Getting the Worst of It

By Mrs. A. J. Wilder, Mansfield, Missouri.

Whenever two or three women were gathered together during the winter, sooner or later someone would ask, "Are your hens laying?"

In one such small crowd where town and country women mingled, I was very much interested and also amused by a conversation which took place between a country woman and a woman who lives in town. Of course the inevitable question was asked and the country woman answered that her hens were doing their duty. Then a town woman inquired, "What are you getting for eggs?"

"Thirty cents," replied the country woman.

"They make us pay 33 cents when we get them at the store," said the town woman. "Why can't you bring me my eggs?"

"I can," said the country woman. "How many would you want?"

"Oh! Bring me three dozen. Might as well save 9 cents," replied the town woman.

Perhaps I imagined it, but I certainly thought that the country woman's left eyelid dropped for an instant as she looked up at me, but her glance was so quick I could not be sure. Her reply was quick too.

"Why! I thought you were offering me the 3 cents a dozen more," she said. The town woman disclaimed this in a tone of surprise and the country woman asked, "How about dividing it?"

"Oh! I wouldn't bother with it for that," said the other in a tone of disgust.

"It is less bother for me to deliver our eggs all in one place. We sell them by the case, you know," said the country woman and again I thought her eyelid dropped as she glanced once more in my direction. I wish I could be sure about that wink. It would make such a difference in the conclusions one might draw.

There I said to myself, is the producer and consumer question in a nutshell, with the real reason why that terrible bogey, "the middleman" gets such a chance at us. Too much bother, unwillingness to co-operate and compromise, or in other words just plain selfishness is the cause at the bottom of all the trouble. The consumer wants something done about the high cost of living, but he wants all the benefit to accrue to himself. The producer wants something done to lessen the difference between the price at which he sells and what the consumer pays but he also desires what is thus saved to come his way, while the speculator standing between smiles to himself, secure in this position because of his weakness of human nature. For the rest of us, the punishment fits the crime and I am inclined to think that we get no more than we deserve.

After all, it is thru some fault or weakness of our own that the most of the evils of life come to us. it is as if our strength of character and virtues formed a guard around us, but a fault or weakness of character makes an opening thru which our punishment comes.

There was once a small boy with a quarrelsome disposition and a great unwillingness to obey the rules his mother made. At school he would seek a quarrel and get the thrashing he deserved; then he would come home, disobey his mother and be punished; then he would sit down and wail. "O-o-h! I always get the worst of it. I don't know why, but at school and everywhere I always get the worst of it!"

It was tragic for the child, but to me there was always something irresistibly comic about it also, because it reminded me so strongly of grown-ups I knew. We have all seen such persons. There are those who persistently disobey the laws of health, which being nature's laws, are also God's laws, and then when ill health comes, wonder why she should be compelled to suffer.

Others by their bad temper and exacting dispositions estrange their relatives and repel friendly advances. Then they bewail the fact that their friends are so few.

From these, clear on down to the man who carelessly picked up the lid lifter from the hot part of the stove and then turned impatiently upon his wife exclaiming, "Why didn't you tell me that was hot!" we are all alike eager to lay upon some one else the blame for the troubles that come from our own faults and all remind me of the boy who wailed, "I always get the worst of it! I don't know why but—I always get the worst of it!"

Mrs. A. J. Wilder. "Getting the Worst of It." Missouri Ruralist,  (March 5, 1917): page 9.  CLICK HERE to see this article as it originally appeared in the Missouri Ruralist.

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