ice.

In this connection a long step forward has just been taken through
the inquiries, which during the last two years, the Department of
Agriculture has been making as to the real position of women on the
farm, and has been making them of the women themselves. This came
about through a letter addressed to the Secretary from Mr. Clarence
Poe, Raleigh, North Carolina, under date of July 9, 1913, in which he
said: "Have some bulletins for the farmer's wife, as well as for the
farmer himself. The farm woman has been the most neglected factor
in the rural problem, and she has been especially neglected by the
National Department of Agriculture. Of course, a few such bulletins
are printed, but not enough."

A letter was accordingly sent out from Washington to the housewives of
the department's 55,000 volunteer crop correspondents, on the whole a
group of picked women. They were invited to state both their personal
views and the results of discussions with women neighbors, their
church organization or any women's organization to which they might
belong. To this letter 2,225 relevant replies were received, many
of these transmitting the opinions of groups of women in the
neighborhood.

The letter asked "how the United States Department of Agriculture can
better meet the needs of farm housewives." Extracts from the replies
with comments have been published in the form of four bulletins. Many
of the letters make tragic reading: the want of any money of their
own; the never-ending hours; the bad roads and poor schools; neglect
in girlhood and at times of childbirth. A great many thoughtless
husbands will certainly be awakened to a sense of neglected
opportunities, as well as to many sins of commission.

The bulletins contain appendices of suggestions how farm women can
help one another, and how they may gain much help from the certainly
now thoroughly converted Department of Agriculture, through farmer's
institutes for women, through demonstrations and other extension
work under the Smith-Lever Act of 1914, and through the formation of
women's and girls' clubs.

It is of the utmost importance to society, as well as to herself, that
the whole economic status of the married woman, performing domestic
duties, should be placed upon a sounder basis. It is not as if the
unsatisfactory position of the average wife and mother could confine
its results to herself. Compared with other occupations, hers fulfills
none of the condition