The American Country Girl Part 15

Lost sleep must invariably be made up.

Try to go to sleep happy.

_Rest_

When you work, work efficiently; when you rest, rest efficiently; whatever you do, do it with all your might.

When resting, relax perfectly; let go.

Stop worrying; think of something else; think of something cheerful.

Do not yield to impatience or to anger; they shorten life.

Think pure and beautiful thoughts; learn the beautiful thoughts of others and say them over till they become your own.

Cultivate a well balanced mind; preserve courage and cheer.

_Prevention of illness or of a depressed state of health_

Study the laws of hygiene and of sanitation.

Avoid patent medicines of all kinds.

When ill, consult a reliable physician.

Prevent illness by following the laws of health and by regular health examinations.

CHAPTER XVI

THE COUNTRY GIRL'S WAGE

"To preserve as things above all price The old domestic morals of the land, Her simple manners and her stable worth That dignified and cheered a low estate, ... the character of peace, Sobriety, and order, and chaste love, And honest dealing, and untainted speech, And pure good-will, and hospitable cheer; That made the very thought of country life A thought of refuge, for a mind detained Reluctantly amid the bustling crowd."

_Wordsworth._

CHAPTER XVI

THE COUNTRY GIRL'S WAGE

A vision had certainly visited the soul of a certain fifteen-year-old Country Girl of New York State who claimed that the girls of the present day have a progressive spirit, and that if this spirit of progress is not found on the farm, they will seek it in the city. The bearing of this spirit on the question of the Country Girl's wage has made her think more deeply and feel more keenly than words can express. She cannot resist the conclusion that unless the young people are paid definite wages for the work they do on the farm, it will not seem to them that they are getting on so well as they might in a city office.

This is a delicate diagnosis of a very painful trouble.

Many of the girls realize that the tenure of industry in the city is light for the person that comes unprepared for it; many realize that the dangers are thickly set about her path; many know well that the lure of the city is to be valiantly resisted; but the majority, being but little accustomed to the handling of money, and having sadly little instruction as to real values, cannot see why eight dollars a week gained in some city industry does not represent a fortune. In making her budget at home the cost of rental and food have not been taken into account, and she has never been made to realize what these items mean in the new environment. Parents and teachers and ministers and all sober people in the farming community are cruelly to blame for the inept.i.tude of their neglect in leaving these things unimpressed upon the mind of the young women in the community and for not watching out for the strangers who may fill their minds with glowing descriptions not founded on fact about the abundant opportunity and the free and enjoyable life to be found in the walks of city work and play. "Let the child earn money, have money, spend money, save money," advised a country mother; and if this were done, wisely and all the time, from earliest years up, the boys and girls would not come to the age of question and desire with so little preparation for its responsibilities.

From a wide correspondence with Country Girls in many parts of America, the conclusion is forced upon us that very few of them, even when mature and hard-working young women, are receiving definite pay for their service to the household. They are doing a wage-worthy work but they are not paid for it. Instead the fathers think their duty is done when they give to the daughters as a benevolence what they, the fathers, think the daughters should have for their needs and pleasures. Meantime there is a new thing under the sun, namely, an awakening of the desire for economic independence in the soul of woman, and the younger women on the farms are partaking of this spirit. Result, the cityward procession! Some medieval daughters have not heard of this new spirit, but they will hear of it and they also will be stirred with a divine discontent.

Many girls gain time and permission to enter into some earning work outside of the home. The money that they thus gain they generally feel that they may lay claim to and use it as they think best. At any rate, the fear that it will not be understood that they do have what they earn leads them sometimes to emphasize the fact that they do positively consider what they earn outside of the home as their very own. Public opinion is ahead of law in this respect. A father who took legal means to take the earnings of a son under age, was quietly told that the village would be too small for him hereafter. Perhaps we have not come to the point where this would invariably happen in the case of a daughter.

The daughter as she grows up should have a reasonable sum of money to spend as she likes; this is essential as a matter of education, to prepare her for the responsibilities that are to be hers as one of the great body of spenders. She should grow up with a fully trained power to spend money wisely. And when she becomes mature, if she is strong enough to do a full-grown woman's work, she should have her self-respect educated and cultivated by receiving the sum of money that would be her fair wage if she were not a member of the family. Moreover, a father may attach his children to himself in a very real and spontaneous service, if he will allow each child, including the daughters, to be responsible for some part of the farm business, to own a piece of land or some of the livestock, and to control the produce thereof. This will be the best way to train them not only to understand the problems of the farm but to feel that interest that comes only through possession and responsibility. The daughter will be as keenly responsive under this method as the son.

Dr. Anna Howard Shaw in a recent address made a good point. It was in effect something like this: She said that if the farmer gave his son a colt, not a scrub colt but one of the very best on the farm to be all his own and to do with as he chose, that colt would tie the boy to the farm as nothing else could unless it was a share of the farm itself. The same, she said, was true in regard to the girl who went out to milk the cows because that was part of her duty, without having any heart or interest in the result of the milking; but if she were given a cow, one of the best of the herd as her own, she would not only be interested in the milking of that one, but all the cows she milked would give more milk--she would do all her work better because of the interest she took in the work.

This is not saying that either the girls or the boys are unconscientious in their work and will not do well unless they have a selfish motive; it is only to say that they are human beings and all the more like grown-up people. Dr. Shaw added as her opinion that the owners.h.i.+p of the boy and girl should not end merely with the colt and the cow. Each year they should feel that a certain percentage of the net profits of the work should belong to them, and that they were having a chance to acc.u.mulate, even though it was only a very small part of the income a year.

"If I had a farm and had sons and daughters on it," said Dr. Shaw, "I would sit down and discuss the whole matter of the work of the farm with them, and agree upon a certain share of the net and then let each one have his or her share, and encourage them to invest it, but leave them free to use their own judgment as to the investment. Until something of this sort is done, I am afraid that the boys and girls more and more will turn from the farm to the city; and who can well blame them, even though it costs them more to live in the city than they can make?

Sometimes one feels happier in spending every dollar he has merely to live, if he is free to spend it as he wishes, than he would to save if he were not free."

This wisdom may sound a little Utopian, at any rate as far as Country Girls are concerned. Very few girls are a.s.signed any pecuniary share in the farm. Now and then one remembers that she once had several calves that were "called" her own; but she does not remember ever receiving any money from that stock. A mother will share the precious egg-money with the daughter. One girl confessed to owning a tree, and one a canary.

Another mentioned as her pecuniary share in the farm the fact that she helped milk! Nearly all would agree with Dr. Shaw that having a share in the owners.h.i.+p would make them more enthusiastic for the success of the farm.

If the young woman in the farmstead would be more systematic in the use of what money she can command, perhaps she would the sooner be trusted with greater financial responsibility. It certainly is a motive in many parental minds that the children--they still seem to be children in the thoughts of some parents even when they have reached years of discretion--are not wise enough to use money discretely. Often they are not, but whose fault is it? If children were trained in the use of money from childhood up, they would not be so foolish when the time comes for putting this discipline into practise. Parents should remember that they are sure to wish some time to have a wise, careful son to lean upon.

Then they will wish they had trained the child properly. The same is true of the daughter. There is nothing more certain than that the daughters in the wide countryside are being brought up in the main with very little inkling of business. Now any girl that has gone as far in her education as to spell and to compute fractions is quite far enough to be taught the meaning of a deed. And not long after that she should know the force of the little word "warranty" or "full covenant" or "quitclaim" written before the word "deed." She should understand something of the meaning of the fell term "mortgage"--something besides the fact that when it is mentioned everybody is expected to weep. If young women grew up with a more common-sense att.i.tude toward this vital subject, the word would be robbed of some, at least, of its terrors. In just a few years those young women will be the distributors of the income for a whole family; they are to be the conservators of the saving for the fatal day of interest-paying. If they understood more of the practical working of the matter, the saving would be approached with less dismay.

Does it not seem reasonable to suppose that if a girl is made to see the relation of "overhead charges" to the "cost of living," if she has been taken into family confidence with regard to the business of the farm, and has been made to understand the difference between the basis for a girl's wages in town and that in the farm home, she will not run away under a fatal misunderstanding of conditions there?

Moreover the girl of to-day is to be the home-conserver of to-morrow.

Since the woman is the fore-ordained overseer of the whole business of spending, we may say that her failure to save and to plan and to adapt, has been the cause of all our trouble. It makes no difference to the women of the countryside that the women of the cities are more culpable in these things than are they; their affair is their own, and their duty is to attain not some one else's ideal, but their own.

The model home-conserver will have the budget for the year put into shape; she will know all the items of rent, interest on mortgages (if the family are so unfortunate as to have these troublesome things to look after), the dates when the fatal inroad has to be made into the cherished store of savings, the days when the various taxes are due--the inheritance, county, village, water and other special taxes--and all other payments that belong in the system of support that the farm or village home requires. She must know that the thing to be aspired to and looked forward to is that at the end of the year the financial income and outgo should accurately balance. The young woman who neglects her own small account will not be preparing herself for these larger responsibilities; and she must be able to make this small one balance if she expects to do the same with the greater one. The comfort of having it come out right once will be an incentive ever after; and the effect upon character of compelling one's self to keep steadily to the task of mental accuracy, of remembering each item and of putting it down quickly before it has escaped, will be incalculable. It is not a matter of mere idiosyncrasy that a young girl may say, "Oh, I cannot keep my accounts and make them come out right--it's too much trouble for just me!" To have to confess this should be considered a disgrace. One should conceal the disinclination to this duty, as one should conceal a disinclination to give one's hair the thorough weekly was.h.i.+ng which that pa.s.sion for cleanness that is the mark of the true lady calls for. It is impossible for a young girl of right instincts to say, "Oh, I would just as lief be an unclean person!" So it should be impossible for the young girl of right feeling to say, "Oh, I would willingly be a lazy, ineffective and partly dishonest person in my understanding of business!"--for slackness and inaccuracy in business are the next door to dishonesty. In all finances, to the remotest penny, the rightly const.i.tuted girl will be accurate. If necessity compels her to borrow a small sum, she will repay it at the earliest possible moment.

It is not the mark of a fine woman to be careless in spending; quite the contrary. The young woman who has intellectuality and training and taste to compute her expenses carefully, to use the money to good advantage and to the best purpose, is the young woman of higher grade, not the one who wastes, who scatters carelessly and purposelessly, and who indulges in things costing much and affording no permanent good. Our ideal in these respects needs some right-about-face orders from our conscience.

"Saving," says Professor Martha Van Rensselaer at Cornell University, "cultivates self-control, imagination, resourcefulness, character." She continues: "It is quite right to economize on some standbys and then spend more for some esthetic object, if the esthetic better satisfies a real craving connected with the higher life.... It is not meanness to study economy; it is not 'near' to avoid waste. To work out new uses that may be made of every particle of food, to get the full food-value out of every bit of it, is scientific exactness instead."

It is possible that all the skill of the woman in the farm home will be needed as time goes on to keep the financial foundations of the farmstead firm. A long look forward seems to discern on the horizon a rising necessity for greater care, and perhaps for all the skill that the farm women and other women of the next generation can master. Why should Nature go on interminably caring for a people who indulge themselves so heedlessly, so criminally in waste, cutting away their forests, throwing away good food, refusing to use the supplies of electric power in their rivers? Of course she will not. Disciplines are before us. It is the part of wisdom to use greater stringency and more scientific exactness in our household systems, that disaster may not come upon us unprepared.

Some prevision of this may be in the minds of women when they endeavor to give themselves a bit of training for direct money-earning business.

For them, and especially the younger women, openings are being made in almost every direction. A woman is no longer to be accused of a tastelessly commercial spirit if she desires to know through actual experiment the value of her labor in the commercial rating of the community. It is only by trying that she can thus standardize her labor.

If she offers cabbage plants from her growing patch, honey from her bee-colonies, wild fruit that she has gathered from G.o.d's free gardens, if she takes boarders, weaves hair, embroiders, or mends, if she takes advantage of postal service and builds up a business in fine lace-laundering, or silk and lingerie waist cleansing, whatever she takes in hand, she is not only earning a little money, but she has gained skill in manipulation, developed taste, compelled herself to seek excellence, and strengthened her character by putting her work--and that means herself--to the test of comparison with the work of others to stand or fall by the decision. If she has failed in this test, she has the chance to try harder and gain more character in further struggle.

All this should be looked upon as a part of the girl's training for life. When parents have presented to the human family a highly developed and trained young woman as their contribution, they should expect her to desire to be a worker and to take up some form of activity as the beginning, in turn, of her personal contribution. Professor Nearing says that every girl should occupy the years between the latest school days and her marriage in some wage-earning pursuit. There should be two or three years there that she could spend in this part of her education.

She should thus learn business law, the stringency of markets, the balance of purchase and sale, the interchange of commercial motive, and the art of salesmans.h.i.+p. Here will be a great field of training for her, and every part of it will be useful to her when she enters upon the duties of her own house and home.

The best way for any girl to start upon this means of discipline, is to think over what she can already do well. What have you been praised for doing? Take that and try to do it still better. What you best like to do will be the easiest to start with. Do this so well that people will desire the product. People buy what they think is most excellent: therefore make something so excellent that people will want to buy it.

And remember this principle: the _appearance_ of anything offered for sale has a great deal to do with whether people will take a liking to it or not. Do up all things nicely; make all packages neat and s.h.i.+pshape; use color if possible; have the box and the cord match in tint; humor the fancy of the buyer. At a certain country fair the girls in one particular booth had great success. Why? Their voices were sweet and they themselves were neatly dressed. But above all, the packages were done up so deftly and looked so beautiful when they were handed out that it was not difficult to understand the success of this booth. Buyers want a good product, but they do like it in a fine package.

[Ill.u.s.tration: This Tennessee girl is a member of a Gardening and Canning Club. She won the cow and calves as premiums for having the best exhibit at the State Fair.]

A beautiful enthusiasm for Canning Club work comes from the South.

Joined with many other good things that come inevitably with the organization of young life, it has enriched and blest the girls incalculably. Writing to me of this, one woman said: "It has done more to stir the Southern girls from the lethargy into which so many of them had fallen than anything else I can think of." In reply to an inquiry, Mr. O. H. Benson, in charge of Canning Club Work for the U. S.

Department of Agriculture, I wrote: "During the present year there are about 250,000 boys and girls enrolled in club projects in the United States who are receiving special follow-up instruction and who are organized on the federated basis, making them members not only of their own local community but of the State and national movement. About half of these are girls who are doing work with poultry, home gardening or the canning club project work." Mr. Benson was kind enough to lend me the photograph of the young lady with the two Jersey calves. She is Miss Myrtle Hardin, of Camden, Tennessee, a girl fifteen years of age, who has been a member of the Gardening and Canning Club of the State for four years. The two Jersey calves were won as premiums for having the best records for Club Work in the State Fair for 1912 and 1913. Mr.

Benson gives a list of the prizes she won, and of the educational trips she has taken, and adds: "Besides this, she has earned from her work several hundred dollars which she deposited in the bank and will use to pay her expenses to attend college and take a domestic science course."

This efficient girl so interested me that I wrote her and asked her to tell me herself something about her achievements that I might hand it on as an inspiration to other girls. She wrote me this delightful account:

The Tomato Club has meant more to me than I am able to tell. My two years' experience has taught me how to prepare nice things for the table, how to beautify the home, and how to make life in the country attractive and happier. Nothing has done more to train my mind than our Club work. I have read bulletins, cookbooks, books on home-making and domestic science, and dozens of different papers and magazines in the two years' work. I have written histories of my crops, and compiled "Tomato Recipe" booklets, and "The Life History of the Tomato"; and have drawn the plan, complete, of my home and grounds. On all of the above I won First Prizes in my State and County.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Springtime in the country. City children may well envy their little country cousins the free life in the open and the companions.h.i.+p with animals.]

I have as a result of my two years' work two Jersey calves, 17 Indian Runner ducks, raised from a pair I won last year, a pen of thoroughbred chickens, a tireless cooker, a cut gla.s.s bowl, and a great many small prizes, as well as some cash which I won at different places. I love best of all my calves, ducks and chickens and hope to tell you some ups and downs with them some time.