For detailed information, get the Maps and Folders of the

GREAT ROCK ISLAND ROUTE,

At your nearest Ticket Office, or address

R.R.  CABLE,
Vice-Pres. & Gen’l M’g’r,

E. ST. JOHN,
Gen’l Tkt. & Pass.  Agt.

CHICAGO.

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REMEMBER that $2.00 pays for THE PRAIRIE FARMER from this date to January 1, 1885:  For $2.00 you get it for one year and a copy of THE PRAIRIE FARMER COUNTY MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, FREE! This is the most liberal offer ever made by any first-class weekly agricultural paper in this country.

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SILK CULTURE.

WOMEN IN SILK CULTURE.

The feminine portion of our population is getting to be mighty independent.  Instead of waiting, Micawber-like, for something (a man) to turn up they are going to work to turn it up themselves.  They would rather make a living for themselves than have a man to make it for them.  They are teaching schools, operating telegraph instruments and telephones, clerking, keeping books of account, type-writing, doing short-hand reporting, lecturing, preaching, practicing law, and some have so far fallen from grace as to be editing papers.  But many of these occupations present closed doors to our country girls and women.  Many of these can not leave their country homes, and these occupations, with the exception of school teaching, can not be carried on in the country.  Others, who could leave home, are chary of braving the wiles and temptations of the city, and their friends are still more loth to have them go.  The great need is some work, light, respectable, and yet fairly remunerative, which our country lassies can carry on at home.  School teaching is possible, but teaching country district schools is the most thankless of all drudgery, and, besides, a majority of our young women are not able to endure the worry and close confinement.  If it can be made successful, sericulture offers by far the best opportunity to country girls to earn their own pin money, or even their own living.  It can be engaged in at home; it is light, pleasant, and interesting work; and there is no doubt that American silk can be produced of such a quality that there will be a brisk demand for it at good prices.  But if all this be true the question at once presents itself, Why have not American women engaged largely in sericulture?

The answer is that they have been appalled at the very outset by the alleged expense of the undertaking.  The promoters of the enterprise took to writing books.  There was an excuse for this amounting almost to a necessity.  To engage in silk culture, a person must be possessed of some special knowledge.  It is no harder than poultry or bee-keeping, but a person to succeed at these must have some expert knowledge, and as sericulture was a new thing, beginners must