The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1886-01-21
THE ILLS OF FARM LIFE.
How They Could Be Relieved by Timely
Recreation.


Recreation.
In an article on Rural Recreations,
in the magazine Outing, Mr.. j. R.
Dodge makes some telling points against
/ the neglect of farmers to allow them
| selves and families suitable recreation
to compensate the common wear and
tear of rural life. The writer saws:
There is hardship as well as privilege,
drudgery as well as elevating labor.
| There is exposure to Summers storm
and Winter cold; tramping in the mud
of seed-time; toiling early and late to
secure the harvest. The haymaking day
has as many hours as that of the street
Car driver. In northern districts the
best part of the Summer is spent in
making hay, and the Winter in feeding
it, with little results in milk and meat
When ten pounds of milk make one
OF cheese, that sells for cents, the ex-
ercise of lifting mortgage is not a re-
assuring recreation. When purchaser
of Dakota railroad lands is offered but
go cents per bushel for wheat at the sta
ton elevator. he sees no elevating pros
poets of meeting his deferred payments.
Nor does the Eastern farmer find either
poetry or profit in picking rocks" OF
making stone wall There is many an
investment in rural Improvement that
promises but insignificant dividends in
cash.
1t is not strange, then, that we see
farmers worn with weary labors, bent
with rheumatism, wearing in their faces
deep lines of care, and showing the
need OF recuperative influences. 1t has
been said, upon an assumed foundation
of statistics, that the proportion of the
insane from the country is greater than
from the city. If true, as it should not
be, what can be the cause? The farm
worker who performs most of his labor
by the muscles, with minimum use of
the brain, unrelieved by sociality or SEN
timent, uses only one set Of faculties,
while the better side of his nature rllsts
with disuse. The isolation of the coun-
try thus becomes a greater solitude;
with cares, apprehensions, and some
times forebodings of pecuniary depend
ence, solitude deepens into melancholy,
and insanity sometimes follows.
The mistress of the farmhouse is Of
ten greater drudge than the farmer.
The routine of daily duty is more uni
form and exacting; the confinement is
more circumscribed, and naturally be-
comes more irksome. She is too often
housekeeper. nurse, cook, governess,
chambermaid, seamstress. dairy-wOman,
as well as the farmers wife Such a
substitute for Observation-Disclosures should
be made of iron. The farmer is ac-
customed to hard work himself, though
it is relieved by the ameliorations of
pure air and free locomotion, and he
fails to see the slavery to which his wife
is doomed because his mother was list
such slave. His ideas come by inner
itance, and are fortified by personal ex-
perience. He might relieve her by rele-
eating the dairy to the factory, by labor
saving appliances, by hiring more help,
sometimes by doing little of this do
mestic drudgery himself; but he doesn't
think of it, and, perhaps, don't like to
have one jog his memory. Under these
evils and hardships, saying nothing of
trials OF disposition and tribulations, is
it a wonder that the farmers wife is
sometimes compelled to exchange her
home OF hardship for hospital of mind
diseases? These may be extreme cases,
but they occur, and, were it not for
NnOItSO1lIC illIiSiCilCCS VI TIC V,
would come to light with greater FIRE
quency.
The ills of isolation and the heavy
weight Of care are not the only causes
OF physical and mental strain and col
lapse in the experience of country life.
There are avoidable unsanitaly sur
roundings utterly out of keeping with
the purity and healthfulness of natural
rural conditions. The barn-yard may
be too near the well; cesspools and sur
face drainage may aid the pollution by
percolation; decaying vegetation in the
cellar may fill the house with poisonous
gases. The resisting power of high
health may long withstand influences
so injurious, until, some Summer, dys-
entery or typhoid fever may select for
victim the flower of the family, or carry
off the Woodworking mother, the
guardian angel Of the household.
In view OF such facts, which have ex-
cited much attention without exerting
sufficient influence, the need of respite
from strain of monotonous toll upon the
farm must be apparent. Some form of
vacation, short though it must be in
Summer, is evidently necessary. Some
temporary change, frequent yet radical,
OF the tone and tenor Of ordinary rou-
tine, is essential to the highest results
OF the work and the highest health and
happiness OF the worker