Even the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto but to minister.
CHAPTER XVII
THE DRESS BUDGET
The Country Girl has this advantage—the business of the farm and the home are so closely connected that the work she has to do can be carried on without separating her from her home. This would not be so in any work she could undertake in the city. She would not have a great big house to return to from her store or factory, but some little upstairs room, the "hall-bedroom" of that tragic book The Long Day, which so painfully portrays the conditions of work for girls in a great city. The Country Girl in her home with her housework about her is in a paradise compared with conditions such as these.
The "home" means rent, board, general living expenses—all these are looked out for in the scheme of life for the Country Girl. Why, then, does she feel so great a need for sheer money? The reason is partly this: she has the dress problem on her hands. She is scantily supplied with a bit now and then when she asks for a cloak or some other garment; she is not assigned a certain sum a month, as her self-respecting spirit demands, and left free to use it as her judgment directs. She has not been trained to do this and the fear that she will not do it wisely keeps the father from inaugurating such a system. In the long run, after the daughter has gained wisdom from a few mistakes with the suffering resulting therefrom, the outgo from the parental pocket would not be much increased by adopting the educative method of letting her have the personal management of her little budget. Few fathers can bear to see a daughter really suffer; most fathers will not let her even foolishly think that she is suffering, and a plea from her will generally bring an indulgence in some unnecessary purchase.
The problem is intricate and has many sides; but we believe the best way for the father to take would be to place a set sum at her command with the injunction that she is to plan and use it carefully—and make it do! If the parent is able to go so far in the process of education as to start her on a cash account and oversee her as she tries to carry it on, especially if he will initiate her in the mysteries of a small bank account, he will in the majority of cases be richly repaid in the development of an ability to manage and to save that he did not suspect the daughter to possess.
The father himself, in the happy-go-lucky method of most fathers in their financial relations with the women of the family, does not know what the daughter's dress budget for a year ought to be. The following lists of items for a country girl's dress budget are presented here as much for the father's sake as for that of the girls. The lists have been drawn from various sources and they represent the thought of many students of country life conditions and of some country girls themselves.
The first list was made by a wide-awake Country Girl in the State of Idaho: