order houses do the rest.

"The ideal home is a social and cooperative society in which all of
its members unite their efforts for the common good. This ideal is
realized most nearly in the country home, where even the smallest
child has opportunity to be and generally is a contributor to the
family support. It has come to be a recognized fact that boys and
girls, healthy, industrious, frugal, capable, intelligent,
self-supporting, cheerful, and patriotic, abound in country homes, and
that the prevalence there of these high qualities is largely due to
the family life, which requires each individual from his earliest
years to bear his proportionate share in providing for the maintenance
of the home. By bringing within the reach of the country people
educational advantages suited to their needs, rural life becomes more
attractive, country homes are multiplied, and the valuable qualities
which these homes develop become the possession of a correspondingly
larger number of the citizenship of the state."[16]

[16] I. H. Hamilton, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, Circular 85.

The government has recognized the need and the possibilities of
meeting it in the recognition it has given to Farmers' Institutes for
women, in which, by lectures, demonstration, and short winter courses
at the colleges, the interest of the woman in her occupation is
aroused. She is not only given help in details of her daily work, but
she is shown how much the efficiency of the farm life depends upon her
capability and intelligence. She is encouraged in the using of all
mechanical and scientific appliances, is introduced to the means of
mental growth; but, best of all, she is given the stimulus of social
recognition. In the year 1908 there were held 832 such meetings in the
several states. In the year 1910 the number will be nearly or quite
doubled.

In no other form of society is the power of the woman for good or ill
so paramount as in rural life, in no other mode of living is the
family so much at her mercy.

In suburban and city life the family can in a measure escape from
insufficient care and uncomfortable conditions. That they do so
escape, any student of social tendencies will testify. The great
increase of restaurants, of clubs and hotels of all grades, shows one
phase of the unattractiveness of home life. The city woman is only
half a housekeeper; she has only one-eighth of a house as compared
with her rural sister. Her control is theref