The American Country Girl

by Martha Foote Crow

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 ownership 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 accumulate, 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 assigned 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 ownership 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 attitude 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 washing which that passion 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 constituted girl will be accurate. If necessity compels her to borrow a small sum, she will repay it at the earliest possible moment.