uggle and to give her
sometimes slender strength to help in the lifting; but when it becomes
evident that the old unsanitary kitchen of the average farm home could
be renovated and made the workshop of joyous efficiency instead of the
treadmill of despairing burden-bearing; and when at the same time she
sees additions constantly made to the greater efficiency of the farming
side of the farmstead business, the daughter feels with the mother that
their work does not have the appreciation that it deserves. And this is
what puts the one little drop of bitterness into the cup she has to
drink. There is nothing like this to take the tuck out of one. To know
that there exist means to reduce the time limit for a certain piece of
work from four hours to twenty minutes and that these means are
stubbornly and constantly denied to the worker, takes the poetry and the
hope out of her heart and the buoyancy out of her joints more than
anything else could. Especially is this the effect when the chains are
being hung in the new barn to swing the feed along the passageway to
every stall, all to save the strength of the men's arms, and no chains
and pulleys are being strung in the kitchen to lift pails and swing
loads for the mother and sister. To know that the time spent in
dishwashing for a family of five could be reduced from six hours
distributed through two days to forty-two minutes at one time in one
morning--and then to have to go on interminably giving three separate
hours daily to this loathsome, lukewarm, greasy, unsanitary,
ill-assorted, deadening task--no, the next group of household
administrators will not do that!

It is not that the younger women are lazy and inclined to shirk the
heavy tasks. That is not their spirit. But they cannot keep up their
fine buoyancy of mind and heart when better methods are constantly going
into the barn and none into the house; when appliances are bought for
cattle and none for the women. And they know that life will not be held
up to its high level if they cannot command buoyancy of spirit.

Life is framed on a larger pattern nowadays; there is a greater demand
for standard; there is a higher degree of intelligence required. All
this the new young woman sees that she has to do and be. She springs to
meet the situation--but hanging at her heels is a chain, the chain of
old-fashioned methods. She must be free of this chain, or she will not
sustain the burden of country life in the time to com