Norwich bulletin., 1922-06-16

 answered sYesF'-only six in the hun dred said "No.''
 Many of them gave their reasons for saying Yes, which the magazine sum- marizes but I will not try to. All | can say Is that most of them were erpinent- ly practical and-very few of them were either sentimental or selfish. They might not always be strictly logical. but they were all based on intimate first hand knowledge of the situation. They i showed a strewd common-sense in bal I ancing admitted disadvantages against l proven advantages which was realIy inn pressive.
 Now. do yoc suppose that the sixty six hundred women of the northwest's i farms who, after long experience of farm life, reported that they craved it l for their loved daughters-do you sup pose they were lying just in order to make fne-sounding letters? I don't Of course, their answers do not actually prove, anything. Nothing short of a similar census, extended to the whole seven millions of American farm wives would be conclusive. But there is no reason to suppose that the seven thous- and are anything but fairly representa- i tive of the seven millions One doesn't need to eat the whole pudding. A sin l gle plateful tells him whether 1t is good or not. Nor need we erect weather i vanes-on every square foot of our land 1 to know which way the wind is blow ing. A single arrow above the barn ga- ble tells whether 1t Is from the east or the northwest.
 What then shall we think of the city dwelling critics who have for two gen erations been alternately bewailing the slavery of the farm-wife, and denounc- i ing the selfshness of her brutal slave driver? I, for one, am. not disposed to regard them as wilful liars, either. But I can't help feeling that they have been sadly one-sided, prejudiced, self-blinded i; prone to generalize too reck1essly from insufficient data.
 He would be poor observer who ] would assert that farm life, whether ipassed by farmer Nor farmers wife, is
 always a bubbling ecstasy. We have
 all of us, known farmers wives who
 have been worn out by overwork, crush
 ed down by accommodating cares, wreck ], ed hopelessly on the reefs of premature old age. So, too, have we all knowI
 farm. husbands who have sunk from the glorious promise of youth to the bent
 backed, blear-eyed. gnarly-hngered de
 crepitude of sordid age. But it wasn't necessarily. their wives selfishness and avarice which caused it. There are al ways two sides, even to a turnip, and ii is not judicious for the pot to call the kettle black.
 } It Is a common tendency of shallow minds to leap to conclusions They take notice of few exceptional cases n and thereupon formulate general law : based on these exceptions. Once in six. ty years farming experience thave had i l7oH
 redbreast" by some-puil up my sprout . ing corn, much the, way the crow does
 if given chance. Nor were tht
 thrushes anything like as amenabIe tt argument as the crows. They paid nc attention to the strings which kept th' crows away. They even perched uncon cernedly on the poles from which deat thrushes dangled as~"drefT1e examples ' and warnings. They made me nor, trouble and did my crop more damagi that one year than all the crows of si1 decades. But should have been a yer. nasty chap if I had thereupon rushed in : !. to print with a. venomous denunciation o J all thrushes as confirmed corn-pullers There are mighty few rules whicl = have no exceptions. Indeed, ft
 sometimes said that he>exceptions prov
 the rule But they never make it, ex t cept in minds unbalanced by persona = prejudice or united for logical reason q ing. Life, however, Is pretty muc e what we make it, whether on the farm o e in the factory or the office or the kftche tt or the parior.
 q It is, also, a rather common trait 0 q human nature for each one of us to be l. lieve that his particular job is jest l. leetle worse than the other fellows. ( have seen it reported that John I T Rockefeller was willing to give mdl D lion dollars for a good digestive az o paratus. Doubtless there are some far r mers and perhaps some farmers wive i" who think they'd be glad to take hi
 bellyacl1es if they could have the mi q lion dollars in exchange. The chance I, are, if the swap should really be mad, l. that it wouldn't be a week befoTe bot
 sides would be sorry for their bargain. q Meanwhile. I'm glad to know that,