—Professor Martha van Rensselaer.
CHAPTER XIX
THE FARM PARTNER
The Country Girl of to-day may look forward to a life in which she shall serve in a double capacity. She is to be a farm-woman and she is to be also a wife-mother. The farm woman may do what she can in the work of the farmstead, but her occupations there must be in abeyance before the vastly greater importance of the work which is specially hers—the conserving of the best and highest interests of the family. She is, first, the head and link of the family. If after she has finished her contribution to the work of discipline, education, inspiration, reading and story-telling, spiritual and esthetic guidance, mending and making, and placing food thrice on the table daily; after she has supplied her own needs in self-education and self-inspiration, in recreation and social satisfaction, so that she may come to the tasks mentioned above with spiritual and mental energy and alertness; and if then she still has time, strength, patience, will, energy and taste, left for still greater demands upon her resources; then she may help in the things that concern the farm business. She may do whatever will be a joy to her to do, whatever she can do buoyantly and with enthusiasm.
No doubt in the new era this will be possible. But the woman of the next generation is going to insist upon being happy, and her happiness is to consist in maintaining efficient working power and in having her work appreciated. Her work in the home must be thought of as having the same value as any other earning work. It must be acknowledged in the home of the future that woman's skill and woman's power to save are both business assets. It should be acknowledged in the home of to-day both for the wife and for the daughter.
One may say that all business is carried on by men in order that the home—which means the wife and the children—may be sustained and that its happiness and its outlook to the future may be made to prosper. All men work for this end. The love of a man for his wife and for their children is the inspiration of his daily toil. But with all other occupations save the farmer's, the business is one thing and the home is another. The woman and her share of world's work, namely the making and the keeping of the home, are a thing apart. They are placed in a little coop by themselves and there treasured as a shrine. Sometimes, to be sure, the little coop where the woman plies her work is in the mind of the man quite other than a shrine. But in the majority of cases it is this, and we are speaking of the law and not of the exception.
But with the wife of the farmer, the woman's laboratory-machine-shop-studio is not a little room by itself. The home is a business center; it is a dynamo from which goes out the power for the whole machinery; it is itself a piece of elaborate machinery without which the rest of the cogs and bands and phlanges would all go awry and break into pieces, doing damage to the whole farm-factory.
It is because of this that the woman in the farm home is so essential a part of the farm business; it is for this reason that she is to be thought of as a partner. It is for this reason that the farm woman may have the satisfaction of knowing that she contributes more of constructive value than do the women of any other group. From these conditions farm women gain a training that no other women have. It is claimed that suffrage was carried in the Northwestern States by the weight of the women of the agricultural regions; they had been trained to the new point of view by their position in the farmstead.
Students of the conditions of living in the homes of both city and country have proposed various schemes for the practical finances in the home. An excellent scheme for a household budget appeared in the Journal of Home Economics for June, 1914. It provided for three separate accounts, one called "The Man's Personal Account," one "The Woman's Personal Account," and the third, "The Family Account." Into the first went the man's clothes, traveling expenses (carfare, etc.), charities, amusements, society dues, dentist and doctor's bills—all personal expenses. Into the second went similar items for the woman, except that the bills connected with the birth of children were not recorded there. These went into the third account, together with the running expenses of living, and all expenses connected with the children, their clothing, amusements, instruction, etc. A weekly sum came from this account for the use of the wife for the household; what remained there after these depredations, composed the mutual savings, and this sum belonged equally to both husband and wife and could be used for any purpose only by consent of both. This scheme in its general features is adapted to any family, but might of course, after discussion and consent, be altered to suit circumstances.