198 Historical Sketches of the Foreign Missions of the Seventh-day Adventists
father is often the shoe-maker for the entire family; that is, he buys
the leather tops at a trifling expense, and puts in the wooden bottoms
himself. One pair of shoes costs from twenty to forty cents, and is
expected to last about year. So far as hats and bonnets for the women
and children are concerned, they either go bare-headed the year round
or wear a little white muslin bonnet with a fluted frill around the face.
The work of the women in the house, in cooking and sewing,
being quite light, they spend much of their time in out-of-door labor.
It is very common to see women digging in the ground, dressing
vineyards, or hauling large loads of wood, hay, or the like, to market.
The team they usually drive is cows. Horses are seldom used here
except before carriages; mules, Sardinian ponies, donkeys, and oxen
are quite common; but the animals most commonly used for ordinary
farm labor are cows. These are usually driven by ropes attached to their
horns, the driver walking by their side or going in front and guiding
them by pulling them this way or that. Most other animals, except
carriage horses, are taught to be driven without lines of any kind, as
we drive oxen. Besides being thus used as beasts of burden, the cows
are often milked regularly three times a day.
How the milk from such animals can be healthy is a great question.
But we notice that they are driven very slowly, and with only moderate
loads, and they are given the very best of care. In winter they share
the comforts of their owners, or, more correctly, the owners share the
comforts of the cattle; or then the majority of families move into their
stables, where men, women, children, sheep, goats, and cows live
together in peace and harmony. This is purely an economical scheme,
the heat from the animals being made to answer instead of fire. Fuel
of all kinds is high. Coal can hardly be obtained. Coke costs from ten
to twelve dollars a ton; and wood, which is simply limbs including the
small twigs, costs a third of a cent a pound. Besides this, those who
use it, have to pay a wood tax.
Most people who use wood raise it as they do any other crop. It is
done in this way; Rows of willows are planted along their fences or
irrigating ditches, and are allowed to grow from six to ten feet high.
Then they are cut back every second or third year to the same height,
and the smallest twigs and branches are used for fuel. In view of these
facts in regard to fuel and the exceedingly low prices paid for labor,