woman regard her
right to vote? Generally she is unconcerned with the vote. But as time
goes on, by reason of the many factors that enter into her new way of
living, she is evidencing more interest, both in the county and state
elections. Strangely enough, though the mountain woman went hesitantly
to the polls, a Kentucky mountain woman, Mrs. Mary Elliott Flanery, of
Elliott County, was the first woman to be elected to the legislature
south of the Mason and Dixon line. She was self-educated and for a
number of years was rural correspondent for newspapers, which experience
perhaps gave her a broad understanding of political matters and the
incentive to enter the field. Hers was a distinctive service to the
commonwealth and particularly to her sisters of the southern highlands,
inasmuch as she was first of her sex to actually voice before a
legislature the problems and needs of the mountain woman.

Today with rural electrification the mountain woman ceases to be a
drudge. She is on a par with her sister of the level land.

She no longer stumbles wearily to the barn after dark with a battered
lantern, its chimney blackened with smoke. She has only to switch on a
light and turn to milking. Or if her household has progressed to dairy
farming, as many of them have, finding the sale of milk to the city
creameries more profitable than raising vegetables, she has only to
attach the electric devices and the cows are milked mechanically. She
sits no more at the churn, one hand gripping the dasher, the other
holding a fretful babe to her breast. Now that unseen juice, or
'lectric, comes along the wire and into the new churn and there! Almost
before you know it there is a plump roll of butter.

The whole family benefits from rural electrification. The youngest girl
of the household is not reminded of the irksome task of cleaning and
filling the lamps, trimming the wicks. What if the single bulb swinging
from the middle of the ceiling is fly-specked! It still gives ample
light for the room. The hazard of the overturned oil lamp and the fear
of burning the house down are gone too. "I'd druther have 'lectric than
a new cookstove or a saddle mare," any mountain woman will tell you.

She is through with the back-breaking battling trough and the washboard.
Her proudest possession and the greatest labor-saving device on the
place is the electric washer. Carefully covered with a clean piece of
bleach, it holds a distinguished place in th