Farmer's Wife

"Uncle" Henry Wallace/- sat chinning with Horace Klein as they watched the crowd mill past the Wallace's Partner cottage on the dusty Iowa State fair grounds. "There is something terribly pathetic to me in the faces of these farm women," "Uncle" Henry said. "They are so tired and worn and spiritless. There is a mission for someone: to bring material comforts, help and inspiration to the woman who labors on the farm." That was in 1907 and Horace Klein was advertising manager of a nondescript magazine called the Farmer's Wife. Its publisher was Edward A. Webb who also ran The Farmer, a poultry paper. Horace Klein carried back to St. Paul "Uncle" Henry's message and Publisher Webb decided to let his India-born, missionary-trained sister, Dr. Ella S. Webb, try her hand at missionary work among farm women. He made her editor of the Farmer's Wife and under her zealous direction the monthly magazine thrived.

Last week, when the February issue appeared, announcing Reuel Durkee Harmon as its new publisher, the Farmer's Wife had earned clear title to fame as one of the country's biggest little-known publications, the only women's magazine written exclusively for farm readers, with a 1,150,000 circulation concentrated in the Midwest and Great Lakes area, an annual revenue of $1,200,000. The late Mr. Webb had long since (1915) passed Webb Publishing Company to Mr. Klein and Albert H. Harmon. The new publisher is Mr. Harmon's only son, who has worked with his father since leaving Harvard in 1926. Mr. Klein's only son, Horace Dudley Klein, is in charge of market research for The Farmer. Fathers Harmon and Klein remain in control and the whole thing is pretty much a family affair. Of the 700 employes who work in the red-brick buildings which ramble over a St. Paul city block, one out of ten owns stock in the company.

"One magazine you can't buy on Broadway" was the description of itself the Farmer's Wife ran in a series of lively advertising promotion ads in the New Yorker last fall. No newsstands carry the Farmer's Wife but it goes through the mail anywhere at $1 for three years. Circulation teams of women scour the richer byways for more readers. Six field editors, including Bess M. Rowe, who probably knows personally more farm women than anyone else in the U. S., constantly circulate over 100,000 rural miles each year, keeping Managing Editor F. W. Beckman in touch with his readers. A sort of countrified Delineator, the Farmer's Wife carries plenty of fiction, but not by big names. There is lots of advice on how to run a Halloween party, make clothes, improve the appearance of a kerosene lamp.

"Does the baby bother you when you're trying to get the morning's work done? A neighbor down on Oregon Road writes to offer this remedy: Dab a little molasses on baby's hands, set him on the middle of the kitchen floor, and give him a couple of fluffy feathers to play with." For more serious problems, "Aunt Polly" is willing to square away for as much as two pages in reply to such a letter as this recent typical one:

Dear Polly: Please tell us, how much does it take to get married?

John and I have had serious intentions since high school days--six long years--and now we'd like to marry. Mother and Dad like John, but they think we haven't enough money to marry. But John has $450 saved, and I, $250. John has a car, a team and other livestock of his own, and of course I have guilts and dishes. Mother will give me some hens and a few pieces of furniture, too. Do you think we have enough to start farming in March? We'll rent at first, of course. We know we'd have more money saved if each of us worked a few more years, but we're tired of waiting. Please tell me just what you think.

Love,

Margaret

Aunt Polly said go ahead.

/-Grandfather of the present Secretary of Agriculture.

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