hold duties is much the same as it used to be, there have been modifications. Soft water, running water, furnaces, modern range stoves, oil stoves, and gasoline engines are some of the innovations that have tended to make housework more congenial. The following figures show the percentage of homes into which certain conveniences have been introduced; oil stoves, fifty-seven; furnaces, fifteen; hard-coal stoves, forty-four; soft-coal heaters, thirty-one; washing machines, thirty-three; washing machines run by engine, ten; drinking water in house, eleven; soft water in the house, sixty-three; soft water beside house, ten. Food purchased: canned vegetables, sixteen; fruit, fifty-four; fresh meat, fifty-nine; prepared breakfast food, thirty-three.

There are fewer washing machines in use now than there used to be. Those who have quit using them say that badly soiled clothes, like men's overalls and shirts, can not be thoroughly cleansed by the ordinary machine, and fine garments such as lingerie may be torn by a machine.

000

48% Berries

53% Apples

76% Winter Vegetables

Diagram showing percentage of homes producing various supplies on farm. Just as the farmer is getting skilled labor to do special jobs, such as concrete cement work, masonry, carpentry, and painting, because he has not the time to do things besides his regular routine work, so his wife is more and more "letting out" some of the work she formerly was obliged to do herself. Six per cent of the families have their sewing done by a professional seamstress, usually some young woman who lives in the country, going the rounds from family to family. This does not mean, however, that all of the sewing is thus done by the seamstress. The everyday clothes of the women and children are almost always made by the housewife herself. There are forty-one per cent of the families in which all of the tailoring or sewing is done by the housewife.

So also there are but few households of to-day where the housewife does the churning. Only twelve per cent do that. Most farmers get their butter from the creamery. This is a big relief for many overworked housewives. In hot weather it is very hard to make good butter without ice, and not a single farmer had ice in storage. A few households buy canned vegetables and fruit and thus save work for the women; yet there

seems to be no distinct tendency in this direction. Nearly all of the farmers have gardens of their own, or get their vegetables and berries from neighbors, and do their own canning and preserving.

With household duties are usually included the care of chickens and the garden work. In almost every case where they have a garden, the women had at least to help tend it. So, also, if they wanted their front yards to look tidy, they themselves had to run the lawn-mower. In twentynine per cent of the homes this was done; and the yards in the country averaged twenty square rods, or one eighth of an acre.

......79% have good gardens

......13% have poor gardens

.8% have no gardens

Diagram showing percentage of homes having good and poor gardens.

With all these heavy outside tasks as a part of the regular household duties it is clear that the women are not run down from lack of exercise. Even the indoor work is of the heaviest nature. There are big milk cans, separator, and all the milking utensils to cleanse by washing and rinsing with boiling hot water. This morning task itself together with doing the dishes lasts for an hour in many places. There is always much sweeping to be done, for feet can not be kept clean in fields and barnyards. Preparing dinner is no longer the simple work it used to be. A woman has to be able to put up a little variety nowadays, although pork, potatoes, and gravy together with butter-bread, and coffee, are still the main diet of the toiling farmer. Although there may be endless distractions, such as medicine men, picture men, and University fellows, or just plain tramps, interfering with her work, a good housewife has to be able to attend to all this and yet get dinner ready on time. Nothing could be much more of an offense to her good husband than that she should accidentally keep a hungry score of threshing men waiting for their noonday meal. In only ten per cent of the places was a hired girl kept. Sixty-nine per cent of the families were without any girl-help of sixteen years of age or over, and in forty-six per cent of the families there were from one to four children under seven years of age who required care to keep them safe from mischief and out of harm's way. Thus the good women are kept "on the go" from five o'clock in the morning until nine at night. Even after the

men have gone to bed, the devoted mother has to put away her sleepy "flock of little ones"; and after that perhaps mend some torn garments in order that they may be ready in the morning, when at day-break the same drudgery begins all over again.

So far we have considered only the routine of the regular household duties. There are a considerable number of homes, however, in which the women are obliged to help with the outdoor men's work. Besides the garden work and the care of chickens, which we have seen is general, there were in this township thirty-two per cent of the families in which the women helped with the milking and the general barnyard chores. On sixteen per cent of these farms the women helped in the field work. This heavy outdoor work is naturally done on farms where there is more than one woman in the home. Thus, out of the sixteen per cent of the places

Diagrams showing percentage of homes in which women do work outside of house.

where women work in the field, eighty-two per cent represent homes where there are daughters over sixteen years of age. A total of twenty per cent of the families have girls of sixteen or over. In each case where there were two daughters of this age, the women helped with field or chore work.

The work that the women do in the fields is not of the lighter or easier kind of work, as might be supposed. Usually the woman is a poor machinist. It is not thought that she can run a harvesting machine; or it may not be considered safe to let her drive horses; hence it is usually she who cocks the hay or shocks the barley, the scratching beards of which cover the body with the dreaded prickling "barley itch." Some women even stack or pitch bundles. All these jobs are of the very hardest work on the farm. Lest unwarranted pity be evoked, it should be stated that most of this

help on the part of the women is rendered freely, ungrudgingly, if not cheerfully. True it is that it is distasteful to the young girls as a rule, but they seem "obliged to help because hired men are not to be had for love or for money"; or it seems that "the only way to save and lay by any money for old age," or "to give the young ones a start," is for every one to "pitch in and dig for all they can stand."

In spite of these facts there are those who wail: "They don't make the kind of men and women that they used to any more. Our young men are getting to be weaklings and our women, pampered idlers." It is true that women no longer do so much outdoor, field, or barnyard work as they used to do. There seems to be a growing sentiment that "a housewife can not do field work, help choring around the barns, and at the same time keep the house the way it ought to be kept." On the large majority of farms, however, as we have seen, there is little evidence of "pampering and idleness."

These facts lead us to the consideration of the effects of these changes. in the conditions of country work as regards the present, as well as the growing, generations, the efflux of the youth of the country, and the labor problem as it confronts the farmer. All these things, however, are further affected by other influences than work; hence we shall postpone the consideration of them until later chapters.

BUSINESS RELATIONS

The early settlers of this township had to do their marketing at river ports. Red Wing and Hastings, about thirty miles distant, were the nearest places on the Mississippi River to which supplies of machinery, clothing, and groceries were brought up from Chicago, St. Louis, and other primary markets on the river below. To these places farmers brought their staples, such as wheat, potatoes, onions, and whatever salable articles they produced. It is estimated that Winona, Wabasha, Red Wing, and Hastings shipped an aggregate of three million bushels of wheat and flour in the year 1861. This was before the milling industry had fairly begun up the river at St. Anthony Falls, so practically all the wheat was shipped downstream to be milled at St. Louis or eastern cities.

Thus we find that the early settlers of this township had to haul their products thirty miles in order to get them to a market. To get his load on the market early in the morning the farmer would leave home at about four o'clock the preceding afternoon. Following the winding trails along the divides, he travelled all night and got to the market place at about three o'clock A.M. the next day. After feeding his oxen, he might sleep

until four-thirty when it was time to look up buyers. Brokers or commission men from eastern mills and exporters were on hand in great numbers. This was before there were any deals in futures to steady and govern prices; hence, there were often great fluctuations from week to week and wide disparities between prices received by different farmers selling in the same market-place. Considerable time would be spent haggling with the various buyers, before the load was finally sold. By this time it would be daylight, and the farmer would yoke his oxen, draw the load to the wharf or wherever the buyer wanted it. The grain was unloaded and piled away on a river barge or stacked in large heaps along the bank until such a time as it might be "toted" down-stream. These were before the days of grain elevators and warehouses, and grain was kept in sacks both in storage and in transit.

Such was the market condition until the railroad was built into this country. Although the grading had been done from Mendota to Faribault "before the war," it was not until 1865 that trains were run. That was the beginning of a big change in market conditions. Naturally, elevators and warehouses were soon built and grain could be gotten to market more easily. Since that time marketing of the farm produce has been done in much the same way as it is done to-day. There is this difference, however, that, while in the seventies and the eighties the farming was pretty largely of the all-grain type, and, hence, the crops were marketed soon after threshing was done, to-day most of the grain is fed to live stock and thus marketed on hoof. There is no longer that "fall rush" to sell the grain in order to meet financial obligations. Nearly all of the farms to-day have ample granary room in which to keep their crop as long as they care to. Only twenty-one per cent of the farmers sell early in the fall and seventyeight per cent of these are renters. Half of the renters, however, market their spare grain in the winter or spring according as market prices and roads seem to be satisfactory. Most of the grain is sold in the winter. Only thirteen per cent of the farmers keep their grain to be hauled in the spring after seeding is over.

There are now five local railway stations to which the farmers of this township take their products to be marketed. Two of these towns are located on the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul, and the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railroads. N., the largest of the local towns, is also connected with Minneapolis by a regular service of four trains a day on the "Dan Patch Air Line," as well as being on the Chicago Great Western, and the two aforementioned steam railway systems. Along the eastern side of the township runs another branch of the Chicago Great Western. On this line at distances of four and a half and five miles are the other