204 STATE BOARD OF AGllICULTURE, 



zation, tastes, teinpcriiiucnt iuiil capability. In this diversity of gifts nature 

 itself teaches us that there should be diversity of occui)ation. Tiie same lesson 

 is forced npou us when we look abroad upon the world's wants. Large num- 

 bers of men must be employed in other occupations besides that of producing 

 the raw material. Government, education, transportation, manufacturing, 

 mining, — think of these vast fields of labor in which millions of active brains 

 and busy hands must find honorable and remunerative employment. It is the 

 part of wisdom for parents to watcli the indications of tastes and fitness and 

 allow to the individual the largest liberty in regard to the choice of an occupa- 

 tion, understanding always that success does not depend upon the particular 

 calling pursued, so much as in the manner in which we pursue it, on the amount 

 of brains and energy and enthusiasm that we bring to it. 



Still it cannot be doubted that many young men have left the farm for some 

 other pursuit, who, had their surroundings and associations in early life been 

 different, as they might have been and ought to have been, they would have 

 remained to find in the occupation with which they first became familiar muck 

 that was congenial to their tastes, helpful in the development of their man- 

 hood, and furnishing scope for thought and intelligence equal to any calling 

 known to man. And now I desire to point out briefly some of the things that 

 have contributed to place farming in a false position as compared with other 

 occupations, and have been causes of discouragement to active and ambitious 

 young men, leading them to think that almost any other occupation is prefera- 

 ble to farming. 



One cau.-e of this I have no doubt we will find in the false idea, altogether 

 too prevalent, that farming does not imy, and the spirit of discontent and dis- 

 satisfaction resulting from this idea with which farmers themselves often regard 

 their occupation. 



There are men I presume in all occupations who are constitutional croakers; 

 it is as natural for them to grumble as it is for them to breathe, and I have 

 known farmers who, if they impressed anything sharply upon their children, 

 it was the idea that the occupation of farming was tlie hardest, most uninvit- 

 ing and undesirable of all pursuits ; that in no other branch of industry was 

 labor so inadequately remunerated as in this. The burden of conversation 

 in their homes is that farming does not pay. It is hard work; farmers can't 

 afford the luxuries that other people can. There is also a constant worrying 

 and fretting about the weather; it is too hot or too cold; the wheat will be 

 winter killed, and the corn destroyed with frost; it is too wet or it is too dry, 

 and you know the old saying that "a dry year frightens tiie people to death and 

 a wet one starves them." Meet one of those discontented farmers and ask him 

 how things are looking in the country, and with a remarkably sober visage he 

 will tell you ''it is the poorest season I have ever known ; we farmers are hav- 

 ing a very tough time ; the grass is so light it will hardly pay the cutting ; the 

 wheat what wasn't winter-killed will be badly rusted, aud the other crops are 

 so backward we will have a hard time getting them harvested. Ah, I tell you 



farming is a dreadfully poor business 



You might as well expect that a fire would burn under water as that a love 

 for farming would be developed in such an atmosphere of discontent. What 

 folly to expect that the children, who have constantly breathed this atmosphere, 

 should voluntarily choose for the business of their lives an occupation which 

 they can think of only as furnishing an occasion for fault-finding and complaint. 



Now, the fact is, as you know, farming does pay. I see men before me to- 

 night who have demonstrated that the farmers of this township could buy up 



