Why, for example, should we spend forty thousand pounds a year upon honey, to name what our American friends would call "a side line," when we have a wealth of flowers and fruit blossom that would not only yield all that is required, but would even enable us to substitute honey for much of the sugar that is only sold to us when it has been chemically treated to improve appearance at the expense of quality? Why must we gather eggs from the far ends of the earth, and bacon from countries where pigs are fed as they are said to be fed in China? When I think of the thousands of women who are ready, willing, and, if properly trained, able to take a hand in the great task of feeding the people, it seems to me that the seed I sowed in 1898, to the accompaniment of much amusement, derision, and hostile criticism, has grown into a very sturdy and healthy tree. I even venture to think that the fruits will be more refreshing than those of the Insurance Act itself. As far as the records I have been able to examine teach me, there have been very few failures to achieve success among the women who have taken resolutely and completely to this comparatively new walk in life. The students have done more than merely earn a comfortable living. They have been the disseminators of the new ideas, the modern theories of agriculture, horticulture, and apiculture, the introducers of order and method into realms where chaos ruled amiably and ineffectively. In many cases they have even succeeded so far as to disarm prejudice and to persuade omniscient man that a method is not good merely because it is customary or easy to follow. And what they have done is small by the side of what they may hope to do.
What is needed just now, when the Government is really awake to the importance of woman's work on the land, is an extension of the agricultural colleges and a series of State grants. At present the work is costly. The upkeep of a big institution is expensive, because you cannot treat the land precisely as you would for utility farming. It is there to teach pupils, to carry out demonstrations. So it is with the glass, that is so costly to build and to heat. Then, again, professors--the best in the country--must be asked to lecture; and while agricultural colleges are in the heart of the country, the professors are probably living in distant university towns, so that their lectures are bound to be costly. Let us remember, too, quite frankly, that there is not much money for the girl who is not able to start a little establishment of her own or to go into partnership. There is a happy, healthy, useful life, there is valuable service, quite unrecorded, to the public at large, but the monetary reward is of the slightest and the training is long.