Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farm Journalist

I cannot help but pour forth great excitement and delight in a book I just picked up titled Laura Ingalls Wilder: Farm Journalist, edited by Stephen Hines. Any American worth their salt knows Wilder as the author of the “Little House” books. I myself cut my book-reading teeth devouring these books time and time again, always dreaming of being a modern-day pioneer homesteader.

Before book-writing fame came to Wilder, she was known through the state of Missouri as a popular columnist in the Missouri Ruralist from 1911 to 1923. This book gathers nearly two hundred of these essays together for our profit. Ingalls wrote about home, agriculture, thrift, parenting, women’s roles, etc., and gave readers an endless supply of pithy advice and personal anecdotes. She was Erma Bombeck, Will Rogers, Samuel Clemens, and Ben Franklin all rolled into one.

Ingalls’ eyes were wide open to the advancements of the future, all the while seeking to keep her hands on the best of the “old ways”. For example, in a clip called “Let’s Revive the Old Amusements”, she writes:

“Sometimes I wonder if telephones and motor cars are altogether blessings for country people. When my neighbor can call me up for a short visit over the phone, she is not so likely to make the necessary effort to come and spend the afternoon, and I get hungry for the sight of her face as well as the sound of her voice.”

However, Ingalls was not a sentimentalist in regard to the past. She says:

“Love and service, with a belief in the future and expectation of better things in the tomorrow of the world is a good working philosophy; much better than, ‘in olden times-things were so much better when I was young.’ For there is no turning back nor standing still; we must go forward, into the future, generation after generation toward the accomplishment of the ends that have been set for the human race.”

Historians, fans of Little House, farmers, and children will all enjoy this book (hint: Mother’s Day is coming soon).