FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 205 



every other interest iu it and still have something left for investment where 

 they could have good security and ten per cent. The probate records all over 

 the country show that there is no class of men who accumulate so much prop- 

 erty as the farmers. Occasionally there is a merchant prince who has accumu- 

 lated millions, but for one such perhaps there is a hundred struggling to keep 

 their heads above water, some of whom never succeed in accumulating anvthins: 

 except liabilities which they cannot discharge. Taken as a class the records 

 show that farmers accumulate the most. And yet we all know that the 

 instances are comparatively few in which farming is made as profitable as it 

 might be, and that in a large number of instances the profit, if there is any, 

 is very light indeed, but in these latter cases the method, or rather the want of 

 method, in conducting it would inevitably lead to embarrassment and failure 

 in the conduct of any other business. What a large proportion of farm work is 

 done in a slipshod, hap-hazard sort of way without any definite plan or purpose. 

 When I drive past a farm-house in winter and see vehicles and implements 

 standing around in the weather, cattle and sheep evidently poorly fed and 

 still more poorly sheltered, and the only wood pile in the dooryard a log or two 

 drawn up, and an ax beside them with which a block is cut off as needed, I 

 know that there lives a man who feels quite certain that farming does not pay. 

 Oh, how little there is about such a home and such a life to make any one 

 love it. 



Another thing that has made farming uninviting to many of the better class 

 of young men who have turned away from it will be found in tlie defective 

 manner in wMcli farming operations are too often conducted. 



It has been too common for farmers themselves to regard their occupations 

 as one in which it was not considered necessary to lighten its labors by any 

 rays of science or gleams of intelligence from the realm of mind and thought. 

 AVork has been the one thing in demand from morning till night, and with the 

 physical nature thus overtasked to such an extent as to exclude the possibility 

 of mental effort the mind must become dwarfed. 



If there is such a farmer here, as possibly there is not, for they are not the 

 class likely to attend a Farmers' Institute, but if there is such a farmer as 

 shuts his eyes against the light that is bursting forth upon the agricultural 

 world, from the progress of the natural sciences; who, realizing in his pursuit 

 no necessity for anything but muscular energy and strength, closes the door 

 against the innovations of science ; who plods along with the fewest possible 

 implements, and these the cheapest and poorest he can find, I hope he may 

 never have a boy so devoid of ambition as to follow in the footsteps of his 

 father. I am strongly of the opinion that a more general recognition of the 

 necessity and importance of farming on scientific principles, a recognition of 

 the scope and profitable employment which the occupation gives for the use of 

 the jiowers of observation, thought and inventive genius, will do much to make 

 the boys growing up on the farm feel that it is a fitting place for them to 

 remain. But just so sure as they are made familiar only with modes of opera- 

 tion that exclude all necessity for thought, require only physical dexterity and 

 strength, so surely if there stirs within them any laudable ambition they will 

 long for the coming of the day that will at once free them from parental con- 

 trol and the monotonous drudgery of their farm life. 



In so much as we do away with the drudgery — the severe tax upon the physi- 

 cal strength — in the work of farming, and allow time for mental activity, 

 either by improved methods, or the invention or adoption of some labor-saving 

 machine, by so much we elevate and render more attractive the occupation. 



