Horticulture and Landscape Gardening.—Special designing in cultivated flowers. Origin of new species; bees and their relation to the forest and garden; the hiving of bees and after-management. A study of honey-producing plants; the economic value of the honey.
Market Gardening.—Relation of crops, geology of the garden, agricultural chemistry, good roads and their relation to the success and value of the farm, mineralogy and useful birds and insects.
I believe that all who will make a careful study of the subject will agree with me that there is a vast unexplored field for women in the open air. The South, with its mild climate and other advantages, is as well adapted to out-door labour for women as to that for men. There is not only an advantage in material welfare, but there is the advantage of a superior mental and moral growth. The average woman who works in a factory becomes little more than a machine. Her planning and thinking is done for her. Not so with the woman who depends upon raising poultry, for instance, for a living. She must plan this year for next, this month for the next. Naturally there is a growth of self-reliance, independence, and initiative.
Life out in the sweet, pure, bracing air is better from both a physical and a moral point of view than long days spent in the close atmosphere of a factory or store. There is almost no financial risk to be encountered, in the South, in following the occupations which I have enumerated. The immediate demands for the products of garden, dairy, poultry yard, apiary, orchard, etc., are pressing and ever present. The satisfaction and sense of independence that will come to a woman who is brave enough to follow any of these outdoor occupations infinitely surpass the results of such uncertain labor as that of peddling books or cheap jewelry, or similar employments, and I believe that a larger number of our schools in the near future will see the importance of outdoor handwork for women.
There is considerable significance in the fact that this year more than fifty girls have taken up the study of scientific farming at the Minnesota College of Agriculture, and have thus announced their intention to adhere to country life. The college has been in existence for the past decade, but girls have only recently been admitted. The character of the instruction available to the girl students is suggestive. The course presented emphasises the sciences of botany, chemistry, physics and geology, requiring, during the freshman and sophomore years at least, two terms' work in each of them. Boys and girls work together throughout two-thirds of the entire course, which includes study in language, mathematics, science, civics, and considerable technical work. In the courses for girls, cooking, laundering and sewing are substituted for carpentry, blacksmithing and veterinary science. The girls, too, give more attention to household art, home economy and domestic hygiene than to the business aspect of farming. It is happily the chief purpose of the college to awaken in its entire student body a keen interest in farming, farm life, the farm-house and farm society. Both boys and girls are taught to plan farm buildings and to lay out the grounds artistically. Considerable attention is given to the furnishing of houses, to literature, music and social culture, with the general thought of making the farm home the most attractive spot on earth. The result of the new movement is being watched with keen interest by agriculturists and educators. It is evident that, should it prove successful, the innovation will spread to other agricultural States. Its influence, one readily apprehends, is apt to be social as well as agricultural in character. Heretofore, one great drawback to farming, even in the North, has been the difficulty of keeping the farmers' sons on the farm. With trained and educated girls enthusiastically taking up the profession of farming, the country life will take on new charms, and the exodus of young men to cities will be materially lessened.
CHAPTER X Helping the Mothers
Something about the Woman's Meeting, organised and conducted in the town of Tuskegee by Mrs. Washington, seems not out of place in this book. It is her work, and she has kindly supplied the following outline of the aims and results of this attempt to better the conditions and lives of the people living in this typical Alabama community: