her present home; and in her future home, if she does not do it, she will be completely out of tune with her time.

In a thoughtful and courteous book on rural conditions in the United States, by a distinguished English observer, the suggestion was made that the woman in the farm home is the fitting person to keep the accounts. The author decides this by her leisure (save the mark!) and by her well trained faculty for detail.

This statement of opinion aroused a storm of comments in other books, chiefly by American gentlemen, claiming that the farm woman lacks the training for keeping accounts and the large comprehension needed for that part of the business. But this training is now accessible to the Country Girl, and we believe the "large comprehension" will come with experience. At any rate this will come to her as easily as to the unwilling agriculturalist himself, and the leisure (in a new era) and the faculty for detail will remain her valued a.s.sets. It is idle to say in this day and age of the world that the woman has no mind for the keeping of accounts when women are bankers and millionaires and managers of large business enterprises by myriads.

It is a simple matter for the girl to take charge of the b.u.t.ter and egg accounts, and also of the bookkeeping for the whole farmstead: she will be all the better mentally and morally for attending to this duty.

Mentally she will improve under the discipline of exactness and promptness; morally she will improve under the discipline of the strictness and definiteness required by the responsibility. The reason why so many women have been so irresponsible in money matters is because they have been treated as children and therefore have adopted the habits of children in their buying and selling.

There is a telephone girl who can tell the 'phone number of nearly all the houses in three large cities where she has worked in the hotel 'phone booths. There are a good many things she cannot do but she can do that. The person at the head of the department for receiving payments at one of the largest department stores in New York City is a woman. She takes in all the bills and makes change on the charge slips and the checks, and estimates all the details of the accounts. She puts her mind completely upon the papers in hand, so that while a set of these are before her she is so absorbed in them that no question put to her by any one standing at the door of the cage would any more reach her mind than if she were dead. In a moment she hands the papers to the proper person with the correct statement; then that is over and she is ready for the next. She has done this work every day for sixteen years, and she looks young and blooming. This woman is working for herself; but she is doing her work so excellently that it becomes a universal benefit, inspiring us to imitate her efficiency.

As the home is the reason for being of the farmstead, the woman therein is making good her partnership if she is taking care of her housekeeping and family duties. Her contribution is being made. But the farm and the home are so closely interwoven that she is of far greater importance than this shows. She is a true partner and is worthy of all the rights and duties that this indicates. If the woman is not the keeper of books for the farm business, it is at least her right as a partner to have the books of the business always open to her. To see the books would be the first request of any partner.

One of the best farmers, who was also one of the best of men, affirmed that he was not in the habit of confiding his business matters to his wife. She on her part was one of the most loyal and most refined of women, the mother of wonderful children, and the very effective though unencouraged worker by his side for many years. His thought was that he would take the whole responsibility for the support of the family; he did not want to bother the rest of the household about details of business. One summer he lost a thousand dollars through the bad outcome of a bargain, but he did not tell his wife of this. Then after a while he made five thousand dollars more than usual--but neither did he share this news with her. Do you not think that if that wife had known that summer that there were four thousand extra dollars that might be depended upon for the use of the home, she would not have used two of them in the development of an efficient kitchen, placing a set of machines there that would have given her hot and cold water at hand, some form of power for the washing-machine, dummies, dust-chutes, ice chests, fireless cookers, lighting, wheeled trays, and all the necessary paraphernalia to put her household on an efficient basis--by this means not only lifting her own work up to the place of a scientific laboratory but raising the productive level of the whole valley where she lived and helping to lighten the burdens of a hundred farm women who were having not even so comfortable a time in their life plans as she was?

Now if this woman had had a little more business sense she would have realized that she had begun wrong years ago. It may also be that, if she had understood the whole situation, she would have approved of leaving the money in the bank for a time: it may be that she would have devoted it to sending a daughter to college. But, other things being equal, and if to her marriage had been a platform from which the soul of woman takes a new flight, we may believe that she would have devoted some of the money to better equipment for her own workshop.

But all these things are aside from the point, which is that she had earned the money as much as he had, and that she should have had as much to say as her husband had about the disposal of their joint savings.

The Country Girls of to-morrow must profit by experiences like these in the families of the generation now pa.s.sing, and make certain that the efficiency principle of the square deal and the basic principle of a true partnership shall be established in the home-plans they are making. If they cannot a.s.sure themselves that conditions satisfying to their self-respect will prevail for them in the farmsteads of the future, they are justified in rejecting the countryside for their home and in leaving it to wither away in its lack of their dynamic and rejuvenating presence.