“Most of the living is in the kitchen. The barn is bigger than the house and is more modern than the kitchen. That is because the Pennsylvania Dutchman is parsimonious with everything but the labor of his women. He’ll buy modern plows, an automobile to take his products to market, modern harness to save his horse. Up-to-dateness in the barn means more money in his pocket. But he won’t spend a cent to save his wife or his daughter a bit of work. That is what they are for--to work for the men folks in the kitchen or near it. “When a young man goes courting, his eyes are not blinded with Cupid’s bandage. They are wide open to note how the prospective bride qualifies as a frugal, hardworking housewife. I watched a young man studying three girls, his object matrimony. They were sewing and he made a test of their frugality by the way they tore off their threads. The girl who tore off her thread closest to the stitch appealed to him most. Later he watched them at pie making. With another test in mind he asked each of them for the waste dough scraps. One of the girls, wanting to make a hit, gave him generously. The girl who had won in the first test scrimped a few crumbs for him--and won his hand and heart. Soon after, his foot was seen on the rocker of her chair as they talked--which is Pennsylvania Dutch for ‘I mean to marry this girl!’ ... “What has given them the passion for pinching their souls I don’t know. It may be a narrow and too literal interpretation of the Bible--for they are intensely religious in the orthodox sense. The great majority of them sooner or later join one of the several religious sects--Mennonites, Dunkards, Amish, or some other. ‘I feel to be plain,’ they say, and join one of these sects. “Their word is as good as gold--but they’ll quibble with their word. A grower will get his wife to water the tobacco leaf, to make it weigh more. ‘Did you water this tobacco?’ the intending buyer asks the farmer. ‘No,’ the farmer answers with literal truth. But once he gives his literal word it is good to the last penny.” These people are without the sense of citizenship. “They don’t think about it at all,” said Mrs. Martin to an interviewer whose report of her was printed in the _Evening Sun_, New York, April 7, 1915. “They have no problems and therefore they are contented with their lot. They are wary of education; they think it makes rogues. ‘Look at those grafters in Harrisburg!’ they will say.”