The American Country Girl — A Reader’s Guide

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In Category - Customs Everyday Life

Authors: Crow, Martha Foote, 1854-1924 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2010 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Farm life -- United States; Girls -- United States Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 100,977

Reading time 440 min

Text sections 13

Before opening The American Country Girl — A Reader’s Guide, the edition data offers a quick orientation: 100,977 words, 7 hr 20 min estimated reading time, and 13 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 22.7 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Farm life -- United States,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #32949

Martha Foote Crow's 1915 study examines the lives of rural American girls through practical advice, economic arguments, and advocacy for their education and independence, drawing on firsthand accounts and contemporary reform movements.

Editorial Edition Score 4.8/5

★★★★★ ★★★★★

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Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg32949

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Isabell was at Cornell I had charge of the chickens. Now the bees occupy a great deal of my time.

"I don't know as it is necessary after writing all this to add a program of a day, but I will simply put down the things I do in a day which isn't especially rushed.

"I get up at about 6:15 or am supposed to. My sisters get up earlier. After I have eaten my breakfast I prepare the potatoes for dinner. By that time all the men have had their breakfast and I wash the dishes and clean up things in general. Then there are beds to be made and perhaps rooms to be cleaned. After that some mornings I go to the creamery and wrap butter, but recently I have worked for an hour or so fixing bee equipment. About 10:30 on some mornings, I put on my bee togs and work with them until nearly dinner time, when I set the table and help get dinner. After dinner I wash the dishes and, unless there is garden picking or preparing of something for canning to do, as there often is, I am free until about four-thirty. If I go to town I leave directly after dinner and get back about six. We don't go down a great deal however. During the afternoon the mail comes bringing the daily paper and at the end of the month the magazines. The entire family take turns reading the paper, and the magazines are read at the first opportunity. We sew, do little odd things, and are never at loss as to how to spend the time. Supper is at five, so the men can milk after it. I wash dishes or gather eggs after supper and unless something turns up to do am free. We often pick garden things for the next day because it is cool then."

The itinerary of the American Country Girl might thus be followed from the energizing cool of the morning when the impact of the day's work is so buoyantly met to the quieting cool of the evening when rest is so joyously welcomed. So far in our investigation there has always been some source of hope and enthusiasm to be discovered. If the margin of unbearable drudgery seems to be reached, there is the solace of music at evening when the whole family join in an orchestra of violin, cornet and piano. If the days seem to grow unendurably monotonous, a pageant looms on the horizon to capture the interest and to make life fascinating at once. A fourteen-hour day of hard labor is broken by a recess in the midst to write a letter and send it out to some girl friend in the great big world that shall keep the secluded spirit in some touch with the outside currents of life. At the stroke of eleven the daily paper comes; at the twentieth of the month the magazine. A French or an organ lesson is possible; and life, though burdened is kept enlivened on every side. In such homes, work is not drudgery and the word "monotonous" has no fatal meaning.

Perhaps it may be said that there is always something that can be found, if it is looked for searchingly enough, to make a life of hard work bearable. Work is good; all of us write that down on paper and believe that we believe it. But when the principle is illustrated in a practical form many things are required to sustain our conviction. There must be a meaning, a hope, a definition, a goal. Each life is a system set in with other systems. To make one of them a success, all must move on right lines toward the chosen end. Other letters from these sensible young women in the rural realm will perhaps make us feel this more keenly than the foregoing.

WHAT ONE COUNTRY GIRL DID

THORN APPLES AND SWEET ACORNS

I love the taste of thorn apples and sweet acorns and sumac and choke-cherries and all the wild things we used to find on the road to school.

And I love the feel of pussy willows and the inside of chestnut burrs.

I love to walk on a country road where only a few double teams have left a strip of turf in the middle of the track.

And I love the creaking of the sleigh runners and the snapping of nail-heads in the clapboards on a bitter cold January night.

In the first cool nights I love the sound of the first hard rainfall on the roof of the gable room.

And I love the smell of the dead leaves in the woods in the fall.

Continue Reading →

Martha Foote Crow opens The American Country Girl by addressing her audience directly as “the seven million country life girls of America,” a dedication that signals both the scope and the reformist intent of the book. Published in 1915, the work blends sociological observation with prescriptive guidance, drawing on photographs, case studies, and the author’s own arguments about rural life. The table of contents reveals a systematic structure: early chapters ask whether the country girl is happy, then move through calendars of work, inheritance, wages, dress, health, and community resources. Crow’s voice is earnest and practical, often citing experts like Dr. Anna Howard Shaw to bolster her points. Readers should note that the excerpts provided are incomplete; the full text likely contains more detailed examples and statistical data.

The Opening Appeal and Dedication

The book’s front matter immediately establishes its intended readership. The dedication “to the seven million country life girls of America” is not merely rhetorical; it frames the entire project as a direct address to young rural women. Crow’s preface and opening chapter, “The Country Girl—Where is She?,” likely set up the demographic and geographic scope. The inclusion of fifteen photographs—described in captions that emphasize sunshine, fresh air, and healthful exercise—suggests a visual rhetoric of pastoral vitality. Yet the author also acknowledges problems: isolation, lack of wages, and the pull of cities. The opening thus balances celebration with reform, a tension that persists throughout the excerpts.

Economic Arguments and the Daughter’s Share

A central thread in the excerpts is the economic position of the country girl. Crow argues that daughters should receive a “reasonable sum of money to spend as she likes” as a matter of education and self-respect. She cites Dr. Anna Howard Shaw’s anecdote about giving a girl a cow to foster interest in milking, extending the logic to a share of net profits. The author is careful to note that this is not about selfish motives but about treating young people as “human beings.” She acknowledges that such ideas may seem “Utopian,” and observes that few girls are assigned any pecuniary share. This section reveals Crow’s reformist stance, grounded in practical psychology rather than abstract theory.

The Homesteader and the New Era

Two chapter titles—“The Homesteader” and “The New Era”—point to Crow’s interest in frontier and modernizing contexts. The homesteader section likely profiles girls on the plains, with a caption describing a “soddy” and the quiet broken by a river or coyote. The “New Era” chapter probably discusses agricultural education, canning clubs, and household science, as hinted by illustrations of a knitting class and a gardening club winner. Crow’s language shifts between descriptive and prescriptive: she notes that “the country is responding to the call of Progress” while also warning that without economic incentives, boys and girls will “turn from the farm to the city.” These chapters ground her arguments in specific, contemporary examples.

Reading as Solace and Community Resources

Later chapters address cultural and social life. “The Solace of Reading” and “The Service of Music to the Countryside” suggest that Crow saw intellectual and artistic pursuits as remedies for isolation. She also discusses organizations like the Young Women’s Christian Association and the Camp Fire, framing them as community resources. The final chapters—“The Country Girl’s Duty to the Country” and “The Country Girl’s Score Card”—indicate a self-assessment tool for readers. The bibliography and index further imply a research-based approach. While the excerpts do not reveal the full content of these chapters, they position the book as a practical manual for self-improvement and civic engagement.

Readers approaching The American Country Girl should treat it as a document of its era—progressive in its advocacy for girls’ economic independence, yet rooted in early twentieth-century assumptions about domesticity and rural life. The excerpts show Crow weaving together anecdote, expert testimony, and moral argument. Because the full text is not provided, readers should be cautious about inferring the book’s overall argument or the completeness of its evidence. The work rewards attention to its specific examples and the rhetorical strategies Crow uses to persuade her audience of seven million country girls.

That rainy afternoon, I remember lingering over Martha Foote Crow’s warmth toward solitary rural girls, their quiet competence. Her insistence that their futures mattered somehow circled back to a dusty shelf, where I found myself tracing other overlooked lives, other vast landscapes. By evening, I’d drifted halfway across the world with Brazil and Her People of To-day An Account of the Customs, Characteristics, Amusements, History and Advancement of the Brazilians, and the Development and Resources of — Edition Insights, the same sense of unseen dignity waiting there.