Show THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE SUNDAY MORNING JULY 24 1938 w By Marguerite Mooers Marshall American woman who today is the Novelist Rose Wilder Lane who finds the frontier virtues of courage and sacrifice as common now as ever -- says is IT holding the fort in millions of homes just her pioneer mother or grandmother did It is this forgotten woman who works with hands and brain to the limit of her strength who cuts down expenses yet manages so that her children are fed and warmed who backs her husband to the last ditch and bolsters his She stands the gaff of courage when it fails and recession unemployment outdepression the family off and taxes keeps s(ie rageous She is the new pioneer 1" relief Blue eyes shining quiet voice warmed with Rose Wilder Lane indignant championship daughter of pioneering homesteaders and ardent recorder of their Iliad in those two magnificent novels “Free Land’N and "Let the Hurricane Roar” 'voiced r"1 her faith in what Rose Wilder Lane T SPOKE -- of what has been happening at the beach colony on the Atlantic seaboard where my summers are spent It is the simplest of summer bungalow settlements the tiny shacks unlined without cellars in no way designed to stand winter temperatures d Yet family after family by unemployment has turned the summer bungalow hard-presse- The d dwelling into an and women take the lead in the arrangements most of the hardships and adjustments fall to d Used to their lot apartments equipped with every modern convenience these wives and mothers have made real homes of wooden cabins miles from shops movies church heated by fireplaces or woodstoves the water supplied by small pumps (thawed out when all-th- e year-aroun- steam-heate- f temperatures drop too low) The women do all their own work in almost primitive farm conditions and have revived the of pickling preserving pioneer handicrafts They have worked out all braiding" rag rugs the neighborly social benefits One cabin has a lending library for the comAnother woman arranges a Christmas munity Mothers with play and party for the children for the sick care experience in practical nursing The life is a rediscovery of homely necessities simplicities kindnesses — in every way a artificial isolated contrast to the mechanized life qf the modern big city — the very life these same people were leading a few years back Again Mrs Lane smiled wisely "Don’t be surprised when I tell you that women all over America are cutting then coats I’ve had to fit the cloth in just this fashion letters from summer colonies in 20 states where the sort of thing you describe is happening The largest estimate of those out of work is 12 million Of this number barely a third have Someappeared on the reported relief rolls where somehow those millions in need of help who have not been helped are still like the rqt of us fighting through on their own" T AST of all we spoke of American women - of tomorrow the girls of today Here is one novelist not in the least worried about them "They’re all right" she said “although it’s a pity they and then brothers are being dis- - This uncelebrated wife and mother lives as dangerously and dauntlessly as any pioneer woman who loaded muskets or braved drought blizzard and loneliness of prairies she insists is the real "modern American woman To Mrs Lane's way of thinking this utterly uncelebrated wife and mother on the farm or m the workingman’s home lives as dangerously and dauntlessly as any Colonial dame who loaded the muskets with which her husband defended their cabin against Indians or any covered-wago- n wife who braved drouth and blizzard bad crops and the loneliness of Sane strong wastes simple this woman of today is American to the roots of her soul — and the roots run deep Site is the woman who works her way in the wind-swe- world instead of riding free In appearance she often resembles Rose Wilder Lane who candidly describes herself as “plump middle-wester- n middle-clas- s middle-aged- " but in whose calm face ahd level gaze are strength and good sense more satisfying than beauty The American woman Mrs Lane considers most typical never gets her name in the papers and she has little time or money to spend in beauty parlors Maybe she toils in a factory farmhouse m a maybe Everywhere she's still a homesteader — one who has staked a claim for her family and fights hard times as indom itably and independently as Mary and Nettie gallant Dakota heroines of “Free Land" fought blizzard and cyclone in the eighties "I was born in Dakota territory in a claim shanty 49 years ago come next December" boasted the author “I personally am a pioI can’t help it As far back as my anneer cestry stretches it’s a long line of people jour- -' neymg west" "And you believe that our womeri today have not gone soft that they are as brave and as they were and in our national past?" I asked “I know it!” she flashed the spaik of indignation rekindled m the blue eyes under the crown of prematurely white hair the square "This country is full of wives jaw outthrust and mothers and daughters of the pioneer breed The women who help their menfolk hold down farms or m towns and cities work as hard suffer privation as pluckily — well they run into millions!" hard-worki- mHEN much-endurin- Rose Wilder Lane told me a story typical of pioneer American women in the I930’s whom she herself las known “I was driving home to Missouri in ’32” she recalled "Ahead of me on the road I of a strange processioiw-- a man caught sight his wife three children (the youngest about three) a child’s express wagon built higher and wider and packed solid with household I didn’t furnishings suppose there had been a group of pilgrims like that since the Mormons went West Stopping my car I asked questions A J g "The man an unskilled laborer had been out of work since ’29 Their savings were exhausted They had been evicted from their home Then the woman said : " ’My children shan’t live on charity We’ll find free land where w£ can homestead even if we have to walk there 1’ "Her husband built the cart packed into it all they had left and they set out at a pace which must be governed by that of their three-year-ol- d "I couldn't could put the cart in my car but 1 and did take the woman and children couraged by all this defeatist talk floatii around in our public schools The young a being told there that the world has no pla for them and perhaps they believe it for little while Once they get out into the wor! they learn better "The marriage with so many brid taking as a matter of course that they shs contipue to work and earn while their husbam get beginners’ wages is a proof of the surviv of pioneer independence loyalt courage fifty-fift- to my farm to wait for the man up in due time — he had walked He turned 210 miles! From my place they went on into Arkansas “Two years later I visited their homestead m that rough country They had cut down trees and built a cabin They had a cow chickens a garden The woman cheerfully helped her husband with all the work in surroundings as primitive and remote as those of any earlier pioneer They were winning tool" y The qualities are the same: circur strength stances merely call for a different expressir of them "American women still want to do the share They always have They always will concluded Rose Wilder Lane |