Audubon County Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Audubon Co., Iowa) 1885-1894, 1886-02-11
Some Of the Ills OF Farm, Life.

/ W 81
In art,cl, on "Rural Rocrcatiols,f In
outing, Mr.. j. X. Dodge makes some
telling points against tn, neglect OF
farmers to allow themselves and fam-
lies suitabla recreation 10 compensate
the common wear and tear OF rural
life. The writer says:
There is hardship rs well as privilege,
| 8rudgcry as well as uevating labor
| There is exposure to summers storm
and winters cold trampng in the mud
| of seed.time: toling early aud late to Sc
cure the harvest. The hay-making day
has as many hours as that of the street.
car driver In northern districts the
best part of summer is spent in making
hay, and the winter in feeding it, with
with little results in milk and cheese,
that it sells at seven cents, the exercise
of lifting a mortgage is not a reassurng
recreation. When purchaser of Da-
kota railroad lands Is offered but sixty
cents per bushel for wheat at the sta
ton elevator, he sees no elevating pros
pect of meeting his deferred payments.
Nor does the eastern farmer find either
poetry or profit in picking rocks" or
making stone wall. There is many an
investment in rural improvements 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 necuperative 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
his brains, unrelieved by sociality of SEN
timent, was only one set of faculties,
while the better side of his nature rusts
with dsuse. The isolation of the coun-
try thus becomes 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
often greater drudge than the farmer.
The routine of daily duty is more cir
cumscribed and naturally becomes more
irksome. She is too often housekeeper,
nurse, cook, governess, chambermaid,
seamstress. dairy-woman, as well
as the farmers wife. Such
substitute for maid-of-all-work 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 just
such slave. His ideas come by Inherit
ance, and are fortified by personal cx.
perience. He might relieve her by
RELOCATING the dairy to the factory, by
labor-saving appliances, by hiring more
help, sometimes by doing little of this
doesn't think of it, and perhaps, don't
like to have one jog his memory.
Under these tolls and hardships, saying
nothing of trials of disposition and tribu-
lations of temper, is it Il wonder that
the farmers wife is sometimes compell-
ed to exchange her home of hardship
for a hospital of mind diseased? These
may be extreme cases, but they occur,
and, were it not for wholesome in
fluences of the country, would come to
light with greater frequency.
The ills of isolation and the heavy
weight of care not the only causes Of
physical and mental strain and collapse
in the experience of country life. There
are avoidable unsanitary surroundings
utterly out of keeping with the purity
and healthfulness of natural rural condi-
tons. The barn-yard may be too near
the well; cesspools and surface drain
age may aid the pollution by percola-
ton; 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, dyscntery or ty-
phoid-fever may select for victim the
flower of the family, or carry off the
hard working mother, the guardian
angel of the household.
In view of such facts, which have ex-
cited much attention without cxerting a
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 ordn-
airy routine, is essential to the highest
results of the work and the highest
health and happiness of the worker.