In Times Like These

by Nellie L. McClung

So begins the degeneration of a man, and it is all based on the false attitude we have toward labor. His idea of labor was wrong while he was on the farm. He worked and did nothing else, until he forgot how to do everything else. Then he stopped working, and he was lost.

Why any rational human being wants to "retire" to the city, goes beyond me! I can understand the city man, worn with the noise, choked by the dust, frazzled with cares, retiring to the country, where he can heal his tired soul, pottering around his own garden, and watching green things grow. That seems reasonable and logical! But for a man who has known the delight of planting and reaping to retire to a city or a small town, and "hang around," doing nothing, is surely a retrograde step.

The retired farmer is seldom interested in community matters—they usually vote against any by-law for improvement. Coal-oil lamps were good enough on the farm—why should a town have electric light? Why should a town spend money on cement sidewalks when they already have good dirt roads? He will not subscribe funds for the support of a gymnasium, hockey club or public baths. He does not understand about the need of exercise, he always got too much; and he doesn't see any reason why the boys should not go to the river and swim.

It is not that the farmer is selfish or mean above or below other men. It is because he has not learned team play or the community spirit. But it is coming. The farmer has been an independent fellow, able to get along without much help from anyone. He could always hire plenty of men, and there are machines for every need. So far as the farmer has been concerned, he could get along very well.

It has not been so with the farmer's wife. More than any other woman she has needed help, and less than any other woman has she got it. She has been left alone, to live or die, sink or swim.

Machines for helping the man on the farm are on the market in great numbers, and are bought eagerly, for the farmer reasons out the matter quite logically, and arrives at the conclusion that anything which will add to the productiveness of his farm is good buying. He can see the financial value of a seeder, or a roller, or a feed chopper. Now, with a washing-machine it is different. A washing-machine can only wash clothes, and his wife has always been able to get the clothes washed some way. The farmer does not see any return for his ten dollars and a half, and so he passes up the machine. Besides this, his mother never used one, and always managed to keep the clothes clean, too, and that settles it!

The outside farm work has progressed wonderfully, but the indoor farm work is done in exactly the same way as it was twenty-five years ago, with the possible exception of the cream-separator.

Many a farmyard, with its binders, rakes, drills, rollers, gasoline engine, fanning-mill, and steam-plow looks as if someone had been giving a machinery shower; but in the kitchen you will find the old washboard and dasher churn, which belonged to the same era as the reaping hook and tallow candle. The women still carry the water in a pail from a pump outside, wash the dishes on the kitchen table, and carry the water out again in a pail; although out in the barn the water is pumped by a windmill, or a gasoline engine. The outside work on the farm is done by horse, steam, or gasoline, but the indoor work is all done by woman-power.

And then, when the woman-power gives out, as it does many times, under the strain of hard work and childbearing, the whole neighborhood mourns and says: "God's ways are past finding out."

I remember once attending the funeral of a woman who had been doing the work for a family of six children and three hired men, and she had not even a baby carriage to make her work lighter. When the last baby was three days old, just in threshing time, she died. Suddenly, and without warning, the power went off, and she quit without notice. The bereaved husband was the most astonished man in the world. He had never known Jane to do a thing like that before, and he could not get over it. In threshing time, too!