The progressive farmer., 1902-08-26
Woman's Work.
A WIFE SAVER.

We have been urging farmers now
that labor is advancing in price and
hard to get, to use the very best agri-
cultural machinery, machinery that
will enable the operator to decrease
the cost per bushel, per ton, or per
pound of growing the different farm
crops; and when he has to employ
labor, to employ labor of the highest
efficiency and pay a proportionate
price. A high priced man with the
best tools will produce any kind of
crop more cheaply than an ordinary
priced man with ordinary tools.
The same method should be applied
in the household. The mistress of the
house has absolute right to any and
every labor-saving contrivance that
has been devised and that lies at all
within the means of her husband to
purchase. For improved appliances
are women savers. They save the
health of the wife and prolong her
days. No sensible farmer ever wants
to be a widower. His wife's health
should therefore be a matter of first
consideration and if he can devise or
purchase anything that will tend to
lessen the number of her steps and de-
crease her burdens, it is the very best
economy, to say nothing of humanity,
to supply her with the same.
AS most farm houses are construct
ed, the wife or daughter has to take
many more steps than should be neces-
sary. 1t is a wearisome job, especial
ly when company is about, to carry
dishes from the dining room to the
kitchen sink and then carry them back
to the cupboard. Why not make for
your wife work table? 1t should be
about five feet long and narrow
enough to pass through the doors and
high enough to enable her to sit by
it with comfort on a stool Put
around it an edge or border about
three inches above the top surface to
prevent the dishes from sliding off,
line with zinc and put it on easy run
ming castors. The housewife can shove
this to the table. put all the dishes on
it, push it out to the sink, wash the
dishes and dry them, put them back
on the work table and push it to the
cupboard.
This is very simple Any farmer
can make it himself, if he wants to,
and we hope that the farmers wives
who read Wallaces' Farmer will give
their husbands no peace until they
make one. No farmer would think of
carrying corn fodder sheaf by sheaf
from the field to the barn, or from the
barn to the feed lot. He would put
them on a low-dOwn wagon, hitch a
pair of horses to it and haul it. Why
should he ask his wife to take unnec-
essary steps, when he himself is not
willing to do it? Think over this, sis
ters, and you have our permission not
to give the man of the house any peace
night or day after the first wet day un-
till he makes this table He will be
so pleased with it himself that he will
undertake even to wash dishes just to
see how much labor he has saved and
how easily it is done.
IF this works, as we are sure it will,
we are quite sure there is not the
slightest danger of his neglecting to
subscribe to Wallaces' Farmer next
year and many years to come, for this
suggestion is worth to the tired house
wife many years. subscription to the
paper, and we don't charge a cent for
it. We do not believe there is a man
reading Wallaces' Farmer who will
refuse to make a work table of this
kind at the first opportunity. It will
not be complete, however, unless he
furnishes his wife stool on which to
sit when washing dishes. What is the
use in her standing up when she might
as well be sitting down ?-Uncle Henry
in Wallace's Farmer.