Читать книгу Farm Boys and Girls - William A. McKeever - Страница 16

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Greater attention needs to be given to the conservation of the farmer’s wife. Although there are many other justifications for giving more thought to the care and the comfort of the country mother, the single fact of her very close relation to the children growing up in the home, and of her peculiar responsibilities as center of life there, warrant us in devoting a chapter to her interests. Recently, while passing upon a country highway, the author met a funeral procession. A little inquiry revealed a pathetic situation, one that has been repeated thousands of times throughout the length and breadth of this fair country. The deceased was the wife of a young farmer, both of them under thirty-five years of age, hard working and ambitious for success, but thoughtless of their own health and comfort. Their farm was somewhat new and unimproved, there were hundreds of things to do other than the routine affairs of home keeping and crop raising. Worst of all, there was a mortgage to be lifted. After all reasonable improvements were made and the mortgage paid off, then, according to their plans, they were going to take matters easy. But the delicate cord of life suddenly broke in the case of the wife, and left the young husband as overseer of the farm and home and sole caretaker of three little children.

How can parents hope to produce a better crop of boys and girls in the farm communities so long as the typical farm wife is crushed into the earth with the over-weight of the burdens placed upon her? A few minutes’ enumeration in this same rural neighborhood brought out the startling fact that in fully half of the homes a scene similar to the one just described had been enacted during the last score of years. That is to say, during the twenty years, fully one-half of the farm mothers living in that particular neighborhood had died before their time from one cause or another. In most instances the death occurred during what we usually speak of as the prime years of life, and at a time when the rose bloom should naturally be fresh upon the cheek. Fortunately, this serious condition, still present in some communities, is being gradually improved by the improved methods.