Letters From a Sage-Brush Farm

January 23.
MY DEAR SISTER,—
The children are all in bed, and the wind is howling about the farmhouse in anything but a pleasant fashion, but I don’t mind it any more. The older I grow, the less the weather affects me. Let the elements rage. I know the storm is good for something or somebody, and I can rejoice all the more when a bright clear day comes.
I am all alone here in the farmhouse as Charley has gone to the Legislature at Boise. I mean alone except for the children. If I were in a city house a few feet from my neighbor, I should be quite terrified at being left alone with the children for two months; but here, out in the country, perched on the top of a hill, far from neighbors, looking out upon a landscape scarcely yet tamed by man, I feel perfectly safe. In the city I fear I should have difficulty in feeling the close, intimate presence of God; but out here in the wild country it seems the most natural thing in the world. No wonder the Indians named Him the Great Spirit, for here, with the vast expanse of cloud-filled sky above me, and the vast expans e of earth about me, I feel the Great Spirit around me, in me, and through me, as though my little children and I were floating in waves of protecting love.
I am not a Christian Scientist, nor am I a New Thoughter, but I am a believer in God in this world with us. Two weeks ago Charley, just over the influenza, was forced to leave for Boise. Three of the children were in bed with the influenza, and the day after he left, the last, Charles took it. But he had faith in the God we cannot see. I was downstairs sleeping when I heard him call. I went up and found him in a burning fever. I gave him medicine, and he said, ‘Mamma, tell me what to think of to get well.’ I do not know what a New Thoughter would have said, nor yet a Christian Scientist; but I told Charles how to speak to God and to himself as well, for I believed he could heal himself, as he also believed.
The next day I kept him in bed, although the fever was entirely gone, for faith without works is dead. He was never sick from the time he woke with the fever. That day I began to have the symptoms of influenza — you know that long shuddery chill down your spine that is not affected by the hottest fire you may try to sit upon. By the time I went to bed I was almost prostrate, and worst of all, I was suffering — or beginning to suffer — fear at the thought of myself in this lonely farmhouse, sick, with four little children to be waited upon.
I thought it over as I lay there chilling, and it seemed to me that if God loved me as I believed, and if I had power to heal myself, as I also believed, there was no sense in my allowing such suffering to come upon me and my little ones. I said at once, ‘I feel warm, and t here is nothing the matter with me. I shall go to sleep and wake perfectly well.’ I said those words over and over, and you will find it hard to believe, when I tell you that before long the warm blood began to flow through my veins and I fell asleep. I was all right when I awoke the next morning, and although all my family have had to spend from a week to two weeks in bed with the influenza while I nursed them, cooked, washed, ironed, etc., I have not been sick since my brief symptoms. My dear sister, I am not propounding a religion, I am giving a testimony. God is with us. Anchor yourself to that. He is not sitting up on a throne, an absentee landlord, letting the world shift for itself, and yet holding it accountable: he is with us here, right now, yearning to lift us all up into happiness and lovingness.
I had just managed to get two of my babies out of bed, when two of Charley’s friends came to kill hogs. Charley meant them to keep one hog for themselves to pay for the killing, but they would n’t take more than a shoulder apiece and some ribs and liver; so I had most of those two hogs to ‘put down,’ and I never did such a thing in my life before: Charley has always taken care of the hogs, from hams to sausage.
I worried about that job. O ye of little faith! I had faith to cure my influenza; but to cure the meat from two hogs — I thought I had it all to do, without the assistance of God or anybody else. When the men came to scald the hogs, they wanted to take the galvanized tub that we bathe in. We have been six years on this farm, and until two years ago I bathed uncomplainingly in a sage-brush fire-blackened tub that the pigs had been scalded in. But two years ago I rebelled. Never until we came on this farm had I bathed in anything but a full-sized bathtub with faucets, etc., and it was hard enough to enter that tiny round tub, without using one from which no human ingenuity could remove the soot. I demanded a new tub and got it, and did n’t propose to give it up. It was n’t a bit nice of me, because it caused those men some inconvenience, and they were just doing the killing as a favor; but I put the boiler on the stove, and they brought water from the ditch to save the cistern water, and when it was hot, they carried it out to a barrel where they had some hot irons, which they inserted.
There w ere 350 pounds of meat, and when I saw it I could n’t sleep that night for the thought of taking care of it. The neighbor below the hill offered to have her husband come and do it; but I told her no. I knew that, if I could successfully care for those two hogs, I should be a more valuable person than ever before, even though the apprehension would arise that, were I successful, I should probably have it to do henceforth.
But I did it, sister. I have the prettiest white lard, and the most beautiful hams and bacon. My sausage was the best we have ever had in the six years. I am sending you some so you can try it. I processed most of it. I am a bit suspicious that I may not find it a success, as the fat separated, as did also the juice; but I plan to put the fat in the frying-pan when I open the jars, and take the gelatine juice and work it into the meat, moulding it into pats.
I put my hams and bacon in boxes in the upstairs hall, and was alarmed two days afterward to find the ceiling leaking. One of my neighbors says that the salt is curing the meat and is doing it well. Upstairs all around the boxes is a jellied mass which I shall have some fun cleaning up, and the ceiling is still dripping with a pan set beneath it. My neighbor says that I must not disturb the meat at this stage; so let her drip! Luckily the upstairs hall has no carpet.
And the very next day after the killing, a neighbor man told me exactly how to take care of the meat, another neighbor got my salt, sugar, saltpetre, and pepper, and a neighbor’s girl came over, unasked, to help me. God was looking after me all the time.
I have been making some money lately which is going into thrift stamps. Yes, I have a book along with the rest of my youngsters. A man came to sell me a piano or a phonograph, and before he left I had sold him six hens and a pup. Hens at a dollar and a half apiece, and pup for three dollars. It was twelve dollars for me that I was glad to get; but he made a good bargain, for the hens are the most beautiful white Plymouth Rocks, and the pup is a pure-bred collie. His mother brought twenty-five dollars at the same age, as did also his father.
Walter’s birthday was in December, when he was eleven years old, and he now milks two cows. I am proud of him. It does n’t hurt him, and I know that, the mastery of that milking business must build character. I was a worthless child compared to what my boys are; but then, I was a help to mother, as you know, for I was great at entertaining the other children. But of real work I knew nothing. Whatever the farm may mean to a woman, it is the best place in the world to raise boys.
How strange it. would seem to you if you had been to town but twice in a year’s time. That is how it has been with me — once when I went to have the babies weighed and measured by Uncle Sam, and once to vote. And yet I feel as though I have been over to Europe, and all over America. I have hardly seen a boy in khaki, yet I have watched them march down the streets of several big cities, and leave New York harbor. I have heard their feet tramping in the dark over in France with the bombs bursting, and the sky lit with death. No one, to observe casually the outside of my labor on the farm, would know that a war was taking place, although they might wonder at some of the queer things I have been substituting for the cooking of other days; but my soul has been marching on with the world’s war, and I cannot believe that I have not been in close touch with it. That is what reading does. I have watched the Tsar fall, 1 have watched the Kaiser sneak away, I have watched the whole terrible conflict from my secluded perch on the t op of this hill. And I have tried with all my heart and hands to help push the work along. Don’t you think I may have caused just a ripple in the great sea of progress?
It, is time for me to be in bed with my little ones. The wind is still raging round the farmhouse, but we are safe. This is the first lett er I have ever writ - ten to you without a dash of humor, but I do not feel funny to-night. Only thankful. Thankful that my wee ones are all well and in bed, thankful that the two hogs are cured, thankful that I do not have to run my life all myself.
God bless you, my dear girl, and good-night.
YOUR SISTER.

HAZELTON, IDAHO, January 31, 1919.
MY DEAR FOLKS,
I want to thank you at once for the rubber gloves. They are such a gift as only a long-suffering farmer’s wife, with broken finger-nails and split, bleeding thumbs, can appreciate. Once before in my life I wore rubber gloves to do housework, but it was more or less vanity at that time, as I disliked seeing my carefully manicured hands lose their youthful appearance through the ravages of the hard Los Angeles water; but in the present case the rubber gloves are first aid to a wounded soldier on the battlefield of life. I have never had the chance to cut or file any of my finger-nails except my thumbs, in the six years I have been here — they break off as they grow. They are alunder the hard manual labor which it is necessary for me to do. I think it is almost wholly due to the water from the cistern, which is of course hard, since the cistern is not lined with waterglass. Of course, doing the work I do, it would be impossible to have beautifully manicured hands, but they need not be bleeding and painful. However, they are worth a hundred per cent more than they were when I kept them so carefully manicured in the days of my youth.
What do you think? I am going to Boise to-morrow to hear SchumannHeink sing. Can we afford it? I am going to shut both my ears tight to that question. I feel that I can’t afford not to. I must have a taste of life wit h other people. So my suit case is packed, and in the most irresponsible manner I shall now take a bath in the round galvanized tub, sleep, and immediately be on my way. One of my reasons for going, too, is that I want to see some other part of the state. I love Idaho, and I would like to see Boise. And besides, Charley suggested my coming.
Some friends are going to stay here with the children, and for the first time in eleven years, — no, the second time, now I think of it, — I am leaving my children for more than a day.
With love, I am,
A.

BOISE, Sunday.
DEAR JEANETTE,
I am so homesick for my babies.
Walter and I walked through mud to my ankles to the train through the sage-brush. There I went along through the sage-brush in my heavy, flat-heeled shoes, dangling my French-heeled city shoes in my hand. I sat on the suitcase and changed them when we got to the track. Walter rode Buttons and carried the suitcase. I was over an hour too early; it was snowing and bitter cold. Buttons tried to paw out his grave in his discontent, while I would whistle and Walter and I would dance to keep warm; then Walter would whistle. When we got tired of this diversion, I decided to stand still and freeze and let the conductor chop me away and load me on the train. I turned my back on the storm, and gradually became a snow-image. Walter, poor child, had to stand in the centre of the track, holding that dirty rag of a flag, and peering through the snow for the train, while I reiterated, like the lady in Bluebeard, ‘Sister Anne, Sister Anne, do you see anything coming?’
And then, all unobserved, Buttons broke loose and went loping up the gradual slope of sage-brush hill, my old shoes, tied together by their shoestrings, flopping on either side of the saddle-horn. When the train finally came, and Mr. McHenry stepped off with a shovel over one shoulder and a pitchfork over the other, both new, I was so glad, because Walter would have someone to walk home with.
What stories I hear among these people here! And all true. Better than fiction. I have been talking to-day to a senator’s wife who pioneered on a homestead outside of Rupert. Two years ago, when her husband came to Boise in the interests of the people down there, — he was not a senator then, but a bill was pending which he worked for, — that woman had ten head of horses to feed and six cows to milk herself, and all the chores to do, with two children to get off to school. And the consolation she got from a neighbor was that anyway her husband was getting a nice trip to Boise. I would n’t have a man anything but public-spirited, but there is no gratitude for what you do from the people whom you most benefit.
One of Charley’s close friends here is the representative from a northern county. He has a homestead there. How different are conditions there from what they are in our part of the state! He says that the forest back of his homestead is so dense that it is hard to get the cattle through it, and that they have so much rainfall, they need not irrigate, while we have no trees and it keeps Charley so busy trying to see that the other fellow does not steal his water, that he does n’t know we have the most beautiful view in the world from our farm.
This man’s sister-in-law has killed twenty bears. One day she and his wife saw a mother bear and cubs come out of the forest close to their house. They chased the mother bear away and her cubs up a tree. Upon going to the house for a gun, they found the husband had taken it with him. One of them then sat down to wait and watch, while the other went for a neighbor with a gun. He came, and the women, who were both good shots, begged him to let them shoot at least the cubs, and he might have the big bear; but he shot all three, and took the skins home with him. Gallant, was n’t he?
The representative from another northern county told Charley that he and his wife homesteaded, with the nearest farm thirty miles away, and that she did not see a white woman for two years! Can you conceive the loneliness of that?
‘But looking back, we wouldn’t have lived anywhere else,’ he said. ‘We went through hardships that no one has now. I have plenty of means as the result, and all my children are good. I have twelve children. If we had made the money and the children had turned out bad, we would have felt that we had failed. Stay on the farm. It is the safest and best place for your children.’

HAZELTON, February 9, 1919.
DEAR CHARLEY,
To-day Mr. Bennett came with your letter to me, and looked very strange in his best suit and white collar, sitting in your chair and talking of his meeting with the Governor. If farm men only knew what a gratification it is to the women folks to see them in business suits and white collars once in a while, instead of the everlasting overalls and colored shirts!
Consider the farmers of the field, how they go; they shave not, neither do they bathe:
And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon at his very worst was not arrayed like one of these.
That is one of the things that makes us countrywomen age more than the city woman; it is the seeing your man day in and day out in his old overalls, colored shirt, no tie, manure all over his shoes, a slouch about his shoulders, and a quid of tobacco in his cheek. Not to say that my man would do such a thing, but that is the average farmer.

Monday night.
P. S. When Mr. H. went to town Saturday I asked him to get me envelopes, but he forgot to do so, so I could n’t mail your letter to-day. I am writing just for lonesomeness. I enjoyed my trip to Boise so much that I feel homesick for it. I have been amusing myself by writing some verses which, you will recognize, were inspired by that jaunt abroad. How is this for gustatorial appreciation?
I know that if I should read those first verses to little Charles he would take them in dead earnest, and in that he is most unlike his mother; but if I should read the second verse to him — I mean the second ‘pome’ — he would melt into tears; and in that he is like his mother. The description in the Digest of how grateful our poor wounded boys were ‘over there’ for their icecream, served only to the seriously wounded, made me press my hands to my eyes to keep the children from seeing my tears that would have flowed.
Little Charles! He has been trying all day to express how much he missed me while I was gone, and how glad he is that I have come back. But in between his protestations of love he was a very limb of Satan. For that matter, all my little branches were limbs of Satan to-day. Perhaps it was because it was wash-day. You know I hate the smell of soapsuds as much as you hate the smell of manure. So it is just possible that mother’s mood may have played a part in the complexion of the day.
You should have had a movie of our family life. I fear you would never return. It began early with Rhoda dashing for a dipper of hot water to the reservoir. She had been playing in cold water, — you know what a fish she is, — and she wanted to warm her hands. Charles interposed himself like a Roderick Dhu.
But Rhoda believes that actions speak louder than words, so she up with the dipper and whacked him over the head. Charles was dazed, but one of his feet remembered the proper answer; and upon Rhoda’s screech, Walter took a hand, and in his forcible efforts to punish Charles for mistreating his sister, he stepped on Joe’s hand. Now, I leave you to imagine the orchestration.
It had all happened in the wink of an eye, and their poor mother was totally unprepared for the terrific bedlam. I thought, ‘I must do something quickly, but what?’ What would you have done ? I ’ll tell you what I did: I broke into peals of laughter that stopped every last one of those children dead in their tracks, their last yells frozen on their faces. I believe they thought that at last they had driven their distracted mother insane. Taking advantage of the sudden lull, I told Charles to try the boat for which I made a sail yesterday in the tub of water in the kitchen, directed Rhoda to watch him, took little Joe on my lap and nursed his hand, and whispered to Walter, ‘You won’t interfere any more with the children, will you ? ’
‘I don’t know whether you mean yes or no, mamma, but I’ll try,’ he said.
Once again, in quite heartless manner, I laughed at my children’s cries of woe. But I secreted my head behind the wringer to do so, and did not let them see me. Joe did n’t like something, and in a fit of temper threw himself on the floor screaming. That is something I will not tolerate, so I spanked him and laid him across a chair where he could enjoy his grief at his leisure. Charles saw his opportunity, and began to imitate Joe’s cries, which of course made Joe bellow all the more. I looked in on Charles meaningly. All that I accomplished was that Charles lowered his tones to what he thought was about right to reach Joe’s ears and escape mine. But I was on the job. I slipped through the bedroom, catching him unawares, and gave him a nice sample of ivory soap. Now you may add Charles’s howls to Joe’s. Rhoda, hearing his agonized cries, began also to cry at the top of her lungs through sympathy. Of course, Joe, who had failed to notice mamma applying the bad-boy cleanser, supposed that Charles was giving a more vigorous imitation, so his howls of protestation grew louder also. Thank goodness, we do not live in an apartment house! I went right on with my work serenely. I felt neither anger, sorrow, nor amusement, until Walter leaned over me (he was turning the wringer), and at the climax of the orgy of wails murmured, ‘Mid-African Jungle.’ It sounded so exactly like a jungle of wild animals giving voice to their emotions that I shook with laughter. Charles found it the proper occasion to brush his teeth, which he did for upwards of half an hour. And it effected a complete cure — at least for to-day, which is saying a good deal for a child who likes to tease as does Charles.

FRIED SILVER SMELTS

And now for the other: —

DEATH

Saturday Night, February 15, 1919.
MY DEAR SISTER, —
So Bert, having been a farmer himself before you married him, would like to know something about the NonPartisan League. Well, I suppose I should be satisfied that I have roused some interest in at least one of your family. Maybe, if he is interested, you will be; but since he has become owner of an electric-power plant , I suppose we can’t hope for his support at election time in case the Non-Partisans should get a footing in Utah. And yet, I don’t see why not, because he is just a little independent owner, and he may butt his head against one of the power trusts before he get s through, just as we farmers are butting ours against the water t rust and the power trust here in Idaho.
All we farmers paid our sixteen dollars to join the League when the organizers came around. At the primaries we outvoted both Democrats and Republicans. But at election we fell way behind. You sec, Frank Gooding wanted to be United States Senator, and he spent over a thousand dollars a day in newspaper publicity trying to convince the farmers that the League leaders were unpatriotic — I.W.W.’s in disguise. Charges of disloyalty were made against our leader, Townley; and of course, a good many concluded that t here must be smoke where there was fire. This was an elect ion measure, and as soon as election was over, Townley was acquitted.¹
The morning of election, the Boise Statesman came out with a signed statement on its front page from sixty boys in the army, protesting against the voting of the Non-Partisan ticket as being grossly unpatriotic. Sixty boys out of the State of Idaho were supposed to represent what all the boys in Idaho thought. It seems that a certain reverend gentleman from Boise was sent to France at the expense of the politicians, su pposedly as a Red Cross worker, but really to get t hese signatures. The politicians were wise. That plea had its effect, for our farmers are very simple people, and they could never resist such pleading, even though they might know it wrong. But the majority did not know that it was wrong. Oh, let’s not bandy words in anything so serious. They were either too ignorant or too indifferent. We lost at the polls.
Our county went Non-Partisan — Charley as representative, and a Mr. T—— of Rupert, hardware man and former farmer, as senator. One of our Hazelton men had expected the nomination for senator. A big banker had made an agreement with our present Governor, Davis, to help him, in return for the making of Jerome County from slices of three other counties, Jerome, where he had his bank, to be county seat. Of course, our Hazelton business men, who see red when Non-Partisan is mentioned, and who hate Rupert, worked for the county. They declared that we were to be split in two, — our segregation, — unless we petitioned, because the division had been planned by Rupert. They sent out a petition for the farmers to sign, to the effect that, if we had to become a part of Jerome County, we wanted to go as a whole. Then we began working against going into Jerome County. That ‘if’ petition was used against us as asking that we be taken into Jerome. And Charley’s name led all the rest (like Abou Ben Adhem’s). But when he signed it he underscored the ’if’ himself, for fear some farmer would overlook that important word.
Charley worked night and day, — neither slept nor ate, — to try to prevent our being made part of Jerome County, but to no avail. The fact that the Non-Partisans were against it only made the bill pass faster. We are now living in Jerome County, and our taxes will go sky-high to pay for the new county courthouse, the new county papers, and the new road to Jerome through a desert of lava rock.
Charley has just introduced a bill asking for the referendum, so that the people of the state may have a chance to vote the Jerome County bill. I want to quote from his letter (I could almost do so from memory, for when I do not receive many letters, I read and reread those I do get a hundred times. You see, I have now nothing but reading as a diversion, and letters are almost persons.) ‘There will be no chance to fight for any of our bills, as they are referred to committees which recommend that they be not printed, which has the same effect as killing them would have. That is to say that they are put out of their misery as soon as born.’
He continues, —
‘I had a letter from Russell Lane Grange in which they thanked me for making the fight for them. I start, tomorrow on the power bills. I have to study to-night in order to make a fight to-morrow, to get my bill printed, whereby the state will develop unused water-power, I won’t get anywhere with it, but as it is one of t he planks of the Republican Party’s platform of last election, it will be interesting to get a record vote of the thing, just to see how they will vote down their own promises.
‘I visited the plant of the Farmer’s Daily yesterday, at Nampa, and they have a big affair. They are installing a big press and we will have a fine daily fully paid for in advance for one year before the first issue. That will put it over in good shape.’
So you see, Bert, what we are up against. I can see you chuckling to yourself, and congratulating yourself on your wisdom in leaving that plough in the middle of the field when you made your declaration of independence to your father. I, too, would quit, but my fighting blood is up, and if I get out now, it would be with a sense of defeat. Thank God, I have at last found a cause worth fighting for, though like all other Great Causes of the world’s history, the people whom I would see most benefited seem the most indifferent. I hope it is not sacrilegious when I say I know how Christ felt when he was trying to save the people of the world in spite of their indifference. But the farmers will wake up. I will not sink under this injustice, and I will not rise, unless all farmers rise with me.
Of course, we shall have to suffer. We have had to suffer being pioneers on a pioneer farm, and we shall have to suffer being pioneers in this new political party. There are times when I feel that I am of the blood of martyrs, and other times when I would almost sell the whole cause for a real porcelain bathtub! But even Christ had his temptation.
I am not a successful farmer’s wife. Do you know what it takes to be a successful farmer’s wife? She is a woman who must not read (there is no time); she must not be interested in politics (of course not); she must have unlimited capacity for work (eighteen hours out of the tw enty-four); she must economize pitilessly on what she has, and do without everything possible (she has milk to drink, what else could one desire?); she cannot have any of the niceties of person (imagine a farmer’s wife with manicured nails, carefully-cared-for hair, face cold-creamed!); she must never expect a day off, or an afternoon free (even Sundays are days of work); she must not expect to see or hear opera, the movies, plays, lectures, or concerts (can’t afford time or money); she must be able to do anything on the farm that her husband can (many a time she must take a hired hand’s place); besides which, of course, she must do all baking, butter-making, washing, ironing, cooking, cleaning, bathing of children, gardening, chickencare, including hatching, hair-cutting for the family, curing of the winter’s meat, helping gather and store winter vegetables, canning of fruits. Of course, she has all poultry to kill, pick, and clean for the table, and any she may sell. Also she must sew for the family, and must patch and darn as long as the cloth will hold an added thread.
And why must she do all this? Oh, because she is a farmer’s wife. Why must she receive almost no compensation? Same reason. Why have no time to take care of herself or go to see and hear things she loves? Because she works so hard. And why does she work so hard? Because she is a farmer’s wife. And why should a farmer’s wife, of all women in the world, be compelled to suffer such a fate? Because the farmer has chosen his profession with the idea that in it he is the most independent man on earth.
Certainly! Independent! Here are the things he must do whether he will or not: he must rise before daylight; he must water and feed his cattle; he must plough, sick or well, and do all the other things toward a crop; he must worry about the water; he must demand of his entire family all the work he can get out of them, no matter how kindhearted he may be; he must turn his crop over to someone else who will give him whatever they see fit; he must see it sold for so little, that he wonders whether his family will have shoes to wear in the winter; he must, worry to meet taxes; he must see his cattle die, and his hens pass away, because he cannot afford to feed them; he must give up reading (he is too tired at night); he must go to bed with the chickens; he must see nothing, hear nothing, do nothing that does not apply directly to his crop. Oh, yes, the farmer is the most independent man on earth, with his thirty-three-and-a-third-cent-dollar in his overall pockets, and a week’s growth of beard on his chin. And his wife is the most enviable woman on earth.
But, believe me, the world will change! It’s got to do so! What is the government doing for us? Setting the price on wheat and sending us county agents to tell our husbands how to kill jack-rabbits, and women county agents to tell us farm-women how to make a dress out of our flour-sacks. That latter was all right during the war, but I wonder if that county agent did n’t find out that we farm-women, long before the war, were compelled to use our flour-sacks for underwear because the middleman was buying silk underwear for his wife?
Why does n’t our good old government ask us farmers what we want, instead of assuming that superior paternal attitude, as much as to say, ‘You farmers are all little children. We know what is best for you. Just be good and do what we tell you, and by working hard, some day you can have a few dollars in your old age — oh, not much; but you won’t need much, because we shall teach you how to live all these years on so little that you can get along on very little when old age grips you.’
Last summer our county agent, with the best of intentions, spent his time (at a high salary) telling our men how to kill jack-rabbits. If he had hunted a market for our hay, actually marketed it, and paid the farmer the money, how infinitely grateful we would have been to the government. As it is, worthy young man though our agent is, our farmers seem to think that he is of little use to them. Our agent also sent me elaborate diagrams and pictures for making iceless refrigerators, and screens for our windows. The supposition was that we could not afford ice (which we can’t), or the time to get it (which we also can’t), and that we would be glad of a makeshift. The window-screen fascinated me. All the hard-working farm-woman had to do was to get her husband to buy screening in town; then she cut it to fit her windows, then she sewed cloth around it, then she spent several hours working button-holes around the sides, and then she fixed hooks around the windows over which she buttoned the button-holes. Of course, having so much leisure, her time was worth nothing.
I resent the fact that the hardestworking woman in the world is expected by the government to make her own necessities. Why she should be compelled to use makeshifts when she works eighteen hours a day, her husband likewise? Why have I only three miserable makeshift screens in a house of fifteen windows? Were our crops a failure ? Quite the contrary: we had good crops considering the insufficient water distribution with which we had to contend, and we thought we were going to be on Easy Street every year for six years. Did n’t we have enough land? One hundred and sixty acres ought to be enough. Where is the trouble? The lack of market and marketing facilities, and the middle-man. The men who have handled our crops have grown rich.
I am not a Socialist. I am not dreamer enough for that. But my beloved government is taking the wrong course with us farm people. Let the government supply us with middle-men instead of county agents — government-paid middle-men who would have no object in profiteering on us. Let the government supply us with warehouses to store our surplus — every year a part of our good money goes to build granaries which stand idle half the year, and I board the builders of the granaries. Let the government find out where our crops should go and see to the shipping of them, so that we who have plenty can supply those who want. Let the government study our conditions, cost of production, — including farm-labor, husband’s labor, wife’s labor, — and set the price on crops accordingly, different in each locality, and we shall all be glad to abide by the results and the consumer will not suffer, there being no middle-man to pay.
Then we farm-women will go about our hard task rejoicing, for we shall know that we shall be paid what we deserve. We shall have real screens in our windows, real refrigerators, and real ice. We shall have leisure to care for ourselves, and we may possibly see the day when once again we can have presentable hands and hair and look the world in the face — independent at last!
But since the government at Washington is so slow in waking up, we shall have to bring about what reform we can through the Non-Partisan League. Don’t make the mistake, Sister and Bert, of thinking that what I wrote about the government is in the League platform. The League is for stateowned warehouses — in fact all stateowned public utilities. I would rather it were from the government being taken out of politics, as I believe it will be some day, though perhaps not in my day; but we must be content to try to reform our little corner of the world, and perhaps the leaven will cause the whole mass to rise.
The old idea is, that the farmer likes to live in the horrible, inconvenient houses that he is forced to inhabit. Let him receive his just dues in the way of money, and see how soon he takes advantage of his means, — beautiful home, fine barns, education, — if not for himself, for the next generation. Don’t try to teach us to do with makeshifts. You are pushing the farmer down into a peasant class that is as bad as the man with the hoe. Yea, what an epic could be written of the wrongs of ‘the man with the plough,’ and ‘the woman of the stove.’ Pay the farmer his just dues and let him rise to the enjoyment of real things.
I have just been bathing my four little ones in a round galvanized washtub on the kitchen door. Sister, if you could see how I have worked, how I have endured, how I have economized, to be able to do that! And my poor husband! His first new suit since we came to Idaho, to go to the Legislature in. You read all the stories of wonderful success here with raw land. Where you read one story of chance success (it is always a matter of chance), I see here with my own eyes hundreds of failures. Some of them do not know that they are failures. They do not know that they should receive more. They have farmed all their lives and been content with a mere pittance. But I say that it is bitter failure, when I go into their threeroom shacks, crowded, no conveniences, and know how they have slaved. Let the government back us!
One big thing that the government could do would be to tell the farmer what to plant. One man here makes a success with potatoes, the next year everybody plants potatoes — you know the result.
I am not ever going to write such a letter as this again. But I am boiling over. I have stood all that I am going to, in silence. I am not a successful farm-woman. I love the farm, would rather live on it than any other place in the world, but I am not willing to accept silently the wrongs of the farm life. Like Wolsey if I had served any other profession as faithfully as I have served that of being a farmer’s wife during the past six years, I should now be independently prosperous.
Well, Bert, how do you like this spiel ? Never mind, I am dead in earnest. I must stay with the babies, or, like Carrie Nation, I would get out and smash a few things. But I have a man that I am going to back to the utmost.
Here’s yours, for the galvanized tub in the kitchen,
THE FARMER’S WIFE.

March 22, 1919.
These are [some of] the measures which our Non-Partisans tried to make laws, and which were killed. You will notice that they are not entirely for the benefit of the farmer. One of the criticisms which was made recently to me of the League was that it was just as wrong for the farmer to legislate solely for his own benefit as anything in the present state of society in Russia. The farmer is trying to legislate for the benefit of the producer and the consumer, and let the profiteer go hang. I think that you will agree that everyone in the world is a consumer, and that a great many are producers.
Soldier’s moratorium. (A soldier was to be given one year’s time in which to pay past bills. Of course, his bills need not be paid after he entered the army; but what good would that do him if a pack of creditors leap upon his back, as soon as he comes out of the army? In case he was trying to farm, it might mean ruin. Idaho would not even do this for her soldiers, but instead voted monuments, all alike, to be placed in each county seat, like so many dozens of spoons. Surely this is enough pay to the soldier for ‘the dangers’ he has ‘passed’! And if he is a taxpayer, he must help pay for the monument to himself! As Pliny the Younger said, ‘The erection of a monument is superfluous’ ; but it would not come amiss to use the county and state money to give each soldier a real start.)
Resolution favoring the League of Nations (turned down cold, and resolutions introduced condemning President Wilson and the League of Nations). Believe me, if the common people, the working-people, the farmers, could cast their votes for or against the League of Nations, it would be found that they are solidly behind it.

It does not matter how much the big men of the country are arguing it back and forth — we, the people, who know what it means when we say, ‘the brotherhood of man and the Fatherhood of God,’ we, the people are heart and soul for the League. There is n’t a farmer or a working-man that I know who is not for it, and I have never heard of a farmer or a working-man who is not for it.
Passed a really fine educational act (supported by the Non-Partisans, but not introduced by them), but forgot to put in it the enabling act, and of course it is thereby killed. This act, which is a thick book by itself, was introduced on the last day, almost at the last moment, and the members were not given opportunity to read it.
Killed the Women’s eight-hour law (not Non-Partisan). I think they were right in this. There is a good nine-hour law, but the politicians amended the eight-hour law to read, ‘except in emergency.’ You know very well that reservation would kill the eight-hour bill, for any employer could declare an emergency that might last for fourteen or more hours. The nine-hour bill is straight nine hours.
I can write bravely enough in these letters, but at heart I am sad at the thought of these hard years during which the farmers are slaves in this beloved country of ours. We are giving the best years of our lives — for what? and who cares? O my country! wake up and hear your children crying unto you for relief. Have you no ears to hear us? Have we been patient and silent so long under great wrongs that you cannot believe they exist?
Let us hope that a better day is coming! Yours,
THE FARMER’S WIFE.