The American Country Girl

by Martha Foote Crow

At present housework, especially in the country, affords wearying labor which is not so well adapted to the development of physical strength as it might be because it is not systematic. Certain parts of the body are overexercised and certain parts are neglected. The result is frequently a body with a semblance of strength but with, as you might say, strands of weakness, rendering it liable to fall at the least onslaught of infection or unusual strain. These lacks should be made up for by consistently arranged exercises, by carefully studied diet, and by proper sleeping plans, so that there may be rightly developed muscular force—not too much and yet enough; so that there may be perfect circulation; fat enough and not too much; and that there may be a full supply of energy. If the young woman is vain enough to wish not to be portly when she is forty, she must not wait till she is forty-five to go to work at it; she should begin at twenty to train for that special form of beauty; if she does this she will soon express it in trimness, in an energetic and graceful step, in the exact curve of the spinal column at the small of the back, the right lift of the chest beneath the neck, and the perfect position of chin, elbows, shoulder blades, hips, feet, and all the parts of the body, for walking, sitting, standing, running, sleeping, and for every possible activity. Beauty is a thing to be valued and worked for; but a greater motive for the attention necessary to the full development of our physical powers is that we should be able to give to our children the greatest allotment of beauty and vigor that we can possibly command.

Miss Goldmark in her valuable study, Fatigue and Efficiency, says that the results of overstrain in the labor of women are manifest in a heightened infant mortality, in a lowered birth rate, and in an impaired second generation. We should take this to heart. Not to make a struggle to increase our store of vigor for the sake of the children that are to be is to do them a great wrong.

For girls under twenty the responsibility of the mother is greater because so much depends upon the establishment of the daughter's health during these earlier years. But girls themselves should take it upon their own responsibility to a large extent also. In the appendix to this volume will be found a bibliography where among the works published by the Young Women's Christian Association, the girl may find some that will answer many questions that perhaps have puzzled her in the period of swift growth between fifteen and twenty.

Every mother should be in her daughter's confidence in regard to all questions of health and physical well-being. And now and then the father should stand his daughters up in a row before him, look them over, and see for himself whether they are sound, blooming, well developed and rosy. Do their chests stand up good and strong? Is the chin well down and back? Are the shoulders well back? Can they take full, deep, long breaths? If they were set back against the wall, would the hips be close to the wall, the shoulder blades nearly flat against the wall and would the girls be perfectly comfortable in that position? And can they then walk off, holding the frame in this way, and keep the position firmly and gracefully? How hard can they hit, how fast can they run, how high can they jump, how much can they lift, how free are they from pain, and how happy are they? If the answers to these questions are not satisfactory, that farmer's crop of humanity does not take a prize! And he should try to know the reason why. It is not a lightning streak of divine disfavor that has destroyed this crop. It is just as impossible that a woman should have a beautiful child if she has been the victim of overstrain for ten years before that child is born, as it would be to get a good crop from absolutely untilled ground. The home is the field for the harvest of children. That ground must be cultivated as carefully and assiduously as any other, or the harvest will bring no honor to the family.

If the young girls in the farmstead do not measure up to the standard, will they try to do what is in their power to make themselves more strong, fit, and beautiful? It will take six weeks of hard, unremitting work, by night and day and every hour in the day, to turn a round-shouldered girl into a well-shaped, straight-shouldered, elastic figure. Is it worth while? The result will be a girl with better breathing capacity, more vigor, more beautiful carriage, and in every way better prepared for a happy life. There are some wrongs that are done to the young people by neglect of the laws of health that never can be made up to them. But there is much that can be done, and perhaps it is not too late to correct some errors and to make up for some losses. Health conditions on many farms are not up to the mark and among the causes of this the Report of the Commission on Country Life mentions the too long hours of work. There are of course other causes. Three meals a day of pork and bread, seven days in the week, fifty-two weeks in the year, year in and year out the same, will never produce blooming youngsters, especially if we are speaking of the delicate constitutions of girls. Nor will bedrooms hermetically sealed from air during half of the breathing time, favor development of lung-capacity.

Theoretically, the farm should be the most healthful place for the growth of human beings; and wherever sanitary conveniences are installed, health conditions need no betterment. The point is not that the rural people have declined from a former better condition, but that they have not gone forward so fast as they might. While the residents of cities have at the command of new science been making swift progress in sanitation, working vigorously on the problems of pure food, good water, the suppression of tuberculosis, pellagra and other diseases, the country people have not so swiftly answered the call.

Such movements as, for instance, the one to provide pure milk for babies, lower the death rate in the cities, while the health rate in the country has not shown a corresponding rise. This is simply because the country towns have not waked to the importance of these endeavors toward betterment. The country may be the home of abounding physical vigor; but many an unsanitary farmstead and many an unregenerated village is still in a decidedly unmoral state of ill-health.

In this matter a recent investigation in New York State has aroused serious apprehension. Statistics were made public showing that the death rate in so-called rural districts was increasing as compared with that of the large city, New York, the conclusion being that the country would have to give up its world-old claim to being a supremely healthful place to live.

If, however, we look into the matter more closely, we may find a ray of hope. The investigation included under the word "rural" towns of over eight thousand inhabitants, the division being no doubt made because of the fact that the United States reports were, up to 1810, made on a like basis, and other statistics could be more conveniently compared if these were included. But the census of 1910 makes the word "rural" cover towns and villages of 2500 and under, and what we understand by rural conditions pertains to this smaller grouping. The larger grouping includes a number of towns that are manufacturing in character, that sometimes contain a large foreign element, that have the beginnings of congestion without the open air to offset them, and that have notoriously not followed in the steps of the larger cities in sanitation. Thus these very unrural towns bring down the average.

We feel, then, that we have a right to take heart of grace and tell ourselves that the open country is as good for health as it ever was. Moreover, farm houses are rapidly acquiring the principal appliances for sanitation. The wells are being looked out for and the pure condition of the water supply being insured from contagion; and the level of education in regard to sanitation is being rapidly lifted. At present, the small towns and the larger villages are about on a par in regard to indifference to the laws of health, and to the necessity for framing new ones to meet new demands. But in the smaller villages and in the open country the necessity is not so pressing because the congestion has not been so immediate as to cause depression of the death rate there.