15-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Saturday, January 14, 1911. Here’s to another monotonous day. It rained instead of snowing. I like things to come in some kind of order, but things won’t always come as you would want them to.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Weather Underground forecast for McEwensville for today, January 14, 2011:
Low: 11; High: 29; partly cloudy
15-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Friday, January 13, 1911: Jakie, that’s my teacher had a siege of moving our seats today. I didn’t get mine moved, although I expected to be. It really was a wonder that I didn’t. Some wonderful things happen in this every day world.
Local newspaper article exactly 100 years ago today:
Miss Helen Wesner, Miss Jennie E. Guinn, and Howard Guinn spent Wednesday evening at the home of Clem Baylor.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
A hundred years ago people also wanted to keep their friends informed about what they were doing. The tweets of that day were brief items in the local newspaper. A fun evening that a friend of Grandma’s had is mentioned in the Milton Evening Standard exactly a hundred years ago today. You’ll meet Helen Wesner—Grandma calls her Tweet— in the diary in a few weeks. Tweet or one of the other people mentioned in the paper must have given the information to the McEwensville reporter for inclusion.
I remember when I was a child that when we had out-of-town guests my mother would always inform the Watsontown reporter of the Milton paper. At the time small town newspapers that included minor social happenings were seen as being really backwards and old-fashioned, but perhaps tweeting–either in the newspaper or electronically– is really back to the future.
January 10, 1911: Missing entry (Diary resumes on January 12)
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
I’ll give you a little more contextual information today since there is no diary entry.
In 1911 many families had a few general reference books–one such book generally was the Almanac and another was the Compendium of Every Day Wants: A Thousand and One Facts. The book contained information that ranged from grammar rules, to sample civil marriage forms, to recipes, explanations of who is responsible for runaway horses, and treatments for medical emergencies.
Nature demands that we oby her laws, and it is much easier and much less expensive to try, by proper care of ourselves, to retain good heatlh than it is to cure many ailments which come from abusing our bodies.
Compendium of Every Day Wants: A Thousand and One Facts
The chapter on How to Preserve Health had the following tips:
If the above is heeded, much suffering will be saved and few doctors will be needed.
Compendium of Every Day Wants: A Thousand and One Facts
January 9, 1911: Missing entry (Diary resumes on January 12)
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
In 1911 the nation was focused on rural deterioration, and the perceived breakdown of rural institutions. Rural youth were flooding into the nation’s cities, and they were often unprepared for urban life.
President Theodore Roosevelt had appointed the Country Life Commission in 1908 to figure out ways to improve rural life. The idea was that rural youth would stay on the farm if the young men learned how to use scientific agricultural principals, and the young women learned how to make rural homes comfortable and attractive.
The Country Life Commission Report (as well as several other related reports) were published in 1911.
The repair of country life will come in those forms which give value to the things in the open country. The community must move and breathe in joy and enthusiasm of the country. The celebrations must be of country matters, not those of the city.
W. H. Wilson (1911)
George Wesner in his 1976 History of McEwensville described two-day long Farmers’ Institutes that were regularly held at the McEwensville Community Hall in the early part of the twentieth century. He wrote that “usually some outstanding farmers or professors from Penn State were speakers.”
In the years following the release of the Country Life Report home economists demonstrated the latest cooking and food preservation techniques at meetings attended by rural women and girls, They also taught the principles of interior design.
The Country Life Movement encouraged the support of local fairs. The fairs provided opportunities for people to socialize. Produce and livestock competitions provided opportunities for farmers to demonstrate to others the benefits of using scientific agricultural methods.
The Country Life Movement also encouraged the revitalization of rural churches.
The church must provide directly some modern equivalent for the husking, apple bee, quilting and singing schools of the old days.
W. H. Wilson (1911)
The Country Life Movement also believed that a rural fraternal organization called the Grange had great potential to improve rural living.
At its best the Grange has a unifying power in the country community . . . Especially in the community in which religious people cannot come to agreement in religious matters, the Grange infuses a spirit of unions among them through the discussion of every day interests and the social pleasures which it furnishes.
W.H. Wilson (1911)
The Country Life Commission asserted that education was needed to prepare students for life in their community and that it was important to provide an education that would be meaningful in a rural context. The Commission encouraged development of vocational agriculture programs, including school farms, that could provide the context for learning.
Today some people believe that there is a need for a new Country Life Movement to once again revitalize rural America. However, others argue that the Country Life Movement was an attempt by elite outsiders to control rural areas—and that the Country Life Commission created a consumer culture in rural locales when rural residents were encouraged to decorate their homes with the latest styles and use processed foods in recipes.
Grandma lived her entire life in within a 5 mile radius of McEwensville. Did the Country Life Movement help encourage her—and Raymond Swartz, her classmate and future spouse—to stay in rural central Pennsylvania? Who knows?—Though it can be said with near certainty that the implementation of policies recommended by the Country Life Commission affected Grandma’s life.
January 10, 1911: Missing entry (Diary resumes on January 12)
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Times were different in 1911. It was before Prohibition, patent medicines containing opium could be purchased without a prescription, and women could not vote. Neither World War I nor World War II had yet occurred.
The unemployment rate 6.2%. Only 3% of the people in the United States had a college degree.
The suffragettes were organizing and marching for their rights—though it would be another 9 years before women won the right to vote.
William Taft was president. He is generally remembered for getting stuck in the White House bath tub. But, he also brought about positive changes by signing anti-trust legislation and breaking up monopolies.
1911 was a heady time. Corporate greed, led by the robber barons had created many problems and inequities. Muckrakers–in today’s world they’d probably be called investigative reporters–used their pens to highlight the many problems and horrors that may have been caused by monopolies. And, the Standard Oil monopoly was finally broken up in 1911. (In history books this is generally seen as one of the key events in 1911).
Hatchet-wielding temperance advocate Carrie Nation died on July 9, 1911, but many women’s clubs across the nation continued her efforts–though the law that enacted prohibition wasn’t passed until 1919.
Workers had few rights in 1911. Federal child labor laws would not be passed until 1918. Grandma lived in the agricultural portion of Northumberland County–but the far end of the county contained some of the largest anthracite coal mines in the US. Those mines–as well as other industries, but the mines were some of the most notorious–relied upon cheap child labor to do some of the jobs. Muckrakers and photographers were highlighting the horrors of the practice.
In March 1911 a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City killed 146 garment workers because the doors had been locked to keep the workers from leaving early. This led to laws requiring better factory safety standards.
A few years before 1911 Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, which highlighted the horrible conditions in the Chicago meat-packing plants, and the unsafe, adulterated foods coming out of the plants.
In 1911 people were furious about chemically-laden foods and demanding safe, pure food that did not contain chemical preservatives or unfit materials. In July 1911 the use saccharin was banned by the US Department of Agriculture. (The decision would be reversed in 1912).
Did these national issues affect Grandma? Or as a teen in rural Pennsylvania did she have little overt awareness of the bigger picture?
