Brigham Young asked Emmeline Wells to organize a wheat storage program.  Apparently, it wasn’t easy to get the women out to glean the fields.  The women were heard to say, “I will rather give a bushel of wheat than go out to glean.”  It was such a problem that women, who refused to do their gleaning duty, were told they had “hands…small, white, and tender”; a statement clearly not to flatter.

Even in 1878, they were worried about calamities of the “last days”, of destruction and the need to prepare for an emergency.  Everyone understood the need to store, but no one wanted to do the work.  Things never change, do they?

“One of our most delicate and refined sisters went out with us and gleaned, quite sure of a severe headache, and on returning home, told us with becoming pride, that she had had no headache, and said she, ‘I thought gleaning was so hard, so different from what it was.’”

Isn’t that what we say after spending hours at our local welfare unit?  I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anyone say they absolutely hated working at those welfare projects.  Nothing is terribly hard to do.  You are working with friends (and many of us make friends easily with others while working down there).  It’s common to receive a snack, lunch, or opportunity to buy, or take home, the product you worked on.  Yet, we might still hear someone say, “I will rather give [money] than go out to [serve].”

“May God bless those who have gleaned, those who will glean hereafter, and those who would cheerfully glean if they ‘could’, and all who lend their influence and efforts to the great object of filling the storehouses of the Lord.”

Article: “Should we glean?”, Women’s Exponent, Aug 1, 1878