Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1910-08-24

has and he himself has not. The two
should be put on equal terms. and the
country talent be given the same oppor-
tunity as the city talent to express itself
and to contribute to the welfare of the
world in which we live.
THE COUNTRY CHURCH.
THE country church should be made a
true social center. alive to every need
of the community, standing for a broad
individual outlook and development TAX
ing the lead in work and in recreation,
caring more for conduct than for DOGMA
more NOR ethical spiritual, practical
betterment than for merely formal piety.
The country fair offers far greater pos
sibilites for continuous and healthy use
fulness than it at present affords. The
country school should be made vital
center for economic, social, and educa-
tional cooperation: it is naturally fitted
to be such a center for those engaged in
commercial farming. for those who live
on and by the small farms they
themselves own. The problem of the
farm is really the problem of the family
that lives on the farm. On all these
questions there is need of intelligent
study, such as marks the books of Pro-
fessor Bailey of Cornell and of Horace
Plunkett's book on the Rural Life Pro-
blems of the United States
zone feature of the problem should be
recognized by the farmer at once. and an
effort made to deal with it. 1t is our
duty and our business to consider the
farm laborer exactly as We consider the
farmer. No country life can be satisfac-
tory when the owners of farmers tend,
for whatever reason, to go away to live
in cities instead of working their farms;
and, moreover, 1t cannot be really salts
factory when the labor system is so
managed that there is for part of the
year demand for labor at all, so that
the farmers tend to rely on migratory
laborers who come but to work in the
country with no permanent interest in it
and with no prospect Of steady employ
ment: 1t is exceedingly difficult to make
a good citizen out of a man who can't
count upon some steadiness and contin-
uity in the work which means to him his
livelihood. Economic conditions on the
farm-in variety and kind of crop grow
ing. especially as distributed in time,
and in housing for the men-must be 50
shaped as to render 1t possible for the
man WHO idDOSS IOF the FARMER TO De
steadily employed under conditions which
foster his self-respect and tend for his
development.
MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL.
"Above all, the conditions of farm life
must always be shaped with a view to
the welfare of the farmers wife and the
farm laborer's wife quite as much as to
the welfare of the farmer and farm la
borer. To have the woman a mere
drudge Is at least as bad as to have the
man a mere drudge. 1t Is every whit as
important to introduce new machines to
economic her labor within the house, as
1t is to introduce machinery to increase
the effectiveness of his labor outside the
house. I haven't the slightest sympathy
with any movement which looks to ex-
cusing men and women for the non-per-
Torrance of duty and fixes attention on
ly on rights and not on duties. The wo-
man who shirks her duty as housewife,
as mother, Is contemplate creature;
Just as the corresponding man is a con-
temptible creature. But the welfare of
the woman is even more important than
the welfare of the man; for the mother
is the real atlas, who bears aloft in her
strong and tender arms the destiny of
the world. She deserves honor and con