86 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



I remember a leaflet set out by Prof. Plumb of Indiana upon the 

 care of domestic animals, and there is a good deal of valuable 

 information in it, for farmers as well as children. Children are 

 interested in nature studies, whether they are to be farmers or 

 not. 



Let us come now to the secondary schools, the high schools 

 and the academies, and let us see about the teaching of agri- 

 culture there. You are all acquainted with some high school or 

 academy ; you are familiar with its work, you are familiar with 

 its courses of study, but have you ever found one, or heard of 

 one, in the State of Maine, that teaches agriculture in any way ? 

 Many of our high schools will teach young men to become mer- 

 chants, they will fit them for college, they will put them on their 

 way towards some learned profession, but I have failed to find 

 yet an institution of that order in the State of Maine that pre- 

 tends to teach agriculture ; and what is worse, yet a solemn fact, 

 the boys and girls of this State who get a high school education, 

 who advance as far as that point, do not go back on to the farm. 

 Now that is one of the most serious things that the farmers of 

 this State have to contemplate, in my opinion. What does it 

 mean, my friends ? What does it mean that the boys and the girls 

 to whom you give the best educational facilities leave the farm? 

 It means a great deal. I have heard men say that farming did 

 not pay. It is barely possible that their boys may have heard 

 them say that, and it has been the means of inducing them to 

 leave the farm. Do you know what I think when I hear that 

 expression ? I always wonder why that man went into the busi- 

 ness if it does not pay. It is a sad commentary on his own 

 judgment. What must a man think of himself, what must his 

 neighbors think of him, when he will deliberately go into an 

 occupation which he declares does not pay? But farming does 

 pay. It pays the man who puts business principles into it, if he 

 is fitted for it, as well as any other business. The farmer is apt 

 to envy the man who draws a salary of $800 or $1,000. But 

 there are hundreds of farmers in the State of Maine that, reckon- 

 ing in their living expenses, reckoning in the things they draw 

 from the farm and use in their families, are making more than 

 that. There are hundreds of farms in the State of 200 or 300 

 acres from which the gross receipts are from three to five thou- 

 sand dollars. There is no calling where there is a greater oppor- 



