The Wolf Point herald. (Wolf Point, Mont.) 1913-1940, 1926-06-03
THE PRAIRIE MOTHER
(By Herbert Kaufman)

(By Herbert Kaufman
She came to rock the cradle of a new empire.
Adventure calls to men but duty summons women.
And so, when the time was ripe to breed new stars
for the Flag, she set forth from Maine and Ohio and
Killarney's loneliness and her Swedish village and
her ford home to mother the wilderness.
Only God and she know the fullness of her CIV
ing to the young Northwest.
She lived in sod houses and hay-roofed huts,
with the nearest n~eighbor often a days trudge away.
She had no decencies. She did not even know
the luxury of floor or fire place. Her meal was ground
in a hand mill and her baking range was a make
shift oven, in the yard.
She helped in the felds-at the p~loughing and
the sowing and she helped to scythe the crop and
bind the sheaves.
She watered stock and spun and knitted and
tailored. She made a garden and preserved the Win
ter food-milked her COWS and nursed her children.
The sleepy-eyed sun found her already at her tasks,
and the midmOon heard her Groom the baby to rest.
Her beauty sleep" began at ten and ended at
four. Year in and out she never had an orange, a
box of sweets or a gift of remembrance.
She fought drought and dearth and savages-
and savager loneliness. her Sunday bests were
calico and linsey WoOlsey. She grew old at the rate
Of tWenty-fOur months a year at the %grubbing hoe
and the wash tub and the churn.
She bore her BARNS alone and buried them on
The frozen prairies.
But she asked no pity for her broken arches,
her aching back, her poor, gnarled hands. Or for the
Wistful memories Of a fairer youth in sWeeter lands.
She gave America the great Northwest, and was
too proud to bubble at the cost of the stalwart sons
to whom she Willed it. She mOthered MEN.
The only discouraging aspect of agriculture is
its past. The privations, the is"olations, the roadless
wastes, the insanitation, the drudgery that made its
yesterdays a hideous economic dream, are gone.
Electric locomotives ride in the prairie schoon-
ers trail. The site Of the crossroads store is occu-
pied by a r miniature metropolis with the trading re-
sources of a great city. Where the sod house stood,
there's a full cOnvenienced home, with running wa
ter and modern plumbing. The incandescent light
has succeeded the candle dip, and central heating
replaced the old wood burner. Automobiles spin
where s%pringless wagons creaked. The farthest
farmstead is on a R. f. D.. route and blooded herds
have showed scrub stock out of the pasture.
Everybody and his wife are on the telephone
line and are members of the university of Every
where and Everything" via wireless.
A replica Metropolitan Opera House gives
nightly performances in the parlOr and the bowling
of the storm is drowned by Caruso's voice, the Sym
phOny Orchestra and the swirl Of dance music.
New York, by grace of aerial mails, is less than
a day removed from Dakota. Gasoline engines and
propeller blades are measuring distance with a new
foot rule. Invention is fast telling the entire con-
tlnent, shrinking distance out Of the map, as a
blank is shrunk on a hatter's frame.
Within another decade, Montana households
will fly to the seashore and back, in their own sky
flivvers. And the just achieved miracle of trans
Atlantic telephony guarantees that a twelve-year-
old boy in Steele county will, before maturity, turn
his dial in the college dormitory, tune in with the
folks and bid them his regular good night"
Complete identification is on its way to the
farm; the grandsons Of Franklin's kte-key are pre-
pairing to churn butter, and furnish illumination, to
run the saw buck, cook the dinner, to operate heat
ing r~eflectors and warming pads, refrigerate surplus
yields and dairy products until more advantageous
markets, furnish fresh vegetables and fruits through
out the twelve months, pump water for the irrigat-
ing ditch and force seedlings for earlier planting.