Americus times-recorder. [volume] (Americus, Ga.) 1891-current, 1919-03-06
RURAL WOMEN OvERwORKED.

XII RAL NUMEN UNEhNOhhLD'
Cooking cleaning washing, ironing, scrubbing, sew
ing milking churning nursing canning and preserving
caring for chickens and garden sometimes spinning ana
knitting frequently providing all the family home-
made bedding are few of the minor household duties
with which rural mothers in many sections of the United
States are In addition to the daily perform
ance of these tasks the average country
is frequently called upon to work side by side
with her husband in the fields and to assist in all kinds
of seasonal chores, including carrying water for house
hold uses from distant springs and wells.
'"Toting" water of the heaviest tasks that fall
to the lot of rural women and children Oneffh of the
white families visited in the OF a recent survey
made by the Childrens Bureau, United States Depart
ment of Labor in one county in Southern state and
one-third of the negro families carried water for all
necessary household purposes far so feet and
humber farms had water of any kind
their premises and had supply their needs from the
landlords wells In another section investigated
single family visited either in the house
the porch; and only of five had it so
feet of the house Twenty families in this section carried
water far 800 feet and eight families far
eighth to a quarter Of mile from the nearest
spring
In most rural families, according the report the
house work well many outside chores has to be
done by the mothers without help of any kind except
what afforded by the girls of the family Only three
of the in of the counties studied kept SER
regularly, and the obsence of modern household
conveniences handcaps the housewife and renders her
tasks doubly hard, With the exception of sewing
chimes, there practically conveniences for faci-
tang the womens work in the average rural family
the Investigated area. While the men, as a rule, have
planters drillers spreaders and various kinds Of new
tangled help in their farm work nothing has been done
to make women's tasks any easier
The cooking is usually done small wood-burnng
stoves the only utensils being pots and kettles,
which may on the stove or in the big open
freplayes The laundry consisting of wooden tubs pac-
ed bench and great iron wash kettle in which the
clothes boiled is usually down by the spring Much
strainng lifting undue fatigue involved this
ort-odoor laundry. Sometimes oldfashioned paddle
is used instead of the modern washboard which still
regarded luxury in many honest Only one home IL
this section had pump and sink inside the kitchen
The gasoline engine furnishing power, makes it pos
sibe for every rural home be equipped with such
timesaving labor-savng devises as electrically
driven washing machines, churns pumping apparatus,
electric lights and hundreds of other machines which
lows rural homes have the convenences
of the city Modern individual sanitary systems are TAX
ing the places of the unsaniary arrangements the past
Merchants in Americas other towns in this section
constantly advertising their desire to demonstrate
at their expense, the efficiency of modern electric
and sanitary equipment
The oldstyle cook stove is being replaced by mod
ern stoves that conne the the stove saving fuel
and labor.
Many of the mountain homes in this state still have
their spinning wheels in use and occasionally prirn1-
tive hand-loom is found Some of these homes display
rare collection of homemade coverds and blankets The
wool was grown the farm, sheared from the Sheep
washed, carded and spun by the women of the family
dyed sometimes, with home made madden indigo and
walnut stains; and the into quaint cover
lids and blankets. The old-fashioned implements
for churning and buttermaking sweeping done by
of homemade brooms fashioned of short lunches
sedge grass for house twgs bound together
with hickory withe for the yard, are among some of
ahe primitive conditions dealt with by the report