The American Country Girl Part 5

Many charming glimpses are given of the home this girl represents. She is an enthusiast for the possibilities of farm life. She prizes it because she finds that freedom of action is possible there in matters of dress and in the choice of companions. All desired urban benefits--such as lectures, church, organizations and social events, seem to have become accessible to her. She thinks, too, that the farm realizes outdoor life at its best. There is plenty to do--this she rates as one of the great advantages--and she adds this pregnant sentence, "what one does is of consequence."

She acknowledges that parents might desire to go away from the farm in order to put children in a town school. But she adds: "I'd rather take them to a good centralized country school. I have taught in town and country both, and am now teaching a country school under town supervision with ten pupils and every advantage. As I keep house for my grandfather on a dry homestead two miles from school, I have the fun of walking to and from the schoolhouse."

Again she says that people may go to the town in order to spend their money; town, she says, is a good place to go for that purpose. She adds this caustic note: "But my father made money in town and spent it in the country--as long as he kept tenants on his farm!"

Her share in the housework is ample and joyous. She says: "Myself and two grown sisters, both younger than I, take turns about doing the entire housework. The rest work in the garden and the field, irrigating, hoeing, etc. I prefer outside work too, but I always wash and iron, even when I am working outside." Her home conveniences are a washing-machine, a pump in the house, running water at the door, a telephone, the daily weather reports, a typewriter, a sewing-machine, screened windows and doors, and homemade soap. Who but a girl of the great untrammelled Northwest would call the weather reports a home convenience, or think of including homemade soap? Of course she is not satisfied: she would like electrically pumped water, electric lights, ice, and a gasolene stove.

Some of these she hopes to have next year, and the electric stove will doubtless come too and other new and important things.

Opportunity for recreation is not wanting. There are fishing on the place, swimming in the large irrigation ca.n.a.l, and buggy riding. In winter there is dancing at farm homes; visits are made over the 'phone.

Sewing and sewing bees are recreation; so are reading and writing letters. Caring for small brothers and sisters seems to come under the same head; water-color painting, hunting jack-rabbits and grouse, taking kodak pictures, going to picnics and celebrations, camping in the mountains, lectures, lodge, and socials in town, horseback riding and day dreaming do not seem so difficult to include. She harnesses and drives, hitching up to the buggy, the democrat, or even the jockey cart; she rides the bicycle and expects to drive an auto--"some day." All the games they play in that large and varied family are "to work, and to tease one another." Evidently here is a place on the planet where work and play run into each other and become one and the same thing! She says: "There seems to be no necessity for games." She adds: "We older ones often amuse and watch the three children play."

As to the number of young people in the vicinity she says that there are about twenty "within this natural district." During the school year they have about six social gatherings; in summer there are informal picnics and Sunday visits with refreshments. Social life centers about the school and the doings in the adjacent town. Among some of the neighbors there is a German Club. As facilities for a social center, they have the schoolhouse (but with stationary seats), a playground, any number of natural groves and of fishing holes, and the big ditch for swimming. For the girls alone they have swimming parties and visiting parties; and they help one another during haying and threshing. This she puts down among the social gatherings for girls in her neighborhood!

In the house there is a library of about two hundred and fifty volumes.

Lack of time is the only thing that prevents reading. There is a public library in the nearest town and she goes there every week in winter. In summer however she is too busy with farm work to go so often. In the family evenings either she or her mother reads aloud: also on Sunday afternoon. The books that they have thus read together of late are _Lorna Doone_ and one by Wason called _Friar Tuck_ which she marks an underscored "Good."

They have a piano and the favorite songs are such old favorites as _Annie Laurie_ and _Juanita_. Also they sing church songs, and popular tunes, such as _The Trail of the Lonesome Pine_. They adapt the music to the different tastes in the ten-children family.

Besides the daily evening paper and the local weekly paper, they take _Successful Farming_, _Better Fruit_, _Scientific American_, _American Magazine_, _Cosmopolitan_, _Epworth Herald_, some law papers, the government bulletins and reports, _Current Opinion_, etc. For her own interests she is going to take _Epworth Herald_, _Primary Education_, _Youth's Companion_, _American Geographical Magazine_, _Current Opinion_, _Stock Reports_, _Successful Farming_. Her other cultural interests are these: Music; school, especially high school entertainments, correspondence with normal school friends; teachers'

inst.i.tute, each fall, one week; water-coloring; making beautiful clothes and fancy work; Rebecca Lodge; Church in town; amateur photography; and reading, underscored again. It is fascinating to see what a girl like this will include under the head of "cultural interest."

On the question of earning and using money, she says: "From the time we were very small we earned all our spending money by being paid for extra work. I have been absolutely independent, even to buying my clothes, since I was seventeen years old. I figure that my work more than pays my board." First among the ways of earning money, she names hoeing corn; next she mentions teaching school. "I teach school nine months of the year. Before I began that and ever since, I have earned money. I put myself through the Normal School. I packed prunes (at four cents an hour), sold garden truck (twenty-five cents a day, average--did no peddling), and sewed for others at usual rates." No special sum is set apart for her use but she has all she earns. In teaching she receives sixty dollars a month. She has taught for this salary for two years and with this she has paid two hundred dollars she had borrowed for her school expenses. She has four hundred dollars remaining. Most of this is now in interest-bearing notes on farm securities. She adds: "I buy my clothes, go one-half on board with grandfather on the homestead, and am beginning a 'hope-box.'" She is to have a share in the corn crop. "When I am married," she says, "I expect to invest some in cattle for beef."

The vital question as to whether her sharing in this ownership makes her have more enthusiasm for the success of the farm, receives this answer: "Certainly; you should have seen me top the corn when it got frosted June 6. It's doing fine now; I think we saved it, for it was frozen to the ground." She has read all on the subject of farming that she could find. She took some work in the Normal School--enough, she says, to make her realize that she knew very little; she believes she could do much through correspondence. Her interest is now about equally divided between farming and home economics: but, she is good enough to confide, "I expect to make home-making predominate some day." Ah, then this is the true meaning of that "hope-box"! This efficient girl is to be a farmer's wife and she wishes to know how to do her part in helping run a grain-haystock ranch of a thousand acres successfully. So she has taken one year at the Normal School in Home Economics and some studies in agriculture also; she studied family sociology in a forty weeks' course; and she has given some study to the laws governing women's property. May her hope-box overflow! May she in time run her own car, and may all her schemes work out perfectly!

Is there room to put down just one more story? This one has been sent by a friend who for years has been teaching in the Idaho Industrial Inst.i.tute, a school where they train boys and girls for farm life. The writer of the paper, a girl of nineteen, interested her especially and she asked her to write a brief record. The farm where this girl lives is in a hilly region and is productive; they have from it oats, wheat, clover, timothy, and potatoes. There are 160 acres, and they are six miles from town.

"Farm life to me is attractive," she says, "because on the farm one has the freedom that cannot be gained anywhere else in the world. One learns the habits of birds and animals and one comes in touch with nature and hence with the Creator himself. Children raised on the farm grow strong in body and spirit, and they store their minds with more venturous thoughts. By living on the farm one gets all the fresh vegetables, fruits, b.u.t.ter, milk, eggs and meat that one desires. But of course there may be reasons why one might desire to leave the farm. One may get the idea that one has to work harder for less pay than elsewhere. One may think that the pleasures are few and that farm life is not respectable enough, and that if one could only leave and go to the city, one would be contented. But any one leaving the farm will never be happy while away and will soon learn that there is no place in life like the farm."

This young woman shows the usual picture of work and of small opportunity for social enjoyments. These are her books: The Bible, _Stephen_, _Soldier of the Cross_, _Jesus of Nazareth_, _The Coming King_, _Tempest and Sunshine_, _The Broken Wedding Ring_, _Sweet Girl Graduate_, _Daddie's Girl_, _Wild Kitty_, _Girls of the Forest_, _Ruby or a Heart of Gold_, _Taking Her Father's Place_, _Now or Never_. She was very much delighted, she says, with all in this list. She has the long winter's evenings to read in but the additional work in summer interferes somewhat with her reading. They have no musical instrument in the home but they have many of the best hymn-books and country songs, and they sing hymns together. She is very much interested in ways of making better homes. She herself takes the _Mother's Magazine_ and _The Christian Endeavor World_, and is pursuing a course in Home Economics at the present time.

A single working day of her life is thus described:

"One bright morning in early July I was awakened by my mother who told me that it was half-past four. I arose immediately for I had had a good night's rest and did not feel sleepy. I dressed in my riding habit and went to the barn and waked my brother who was sleeping in the hay-loft and asked him to come and saddle my pony, 'Daisy.' He saddled her and I mounted and went to the timber for the cows. The air was fresh and cool.

It filled me with joy and seemed to affect Daisy the same, for she threw her ears forward, listened a second for the cows, and hearing the tinkle of the bell she started out on a gallop. After about a half hour's ride I found the cows and drove them home. When I had taken the saddle from Daisy and given her her breakfast and a few loving caresses I left her and went to the house, arriving just in time for breakfast. After breakfast I told my two sisters I would do the housework myself while they washed. I had an early start, was in high spirits and ready for the day's work before me. It did not take me long to plan my dinner, which I decided should consist of baked potatoes, creamed carrots, greens, and radishes, all fresh from the garden. For dessert I made blanc mange with cocoa sauce. I had plenty of fresh b.u.t.ter, cream, and light-bread at my disposal. The first thing I did on entering my kitchen was to mix up my light-bread. It did not take me long to clear off the breakfast table and put the dining-room in order. When I came to the kitchen I did not find it so easy; but my greatest delight being to set a kitchen in order I did not mind the task before me; but before starting it I did up the milk work which only took me half an hour, there being no churning that morning. I had my kitchen in order and the bread molded by ten o'clock.

I then cleaned myself up and read a short story in the Sunday School paper before starting my dinner which I did at ten-thirty. My dinner was a success or at least my father p.r.o.nounced it so when he had finished eating a not small portion of it. After I had the dinner work cleared away, everything in order and my bread baked, I made my small brother a suit and had it done by the time that my mother had supper ready. After supper again I saddled Daisy and went for the cows while my sisters washed the supper dishes. That evening as we gathered around the kitchen table and my father read a chapter from the Bible, I think I was one of the happiest girls in the world even if I was tired. As I went to bed that evening I thanked the dear Father that I had a father, mother, brothers and sisters to love and help care for. This is only one day out of many that I have spent in this way."

When one reads this account, one pictures the strong vivid life of this sound generous-hearted girl. It seems glorious to be so able and so willing. What, then, will be the surprise when on looking down the page a little farther one sees in the handwriting of the friend who had asked her to write an account of one of her working days, a paragraph like this: "The writer of the above is a cripple, getting about with the aid of a crutch. She entered the Inst.i.tute this fall and pays half her expenses by working more efficiently than most pupils." After reading this, what words of praise would not sound futile!

CHAPTER VII

THE OTHER SIDE

I cannot bear to think what life would be With high hope shrunk to endurance; stunted aims Like broken lances ground to eating knives; And low achievement doomed from day to day To distaste of its consciousness.

_George Eliot._

CHAPTER VII

THE OTHER SIDE

The experiences related in the last chapters have been purposely laid before the reader with little comment. They make their own impression.

They may help to dispel an apprehension lest the girls on the farms should be having too hard a time, or lest when the work in which they are asked to join is closing somewhat too strongly upon their young strength they should be weighed down with the sort of dullness that comes from continued pressure on one nerve. They seem to give an a.s.surance that the country girl's day in many, perhaps the majority, of cases, affords some time for reading and for music; there is a concert in the evening or a spare afternoon hour for the village guest. They encourage us to believe that when the point of joylessness approaches there will be ready a new supply of energy for rejuvenation and refreshment. As long as this state of things exists the case is not so bad.

Into this serene atmosphere a bomb must be thrown; for both sides have a right to be heard. The testimony of the Country Girl when she is speaking in favor of country life has been accepted; the same courtesy must be given her when she tells us more or less frankly--frankly when she can be brought to speak at all--what objections some may have to a life which it seems to many ought to be good for any one, and which, if it is not, surely can very easily be made so.

It is no more than right that a system should be judged not only by the most fortunate example of its working, where factors that have little to do with its essential principles may have crept in to modify the outward appearance, but also by the less known cases, by flagrant examples of what is possible under the existing plan. What wrongs can be found? What sufferings to certain individuals? What must be rectified in order that the machinery may be wholly approved? Is the system, which was evidently designed to foster justice and happiness, accomplishing this end for a reasonable majority? These are very natural questions to those who listen to the testimony of the girl of the rural districts when she discloses her problems almost without knowing that she is doing so. What about exceptional cases? What about a vital minority?

The following description of a Country Girl's working day is taken from the life of a fourteen-year-old girl, who lives on a farm of medium size, so fortunately or so unfortunately placed as to be not very far away from a summer colony. There is no mother in this farmstead.

"Description of my average working day? Here it is. I rise shortly before five o'clock and dress hurriedly. Father is calling me to come and strain the milk and get his breakfast. Go down cellar and strain the milk into pans, set them on a large stone table, and skim the milk for cream for the campers along the lake. Measure out ten to twenty quarts of milk and put them into separate pails to be sent out to customers encamped on the lake. Take cream up stairs and put it in a warm place to ripen for churning. Get breakfast, call the children, and after the others have eaten and the boy has started on his morning delivery, I eat breakfast and clear away the dishes. While sister washes them, I mix bread and set it away to rise. Stir the cream, and then sweep three floors and make five beds. By this time it is nine o'clock. Then there are berries to pick, and vegetables to be got ready for market and I go out to help till about half-past ten, when I come in and make three or four pies and a cake or a pudding. While these are baking I clean the vegetables for dinner and put them on to cook, set the table and put the dinner on, meanwhile watching the baking pies, the rising bread, and the ripening cream. In the course of the morning ten or a dozen persons have come in for milk, eggs, b.u.t.ter, or something else, and I have to wait on them and keep their accounts up in my book. After dinner the bread is ready to make into loaves and is then set to rise again before baking. While the bread is rising I scald out the churn and rinse with cold water and then put in the cream and churn it by hand. After the b.u.t.ter has come and gathered, I remove it from the churn, rinse the b.u.t.termilk out and work the b.u.t.ter; salt and work again and set it in the cellar till the next day, when it must be worked again and put into pails or jars. Then I pour the b.u.t.termilk from the churn into a jar and set it away for future use, clean and scald the churn, setting it out in the sunshine to dry. By this time the bread is ready to bake and must be watched rather closely and the wood fire also. I begin to get things ready for supper, going out into the garden to pick berries, gather vegetables, dig potatoes, etc. Meantime I wait on more people. After straining milk and skimming other milk, I eat supper and then measure out milk for evening delivery, get vegetables and bread ready to be delivered also and start the boy on delivery. Wash dishes and meanwhile wait on milk customers who are transients. When boy returns from delivery, I wash milk cans and put them out in the air, write up books of accounts, plan out next day's work, make list of groceries, etc., that must be bought to replenish our slender stock. By this time it is ten o'clock; I am weary and my hair is a sight. After taking off a little of the dirt with a sponge in the wash basin I tumble wearily into bed until the next morning."

An account like this arouses a perfect hornets' nest of question-marks.

It cannot be well for the nation, and especially for those that are to bear the burden of the day in decades to come that the girls of the present time should in any large numbers be required to endure such strain as this sixteen-hour-day of unremitting, heavy and exacting work imposed upon a young girl between the age of thirteen and seventeen, in one of the largest and most prosperous farming States of this country.

Fortunately she has had phenomenal strength and physical persistence, and the baneful conditions have not caused her absolute break-down.

But--she has run away! Otherwise she probably would never have gained the development that gave her a voice to speak out for herself as she has spoken in this letter.

More laconic, and yet expressive of a more deadly blight, was the letter from a girl of fifteen in another State. This girl lives on a prosperous seventy-five acre farm, three miles from a good-sized town. There is a public library in that town but she never uses it: and there is no home library to give her any aid. There are no contests, no prizes that are accessible to her to awaken her ambition; and there is no a.s.sociation or society of any kind for girls in her vicinity. There is no music in her family, no games are played, and no magazines are taken; she has no share in any part of the farm business except to work tirelessly as directed; nothing on the farm can she call her own; and no sum of money is set apart for her use. She has no enjoyments, no encouragement; she is hard at work all the time. She neither knows why any one should find the farm attractive nor why one should desire to leave it. Time and interest for her have ceased.

It is news from such a girl as this that most startles us. But such a Country Girl exists, hushed, unexpressive, unresponsive, undeveloped.

She is the blind gentian in the country garden. Are there many of these?

Who can tell? If diligent search is made for them they are found upon the most remote farms where no newspapers ever penetrate, where the roads are bad and the neighbors are far away or are beyond forbidding hills, where the deadly round of dishwashing or the weight of work too heavy for the years of the girl are exhausting her strength, stifling her exuberance, and deadening all the power of expression she may have been capable of having. The least fortunate girl is the one that has her power to express developed to the least extent; she does not now know her own wants; but yet when told she too will begin to live and to do her lovely part in the rooms of life.

One of the group who has thus begun at last to live voices a part at least of the inwardness of the reason why the young women and young men of to-day will not be satisfied with the ways of their farming ancestors. She says: "There exist on many farms conditions which make life there almost unbearable, to young people particularly. One of them is lack of congenial companionship; which may be due to lack of material, or to the thoughtlessness of the parents, which makes it impossible for the young people to have their friends come to their homes. Then in many farm houses there is a woful lack of books, magazines and papers of the best sort; again due to the lack of education or of interest on the part of the parents. So also with pictures, music and recreation. But perhaps greater than any other, excepting perhaps the first named, is the dull weary succession of duties following each other day in and day out without rest or respite, and without any or with few of the modern conveniences to lighten the work. So many farmers, of the old school at least, understand little of the reasons for the why and wherefore of the things they do. They were taught of their fathers who were taught of their fathers and who did things in such a way because they proved expedient. By trial, or accident, one may have discovered something to be more expedient some other way, but the wonderful process and reason back of it, they understood little or not at all. This also is true of the farmer's wife.

This blind way of doing things suits the young folks not, for the unrest, that spirit of the times which is forever questioning things, is within them, filling them with nameless longings even though they know it not. In their ignorance they believe they will find something better in the city, something more beautiful, more interesting, more thrilling.

Were these young people taught the reason for things and the possibilities of experimentation to find a better way, were they given conveniences with which to work, so that there might be some leisure for books, music and friends, there would be, I believe, little discontent."

Again we find our Country Girl closing with a hopeful note.

The gentle critical comments of those that in spite of their love for country life reject its claims as a mode of living favorable to human development and content, are based upon motives that are sometimes vocational and sometimes social in character. When they deny to the country their allegiance it is because they fail to find in rural life as they know it, those boasted possibilities and opportunities. Farming seems to them drudgery, which means labor without inspiration or acknowledgment. They have no interest for the work. They may have taste and fitness for some other occupation; but there is the fact--they do not take to farming. They feel intensely the monotony of farm life, the stagnation of the rural community. The sameness, the humdrum tediousness of the everyday life drives them to the city.

In the work of the farmstead, the Country Girl of this disheartened group plainly sees that the subsidiary, detail work, which has no intellectual and very little social stimulus will be a.s.signed to her.

She knows that the monotony of this heterogeneous drudgery will daily leave her too tired to go out, even if she has somewhere to go; and too dest.i.tute of initiative to seize upon any form of pleasure unless she has already a mind trained to find delight in books; and she sees no prospect of being able to gain the training that will open fields of intellectual enjoyment to her. She keenly feels the lack of recreation.

She comes to believe that if she were in the city she would not have such late hours of labor. She does not see the twelve and fourteen hour days of work in that rosy dream of good wages and leisured evenings in town. On the farm it is from five in the morning till nine at night; the work is not only too heavy for her, but it is closely confining. She has not the strength for it; and the enforced toil exhausts her energy prematurely. She now sees that the methods used in her household workshop are laborious and out of date; her task is unnecessarily difficult; and who can blame her if under such circ.u.mstances her enthusiasm for her work fades away? There is resentment in the remark of the young girl who said: "If we always have to work in an awkward kitchen with rusty old pans, if we do not go anywhere and never have any company, we do certainly want to leave the farm." When the blind gentian speaks out like that the emphasis must be multiplied a hundred fold.

From the work of girls like these, incentive has been removed, or else it was never there. This sort of Country Girl may not reason it out to the point of clearness, but the lack of acknowledgment of her labor in the farmstead as an industry, as an essential part of the business, makes her toil seem hopeless; it renders her feeling toward whatever charm the country may have for her permanently callous; and it takes all the vibrancy out of her spirit. All this makes her alert to find deep-seated defects in rural life in conditions that, but for her disaffection would seem but difficulties easily overcome.

The look cityward is not always caused by the incitement of an uneasy, a commercial, or an ign.o.ble impulse. It is sometimes the call of the best and n.o.blest part of the soul. To such as recognize this higher purpose the pa.s.sion for education, for free access to libraries, for a.s.sociation with intellectual people, form a part of the city's lure. They desire to see more of life, to have more and closer contact with one's fellows, to gain valuable companionship, to get more and broader pleasures, to have greater opportunities to make something of one's self. The young women who are thinking such thoughts as these are full of the energy of youth; they are at the moment of opening ambitions and developing personality; they are making plans for the future. They are not the women who in long years have grown accustomed to their burdens and have either learned how to bear them or have become sodden with the despair of ever finding any relief from their load. The brightness of young hope has not faded out, and the buoyant spirit still stands up underneath whatever is to be done or borne. Youth feels equal to anything.

Therefore the slightest deflection of their courage from the norm should have the closest attention.