TRANSACTIONS OF WARSAW HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 257 



Farming is honorable and lucrative. The history of the world shows 

 that it pays. Our own community proves it. Look at the substantial, 

 and, in many instances, magnificent residences that stud the once wild 

 prairie. In farming, man is necessarily confined to certain fixed and 

 known laws. Speculation is scarcely known to the farmer ; that belongs 

 to men whose business is uncertain, who are dependent on the whims and 

 fancies of the world, and is confined principally to men of rash and 

 impetuous natures. So far as work is concerned, all men that succeed 

 are hard workers, either by brain or hand, or both. They must show 

 enthusiasm and love for their work. The man who plucks the luscious 

 fruit, and he wlio saves his client from perishing, must labor earnestly. If 

 the farmer thinks that mental exertion is easy, let him try to lift the load 

 necessary to success. 



Every trade, business and profession has its disadvantages, and rural 

 life is not exempt. No matter what calling a man may choose, he will 

 find drawbacks — times when every thing goes wrong. This is sometimes 

 due to an interference with his plans by natural laws, but generally to a 

 lack of knowledge. If a man persists that his farm needs no renewing, 

 and is as rich and productive without as with fertilizers, he will meet 

 with defeat. If twenty-five acres of grain is cut when ten is all that can 

 be secured from storm, it is a disadvantage. And so if the corn crop 

 can be increased from thirty, the average, to fifty bushels per acre by an 

 outlay of one per cent. If the swine are allowed to burrow and wallow 

 around the well, family and stock suffer. It is a disadvantage to have a 

 greater supply than the demand calls for. Usually only a part of the 

 country has a surplus, and, if the products be wisely stored, no disad- 

 vantage accrues. Millions more bushels of grain and fruits are used than 

 forty years ago, and yet the demand is greater and prices higher. One 

 can remember when a bushel of corn was not worth a shilling, and when 

 homespun was the pride of the husbandman, and pork, hominy and beans 

 his regular diet, and when he returned from market fifty miles away with 

 a hand-basket of merchandise for his summer's labor. Those who 

 consume the products of the farm are too far away, necessitating a loss 

 through shipment. We have need of home manufactories and insurance 

 companies. There is a lack of enterprise in calling in manufactories and 

 artisans, thereby failing to increase the number of consumers that would 

 otherwise be near, and sustaining a loss by being obliged to send grain 

 and receive merchandise and implements by rail and boat. 



Unfortunately, farmers are deprived of often meeting the man of 

 science and attending with frequency our institutions of learning, of hear- 

 ing the eloquent and learned in pulpit, college and state, and coming in 

 contact with all kinds of business men. It is not common or convenient 

 to meet in consultation in reference to crops, animals and the bearing of 

 seasons. Storms of hail, wind and rain come when no mortal can set 

 their time and place of birth, when many months' labor and hundreds of 

 dollars are in an hour destroyed. The severe winters can not be moder- 

 ated, and fruit trees and grain must perish in consequence. Extremes of 



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