The slight appreciation of the power of paint by property owners is understandable; but the slight appreciation of the power of paint by house painters is not so easily understood. How many house painters would dream of assuring a woman that paint would help her shattered nerves? Yet paint would help her. Government farm experts in California know that it would, and are prescribing paint as a nerve tonic. 

Delicate Soothing Paint Cures Your Nerves

"I never realized," said a farmer's wife at one of the Farm Center meetings, "what a few dollars spent in paint could do for a person's health. You see my nerves were all splintered, and working in a dingy kitchen didn't improve them much. No matter how I scrubbed and polished, that kitchen always looked dismal and I got so I just hated the sight of it.

Then my husband went to a farm meeting and the Farm Adviser said something about more cheerful surroundings for the farmer's wife. He said they were worth dollars and cents to the farmer and  the whole nerve cure, as he called it, could be secured for a few dollars.

My husband was impressed. He had the kitchen painted. You should see it now. It is so cheerful and so light that it almost seems as though two or three more windows had been put in it.

Then.. we fixed up our bedroom, all in white, and I bought some new hangings and… well that paint cured my nerves."

Farm Center meetings throughout California are investigating the power of paint, and that these investigations unearth discoveries most flattering to paint is evidenced by the remarkable increase in the use of paint around the farm.

Paint Resists a River

Another story illustrating the power of paint comes from Ohio. A.F. Millar, a well-known farmer of the famous Scioto Valley, north of Portsmouth, Ohio, had his barn painted with Dutch Boy White lead. In the disastrous flood of 1913 the barn was partly submerged for many days. When the water receded, the paint showed neither blister nor crack.

This incident impressed the power of paint so forcibly upon Mr. Miller that he began painting everything around the farm - cultivator tongues, single trees, wagon beds, ends of posts, sections of paling fences and farm machinery. Today the elements pass lightly over the Millar farm.

When house painters themselves more fully appreciate the tremendous value of paint, the education of house owners will become a simpler task. 

ed note: Can you think of a more powerful nerve calming solution that paint? Just painting a room can create so much change in your environment that your nerves may be calmed. I'm just saying… 

Reprinted from The Dutch Boy Painter 1917