WHAT IS A WOMAN WORTH ?

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 16 October 1924, Page 10

WHAT IS A WOMAN WORTH ?

FARMER’S WIFE PETS IT AT £26,000. What is a woman worth? A highly interesting debate on this question in the American Agriculturist has produced widely varying estimates of the cash value of : a wife’s services in a servantless country such as America. One women submits the following statistics : “In the 30 years of my married life I have served 235,425 meals, made 33,190 loaves of breads 5930 cakes, and 7060 pies. I have canned 1550 quarts of fruit, raised 76.60 chicks, churned 54501 bof butter, and put in *36,461 hours of sweeping, washing and scrubbing. I estimated the, worth of my labour conservatively at ’£26,902 2s, none of whicli money I have collected. “But I love my husband and children, and wouldn’t mind starting all over again for them.” In sharp contrast “A Mere Man” writes: “It is a well-established fact that many thousands of good, conscientious wemen have slaved themselves to death on a farm. They sank into untimely graves to make way for new household drudges. A farmer’s second wife would wear out in' a few years and fold her toil-worn hands for the long rest. The minister would comment anew, vaguely, but -feelingly, upon ‘the inscrutable providence of God.’ Often, before the clods were well dried on the grave of the departed, ‘our bereaved brother’ would cast a calculating eye over the visible supply of marriageable maidens, looking for another husky young female willing to work 18 hours a day and to mother ten stepchildren for her board.” Margaret Feddes, of the University of Nebraska, figures exactly that the average farm wife, whose endless round of drudgery has made her the butt of ill-timed jokes, has an average economic value of £926.