216 FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 



of the gentleman. Men march and fight better when their elbows touch. 

 A neighbor is good because you may light your soul from his. So the city 

 and country may supplement each other. 



The country boys have been going to the city, and while some have suc- 

 ceeded many have failed, and now the country says, we will develop a cul- 

 ture ourselves; we will dr^^w ourselves together and work shoulder to 

 shoiilder in the cause. 



So in our colleges we find that the best of their material is from the 

 country. Princeton, the alma mater of so many great men, has drawn its 

 best blood from the country and from the west. 



All honor to the boy who has the grit and the will to cultivate himself 

 alone by the firelight; but where he can take it, give him the opportunities 

 of college work. It is best to educate the boy with his fellows. Attrition 

 sharpens the mind. The country blood means business, there is no taint of 

 swill-milk in it. It takes attraction to keep a boy on the farm ; take him 

 into your confidence; show profit and loss; and that it is a science and not 

 mere drudgery. Make your boys your companions and Avork with them in 

 their desire for development and they will not want to leave the farm. 



So in your institutes and grange meetings you meet together and develop 

 one another and work out that culture for which we used to look to the city, 

 and which will make the farmer able to represent himself and his class. 

 The time will come when it will not be said by anyone that a farmer can not 

 go to congress or sit in our legislative halls. 



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Of this small globe it is estimated that one-fifth is under cultivation. 

 For 6,000 years the human race has worked on its surface, drawn its sus- 

 tenance from the forces of nature, and to-day there is less arable soil on the 

 globe than at first. We say man has improved on nature. True, he took 

 the wild apple and made the greening, and all of our improved grains and 

 breeds of animals from their original wild types, yet. notwithstanding, in 

 large regions man's step has been a blight to the earth. Buins of palaces 

 and temples standing in the deserts of Palestine and of Palmyra, of Spain 

 and North Africa mark the devastation wrought by man. How has this 

 desolation been brought about? By unscientific farming. 



But we need not go to the old world for such illustrations. We have 

 occupied this land less than 200 years, and yet there is a territory equal to 

 that of France which, once fertile, is now exhausted. All through the south 

 are worn out, abandoned farms, eloquent testimonials to the evils of unscien- 

 tific agriculture. About Washington, where once was perfect garden land, 

 you may ride for miles without seeing a comfortable farm. The valley of the 

 Potomac, once the garden of Virginia, is now a wilderness in contrast with 

 which the view which greets you on entering northern Ohio is a perfect feast 

 to the eyes. Not only have these fields been abandoned, but they seem to 

 have had the heart taken out of them. A gentleman told me he had bought 

 very cheaply twenty miles from Washington, a fine-looking clay farm. 

 He tile-drained and plowed and tried to seed to clover, but clover would 

 not stick and he found he could not raise wheat without fertilizers. He 

 tried to put it down to grass, but grass would not take. 



The old Virginians not only depleted their soil by raising tobacco, but they 

 raised slav3s and sold them off from the land. It has been estimated that it 

 costs 11,000 to raise an adult human being, and all of that value has been 



