Connecticut western news., 1920-11-18
FARMERS WIVES RESENT
 PITY OF CITY FOLKS
Sheffield Woman Writ e s Interestingly of Her
 Farm Life

ings beyond those enjoyed by women who live in cities are claimed for the women of the American farmlands by a farm journal which has gone to some trouble to find how farmers wives live and what they think about , their lives, says the Literary Digest. ! A good deal of sympathy, even of | pity, has been extended to farmwives by some recent investigators and newspaper writers. Adeline O. Goess- ling, home editor of Farm and Home |, (Springfeld, Mass.), asked the wom- l en among the papers subscribers to i write letters telling frankly what they thought about reports that the i "poor farm women on lonely farms tolls wearily with scant reward and l grows old and gray before her youth has gone" Nearly ten thousand farmers wives and daughters from all over the country, writes Miss Goessling, took the trouble to deny the charge. Their optimistic letters, number of which are reprinted by Farm and Home, seem especially appropriate in view of the approach ing Thanksgiving season. "How many women living in crowded quar- ters in cities, with scarcely room to breathe and no real freedom, would exchange places with me and many others situated as I ann" asked Mrs. c. E. Hummer, a farmers wife of Oklahoma. "As write, my bonny baby of fourteen months lies asleep in his crib on the screened porch free from noise and dust. Tie older children are playing in the yard with their dog, kitten, and dolls. They have oceans of fresh air to breathe and unlimited freedom. Providing meals is no problem, for I have fresh vegetables growing right at hand, tender young chicken pre- pared from my own flock (no cold storage products for usD We have plenty. of fresh milk and butter, and many other good things to eat and grow on. I can look out on fields of Eipening grain and beautiful flowers and thank God for his blessings" Another farmers wife, Mrs. H. F. Woodrich, of Illinois, writes in an equally enthusiastic vein: Why compare the shortage of hired help in the farm kitchen with the factory? Why not compare it with the city kitchen help problem? The truth is that it is kitchen work and not farm kitchen work that the girls are stunning.
 Lonely? Where is there such an abundance of life as in the country? There may not be crowds of people, but nature makes a grander showing. The trees, the grass, the flowers, the birds, the horses, and cattle-even the crickets, locusts, katydids, and frogs-all add to the grand sym phony of nature. And then there are the beautiful bright moon and the shining stars at night, when God seems so near. Where are the meAbers of the family nearer and dearer to@ each other than on the farm? Where do | they understand each other better? How many wonderful evenings are spent together with neighbors around the piano and victrola, singing and dancing! How many pleasant hours are spent driving through the coun- try, going to band-concerts or picnics or to church on Sunday! And then there are the telephone and the daily visits of the letter-carrier with maga- zines and newspapers.
 It is. city life that is lonely, where one may travel all day. through crowded streets and be among stran- gers; where one may see so many sad-eyed women, and dirty children
 playing in dirty streets!
 Work hard? Of course we work
 hard, but honest work is praise and
 prayer. No other woman on the
 face of the earth is so much a part
 ner and chum to her husband as the 1 farm woman, and nowhere is there
 such clean, wholesome family life as
 on the farm.
 The unfavorable view of farm
 life which moved Farm and Home to
 collect these letters was contained
 in an article called "The Wife of the
 Farmer-The Woman God Forgot"
 It appeared in the Boston Herald and
 contained such statements as:
 1 Knock at the door of the house
 at the crossroads here with me and > see what the farmers wife says
 about it. She will talk, for farmers
 wives are the most lonesome people
 in this world to-day. They look
 out of the window hour after hour
 and see only the same familiar land scape, and when they do get chance
 to talk to the husband for few
 minutes he is so tired that the only thing he can think of is bed "Oh yes," she says, 'T am always work ing. That's all that the women ever
 do on the farm. My day begins at l four-thirty in the morning, and some } nights when am lucky I get through r by ten o'clock"
 : It is in answer to these allegations 4ho4 All