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ONE WOMAN'S 
 
 WORK FOR 
 FARM WOMEN 
 
 BT JENNIE BUELL 
 
ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 FOR FARM WOMEN 
 
 The Story of Mary A. Mayo s Part 
 in Rural Social Movements 
 
 BY JENNIE BUELL 
 
 SECOND PRINTING 
 
 WHITCOMB & BARROWS 
 
 BOSTON, 1912 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1908 
 BY JENNIE BUELL 
 
 AND 
 
 WHITCOMB & BARROWS 
 
 COMPOSITION AND PRESSWORK i 
 
 THOMAS TODD 
 14 BEACON ST., BOSTON, MASS. 
 
DEDICATED TO 
 FARM WOMEN 
 EVERYWHERE 
 
 274689 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 THIS land of ours is marvelously rich 
 in mine, in water power, in forest, in soil; 
 but her greatest asset is her people. Agri- 
 culture is America's largest single indus- 
 try; but greater than agriculture is the 
 farmer. One-third of our toilers are farm- 
 ers; one-half of our people live under rural 
 conditions. The farm home is the root, 
 therefore, of great things for America; it 
 has been the nursery of great men and 
 noble women. Its sanctity, its joy, its whole 
 welfare, in fact, constitute one of our fun- 
 damental problems. 
 
 Mrs. Mayo not only realized this fact, 
 but she had the power of reaching the 
 hearts of those who dwell in the farm 
 home. She knew their trials, their dis- 
 couragements, their hopes and ambitions, 
 their struggles to educate their children, 
 their attempts to beautify and adorn. She 
 renewed within them their ideals, and she 
 told them how to realize their dreams. 
 
 The story of her life is worth writing 
 
VI FOREWORD 
 
 and worth reading, both because of what 
 she did and for what she was. This little 
 book, written by one who knew her inti- 
 mately and who sympathized with her 
 every ideal and effort, should be read in 
 every farm home in America. Indeed, it 
 should be read by all who love the simplic- 
 ity of rural life, or who delight in high 
 service unselfishly rendered. Mrs. Mayo's 
 work needs doing in every state. Few have 
 her native gifts for this particular service, 
 but her pattern is good and beautiful. 
 
 I was one of "her boys" and one of the 
 first to call her "Mother Mayo." I owe 
 much to her, more than she knew, and per- 
 haps more than I realize. I rejoice that 
 her character and her toil are to be set 
 forth in so winsome a way. 
 
 KENYON L. BUTTERFIELD. 
 
 President 
 
 Massachusetts Agricultural College 
 
 Amherst, Mass. 
 
ONE WOMAN'S WORK FOR 
 FARM WOMEN 
 
/ love everybody so much. I have wanted 
 to help people to be kinder, truer, sweeter. 
 And there is so much to do! 
 
 MARY A. MAYO. 
 
ONE WOMAN'S WORK FOR 
 FARM WOMEN 
 
 "THE little brown woman from the 
 farm," she once called herself. When she 
 was gone, I suppose that more than a score 
 of men and women in the thick of life's 
 fight still treasured certain little notes, 
 written in her fine, neat hand, which were 
 signed "Mother Mayo." They treasured 
 them, not because she had made for her- 
 self a name widely known, or had helped 
 others, but because she had meant so much 
 to them individually. She had believed in 
 them personally, and made them feel that 
 she did. Once, as she passed a pioneer's 
 cabin, from her car window she caught a 
 glimpse of a face, the face of a young girl, 
 whom she afterward met and remembered. 
 That girl, grown to womanhood, cherished 
 the memory of the impression she had 
 made on the sympathetic heart of this 
 woman, whose own life was already rich 
 in friendships. A young mother not one, 
 but many looked upon her cluster of chil- 
 
2 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 dren and pondered, " Because of her I am 
 a better mother." A man who had cleared 
 and tilled a farm in the north country, and 
 in the face of poverty had sought to rear 
 and cultivate his family, said: "She was 
 my friend. I never had another like her." 
 A small regiment of wayward girls, whose 
 lives she had touched, called her "blessed," 
 each saying, " She was my friend." Another, 
 one of "her boys," whose life problems had 
 all been spread before her and counseled 
 over a man now standing among the 
 strong and successful on a main thorough- 
 fare laid this tribute beside her hushed 
 form, "I loved to call her 'Mother Mayo/ 
 for she seemed like a second mother to me." 
 Because she affected men and women in 
 like manner, collectively as well as singly, 
 she was able to exert a lasting influence 
 upon certain wide movements of people, of 
 farm people most of all. In some instances 
 she initiated those movements, or "moth- 
 ered" them to such a degree that their 
 getting rooted in permanency is coupled 
 inseparably with her name. To tell some- 
 thing of these movements and of this par- 
 ticular woman, this story has been written. 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 3 
 
 It is the story of a Michigan woman, but 
 she might have lived in New England, or 
 Oregon, or Texas, and the work she accom- 
 plished would have been much the same. 
 "All root problems," says President Roose- 
 velt, "are alike." This our farm friend 
 clearly understood. Because she knew the 
 experiences and needs from having lived 
 them all child, teacher, wife, mother, and 
 neighbor in an inland rural community- 
 she felt that she held the key to every one's 
 life situated as hers was. Through the sym- 
 pathy engendered by such knowledge she 
 dared discover men and women to them- 
 selves. Having found for herself a better 
 way than to follow in the common, rutted 
 roads of farm folks, she was able to help 
 others and put them into contact with 
 something vital outside of themselves. 
 
 ._, 
 
 r 
 
 
 Early Life 
 
 Mary Anne Bryant was born on a farm 
 in Marshall township, seven miles from the 
 city of Battle Creek, Michigan, May 25, 
 1845. Her mother was from England, her 
 father from New England both stanch 
 and sturdy stock. In her sight, and indeed 
 
4 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 in that of many less prejudiced people, her 
 mother was an almost perfect embodi- 
 ment of noble, well-balanced womanhood. 
 "My mother never scolded" -this was the 
 daughter's simple testimony; and it was to 
 this mother that, in later years as in youth, 
 she was wont to go for recuperation and 
 fresh faith in humanity, when she came 
 back home after a hard, wearisome journey 
 out among the people she sought to help. 
 This mother was the refuge and counselor 
 of all her life, outliving her by two years. 
 Her father's death occurred several years 
 earlier, and was to this fond daughter such 
 a great stretching of the ties that bound her 
 to him that again and again she cried out 
 in the silence for him. But at last the 
 mystery of the unseen became to her a nec- 
 essary and beautiful part of her present 
 life. 
 
 Little Mary was tutored, while very 
 young, in a private school taught by two 
 maiden aunts from New England. Who 
 knows whether here were not inculcated 
 those niceties of manner and behavior that 
 were always among her noticeable charac- 
 teristics? Later, she attended the Battle 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 5 
 
 Creek high school, graduated, and was 
 teaching a district school at seventeen. A 
 business man, who was a schoolmate with 
 her, tells how, when Mary Bryant recited 
 or read an essay in school, all the pupils 
 stopped to listen, for "she was always sure 
 to have something interesting to say." 
 
 Thus she came to young womanhood in 
 the vortex of the nation's greatest struggle 
 for existence. She saw her lover go out 
 from the peace of their Northern country 
 neighborhood into the clash and conflict of 
 three fearsome years saw him go out, too, 
 with her love only half confessed; but on 
 his return that lover boy grown into the 
 soldier man she yielded her heart unre- 
 servedly and, on the night of Lincoln's 
 assassination, April 14, 1865, put her life 
 into the keeping of Perry Mayo. No 
 wonder, then, that these two were always 
 filled with patriotism and zeal, and that 
 they measured deeds, ideas, and people by 
 broad gauges and large bounds. Though 
 she was then untraveled, she had already 
 participated in her country's deepest ex- 
 periences. Because of this it was impossi- 
 ble that her horizon should ever be bounded 
 
6 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 by the walls of the modest log house in 
 which she and her husband began their 
 homemaking. Their hearts and interests 
 were broadened to those of humanity at 
 large, and were quick to respond to every 
 pulse beat of the neighborhood life. The 
 little log house across the road from Mrs. 
 Mayo's childhood home still stands in a 
 field adjacent to the grounds of the larger 
 frame house that was built after a few 
 years, when crops had yielded well and 
 times had become prosperous. 
 
 The Mother Heart 
 
 Mrs. Mayo's heart was the true"mother 
 heart," and would have been so had she 
 never borne children herself. The one boy 
 and one girl who came into the home as its 
 very own did not absorb the overflow of 
 her maternal instincts. One and another 
 of her relatives, when no more than babies, 
 were taken within the charmed circle of 
 her home nest, and nurtured till their own 
 homes could receive and care for them 
 again. 
 
 Thus the young woman's hands were 
 kept full, and her powers of execution and 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 7 
 
 endurance developed by the experience of 
 motherhood while she was performing her 
 own household duties. Nor were these 
 duties slight, for these two ambitious young 
 people had to earn everything for them- 
 selves with their own hands. But Mrs. 
 Mayo was not one to shirk any task because 
 it stood on the far side of the line custom 
 had decreed was the boundary of "woman's 
 work." If her young husband needed a 
 "lift" at the barn, or even in the field, she 
 was ready to do her best. She loved the 
 out-of-doors, and, along with her indoor 
 cares, always took pride in her poultry, her 
 dairy, and her garden. No labor was 
 menial to her. She did not know "drudg- 
 ery," for very intimate in her mind was the 
 connection between the deed and those for 
 whom it was wrought. Even during those 
 last bitter months of her life, when pain 
 had tortured her strong body to the utter- 
 most, she persisted in keeping a few of the 
 "chores" at the barn for her own. They 
 were her only "rest," she said, taking her 
 out in the air away from the precious 
 daughter's bedside of pain, a place that 
 racked the courage of both to its utmost 
 
8 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 limit. Here, daily, during a few minutes' 
 respite from her self-appointed nursing, she 
 drew strength for her return to it. "I pray 
 as I milk is it wrong, do you think?" 
 pathetically ran one of her last notes, which 
 she penciled in the watches of the night. 
 Nothing could show the temper of this 
 woman more surely than this admission 
 that, even when too weary and wasted to do 
 more than force herself to keep about, she 
 still combined these "breathing spells" with 
 some labor of the hands, in order to lighten 
 the tasks of others. 
 
 Bread, then Books 
 
 In those first years after the war, Amer- 
 ican agriculture, with every other industry, 
 was struggling to its feet. Among country 
 people, in general, it was a question, first 
 of all, of land and roof and bread to eat. 
 In these conditions, as we have seen, Mr. 
 and Mrs. Mayo were planted. But they 
 struck deeper root than mere annuals which 
 live only from season to season. Though 
 they valued well enough the comforts of a 
 good home and freedom from debt, they 
 sought, also, a margin for travel and cul- 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 9 
 
 ture. A sense of this deeper purpose in 
 their lives came through a common enough 
 circumstance. Mrs. Mayo told me about it 
 long afterward, on the first Sabbath evening 
 I spent with the family in their pleasant 
 sitting room, surrounded by homely com- 
 forts and choice reading matter. It was a 
 tragic tale, though in such humble garb you 
 would not 'recognize it as anything heroic 
 until you got your bearings. It was the 
 old yet ever new story of rebellion against 
 the tyranny of brawn, and the decision to 
 invest brains with leadership. 
 
 "One day, in a store," she told me, "I 
 met an old classmate, who remarked that 
 she presumed, as I had married a farmer, 
 about all I had to do, or did do, was to. work 
 hard and make lots of good butter. While 
 riding home with Mr. Mayo, I kept think- 
 ing it over. I knew that I did work hard 
 and that I made good butter, but it made 
 me indignant to think that this was the 
 measure of my life, and that of every farm- 
 er's wife. We both decided we would do 
 something, but what we did not know. We 
 took out our old school books and together 
 we studied during that winter; there was 
 
io ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 nothing else to do. We had heard of the 
 Grange as an organization for farmers and 
 their wives, but did not know anything 
 about it. When there was one organized in 
 our neighborhood, Mr. Mayo and I joined 
 it. It did not strike me well at first, and I 
 do not think it did Mr. Mayo. It was all 
 for buying direct from the manufacturers. 
 There was little that was educational about 
 it, being scarcely more than a round of rou- 
 tine business. The lecturer's office, as maker 
 of programs for the meetings, was nearly 
 ignored. Indeed, there was nothing really 
 helpful in the first Grange to which we 
 belonged. However, Battle Creek Grange 
 was taking advanced work, and how I en- 
 joyed it!" 
 
 This was the beginning. How little 
 either of these two realized that this step 
 of taking out their old school books meant 
 the initiation of a new epoch in their his- 
 tories, one that was to push them out of the 
 stagnant pools of farm isolation and set 
 them in the currents of the world's work 
 and friendships. Today it all came back to 
 me, what this had meant to them, when a 
 young farmer's wife, with her four-year-old 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN I I 
 
 son on her lap, said to me, " Charles and I 
 are daring each other to get out our geome- 
 tries this winter to see if we have forgotten 
 all we ever knew!" In such a resolution 
 as that, if carried out, lies folded the con- 
 quest of the brutal and fierce within one, 
 and the installing within the home of that 
 which shall drive out of it drudgery and 
 loneliness and low aim, not only for the 
 parents, but in large measure for the chil- 
 dren and others who come within its influ- 
 ence. Such people and such homes have 
 ever been the bulwarks of agriculture and 
 the pioneers of a cultured rural life. Thou- 
 sands of country homes are the scenes of 
 just such triumph of mind over matter. 
 Every such subjugation has connected with 
 it a story of broadening paths and pleasanter 
 places. This is the story of but one of them. 
 
 Outside the Home, but Close By 
 
 Mrs. Mayo's study at home soon led her 
 to reach out into the neighborhood to gather 
 the young people into a reading club. Here, 
 by bringing these young minds into contact 
 with genuine literature, she wrought a beau- 
 tiful work, for she knew how to bring the 
 
12 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 best of it to the humblest listener. She 
 was meanwhile conducting a corresponding 
 work, on the spiritual plane, in the country 
 Sabbath school, where for years she taught 
 the young people's class. She herself was 
 always young of heart, and gay as a girl 
 when occasion warranted; but there was no 
 frivolity in her gayety. Beneath it all there 
 was always a consciousness of the under- 
 currents in the lives that touched hers, even 
 for a brief time. "I believe," she said once, 
 when speaking of later work among friends 
 of an hour or a few days, "I believe every 
 soul is waiting and fairly longing to have 
 us speak to it of its eternal interests. If we 
 only knew how to say the right word!" 
 
 After the study of old text-books, she 
 took up for her own culture the work of 
 the Chautauqua Reading Circle, and com- 
 pleted the four years' home study course. 
 Because she aimed to turn whatever she had 
 to account for others, she felt impelled to 
 constantly feed her own mind by daily read- 
 ing and study, no matter how hard-pressed 
 the hours were with much bodily serving. 
 This habit she continued, ranging widely 
 over the fields of literature and public 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 13 
 
 affairs. Mr. Mayo's instincts led him into 
 politics and public offices, and his wife kept 
 in close sympathy with him, possessing a 
 ready knowledge of the subjects he was 
 most interested in, as well as of those along 
 her own favorite lines of reading. 
 
 A New Era 
 
 It was in these days that the Grange 
 movement was inaugurated among farmers 
 throughout the land. Because it meant so 
 much for these two and was, withal, so sig- 
 nificant to the farming class, I must tell 
 briefly what it was and how it came 
 about. 
 
 During the fearful exhaustion of re- 
 sources and depression of spirits brought 
 about by the Civil War, no class of people 
 suffered more than those in farm homes. 
 Many of them were heavily in debt, and in 
 thousands of cases the life of the head of the 
 family had been given to save the Union. 
 They led lonely lives, these country peo- 
 ple, solitude often breeding in them the 
 narrowness, jealousies, and discontent that 
 thrive most rankly in social separateness. 
 In the South there was still more ground 
 
14 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 inoculated with these deadening tendencies. 
 Many of the farms there had been actual 
 battlefields. The laborers had been freed 
 from obligation to serve their former 
 masters, and the owners, unaccustomed to 
 manual toil, were in straits of mind and 
 purse. These were the conditions as one 
 Mr. O. H. Kelley found them when he 
 was sent into the South by President John- 
 son to investigate and report upon the situa- 
 tion of Southern farmers. Mr. Kelley went 
 from plantation to plantation and into 
 homes, mingling with their families. He 
 became most of all impressed with the ban 
 of social ostracism that rested upon the 
 family of the American farmer because of 
 his calling and necessary environment. He 
 came back to Washington, made his report, 
 and returned to his place as a clerk in the 
 employ of the government. This did not, 
 however, free his mind from the(conviction 
 that there was needed some great cohesive 
 force to bring the agricultural people to- 
 gether and make them to know one another. 
 Their needs were akin; their successes and 
 failures were along the same lines ; they had 
 hopes, ambitions, and disappointments iden- 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 15 
 
 tical with other people; but, in the neces- 
 sary separateness of their living, they were 
 largely unconscious of these facts. Espe- 
 cially did they need to know that their ex- 
 periences were common to those of their 
 own vocation. They needed to know that 
 others had troubles with calves and chickens 
 and children; that others built hopes on 
 crops of hay and harvested bins of grain; 
 that others carried scars of frustrated ambi- 
 tions and dreamed of better schooling for 
 their boys and girls than they themselves 
 had had. The direct result of seeing these 
 needs was that Mr. Kelley united six other 
 men and one woman (his niece, Miss Carrie 
 Hall) with him in an endeavor to institute 
 some plan by which this largest class of our 
 people might in some measure be unified. 
 Though constituting, at that time, more 
 than one-half the population of the country, 
 individual families were little more than 
 scattered units, making, as a whole, only a 
 granular structure. They were the prey of 
 whatever combined against them in the 
 business and political world. Worst of all, 
 they were the victims of their own inclina- 
 tions to social, mental, and moral inactivity^ 
 
1 6 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 Real Help Organized 
 
 The undertaking promoted by Mr. 
 Kelley, and designated as "The Grange," 
 or "Order of Patrons of Husbandry," was 
 launched in 1867, but made no appreciable 
 growth until in the early seventies. Its aim 
 was to bring farmers to see that their happi- 
 ness depended upon prosperity, which in 
 turn rested upon knowledge, and that the 
 ultimate object of this organization was to 
 bind them together in a unity of endeavor 
 to secure this knowledge. This was the sub- 
 stance of a very brief preamble to the con- 
 stitution as originally sent out. IA few years 
 later, in 1874, a "Declaration of Purposes" 
 was published, which has remained the 
 guiding star for the high-minded, if some- 
 what conservative, course of this farmers' 
 society the only movement of the kind 
 that for forty years has kept intact a chain 
 of organizations connecting the individual,- 
 through its subordinate, county, and state 
 Granges, with a national body. 
 
 For a considerable number of years in 
 the history of the Grange, as it is yet in some 
 instances, the feature of commercial co- 
 operation for financial betterment was 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN IJ 
 
 emphasized; but we find in the " Declara- 
 tion" that the first specific object set forth 
 is, "To develop a better and higher man- 
 hood and womanhood among ourselves." 
 Even the second object named is not "mer- 
 chandise or much gain"; instead, it is, "To 
 enhance the comforts and attractions of our 
 homes, and strengthen our attachments to 
 our pursuits." Then follow in order other 
 reasons for the founding of such an institu- 
 tion among farmers, as stated in the follow- 
 ing words : 
 
 "To foster mutual understanding and 
 cooperation. To maintain inviolate our 
 laws, and to emulate each other in labor, to 
 hasten the good time coming. To reduce 
 our expenses, both individual and corporate. 
 To buy less and produce more, in order to 
 make our farms sustaining. To diversify 
 our crops, and crop no more than we can 
 cultivate. To condense the weight of our 
 exports, selling less in the bushel and more 
 on hoof and in fleece; less in lint and more 
 in warp and wool. To systematize our 
 work, and calculate intelligently on prob- 
 abilities. To discountenance the credit sys- 
 tem, the mortgage system, the fashion 
 system, and every other system tending to 
 prodigality and bankruptcy." 
 
1 8 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 To actualize these objects in the homes 
 and lives of its members, semi-monthly 
 meetings were instituted, a ritual was pre- 
 pared calling for thirteen officers to execute 
 it, and nominal fees and dues were levied, 
 with regular reports and dues to the higher 
 Granges in the chain) In the initial call to 
 organize occurred the following words, 
 which have proven prophetic: 
 
 "Unity of action cannot be acquired 
 without discipline, and discipline cannot be 
 enforced without significant organization; 
 hence, we have a ceremony of initiation 
 which binds us in mutual fraternity as with 
 a band of iron ; but, although its influence is 
 so powerful, its application is as gentle as 
 that of the silken thread that binds a wreath 
 of flowers." 
 
 Adhering to these principles, the Grange 
 grew more and more educational in its 
 scope, although casting of! none of its prac- 
 ticality. At the same time it shed, like 
 so many excrescences, those whose love of 
 money alone had induced them to join. 
 
 Woman's Place in the New Order 
 
 It seems, at this distance, quite a matter 
 of course happening that women should 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 19 
 
 have been made equal with men in the 
 Grange. But forty years ago, when this 
 occurred, it was not so. Even, indeed, at 
 present, there are few fraternal orders com- 
 posed of both sexes on the same broad foot- 
 ing as exists in the Grange. But that it 
 should have been wrought into the very 
 beginnings of a society whose aim was to 
 amalgamate the rural population was un- 
 mistakably a guidance of divine Providence. 
 In no other way could the problems under- 
 taken have been solved. 
 
 The social stratum of a people underlies 
 all its superstructure. If the public were 
 astonished forty years ago to see farmers 
 fairly crowd by thousands into an organiza- 
 tion of their own, how they would have 
 rubbed their Rip Van Winkle eyes could 
 they have looked forward and seen what 
 that movement meant to those farmers' 
 wives and their daughters! The founders 
 of the Grange recognized that all life needs 
 its complementary halves the strength and 
 wisdom of the masculine qualities, and the 
 gentleness and love of the feminine else 
 results must be crude and opinions biased. 
 For this reason, women were called. With- 
 
20 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 out them the Grange could not reach its 
 highest idea, an enlarged country home. 
 
 Think what it must have meant forty 
 years ago to country women to come close 
 together once a week or fortnight and spend 
 a social evening with their husbands and 
 brothers! How lonely it had all been be- 
 fore! Days and days they had been shut in 
 with only their own thoughts, seldom seeing 
 faces besides those of their own families. 1 
 Is it any wonder that their minds grew 
 inert, that they stopped, dazed, before the 
 social complexities of the world beyond 
 their own dooryards? Timid, shrinking, 
 all empty of conceit, not guessing the abili- 
 ties latent within them, they came to the 
 Grange. There they drank eagerly, deeply. 
 New wheels of thought began to revolve 
 in their brains as they worked. So it was 
 that the weary, worn women of the farm 
 found sustenance in their own province. 
 Neighbors suddenly became more attract- 
 
 1 But the day of need of organization among farming folk is not past. 
 Only last December (1907) there appeared at one of our state Granges a 
 woman who, with her husband, had come five hundred miles to repre- 
 sent the new Grange of which six of her family were members. In con- 
 versation with her newly found Grange sisters, this interesting woman said 
 she was the mother of fourteen children, and that, at one time, for five 
 years she saw no one outside her immediate family. 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 21 
 
 ive to them; they now met as friends those 
 whose names they had barely known; music 
 from many voices stirred their souls as 
 never before; books and papers held out 
 welcoming hands that they had fancied 
 were only for the leisurely. They did the 
 best they could with it all. They listened 
 and thought upon what they heard and felt; 
 they set splendid tables at the frequent 
 feasts. This much they could do. 
 
 It is not easily told the whole signifi- 
 cance of all this. Women everywhere, in 
 or out of the order the farmer's wife and 
 those who know not the smell of clover 
 and the low of cows all are affected by the 
 fact that women for forty years have been 
 in training in the Grange. So do we rise 
 and fall together. When the Grange had 
 been organized half as long as it has been 
 now, Mrs. Hearty Hunt Woodman, a 
 woman who stood with her husband offi- 
 cially close to the heart of all this work, 
 said of this way opening before farm women : 
 " There never was nor can be again such an 
 awakening among the wives and daughters 
 of farmers as our organization has brought 
 about. It surpasses anything I have ever 
 
22 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 known. No local society or sectarian gath- 
 ering can bring together the talent, com- 
 bined with general knowledge and physical 
 strength, that our women possess, always 
 ready to respond in the Grange to any call 
 that may be made ; but outside the gate they 
 are diffident and only listeners. The time 
 is soon coming when their light will shine 
 beyond, and all will feel and know that our 
 organization has developed the mind of 
 woman more than the most sanguine dared 
 to hope. The founders of our order are 
 jubilant every year we meet in annual ses- 
 sions, because of the work woman is doing." 
 
 Outside the Home, but Farther Away 
 
 Into such initial efforts at rural social 
 improvement work, Mr. and Mrs. Mayo 
 threw the force of their lives at their prime. 
 They were active in their home neighbor- 
 hood organizations, the Farmers' Club and 
 local Grange, and became officers in the 
 county Grange. They were early ^sent as 
 delegates to the state Grange session. In 
 1882, a woman who met them there for the 
 first time, in noting salient features of the 
 meeting, wrote of them, "Mr. and Mrs. 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 23 
 
 Mayo are young, active, and full of Grange 
 
 vim." 
 
 Mrs. Mayo's work in the state session 
 and her contributions to the state Grange 
 paper were the open doors through which 
 calls came into her home from the outside 
 world. She began to go out into all parts 
 of her own state and adjoining ones to press 
 upon her fellow- farm men and women their 
 need of organized effort for their own social 
 and mental awakening. The first time she 
 ventured out of her own county was to talk 
 to Grange people in the adjoining one of 
 Barry. Mr. Mayo accompanied her, and 
 they drove thirty-six miles to their first 
 appointment. Of this meeting, years after- 
 ward, she said: "I knew that people came 
 just out of curiosity to hear a woman speak. 
 I saw just a few women who drank in 
 eagerly what little I had to say. Some ridi- 
 culed, a few were indignant. That some 
 were glad to listen is evidenced by the fact 
 that they asked me to speak to the school 
 children the next day, which I did. Those 
 women who did listen to me were among 
 my stanchest friends, and are to this day. 
 One woman told me she could not set her- 
 
24 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 self at work the next day, but went out to 
 the field where her husband was at work to 
 talk over with him what I had said." In 
 reporting her year's work to state Grange 
 the following December, Mrs. Mayo said 
 of this tour, "If we should ever become so 
 demoralized as to run out of home, friends, 
 and everything else, we certainly shall go 
 to Barry County, for I know of no place 
 where they are so forbearing and charitable 
 as there." 
 
 From this time forward more calls than 
 she could fill came to her. They came from 
 all parts of the state. It must be remem- 
 bered that she was not a free agent whose 
 time was entirely open to outside demands. 
 She was wife, mother, and housekeeper; 
 and nothing but her craving to sweeten and 
 deepen other lives like her own could have 
 tempted her to make room for this work. 
 She left the love circle about her home fire- 
 side in order to beat a path through a way 
 for the most part untrodden by feet of other 
 women of that time. Of the difficulties 
 that beset her path, and of the reception the 
 people gave her work, she once said, in re- 
 porting fifty lectures and several talks given 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 2<J 
 
 during the year 1885: "As I look back over 
 the work I see so many discrepancies and 
 shortcomings I feel almost guilty; still I 
 have done what I could. I had planned 
 for much work during last winter, but the 
 weather was a ban to the lecture field, and 
 I found my own physical strength insuffi- 
 cient to battle with blocked roads and a 
 thermometer that would persist in staying 
 twenty degrees below zero. The better half 
 of the firm said very decidedly, 'You had 
 better bide a wee,' so that only twice from 
 January until the 23d of March did I 
 attempt any work." 
 
 And again, 1886, when reporting seventy- 
 three lectures, she said: "At times we have 
 had unavoidable things to contend against, 
 such as bad roads, rough weather, late 
 trains, weariness, and homesickness; but 
 from the patrons there have always been 
 kindly greetings, words of encouragement, 
 and good cheer; and, best of all, over our 
 many failures and shortcomings they have 
 kindly and gently placed the mantle of that 
 sweet charity which suffereth long and is 
 kind. I have organized but one new 
 Grange this year, Clearwater, of Kalkaska 
 
26 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 County. There are some things in this life 
 that I may forget, but I shall never forget 
 the effort we made in behalf of the people 
 of Kalkaska. After carefully comparing 
 their situation before the Grange came to 
 them with their possibilities and even their 
 probabilities now they have a Grange, I 
 think it is the best day's and night's work 
 I ever did in my life." 
 
 I have visited this Clearwater Grange, 
 set away among the Kalkaska hills, and 
 felt the lingering influence of its organizer 
 hanging over it after many years. Upon re- 
 quest, the family who entertained her and 
 assisted in the working up of the Grange 
 have furnished me with the following ac- 
 count of her work in that community, which 
 is fairly typical of her tirelessness whenever 
 she was in the field: 
 
 "Mrs. Mayo came to our home on 
 August 30, 1886, and in the evening deliv- 
 ered an address at our Boardman Valley 
 Grange. Next day we went with her to 
 J. A. Gibson's farm in Clearwater town- 
 ship, about ten miles from our home. Here 
 in the afternoon she spoke to a large audi- 
 ence in JMr. Gibson's new barn, enrolling 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 2J 
 
 afterward twenty-three names as charter 
 members of Clearwater Grange. In the 
 evening, at a schoolhouse two miles away, 
 she instructed the first and only Grange she 
 ever organized. About midnight we started 
 for home; but, going up a large hill, an 
 evener broke, and we stopped at Mr. Gib- 
 son's until we could make a new one. It 
 was four o'clock in the morning when we 
 reached home, for we had no stone county 
 roads then, only the deep sand ones every- 
 where. During that night a hard frost fell, 
 killing nearly everything. Three years later, 
 Mrs. Mayo came again to our home and 
 spoke at Excelsior Grange, six miles away, 
 in the evening. The following day she went 
 to Clearwater, ten miles, where she dedi- 
 cated the new hall of the Grange which 
 she had organized. Rain fell most of the 
 day. Leaving the neighborhood about seven 
 o'clock in the evening, on our way to Kal- 
 kaska, we were out in one of the most 
 drenching showers of the season. We left 
 her at Kalkaska to take the eleven o'clock 
 train for her home, more than two hundred 
 miles distant." 
 
28 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 Character and Intimacy of Her Work 
 
 No other woman has begun to be the 
 apostle of social, mental, and spiritual de- 
 velopment among the rural communities 
 of her native state that this " little brown 
 woman from the farm" has been. This epi- 
 thet is one she applied to herself, referring 
 to her deep brown eyes and hair, dark skin 
 and sun-tanned hands. So unobtrusive in 
 dress and bearing was she that people sel- 
 dom guessed her identity until it was made 
 known to them. She blended into the scenes 
 among which she moved much as do the di- 
 minutive brown song sparrows of our coun- 
 try roadsides. Like them, too, she attracted 
 attention first when she lifted her voice in 
 joyful, courageous greeting, for she spoke 
 always with tone and face that seemed 
 charged with an individual knowledge of 
 her listeners' difficulties and a sure confi- 
 dence in their ultimate solution. Her mes- 
 sage went ever quick and decisive from 
 her heart to the great, all-hungering heart 
 of humanity in whatever guise it heard 
 her. 
 
 It is not enough to say she went through 
 the highways and byways, nor will the num- 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 29 
 
 her of public platforms she spoke from give 
 any adequate estimate of what she did. 
 Hers was a far more intimate work. Her 
 most lasting labors were the ones performed 
 by the hearthside, in the living room, sitting 
 often hand in hand with the wife and 
 mother; and even " under the covers" ex- 
 changing confidences with the daughters, 
 with whom it frequently fell to her lot to 
 share her room in the crowded homes that 
 made her welcome. Since her earthly pil- 
 grimages ceased, on the walls of how many 
 guest chambers, or in the sitting rooms of 
 how many homes where she had been enter- 
 tained, have we who follow after found her 
 picture framed and hung! 
 
 Mary A. Mayo was only one of hun- 
 dreds of far-seeing men and women who, 
 realizing actual conditions in the set- 
 apart farm home, grasped the possibilities 
 afforded them through organized move- 
 ments. To her, however, more than to any 
 other woman, certainly more than to 
 any other Michigan woman, was given the 
 task and privilege of large sacrifice that 
 she might lead others into these richer 
 fields. 
 
30 ONE WOMAN S WORK 
 
 Farm and Rural Opportunities 
 
 She looked out on what was being done 
 for city and town women through .social 
 and study clubs. She saw, also, the white 
 hands of philanthropy leading these same 
 city sisters out of self-centered lives to work 
 for others. Over against these things, she 
 saw the Grange and kindred organizations 
 offering corresponding opportunities to 
 farm women. She realized what a woman, 
 years later, expressed in one of the women's 
 meetings that grew up under Mrs. Mayo's 
 nurture, "About the only difference be- 
 tween town and country women, after all, 
 is just a matter of a few miles." With this 
 vision clearly before her, she strove as best 
 she could to make it apparent to the sight of 
 other women situated like herself. 
 
 One day she had a memorable meeting 
 with the one woman who, more than all 
 others at that time in her part of the world, 
 could sympathize, encourage, and advise 
 her in these things. This woman was Mrs. 
 Lucinda Hinsdale Stone, widely known as 
 "Mother of Women's Clubs." A year or 
 two before her death, Mrs. Mayo described 
 this interview: "A good many years ago, 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 31 
 
 nearly twenty I think, when I first began 
 lecture work in the Grange, State Master 
 Luce planned for me a series of meetings in 
 Wexford County. I was new to the work, 
 and it seemed so far that I was homesick 
 ere I started, and my heart almost failed me 
 in the going. I left home on an early train, 
 changing cars at Kalamazoo for the Grand 
 Rapids and Indiana Road, which would 
 take me direct to Manton, my first place of 
 speaking. At Kalamazoo Mrs. Stone came 
 on the train. I knew her by sight, but had 
 never met her personally. How I wanted 
 to talk with her! How I wished to ask her 
 questions which were burning themselves 
 into my heart, and which were demanding 
 answers that I could not give! How I 
 longed to tell her the purpose of my jour- 
 ney, and to ask her counsel as to the best 
 way of reaching my sisters on the farm! 
 After some deliberations with self, I 
 pocketed a little false sentiment and intro- 
 duced myself to Mrs. Stone. I found her 
 one of the most gracious and affable of 
 women. 
 
 "I told her of my mission, my work, 
 and what I hoped to accomplish. She had 
 
32 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 heard of the Grange, but knew very little 
 of its object. She asked a great many ques- 
 tions about it, its origin, its founders, and 
 what we expected to accomplish by it. As 
 she belonged to a city club, I told her the 
 Grange was to the country woman what the 
 club was to the city woman, and more; that 
 in the Grange woman stood on an equal 
 footing with man. Here she stopped me 
 and said, 'This is the key to your success.' 
 I read to her our Declaration of Purposes, 
 and she became enthusiastic. She said: 'I 
 have long had you country women on my 
 heart. I have long felt you needed some- 
 thing to lift you to higher thought and 
 greater usefulness, and here you have it.' 
 
 "I shall never forget the earnestness of 
 her face nor the graciousness of her manner 
 when we came to the parting of our ways. 
 As she laid her hand on mine, she said: 'Go 
 on with this work, my dear; set its standard 
 high; keep everything out of your organ- 
 ization that is small and trivial; have sys- 
 tem, though, and a definiteness of action, 
 always striving for high mental and moral 
 growth. So shall you farm women grow 
 grow into womanliness, helpfulness, and 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 33 
 
 strength ; so shall you become wise counsel- 
 ors as wives, stronger, better mothers, hence 
 better citizens. I believe the time will 
 come, if you Grange workers are wise, 
 when every township will have some kind 
 of an organization, and you women will 
 stand as man's equal in all things.' At 
 Manton we parted, she following me to 
 the car steps, cheering, encouraging, and 
 strengthening me for the work. Her one 
 thought was to make the Grange worth 
 while, to bring such subjects for study and 
 discussion to its members as should stimu- 
 late mental and moral growth. 
 
 "Her words have been most prophetic. 
 I never saw her but once after that, but 
 there was no mistaking her ideas of the 
 Grange and its possibilities. She knew its 
 need, and, knowing something of its prin- 
 ciples, she saw in the distance what concert 
 of wise work would accomplish." 
 
 The Evolved Neighborhood 
 
 That was at least a quarter of a century 
 ago. By what tokens shall organized 
 movements among farm people now be 
 known? We cannot well be content with 
 
34 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 tracing its [influence in great legislative 
 enactments such as the installing of a 
 Secretary of Agriculture in the Presiden- 
 tial Cabinet, bringing about rural mail de- 
 livery, securing stringent dairy and food 
 laws, limiting royalties on patents, creat- 
 ing the Interstate Commerce Commission, 
 and alleviating burdens of unequal taxation 
 in many states. In all these and many less 
 spectacular movements, the Grange, with 
 other farmers' organizations, has had its 
 part. Important as that part has been, there 
 has gone on simultaneously a quiet and 
 interior transformation that is far more im- 
 portant. It has been nothing less than the 
 remaking of the farm home life. This has 
 been done by giving a new outlook on the 
 sphere of rural home influence. In short, 
 by enlarging that home's circumference, it 
 has changed the neighborhood into the 
 larger family. Here, in the genial atmos- 
 phere of this larger family circle, men 
 and women have brought forth gifts long 
 wrapped in napkins of social disuse and 
 mental inertia. It was a crude process, to 
 be sure. The foundations built upon had, 
 perforce, to be actual conditions) 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 35 
 
 The Evolved Individual 
 
 Only those who knew those conditions 
 could build up out of them, and there had 
 to be radical beginnings. Thus, early in 
 her connection with this work, we find Mrs. 
 Mayo calling her first talk by the title of 
 " Bread and Books." In the inimitably 
 simple and practical way she had of talking 
 to people, singly or in masses, she(urged 
 them to work first for shelter, clothing, and 
 food ; but then not to be content, but to add 
 to these reading, thinking, and culture of 
 mind and heart. "We are conscious of one 
 thing that must be done," she said, "and 
 that over and over again. We must edu- 
 cate, educate, educate! We have much 
 to educate some things to educate out and 
 some to educate in. The almighty dollar 
 must be educated out. Men and women 
 must be educated to the fact that money, 
 with the accumulation thereof, is not the 
 whole purpose and aim of life; that the 
 mind is of more importance than bank 
 stocks, bonds, and mortgages; and that 
 the neglect to cultivate the intellect, and the 
 eternal round of toil and care that so many 
 
36 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 follow, only tend to drag men and women 
 down to slavery.'^) 
 
 She saw, moreover, that the socially 
 ostracized must somehow be helped to ex- 
 press themselves. Lack of ability out- 
 wardly to declare his inner self is one of 
 the heaviest penalties imposed upon one by 
 the solitudes and distances of the average 
 rural community. It is not alone want of 
 power to say what he thinks; he suffers 
 quite as much from inability to act what he 
 feels. The plight of multitudes of capable, 
 substantial men and women is voiced by one 
 of them who once confessed to his fellow- 
 farmers, "I have plenty of idees up in my 
 head; trouble is, I can't get them down 
 into my tongue!" 
 
 To farm women the mental and social 
 emancipation of the past half century has 
 been a boon indeed. Not long ago, in the 
 course of some Grange visits in the upper 
 peninsula of Michigan, I spent the day with 
 a woman who had been freed by it. The 
 house her home was a two-roomed log 
 house with a " lean-to" kitchen. It was set 
 quite back from the road, but flowers 
 grew about the front, and a vine ran across 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 37 
 
 one window. The floors were bare, and 
 the seats were all hard, wood-bottomed, 
 straight-backed "kitchen chairs." One of 
 these chairs had rockers, and that was the 
 only attempt at comfort the house afforded; 
 no soft, cushioned rockers or pillowed 
 couches in the corners or under the win- 
 dows. This woman in this house was 
 the mother of nine children. When we had 
 had dinner and the table was cleared away, 
 I took out some writing. The mother gently 
 drove out of the house a flock of five little 
 girls, all nearly of the same size, telling 
 them I must be left alone. But after a few 
 moments of quiet she herself came into the 
 room, and said, "Excuse me for interrupt- 
 ing you, but there is one question I want to 
 ask." Hurriedly my mind flew over the 
 multitude of questions she might wish to 
 ask this mother of nine children, living 
 thirty-seven miles from a railroad, a furni- 
 ture store, or a dry goods counter, out of 
 reach of concerts, lectures, and other events 
 commonly thought to be sources of human 
 inspiration. What could be the one ques- 
 tion she would choose to ask? Would it be 
 how to make a new gown for herself or one 
 
38 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 of the girlies? Would it be what sort of a 
 rug to get for her floor, what flowers for 
 her garden, or what pictures for her walls? 
 It was none of these. It was, " How can we 
 help those women where we were yester- 
 day?" The day before we had met in a 
 neighborhood where the women said they 
 had no time to go to Grange meetings. 
 "They say they cannot leave their chil- 
 dren," she continued, "and that is just 
 the situation I found myself in when the 
 Grange was formed here; but my husband 
 said he thought we could manage it, and so 
 I have gone regularly, and I have grown 
 to feel that I can find something to talk 
 about with every one I meet. I have good 
 friends all over the neighborhood. I love 
 the country and am never lonely here; the 
 sky and the fields are a delight to me; 
 the odors of the flowers and the clover, the 
 birds, the clouds, and the quiet are all com- 
 pany in our lives. I should so like to help 
 other women to find these pleasures, too." 
 
 This was in a pioneer section of the 
 country. Alongside of this let me put the 
 testimony of another woman from a thickly 
 settled, old part of our state. The local 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 39 
 
 Grange, of which Mrs. McN. and her hus- 
 band are members, met with them on Mrs. 
 McN.'s fifty-sixth birthday. These two are 
 among the most faithful attendants. Mr. 
 McN., Scotchman that he is, loves an argu- 
 ment, and has practiced public speaking 
 from boyhood. The Grange has furnished 
 him a fruitful field for his " besetting sin," 
 and he rarely allows a meeting to pass with- 
 out entering the lists. His wife is the mother 
 of ten children, but she is youthful still, 
 despite her generous maternity. On this 
 particular occasion, when the Grange met 
 at her home, the responses to the roll call of 
 members and friends consisted of birthday 
 sentiments. When the large number pres- 
 ent had expressed their kindliest apprecia- 
 tion of her past and good wishes for her 
 future, Mrs. McN. rose and said: "Once 
 I did not even think of seeing such a day as 
 this. I thank you for the good things you 
 have said and wished for me. I have come 
 to know you, or nearly all of you, through 
 the Grange. All my early married life I 
 spent close at home, busy with my children, 
 cooking for them, clothing them, and doing 
 the best I could for them. I did not miss 
 
40 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 the outside things then, for I was satisfied 
 with my duty; but as my children began to 
 grow up, I felt I was a stranger to my 
 neighbors. I told my husband how I felt, 
 and he said we had better join the Grange. 
 In the first one we became members of, 
 matters did not mend much for me. I went 
 regularly enough, but somehow I did not 
 get acquainted. After we joined this 
 Grange, I read somewhere that the way to 
 be happy is to find some one lonelier than 
 yourself and try to make him or her 
 happy. I resolved to try this rule at Grange. 
 When I saw another woman sitting off by 
 herself, I went up to her and told her I was 
 glad she had come ; and I took pains to greet 
 strangers when they came to visit us. I kept 
 doing this till I felt perfectly at home 
 among our Grange members and, in fact, 
 wherever I went, for I found friends wher- 
 ever I tried to be friendly. 
 
 "But I didn't know I had done anything 
 for the Grange," she went on, "till one day 
 the master of the Grange announced that 
 we were to entertain the county Grange, 
 and he wished that every one would copy 
 me in the way that I always greeted stran- 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 41 
 
 gers and made them feel at home. Then I 
 saw, for the first time, that perhaps I had 
 helped somewhere, and I was, oh! so glad 
 that I could do something outside my 
 home!" 
 
 In the hush that followed this confiden- 
 tial opening of the gentle woman's heart, 
 one of the men present sturdy, keen, busi- 
 nesslike upon ordinary occasions arose 
 and quietly asked, " Isn't that all of life 
 to make some one else happy?" It has 
 been the revealing of such pure, limpid 
 depths of human nature as these in the lives 
 of men and women, born and bred in coun- 
 try homes, that has made the Grange most 
 worth while, and has put us forever under 
 debt to its promoters. 
 
 Children s Day In the Grange 
 
 The age of entrance to Grange member- 
 ship was originally sixteen years. This left 
 the children unprovided for, a large factor 
 in the farm home life. To the country 
 children Mrs. Mayo's mother instinct ever 
 reached out, and early in her association 
 with state Grange she proposed that a day 
 be observed annually as Children's Day. 
 
42 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 The idea met with ready favor with those 
 in authority, with mothers, and especially 
 with the little folks, who were usually left 
 at home or tucked away asleep during 
 Grange meetings. The matter was taken 
 into national Grange by State Master C. G. 
 Luce, and for several years a day was ap- 
 pointed by the master of that body, all the 
 states being asked to observe it. Custom 
 has now decreed that, if possible, the third 
 Saturday in June shall be given over to 
 making happy times for all the children of 
 Grange communities. 
 
 Mrs. Mayo was the life of every meet- 
 ing of this kind that she attended. Having 
 early acquired the habit of telling stories to 
 her own children, she continued the prac- 
 tice wherever she went, often mingling in 
 them her brightest humor and deepest 
 thought. Her bear and Indian stories were 
 especially famous among the children who 
 knew her best. She used the commonest 
 words and most expressive phrases, but 
 spurned all coarseness. 
 
 Woman's Work in the Grange 
 
 Although men and women entered and 
 worked together in the Grange organiza- 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 43 
 
 tion, still for a time there seemed to be so 
 many things that women could do better 
 than men, that special committees of 
 women were appointed for these purposes. 
 These were known throughout the order as 
 " Woman's Work Committees." In her 
 own state, Mrs. Mayo was the first chair- 
 man, and remained leader of this commit- 
 tee for fourteen years. At the outset she 
 wrote of it: "We thought woman had al- 
 ready borne her part by the side of her 
 brother; but here, as in other fields, there 
 seemed to be work that none but a woman 
 could do. It appealed to her deftness of 
 touch, her artistic taste, and to all the finer 
 sensibilities that characterize the true 
 woman." 
 
 The aim of these committees included 
 efforts to improve the rural schools, to 
 inculcate patriotism in the young, to make 
 places where Granges meet more homelike 
 by raising money to furnish them comfort- 
 ably and attractively, to encourage greater 
 tidiness upon farm premises and improve 
 home dooryards, and to look after the sick, 
 the lonely, and the needy of the various 
 Grange communities. 
 
44 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 Grange Fresh Air Work 
 f *~ tk 
 
 But Mrs. Mayo soon conceived the idea 
 
 of broadening the scope of the work under- 
 taken by country people so as to enlist their 
 sympathies and cooperation in caring for 
 the worn-out and worthy poor outside their 
 immediate neighborhoods. It was a social 
 extension service she pleaded for, and it 
 grew under her inspiration and direction 
 until it became known as the " Grange 
 Fresh Air Work." It was no easy thing 
 to bring about this getting strange little 
 waifs and exhausted women and girls from 
 the city out into the peaceful, uninvaded 
 precincts of the comfortable, roomy, better- 
 to-do class of country homes. There is a 
 sort of aristocracy of silence and cleanliness 
 about some of these farmers' homes that it 
 is hard to gain permission to break with 
 the clatter and carelessness of a child un- 
 bridled for a holiday. Mrs. Mayo had in 
 mind, it is easy to suppose, quite as much 
 the benefit such an innovation would bring 
 her country friends as the health and joy 
 the change would give the " fresh airs" 
 themselves. She herself set the example, 
 and every summer saw one to half a dozen 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 45 
 
 worn office clerks, sewing girls, tired 
 mothers, or urchins from the alleys, each 
 given a few days or weeks of delightful 
 outing in her home. A paragraph in one 
 of her midsummer notes reads: "We have 
 now our fifth fresh-air girl, a daughter who 
 five years ago laid her mother's worn-out 
 body away and then stepped into her place, 
 caring for and working for a family of 
 seven. She says it is the first time she has 
 known rest since her mother left them. 
 Her gratitude is just pitiful." 
 
 She planned with charity authorities 
 and railroad officials for the proper collec- 
 tion and transportation of hundreds of these 
 denizens of the hot cities. Then she en- 
 couraged and coaxed the country women, 
 here and there wherever she knew of one 
 at all favorable to her cause, to enter this 
 beneficent work with her. How well she 
 succeeded is shown by the fact that between 
 a thousand and fifteen hundred poor chil- 
 dren and mothers had summer outings, and 
 at least thirty orphans are known to have 
 been adopted into good homes as a direct 
 result of this work. 
 
46 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 Women at the Agricultural College 
 
 Coordinate with these efforts, endeavors 
 in other directions were being put forth 
 toward the same end, namely, the broaden- 
 ing of the scope of the rural home and the 
 usefulness of its members. Thirty-nine 
 years elapsed between the founding of the 
 first agricultural college for boys and ade- 
 quate provision for girls at the same institu- 
 tion. True, younger colleges of its kind 
 had opened wide their doors earlier, and 
 thus furthered the propriety, possibility, 
 and desirableness of the idea; but it was 
 not accomplished without an often tiresome 
 struggle. There had to be a long, long 
 process of educating the very people for 
 whom the door was to be held open. Hard 
 as it was to persuade farmers to send their 
 boys to a college devoted to a special train- 
 ing in agriculture, it was still more difficult 
 to secure means to provide for the care of 
 these boys' sisters on the same campus. A 
 few people had to do a deal of persuading 
 and educating, both of officials and of the 
 masses, before courses in domestic science 
 and art were given at Michigan Agricul- 
 tural College. Among these few, it is not 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 47 
 
 surprising to find Mrs. Mayo. She held 
 that the best things were none too good for 
 the farm wife and daughter. With a boy 
 of her own taking the full agricultural 
 course, and a girl coming on after him 
 for the one she coveted what the other had. 
 For other girls she desired the same, and she 
 urged upon their fathers and mothers the 
 value of systematic, scientific training for 
 the minds, hands, and eyes of these girls 
 who were probably to become homemakers. 
 This was her x plea, in season and out, wher- 
 ever she went; and year after year she 
 saw that a resolution was adopted by state 
 Grange, thus securing the influence of that 
 body for the movement. At last the plan 
 succeeded. Extra instructors were provided 
 and an old hall fitted up for the girls. In 
 1900 a special women's building was com- 
 pleted. Many gathered from every direc- 
 tion to celebrate the occasion. The little 
 mother woman who had wrought and 
 prayed for this day for so many years could 
 not be present because of the serious illness 
 of her "one ewe lamb"; but five hundred 
 women arose in her honor, recognizing her 
 labor of love in helping to bring about that 
 day. 
 
48 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 Into every structure of stone and, brick 
 there goes brain and heart fiber; it is a real- 
 ization of somebody's dream. None more 
 so than into the beams and walls of the 
 buildings designed for the education of our 
 farm girls. 
 
 Industrial Home for Girls 
 
 Mrs. Mayo's interest did not stop with 
 the improving and providing education for 
 the cherished daughters of the best farm 
 homes of the land. She knew no narrow 
 prejudices of caste or class. In the city 
 nearest her home she associated herself with 
 charity organizations, and for ten years 
 acted on the board of managers of one of 
 its hospitals. Then, when Cyrus G. Luce 
 went from his farm and the master's chair 
 of the state Grange to become governor of 
 Michigan, he appointed Mrs. Mayo upon 
 the board of control of the State Industrial 
 Home for Girls. In this position she found 
 ample room for the exercise of those gifts 
 of mind and heart that were hers in so gen- 
 erous a measure. She pledged her best for 
 those girls, unfortunate by birth or environ- 
 ment, or both, perverted by waywardness 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 49 
 
 and often degraded by actual sins. The 
 woman who was superintendent of the 
 school at the time Mrs. Mayo entered upon 
 her connection with it said of her: "She 
 visited and encouraged the officers in their 
 peculiar and often discouraging work. Her 
 interest in the girls and her hope for their 
 redemption never wavered. Unlike many, 
 she had no foolish sentimentalism, but her 
 strong, motherly heart, her sympathetic na- 
 ture and, above all, her rare common sense, 
 were understood and appreciated by every 
 girl who knew her. Her talks in chapel and 
 cottage were always enjoyed by these girls. 
 They knew and understood her to be a true 
 friend, for no class of girls is keener and 
 sharper in reading character than that at 
 the Home. I always felt safe about any girl 
 that Mrs. Mayo placed in a home, and she 
 took out scores of them. Her vigilant watch- 
 care was constant; if she found the girl was 
 not adapted to the home, or, as it so often 
 occurred, the home was not all it should 
 be for the girl's best good, she would place 
 her in another, sometimes -making several 
 changes before the girl was fitted in where 
 the best that was in her could be brought 
 
50 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 out. She amazed me by her patience, her 
 sympathy, and her rare discernment in many 
 of these cases. I can almost see the sparkle 
 of her eyes and hear her laugh as she would 
 tell the adventures she met with in the 
 management of refractory girls in her own 
 home. She did not bring them back in dis- 
 grace, but kept working and praying, re- 
 proving and encouraging, month after 
 month, and often year after year. I some- 
 times felt it was too wearing for her, and 
 would say, ' Bring her back, Mrs. Mayo, 
 and I will give you another girl.' 'I will 
 not; I am going to save that girl,' was the 
 reply she invariably gave me. Eternity 
 alone will reveal the results of her work 
 with the girls. I loved her, and cannot tell 
 how much she was to me." 
 
 Mrs. Mayo knew, none better, that the 
 wholesome atmosphere of a good country 
 home was the tonic the degenerated minds 
 and souls of her Industrial Home girls 
 needed. She realized that they pined phys- 
 ically, as well as spiritually, for the pure 
 air, the vigorous work, and the healthy 
 interests that go with energetic country 
 living; and that, more than all else, they 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 51 
 
 needed the sort of mothering they might 
 have in many of these homes. Thus in this 
 work, as in her fresh air work, Mrs. Mayo 
 kept firm hold of the rural woman's hand. 
 She sought to take her country sister with 
 her on all her own excursions into the lives 
 of those who lived beyond the bounds of 
 farm fences. She was never diverted from 
 the chiefest aim of her endeavors, the draw- 
 ing out and developing of the rural home, 
 but consistently acted on her belief in its 
 possibilities. 
 
 Women's Sections of Farmers' Institutes 
 
 Among the many agencies that have 
 united to make for the betterment of rural 
 community life, farmers' institutes have 
 played a large part. They have been in- 
 spirational centers and have conducted 
 vigorous, though brief, schools of instruc- 
 tion in progressive agriculture and rural 
 sociology. Necessarily these have had to 
 include topics relating to the home as well 
 as to the work of the fields, for the two are 
 inextricably knit together. 
 
 In 1895 the scope of the Michigan sys- 
 tem of institutes was enlarged through a 
 
52 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 greatly increased appropriation of funds. 
 This enabled the superintendent of insti- 
 tutes, then Mr. K. L. Butterfield, to intro- 
 duce some new features, among which was 
 the provision for a separate woman's section 
 at each county meeting. The idea appealed 
 to him as not only feasible, but as one that 
 would probably prove desirable and help- 
 ful among women. Before announcing the 
 plan at all, he visited Mrs. Mayo, who had 
 long been the confidante and counselor of 
 those leaders in rural improvement projects 
 who knew her. Mr. Butterfield laid his 
 suggestions before her this idea of get- 
 ting women together and leading them to 
 talk of those subjects most vital to them and 
 their homes. Although a man proposed the 
 plan, he well knew it needed a woman to 
 inaugurate and mother it. 
 
 It is not hard to explain his reliance 
 upon Mrs. Mayo for this new undertaking; 
 neither is it difficult for those who have 
 once come under the spell of her vivacity 
 and manifested sympathy to understand the 
 remarkable success it attained under her 
 leadership. When asked how the project 
 suggested by Mr. Butterfield appealed to 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 53 
 
 her, she said: "My heart just throbbed. It 
 was what I had long wanted to do. He 
 asked me what I would talk about. They 
 were strong subjects that I suggested, and 
 I remember we discussed the matter of how 
 they would be received. Finally it was de- 
 cided to try the plan." Looking back now 
 over the history of the wonderful women's 
 meetings, held in nearly every county in 
 Michigan and in many other places, we 
 feel it strange that she was so fearful of the 
 undertaking. Under date of August 9, 
 1895, sne wrote the superintendent of in- 
 stitutes as follows: "What the institutes are 
 going to do, especially for us women folks, 
 is the question that troubles me. There are 
 hosts of topics that need bringing to the 
 'wimin.' While we gladly listen to papers 
 upon the scientific feeding of farm stock, 
 we want to know something about the sci- 
 entific feeding of the human animal. We 
 can understand something of the relative j 
 value of a silo and the best way to construct 
 a barn; but we want also to know how best 
 to build the home so that its influence upon 
 each member of the family may be most 
 helpful. The serious and grave questions 
 
54 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 of life-saving and soul-saving are con- 
 stantly thrust upon us ; let us know some- 
 thing about life-giving how to bear a well 
 child and rear it well. If we only had a 
 Mrs. Kedzie 1 and three or four of her 
 brightest girls, with some such topics as 
 these : 
 
 "'Every-day cooking in the average 
 farm kitchen ; how to make it attractive to 
 the eye and taste, and most nourishing to the 
 body.' 
 
 "'The farmer's home, and how to make 
 it happy.' 
 
 "'The right and wrong punishment of 
 children.' 
 
 " ' Heredity and maternity.' ( Dare you ? 
 This is a subject that should be presented. 
 I can think of none more needed.) 
 
 " 'The farmers' daughters where shall 
 they be educated?' 
 
 "'Care of young children; healthful 
 food and clothing for them.' 
 
 " 'How much of the profits of the farm 
 should the wife receive during the life of 
 her husband and how much at his death?' 
 
 !Mrs. Nellie S. Kedzie (now Mrs. Howard M. Jones), at that time 
 Dean of the Woman's Department of Kansas Agricultural College. 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 55 
 
 " 'The farm home and all that it should 
 represent.' 
 
 "Some of these are strong subjects, but 
 the public needs them." 
 
 After careful thought, Mrs. Mayo chose 
 for the talks she was to give two subjects 
 that represented the lines of social and 
 practical life in the home which she felt 
 should be emphasized in these experimental 
 meetings for women. These topics were, 
 "Mother and Daughter," and "Making 
 Farm Work Easier." She spoke usually 
 without notes, talking simply and directly 
 out of her heart and experience to those 
 who came to hear her. The results sur- 
 prised the most sanguine. The meetings 
 for women, under the leadership of a farm 
 woman, proved unique and far-reaching. 
 The same intense feeling was in them that 
 accompanies any movement which touches 
 vital emotions and unexpressed thoughts, 
 and which requires courage and tact to in- 
 augurate. Through them many women 
 came to know themselves and to understand 
 their responsibilities to their children as 
 never before. 
 
 The first of the Women's Sections was 
 
56 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 held November 14, 1895. Afterward, when 
 asked what convinced her of the value of 
 the separate meetings for women, Mrs. 
 Mayo instanced this first meeting. "I shall 
 never forget it," she said. "They gave us 
 a little reading room with a few chairs; 
 I myself really questioned if any one would 
 come. Twice we had to send out for more 
 chairs. I stated the object of the meeting, 
 all the time tremblingly watching my audi- 
 ence. The women listened quietly, and on 
 a few of the older faces I saw tears. I 
 talked for half an hour, when some school- 
 girls came in; then I talked to them, kindly, 
 tenderly, and sat down, feeling my attempt 
 had been almost a failure. But a beautiful 
 old lady, with large gold earrings and a gay 
 blanket shawl, came up to me, put her arms 
 around me tenderly, and, kissing me, said, 
 'If I could have had such a talk as that 
 forty years ago I should have been a better 
 mother.' " 
 
 Reports show that 5, 309 women attended 
 Mrs. Mayo's sections that first year, in 
 twenty institutes, including the state meet- 
 ing. In 1896-97 she attended forty-five 
 institutes; in 1897-98, twenty-eight; 1898- 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 57 
 
 99, eighteen; and in 1899-1900, twelve. 
 Each year she presided at the Women's 
 Section of the state institute. All through 
 her service she addressed the general insti- 
 tute sections, in addition to holding the 
 separate meeting at each place. No account 
 is made of such addresses in these figures; 
 but it seems fair, however, to estimate that 
 her audiences averaged two hundred a day, 
 taking her work all through. 
 
 In closing these earnest, heart to heart 
 talks with mothers, in those first days, Mrs. 
 Mayo was wont to say: "Oh, mother, all 
 things are yours religion, science, philos- 
 ophy, art, literature all that is best of the 
 best minds. It costs something to secure it, \ 
 but it is worth the whole price. It costs 
 of your time, your energy your whole 
 life's labor must be given to the work. It 
 will not make much difference, years and 
 years from now, whether you rode or 
 walked, whether you wore a costly gown, 
 made in the most approved style, or a 
 cheap fabric that cost little money and less 
 thought; whether your carpets were ingrain 
 or Axminster, or, really, whether you had 
 carpets at all ; but it will make a vast differ- 
 
58 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 ence what thoughts you thought, what asso- 
 ciations were yours. The vigor of your 
 mind and body, the aspiration of a strong 
 motherhood that stirs your soul and that 
 helps make your son a noble, useful man 
 and your daughter a beautiful, true woman 
 -these things are important." 
 
 It was to be expected that the institutes 
 would encounter hindrances. Every new 
 enterprise, particularly of an educational 
 character, is liable to suspicion and dis- 
 credit at the outset by the very persons it 
 most aims to help. The timid doubt its 
 success and give faint-hearted assistance; 
 mediocre and prejudiced minds pass upon 
 it with biased judgment, and attempt to 
 gauge it by material measures. One of the 
 chief aims of the institutes was to allay such 
 attitudes of mind. Mrs. Mayo's only ref- 
 erence to these early difficulties occurs in 
 a report, where she exclaims, "It is very 
 hard to dissuade people that somebody is 
 not grinding an ax, and they are equally 
 fearful that the first thing they know they 
 will find they have been turning the grind- 
 stone." She, in common with the men on 
 the institute force, understood it was neces- 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 59 
 
 sarily a part of her duty to overcome, so far 
 as possible, such suspicion as this, remove 
 prejudices, and broaden farm folks' friend- 
 ships beyond the confines of their own door- 
 steps. To accomplish this, methods must 
 needs be tested and rejected if found not 
 feasible; and thus it came about that an ex- 
 perimental series of Mrs. Mayo's extension 
 lectures to women was abandoned for lack 
 of funds. "I am sorry that the extension 
 work must be given up," she writes. " Some- 
 how, I can hardly have it so, for I know 
 from what several women told me that it 
 was just what they needed especially 
 young mothers. Why must matters of such 
 vital importance, not only to the mothers of 
 today, but to the children yet unborn, be 
 made secondary to stock feeding and breed- 
 ing, potato growing, and marketing and 
 dairying? ... I feel so small and so help- 
 less when I see the needs of the people, and 
 my soul cries out for wisdom, strength, and 
 grace to help some of them along and up." 
 Of one of her topics she writes: "I 
 should like, in 'Home Life on the Farm,' 
 to speak very practically and very plainly; 
 not that I mean to be offensive, but I want 
 
60 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 the relations of husband and wife, parents 
 and children, to stand for all that is sweet 
 and true. I know they are pioneers, where 
 I am to go, but I am sure I can reach them. 
 Because of this pioneer life, of its struggles, 
 anxieties, and cares, I want to tell them that 
 these things should only bind them closer 
 together. I do not mean to talk sentiment, 
 but God's truth" 
 
 When planning the 'Women's Section 
 programs for one of the annual state insti- 
 tutes, she asked that a talk be given by 
 another of the women workers, on "The 
 Relation of the Farmer's Wife to Society," 
 adding by way of explanation of the re- 
 quest, "When I go about the state I find so 
 many mothers with young children who 
 fairly den up they do no reading or 
 thinking, they have no one to exchange an 
 idea with or get an idea from save their 
 husbands, and it may be just possible that 
 their husbands have no ideas to spare they 
 may need all they have." 
 
 At the close of two seasons' experience 
 with these gatherings of women, and after 
 carefully observing their effects wherever 
 he had opportunity, the superintendent 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 6 1 
 
 wrote to Mrs. Mayo: "Woman's work as 
 we have known it under your charge the 
 past winter is entirely unknown in other 
 states, so far as I can discover. I find that 
 the demand for the work is peremptory, 
 and we must furnish a Women's Section for 
 nearly every institute next winter." On her 
 part, Mrs. Mayo realized what an innova- 
 tion it meant to bring social topics of the 
 nature she spoke upon into connection with 
 farmers' institutes. She felt, too, the cavils 
 of prejudice and misinterpretation upon 
 her work searing her soul like a hot iron; 
 but she stood and spoke the word as she 
 believed it to be needed. The paucity of 
 simple information and pure thought on 
 these subjects made her feel the necessity 
 for pressing them upon mothers and daugh- 
 ters. To a friend who was in closest sym- 
 pathy with her efforts at this time she said: 
 "The saddest thing I have had to meet is 
 the fact, learned from some of our brightest 
 mothers, that mothers do not know how 
 to communicate what they really want to 
 either to their young children or their 
 grown-up or growing girls. Some lack 
 knowledge, but more lack the ability to 
 
62 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 teach in a proper, intelligent way what they 
 do know. I have taken a great deal of 
 pains to inquire about this, and the reply 
 has always been the same, i Teach mothers 
 how to teach what they know.' In all the 
 meetings I have held I have found but one 
 woman who felt that children did not need 
 to be taught about themselves; at least I 
 have found but one who said so. I had a 
 good long set-down talk with her. When 
 I finished, she said, 'I think you are doing 
 the right kind of work.' 
 
 "In the lists of books on these subjects 
 I find only a few on how to teach chil- 
 dren how to plant good, beautiful, holy 
 thoughts about themselves. What will do 
 for a child will not do for girls from four- 
 teen to twenty. This line of the work 
 troubles me. More and more do I see the 
 dire need that is what perplexes. The 
 revelations made by some of these mothers 
 in the public meetings, things they have 
 never named to any one before, would al- 
 most take your breath." 
 
 At another time she wrote: "When I 
 see you I shall tell you of one woman I met 
 at Sault Sainte Marie. It was all paid for 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 63 
 
 by just that one. I shall never forget her 
 beautiful face and the intense earnestness 
 of it, as she sat on the front seat with two 
 children, one on each side of her, with their 
 little heads in her lap, fast asleep. She had 
 come thirty miles. At - , the young 
 ladies from the high school came into my 
 meeting. I think what I said was a revela- 
 tion to them. I talked to them very plainly 
 about young men and the kind of young 
 people they should associate with. They 
 listened beautifully. I also talked to them 
 about being good to their mothers." 
 
 Mrs. Mayo's topics, added as the work 
 grew, were: "The Well-bred Child," 
 "Home Life on the Farm," "Poultry 
 Raising for the Farmer's Wife," "How to 
 Keep the Boys on the Farm," "Mother and 
 the School," "The House We Live In," 
 "The Unappreciated Side of Farm Life," 
 "The Mother's Greatest Needs," "Wife- 
 hood and Motherhood," and "Mother and 
 Children." The usefulness of the Women's 
 Sections having been fully established 
 through her experience with them, she was 
 consulted as to the extension of the work, 
 and asked to assist in selecting other women 
 
64 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 speakers. With her keen discernment of 
 character and clear understanding of the 
 need, she set about the task of choosing 
 women who would fit into the work, and the 
 no less delicate undertaking of securing 
 their consent to attempt it and of initiating 
 them into their duties. Her native opti- 
 mism regarding the powers and abilities of 
 her friends shone out here. "Yes, you can; 
 I know you can," she repeatedly said to the 
 timid but really capable person, and by 
 this confidence she helped many a woman 
 to do what she could never have accom- 
 plished without such assurance. She was 
 generous of herself, also, that those in whom 
 she believed might succeed. At one time 
 she wrote the institute management a note, 
 which ran: "How glad I am Mrs. - - is 
 going to try the work. I know that she 
 must have it as easy as possible, and if I 
 can make it one whit easier for her by say- 
 ing, 'Give me the hardest,' I will net only 
 say it, but be glad to take it such trips as 
 to - , for instance, or any others where it 
 needs strength and endurance. I am well 
 and strong, and can stand it just as well as 
 not; anything, so she may bear her message 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 65 
 
 to the people, for she has a wonderful 
 message." 
 
 To Mrs. Mayo herself, however, was 
 always accorded the sovereign place in the 
 affections of the women who attended the 
 institutes, and of her co-workers as well. 
 "The other women helped us and we liked 
 them, but we loved Mrs. Mayo;" this 
 was the frank confession made to another 
 woman who came later upon the farmers' 
 institute force, by the women at the most 
 remote point reached by the work. It 
 chanced that Mrs. Mayo had often told us 
 of this particular point, a spot seemingly 
 almost inaccessible at the time of year insti- 
 tutes are held. She had said of it: "I rode 
 thirty miles, straight into the pine plains 
 and timber. The room for our meeting 
 was a little cooped-up place and very dark. 
 They had some boards for seats and a few 
 chairs. The women had done their best by 
 bringing a good many fancy articles, with 
 bread, butter, and so forth, as exhibits. 
 Our little room was filled full; I think there 
 were forty present. One woman was to 
 read a paper. She had come twelve miles 
 with her four little children, one a baby. 
 
66 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 When she was ready to read, she handed 
 her baby to a woman beside her and read 
 one of the most practical papers on 'A 
 Mother's Needs' I ever heard; then she 
 went back to her little ones, taking the baby 
 again. I spoke on some point in her paper 
 for a moment, trying to impress it on the 
 audience, and shall never forget her reply. 
 With all the beauty and dignity of mother- 
 hood, she stood there with her baby over 
 her shoulder, patting it to keep it quiet, 
 expressing her deep interest in the work 
 and urging that it be continued." 
 
 It has come about that within the past 
 few weeks I have been a guest in the home 
 of the woman who was chairman of this 
 remarkable meeting. Remarkable it was 
 because it was held in a place so difficult of 
 access positively isolated in every way. 
 Isolated it still is, so far as railroad facilities 
 are concerned, but the farm homes in the 
 region round about the village where this 
 meeting was held are now strung on tele- 
 phone lines, the Grange has several organ- 
 izations on the oases in the jack pine plains, 
 and the roads are growing better every year. 
 I visited with the chairman of this first 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 67 
 
 Women's Section while she finished her 
 morning's work, and shall repeat here what 
 she told me, illustrating, as it does, the 
 simple type and value of what Mrs. Mayo 
 accomplished multifold times. This woman 
 told me how actually shocked she had been 
 to learn that she had been appointed chair- 
 man of the forthcoming Women's Section. 
 She had not the faintest conception of what 
 was expected of her. She simply felt cer- 
 tain she could not do it. When her husband 
 came home she told him she must go at 
 once to see the president of the institute. 
 He hitched up a horse for her and she drove 
 several miles, arriving a little before noon 
 at the home of the president, who put her 
 horse in the barn, in spite of her protests 
 that she had come only upon business. 
 When he came into the house, she told him 
 her errand she had come to resign as 
 chairman of the Women's Section. He 
 laughed and refused to listen; she remon- 
 strated and insisted, but it was of no avail. 
 The man finally quieted her fears some- 
 what by promising to assist her in every 
 way, and so the matter was left. 
 
 "Soon after, I received a letter from 
 
68 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 Mrs. Mayo," my informant in the kitchen 
 continued, "and she explained that if I 
 would arrange for some music and see that 
 the room we were to occupy was a comfort- 
 able one, I would only need to call for the 
 music and introduce her to the women. This 
 looked easy enough, and I thought I would 
 do the best I could. When the time came, 
 Mrs. Mayo helped me, and every one was 
 so interested and nice about it that I found 
 it was not so impossible after all." She 
 pointed out to me, too, the place where 
 the woman lived who had read the paper 
 at that first meeting of farm women among 
 the pine plains of the far north "the 
 woman who had come twelve miles with 
 her four little ones," and "stood with 
 her baby over her shoulder, patting it to 
 keep it quiet," while she told what a help 
 the meeting was to her. 
 
 My friend told me, too, of her own 
 memory of Mrs. Mayo, after all these years. 
 "Some way," she said, "we felt she was one 
 of us and knew all about us. Every one she 
 met she left a friend." "I know," looked 
 from the brown eyes, and "I understand," 
 smiled from the face, ere her lips had 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 69 
 
 framed the words that went straight to their 
 mark and convinced of sincerity and of 
 experience as Mrs. Mayo took on herself 
 the burden of them all. "Virtue literally 
 seemed to go out from her, so that at the 
 close of an address she would be weak and 
 exhausted," said a co-worker. Indomitable 
 in her faith in God and humanity, she shed 
 confidence and stirred impulses to stronger 
 endeavor for righteousness in others every- 
 where. 
 
 Even women, for there were such, who 
 came with disapproval in their hearts for 
 the separate Women's Section, almost in- 
 variably conceded its value and joined in 
 its support. Mrs. Mayo appreciated such 
 an attitude toward her work, and met it dis- 
 creetly. An incident of this kind she was 
 wont to tell of is repeated to me by one who 
 recalls her love of a joke even at her own 
 expense. " I must tell you a story," she said, 
 "that is too good to keep. We were to have 
 an institute at - , and the meeting was to 
 be held in a two-story building, the ladies 
 meeting upstairs. I arrived first and was 
 sitting by a big stove that had a 'jacket 7 
 around it, and, through a register in the 
 
70 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 floor, helped to warm the room above. It 
 was a very cold day and also quite stormy, 
 suggestive of a light attendance. After a 
 short time a sleigh was driven to the door 
 and some one helped out an old lady, who 
 came in, unwinding the wrappings about 
 her head as she entered. Seeing me, she 
 said, 'Don't you think I am an old fool to 
 come out such a day as this just to hear a 
 woman speak?' 'Oh,' I said, 'I think you 
 will enjoy it,' and began to help her take off 
 her wraps. 'Well, I hope so, for John in- 
 sisted on my coming, telling me that Mrs. 
 Mayo says so many good things he wanted 
 me to hear her talk; but I don't believe in 
 women going around giving lectures and 
 neglecting things in their own homes. I'll 
 warrant if you should go to her home and 
 look under her beds and around in the cor- 
 ners, you would think she might better be 
 at home than going around telling other 
 folks what to do.' Others began to arrive 
 and go directly upstairs, and the old lady 
 inquired if the meeting was not to be held 
 where we were. I told her the other ladies 
 were going to the room for the Women's 
 Section, and that when she was warm we 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN Jl 
 
 would go upstairs, also. 'Well, I don't want 
 you to set me up in front where I have got 
 to look at her all the time. If I don't like 
 what she says, I want to be where I can look 
 out of the window.' I told her I would not 
 put her in a front seat, but I was quite sure 
 she would enjoy the meeting; then, thinking 
 of something I wished to jot down, I took 
 my pencil from my dress and, using the 
 window sill for a desk, busied myself writ- 
 ing. In the meantime, the old lady had eyed 
 me very closely and finally said, 'Who is 
 this I have been talking to not Mrs. 
 Mayo?' Seeing me smile, she exclaimed, 
 'Oh, Lord! what have I done!' and begged 
 me to forgive her, saying I must promise 
 not to tell John or she would never hear the 
 last of it. She also insisted upon going up- 
 stairs, where she took a front seat." 
 
 The occurrence, we may easily believe, 
 created new inspiration in the speaker, and, 
 at the close of the address, the dear old lady 
 came to Mrs. Mayo and thanked her, tell- 
 ing her how glad she was that she had come 
 and again begged pardon for her indiscreet 
 criticism. "But," added Mrs. Mayo, "I 
 made about as bad a blunder later in the 
 
72 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 day, when quite a number of us were in- 
 vited to tea by a former neighbor of the old 
 lady. At the tea table I could not resist 
 telling of her expressions, adding that I had 
 promised not to tell her son John. Imme- 
 diately one of the guests sprang to his feet, 
 clapping his hands, and, to my dismay, I 
 found he was 'son John' himself." 
 
 The Personal Touch 
 
 A certain small Scotch woman, fine of 
 fiber, set in the lone plain country and too 
 much cumbered for her strength, who was 
 a transformed woman from the hour she 
 met Mrs. Mayo, said: "Her talk to the 
 women of the farm was an inspiration. 
 She seemed to reach the inmost soul, to 
 know our needs. She was so sincere and 
 earnest in every thing she said that our 
 hearts went out to her, and we felt we had 
 a friend." And then she continued, lov- 
 ingly going over the memory, as if to her- 
 self : "There was something peculiar in the 
 way I met Mrs. Mayo. She walked right 
 into my heart the first time I ever saw and 
 heard her. I was honored by having her 
 call me 'friend.' Mrs. Mayo was very 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 73 
 
 unselfish. If she met people whom she 
 thought had any talents at all, or could do 
 any good whatever in the world, she had 
 the faculty of bringing out whatever best 
 there was in them." 
 
 The term "peculiar" has been used time 
 and again by people in referring to their 
 cordial friendship with this magnetic 
 woman. She somehow found that which 
 no one else had seemed to discover in those 
 women whom some one has called " color- 
 less." Having found something real in 
 them, she made the most of it, often sur- 
 prising no one else so much as the woman 
 concerning whom she made the revelation. 
 It was quite likely to be some aptness in 
 the woman's boy or girl that she told of to 
 a group of the woman's friends; or some 
 ingenious contrivance this woman had in 
 her housework, enlarged upon to the credit 
 of the inventor. Mrs. Mayo thus revealed 
 the woman to herself and to her family 
 which latter, occasionally, was more to the 
 purpose. Nor was her influence confined 
 to women. She was a constant help and 
 inspiration to the men who heard and knew 
 her. Said one: "I can never repay the debt 
 
74 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 I owe her personally, for her words of en- 
 couragement, her acute intelligence, her 
 ready sympathy, her belief in one's best 
 side, were sources of strength to me for 
 many years. Her faith in men and women, 
 her love for them, her charity for their 
 failings, her heroic and Christlike spirit 
 during her last years, when sorrow and 
 suffering came to her sensitive soul in a 
 measure running over all these are an 
 inspiration to us all." 
 
 Said a young school man another of 
 "her boys"- -the morning after her funeral, 
 "My wife and I never went to her home 
 but that when we came to go she did not 
 bring us something a chicken, a box of 
 honey, or perhaps we would find a basket 
 of apples, new potatoes, or other good 
 things under the buggy seat when we 
 reached home." Had he thought of it, he 
 might have added a similar testimony as to 
 the less tangible helps this friend had given 
 him, for much does he prize the counsel 
 and timely advice she gave him freely in the 
 beginning of his career. Perhaps no one 
 has crystallized in words the secret of this 
 one farm woman's influence and the potency 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 75 
 
 of her life work so perfectly as she herself 
 did in a few lines in one of the last personal 
 messages that came from her pen: "I love 
 everybody so much ! I have wanted to help 
 people to be kinder, truer, sweeter. And 
 there is so much to do!" 
 
 System and Concentration 
 
 But other women have loved and coun- 
 seled and encouraged. True, and this one 
 is pictured only because by her persistent 
 activity and intelligent direction she was 
 able to cast her impress so deeply on the 
 lives of people who had been overlooked. 
 She was consumed by a passion for human- 
 ity, but she was wise enough to try to help 
 humanity from just where she herself stood. 
 In every movement she put her hand to she 
 sought to wrest from it a blessing for coun- 
 try people. For this reason, the Grange's 
 open door, in her sight, was the Red Sea 
 held back while farmers' wives went out 
 from a service of bondage. It was not so 
 much a bondage of hard work she rebelled 
 against, as of solitude and mental inactivity. 
 She sought to put new incentives into the 
 necessary responsibilities and duties that 
 
76 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 come to every farmer and his family. Be- 
 cause of her alert, trained mind and mag- 
 netic ability to organize and inspire un- 
 assuming, hesitating persons, she was able 
 to achieve much where others would have 
 failed. 
 
 In the broadening of the home life about 
 her into the wide, homelike neighborhood 
 circle, there must of necessity have been a 
 warm, rich love note answering to the clear, 
 discreet call of man's more reasoning sense. 
 Here Mrs. Mayo found vent for the forces 
 that surged through her. She early over- 
 came the desire to yield to passing moods, 
 to shirk, or to magnify physical ailments. 
 She learned true values. She had no time 
 for melancholy. She breathed the ozone of 
 all breezes that freshened her mental and 
 moral atmosphere. She sought to feel the 
 throb of activity everywhere, in science, 
 mechanics, art, drama, music, and worka- 
 day things. She rejoiced to meet great- 
 brained men and large-hearted women 
 whose views towered above the limited 
 horizon of ordinary people. Practical use- 
 fulness was a cogent incentive with her to 
 subordinate self and open avenues to larger 
 
FOR FARM WOMEN 77 
 
 sympathies and closer relations with others. 
 What she was, from all this, she must, per- 
 force, give out in unstinted measure to her 
 great farm sisterhood. 
 
 Her earlier interest and addresses were 
 marked by aspirations and admonitions for 
 a quickened mental life, strong and con- 
 tagious in enthusiasm ; her later, by a notice- 
 able deepening of the affectional life, as 
 shown by her constant counseling for gen- 
 tleness of speech, purity of life, and charity 
 of judgment, crowned by her unflinching 
 sweetness in devotion to the uttermost duty 
 as it was revealed to her. 
 
 Behind the Curtain 
 
 In the midst of the ever widening circle 
 of her deepening power, and the seeming 
 urgent need for it in her own and other 
 states, she was summoned to a more in- 
 terior service. Her only daughter, the 
 delight, pride, and fairly the lifeblood of 
 the mother, was stricken with an illness, 
 agonizing in pain and baffling the skill of 
 medicine and surgery. For five years the 
 smitten mother's face was set full to the blast, 
 yet without faltering. " Because / know my 
 
78 ONE WOMAN'S WORK 
 
 Pilot'' she said, "it will be all right, some- 
 time, somewhere." 
 
 Bravely, with an indomitable courage 
 native to so noble a nature as hers, she stood 
 day and night at the post of her nearest 
 duty. For more than a year, without a sign 
 to others, she fought the inroads upon her- 
 self of an incurable disease, giving up her 
 place at her daughter's bedside only three 
 weeks before the transition came to her own 
 dauntless spirit, April 21, 1903. 
 
 Through all her life ran a recognition 
 that death is but an incident in life, that 
 one's work is not bounded by time, but 
 that what is begun here is continued There. 
 How beautifully such confidence in the one- 
 ness of life reconciles the otherwise irrecon- 
 cilable! Thus lived for and thus has gone 
 before the farm women of every section 
 one who was affectionately known as 
 "Mother Mayo." Not by her many years 
 was the title won, but by the shedding 
 abroad of a sympathetic, dignified woman- 
 liness that constantly suggested the highest 
 type of motherhood. 
 
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