The Pittsburgh Press (April 24, 1943)
Ferguson: Farm wives
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
I have said before and I say again: the home group best serving its country is made up of our farm women. They get the least attention, but on the whole are too busy to notice it.
Those people who are rooted in the good earth have certain fine qualities of soul which are often lacking in the rest of us. Farm women are thrifty, practical, kind, and uncomplaining. As proof, I offer here parts of letters from two farm wives of New York State:
Mrs. Howard Bliss, of Bainbridge, New York:
We will have a larger garden than ever this year. On account of the draft, production of our farm will be cut one half or more. During haying and harvesting, I fill the job of extra man, driving horse, or hay fork, or running the silage cutter at silo filling time. I feel that much of this shortage of food could have been prevented if the farmers’ prices had been increased as organized labor wages have – instead of paying us subsidies, which no farmer wants and which are of no benefit in the long run.
Mrs. Clarence J. Sutter, of South Dayton, New York, writes:
Farm women today are facing many varied problems with the good sense and vim that characterized their grandmothers. After each of our sons goes, more work is undertaken by us, their mothers. Behind our tears is a fierce determination to produce more food for those brave sons. Farmers are not grafters, as so many city papers would have one believe, but are we not also entitled to enough for our work to educate our sons and daughters and to live as other people do? Why are farm prices the first to go down and the last to rise?
The right of free men to produce food without subsidy, a price for that food which in some manner compensates for the labor and expense of producing it, the cutting of all this needless red tape and governmental regulations which now hamper us – assure us of these things and then watch our smoke.