In rural agricultural districts the home-keeper is the provider. She practically requisitions from farm and garden what she deems necessary for the family table. To an extent she makes the clothing and sews the house linen. She also exchanges her perquisites, egg money, perhaps, for furniture and ornaments. The itinerant peddler brings the world’s wares to her door; the mail-order houses do the rest. “The ideal home is a social and coöperative society in which all of its members unite their efforts for the common good. This ideal is realized most nearly in the country home, where even the smallest child has opportunity to be and generally is a contributor to the family support. It has come to be a recognized fact that boys and girls, healthy, industrious, frugal, capable, intelligent, self-supporting, cheerful, and patriotic, abound in country homes, and that the prevalence there of these high qualities is largely due to the family life, which requires each individual from his earliest years to bear his proportionate share in providing for the maintenance of the home. By bringing within the reach of the country people educational advantages suited to their needs, rural life becomes more attractive, country homes are multiplied, and the valuable qualities which these homes develop become the possession of a correspondingly larger number of the citizenship of the state.”[16] [16] I. H. Hamilton, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, Circular 85. The government has recognized the need and the possibilities of meeting it in the recognition it has given to Farmers’ Institutes for women, in which, by lectures, demonstration, and short winter courses at the colleges, the interest of the woman in her occupation is aroused. She is not only given help in details of her daily work, but she is shown how much the efficiency of the farm life depends upon her capability and intelligence. She is encouraged in the using of all mechanical and scientific appliances, is introduced to the means of mental growth; but, best of all, she is given the stimulus of social recognition. In the year 1908 there were held 832 such meetings in the several states. In the year 1910 the number will be nearly or quite doubled. In no other form of society is the power of the woman for good or ill so paramount as in rural life, in no other mode of living is the family so much at her mercy.