chanic, or a man in any small line of business, must trust his
wife with the disbursement of a certain part of the family income. It
passes through her hands in the way of housekeeping, and the
management of it exercises and develops her faculties; but the wife of
the farmer has no such interest. The farm is expected to supply the
family living, and this blessed fact becomes almost a curse when it
deprives the wife of the mental stimulus incident to the management of
resources.

Added to this there is often, at least through the winter, partial or
complete isolation from neighbourly or public interests. The great
crops of the country are produced under circumstances which
necessitate distance from even the most limited social centres, and
that the farmer's wife suffers from this we know, not only from
observation, but from the statistics of insane asylums. And here I am
tempted to quote from a letter of a close student of farmhouse life in
the West. She writes:

"That the farmer himself, as isolated and hard worked, makes no such
record, I believe due to the mental tonic, the broadening influence
that comes from a sense of responsibility in life's larger affairs.
The woman works like a machine, irresponsible as to final results; the
man like a thinking, planning, responsible, independent human being."

This seems to me a very fair statement of the case. The woman, who
misses social companionship, and who has not the saving influence of
administration and responsibility even in her own household, is
narrowed to a very small point in life's affairs, and it is inevitable
that she should suffer from it. The variety of her work also has
dwindled. Cooking and house-cleaning follow each other in monotonous
routine, with too much of it at planting and harvest seasons and too
little at others. She has not even the pleasure of comparison and
emulation in her daily work; it neither exercises her faculties nor
stimulates her thought.

During the winter months she has abundant leisure for a harvest of her
own, in some interesting manufacture adapted to her education and
circumstances, and in the prosecution of these she would be brought
into a bond of common interest with other women. So far I have spoken
only of the individual and personal reasons for which certain domestic
and artistic industries well might be encouraged; but the public and
economic reasons are easy to find.

In looking at the variety and bulk of our nationa