State Agricultural Society. 421 



• 



respect for these pursuits; to provide liberally for such education, and 

 . to multiply in every possible way the social enjoyments and embellish- 

 ments of rural life. We must take this social nature of man into the 

 account and not expect our children, of the age when social attractions 

 are the strongest, to be willing to dig and delve and endure the priva- 

 tions common to a former condition of things. When I remember how 

 often the growing boy was overworked, the short time for study and 

 recreation, the disadvantages with which he entered cultivated society, 

 I do not wonder that the farmer's and mechanic's son turns toward 

 other occupations, or that the ceaseless household'cares of the farmer's 

 wife, in homes where beauty has not softened the hard outlines of utility, 

 homes without music, books, and flowers, should discourage and disgust 

 her daughters. Men have left the farm and the' shop because the refine- 

 ments of life have been left out of these pursuits, and because the demand 

 for educated men in other callings has been greater than the supply. We 

 must change all this. We must become less greedy of money and be more 

 craving of neighbors than of acres, and learn to apply the principles of 

 cooperation in the purchase and use of machinery. When gambling 

 enterprises shall no longer be sustained by public opinion or legislative 

 enactments; when hands hardened by honest toil shall equal in social 

 value hearts hardened by vicious indulgence; when capital shall abandon 

 speculation and engage in diversifying our industries; when farmers can 

 purchase and own the lands they cultivate; then shall these fertile valleys 

 and foothills be filled with free and happy homes, and then we shall have 

 made a beginning in the right direction. 



RURAL COMMUNITIES. * 



In Southern California, Anaheim is a good illustration of the results 

 of social, in contrast to isolated settlements. The rapid growth of such 

 rural communities as that of Vineland, New Jersey, proves a genuine 

 love for rural life when wis not purchased by the loss of social privi- 

 leges. The growing tendency of city population towards suburban 

 life, a tendencj' shown in the formation of our numerous homestead 

 associations, is another proof that nature is still consistent with herself. 

 Here horticulture, the original fine' art, which weaves a web of beauty 

 around the lowliest home, becomes the link uniting country and city. 

 The cultivation of the small garden spot, its harvest of pure and simple 

 pleasures, begets a longing fbr the wide*r fields and freer life of the farm. 

 To the stranger in California, the clump of lilies blooming in mid- Winter 

 by every cottage door, the vines wreathed around porcn and*window, 

 are a more irresistible attraction than the gold of her mines or the 

 wealth of her commerce. No social organization, however attractive, 

 will suffice permanently to elevate our industries; this can come only 

 through education. 



BOOK FARMING. 



I am aware that there is a prejudice concerning "book farming," and 

 that mother wit and plenty of manure are, in older sections of the coun- 

 try, considered the great essentials of successful agriculture. That kind 

 of farming has had its day, just as pans and rockers have had their day 

 in mining. When you think that this science is simply the record of 

 experience in these matters, the history of experiments and their re- 

 sults; when you think whether it would be gain or loss to have all the 



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