Quoted by Mrs. Nixon in a paper before the Conference
of Women Workers in England, 1904.
CHAPTER IX
WOMAN’S RESPONSIBILITY
There are about 40,000,000 women and girls in the United States. About 14,000,000 live in the country and have a direct and compelling power over the life of the community.
In rural agricultural districts the home-keeper is the provider. She practically requisitions from farm and garden what she deems necessary for the family table. To an extent she makes the clothing and sews the house linen. She also exchanges her perquisites, egg money, perhaps, for furniture and ornaments. The itinerant peddler brings the world’s wares to her door; the mail-order houses do the rest.
“The ideal home is a social and coöperative society in which all of its members unite their efforts for the common good. This ideal is realized most nearly in the country home, where even the smallest child has opportunity to be and generally is a contributor to the family support. It has come to be a recognized fact that boys and girls, healthy, industrious, frugal, capable, intelligent, self-supporting, cheerful, and patriotic, abound in country homes, and that the prevalence there of these high qualities is largely due to the family life, which requires each individual from his earliest years to bear his proportionate share in providing for the maintenance of the home. By bringing within the reach of the country people educational advantages suited to their needs, rural life becomes more attractive, country homes are multiplied, and the valuable qualities which these homes develop become the possession of a correspondingly larger number of the citizenship of the state.”[16]
The government has recognized the need and the possibilities of meeting it in the recognition it has given to Farmers’ Institutes for women, in which, by lectures, demonstration, and short winter courses at the colleges, the interest of the woman in her occupation is aroused. She is not only given help in details of her daily work, but she is shown how much the efficiency of the farm life depends upon her capability and intelligence. She is encouraged in the using of all mechanical and scientific appliances, is introduced to the means of mental growth; but, best of all, she is given the stimulus of social recognition. In the year 1908 there were held 832 such meetings in the several states. In the year 1910 the number will be nearly or quite doubled.
In no other form of society is the power of the woman for good or ill so paramount as in rural life, in no other mode of living is the family so much at her mercy.
In suburban and city life the family can in a measure escape from insufficient care and uncomfortable conditions. That they do so escape, any student of social tendencies will testify. The great increase of restaurants, of clubs and hotels of all grades, shows one phase of the unattractiveness of home life. The city woman is only half a housekeeper; she has only one-eighth of a house as compared with her rural sister. Her control is therefore curtailed until she feels her helplessness in the hands of her landlord. She sighs and turns to other interests. To her must be brought the knowledge of her power as a social factor if she will but use the knowledge she can easily gain.
The city woman has amused herself because she has seen nothing better to do with her time. The utilization of her ability is all that is needed to regenerate city life. Without it all efforts will prove fruitless. Education of all women in the principles of sanitary science is the key to race progress in the twentieth century.