The Country-Life Movement in the United States

by L. H. Bailey

On the women depend to a greater degree than we realize the nature and extent of the movement for a better country life, wholly aside from their personal influence as members of families. Farming is a co-partnership business. It is a partnership between a man and a woman. There is no other great series of occupations in which such co-partnership is so essential to success. The home is on the farm, and a part of it. The number of middle-aged unmarried men living on farms is very small. It is quite impossible to live on a farm and to run it advantageously without family relation.

It follows, then, that if the farming business is to contribute to the redirection of country life, the woman has responsibilities as well as the man. As the strength of a chain is determined by its weakest link, so will the progress of rural civilization be determined by the weakness of the farm as an economic unit, or by the weakness of the home as a domestic and social unit.

Now, the farmer himself cannot have great influence in redirecting the affairs of his community until he is first master of his own problem,—that is, until he is a first-class farmer. In the same way, a woman cannot expect to have much influence in furthering the affairs of her rural community until she also is master of her own problem, and her problem is primarily the home-making part of the farm. In the mastering of his or her own problem, the farmer or his wife may also contribute directly to the progress of the community. Every advance in the management of the household contributes to the general welfare: it sets new ideas under way.

If the farming business must in general be reorganized, so also must the householding part of it be reorganized. The solution of the farm-labor problem, for example, lies not alone merely in securing more farm "hands," but in so directing and shaping the business that less farm hands will be needed to secure a given economic result; so also the solution of the household-labor problem is not merely the securing of more household help, but the simplification of householding itself.

So far as possible, the labor that is necessary to do the work of the open country, whether in-doors or out-doors, should be resident labor. The labor difficulty increases with reduction in the size of the family. Families of moderate size develop responsibility, and coöperation is forced on all members of it, with marked effect on character. The single child is likely to develop selfishness rather than coöperation and sense of responsibility. To a large extent, the responsibility of the household should rest on the girls of the family; and all children, whether boys or girls, should be brought up in the home in habits of industry.

It is fairly possible by means of simplification of householding and by a coöperative industry amongst all members of the family, so to reduce the burden of the farm wife that she may have time and strength to give to the vital affairs of the community.

The affairs of the household.

It is essential that we simplify our ideals in cooking, in ornament, in apparel, and in furnishing; that we construct more convenient and workable residences; that we employ labor-saving devices for the house as well as for the barns and the fields.

We are so accustomed to the ordinary modes of living that we scarcely realize what amount of time and strength might be saved by a simplified table and by more thoughtful methods of preparing food. In respect to houses, it should be remembered that the present farm dwellings are getting old. A good part of the farm houses must soon be either rebuilt or remodeled. The first consideration is so to build or remodel them that steps may be saved to the housewife. We have not thought, in the past, that a woman's steps cost time and energy. Within twenty years all first-class farm houses will have running water, both into the house and out of the house.

It is rather strange that in our discussions of the farm-labor problem, we do not realize that a gasoline engine or a water engine may save the labor of a man. Farmers are putting power into their barns. They should also put power into the house. This may be accomplished by means of a small movable engine that can be used either in the house or barn, or else by installing an engine in a small building betwixt the house and the barn, so that it can be connected either way. This can be used to lighten much household labor, as pumping of water, meat-chopping, laundering, dish-washing, vacuum-cleaning, and the like.