558 TEANSACTIONS OF THE 



or jeweler, and twenty-eight more than the printer, shoemaker, painter, or 

 tailor. And finally, your avocation is conducive to moral health and well 

 being. Fewer temptations stray into the country and prowl among the 

 fields than lurk in the streets and lanes of towns and cities. This country 

 can never go far wrong so long as three fourths of its voters are farmers. 

 When all men are farmers, when every sword is beaten into a plowshare, 

 and every spear into a pruning hook, and every man dwells under his own 

 vine and fig tree, the millenium will have come. Every occupation of the 

 farmer brings him face to face with God. When he plows his ground and 

 sows his seed he relies not upon the slippery promises of man for the 

 reward of his toil, but upon the covenant of God, that " seed time and 

 harvest shall not fail, "and that "whatsoever a man soweth that shall he 

 also reap." When he gathers his crops or his fruit he gets his wages direct 

 from the Divine, and no mortal hand interposes between giver and receiver. 

 He deals directly with Providence and not through middlemen, as do the 

 rest of us. And so depending only upon God, and accountable only to 

 Him, the farmer dares to think what is right, and to speak and act and 

 vote in harmony with his thought. 



Rome fell because her city loafers were her only voters. They had no 

 homes to protect — only votes to sell. Our California farmers have wheat 

 to sell, but no votes. They are never the cringing slaves of capital, nor the 

 tools of party bosses, and the plutocrat and politician both have a whole- 

 some fear of the men with the hayseed in their hair. 



And now a closing word as to the dignity of this pursuit. 



Well has Emerson said: " We look upon the farmer with reverence and 

 respect, when we remember what powers and utilities he so meekly wears." 

 Plain in manners and in dress, he would not shine in palaces, but set down 

 beside him the drawing-room dandy, who is only a whiskered essence and 

 an organized perfume, and the " dude " shrivels into nothingness, while the 

 son of the soil formers in manly stature, like one of the Homeric heroes. I 

 know there is a tendency among farmers' boys to look wistfully to the city, 

 or to the professions, as offering better inducements to honorable ambition, 

 and manual labor seems to be the abhorrence of many. They will clean 

 spittoons, measure tape, take a third assistant clerkship in a junk shop, 

 peddle sewing machines, or liver pads, rather than do honest hard work. 

 A farmer's boy wrote to Horace Greeley, a few years ago, asking his advice 

 about leaving the farm for a professional career, and received the following 

 answer: " Dear sir, I judge by the number of lawsuits and deaths that there 

 are three times as many lawyers and doctors as the country needs, and by 

 the price of flour, butter, and beef, not half enough farmers. I advise you to 

 produce potatoes, rather than pills or pleas." The Lord deliver you from 

 boys and girls who are ashamed of the farmer's vocation and afraid to 

 work. The rearing of such a family is a worse speculation than Mr. 

 Beecher's hogs were on his model farm at Peekskill. He bought the orig- 

 inal hog for a dollar and a half, fed him forty dollars worth of corn, and 

 then sold him for about nine dollars. He said that was the only crop he 

 ever made any money on. He lost on the corn, but made seven dollars 

 and a half on the hog, and as for the corn,' he didn't expect to make any- 

 thing on the corn, anyway; and then he had the excitement of raising the 

 hogs, whether he made anything on them or not. So these ornamental 

 sons and daughters who think a professional or city life superior to that of 

 the farm — all that is made by rearing them is the excitement of the thing, 

 and is terribly exciting, too, sometimes, when the farm has to be mortgaged 

 to pay their tailor or millinery bills. 



But the farmer in California has, above all others, it seems to me, a 



