324 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



who were in every respect the equals, and sometimes the superiors, of 

 anything? a city could produce; and they looked with a supreme and 

 lofty contempt, and spoke with scornful indifference of all who lived 

 on farms, delved in the soil, planted orchards, and dwelt literally as 

 well as figuratively under their own sweet potato vines and cucumber 

 trees. While the fact in the case is that were it not for the farm homes 

 from which to draw fresh blood and brains in the bright boys and 

 girls that go from them to add luster to the so-called learned profes- 

 sions and commercial ranks, and make good the losses resulting from 

 the debilitating influences of city degeneracy would soon appear. 

 Another great mistake made by farmers is the neglect to provide 

 the family with good and useful reading matter. The compound inter- 

 est of happiness, general intelligence and increased usefulness of every 

 member of the family by reason of this is beyond price. It is the very 

 poorest kind of economy to starve the brain and stint the growing 

 curiosity of the youthful mind. 



And even the newspapers used to play their part against the best 

 interests of the farm homes by publishing all sorts of views and queer 

 practices ascribed to farmers, by which no one was so much surprised 

 as the farmer himself, to learn that he had entertained such views or 

 conducted business in such manner; and it would be hard to tell what 

 some of them would do to fill their colums even now if they were de- 

 barred from discussing the farmer and his ways and means. There is 

 no subject that I know of that is more valuable to help some of them 

 tell what they don't know. The world-renowned Horace Greeley once 

 wrote a book which he named "What I Know about Farming." If he 

 had written one more and labeled it " What I Don't Know about 

 Farming," it would have been the biggest book on record. 



But I am glad that it is a noticeable fact that public opinion is fast 

 changing in favor of the farm home. I think in a few more short 

 years it will actually become fashionable to be a farmer. Some of our 

 United States Senators are now calling themselves farmers. Of 

 course they are not, but it shows in which direction public opinion is 

 drifting, and not many years hence all the main traveled roads leading 

 to the best positions in the gift of the people will be filled with farmers 

 traveling toward the United States capital, and it will be wideawake, 

 progressive, thoughtful and educated farmers who will "get there ;" none 

 other need apply. And instead of everything tending to drive or coax 

 the youth away from the farm home in order to satisfy his ambition to 

 become a man of wealth, fame or notoriety, he will see and realize that 

 the farm is the stepping-stone not only to these, but to all the greatest 

 blessings and achievements of mankind. 



