244 PROSPECTS OF AMERICAN AGRICULTURE. 



of Queen Victoria cannot all be kings and queens, and the sons 

 and daughters of farmers cannot all be farmers and farmer's wives. 

 I do not object to young men leaving the farm for the cities, nor to 

 successful business men turning farmers. We need more of the 

 latter class in the country. 



But what of the active, enterprising, well-educated young man 

 who sticks to the farm or who adopts agriculture as the business 

 of bis life ; what are his prospects ? The farmer's son who leaves 

 the farm and turns carpenter, brick-layer or mason may become a 

 builder and contractor and the owner of a dozen blocks, the quar- 

 terly rent from any one of which would buy his father's or his 

 brother's farm. 



Another farmer's son turns blacksmith, and having learned to 

 make nails and horse-shoes by hand, thinks he can make them by 

 machinery, and becomes a millionaire. Another is a shoemaker 

 but does not stick solely to his last. lie becomes, after a few 

 years, the President of one of the largest boot and shoe manufac- 

 turing companies in the world. Another studies law and becomes 

 an O'Connor or an Evarts. 



But I need not go through the list. We all know, and the 

 young men on the farm know, that there are great prizes to be 

 won in the learned professions and in trade, commerce and manu- 

 factures. And they will try for them and work for them, and I do 

 not object to it, and if I did it would make no sort of diiference. 

 A business in which there are no prizes, will have little attraction 

 for a young man full of hope and energy. 



Are there any prizes to be won in the field of agriculture, and, 

 if so, how shall we go. to work in order to get them ? 



Farming is said to be a slow business, but sure. The man who 

 cannot work and wait will not succeed. But the agriculture of 

 to-day or of the future is very different from the agriculture of the 

 past. 



The improvement in agricultural implements and machines is 

 something wonderful. We can hardly realize the advantges which 

 the men of science, inventors and manufacturers, have bestowed 

 on agriculture. Many of the operations of agriculture are depend- 

 ent on the weather. A large factory making shingles goes on, no 

 matter what the weather may be, but a single shower will stop a 

 whole field of hay makers. 



Twenty-five or thirty years ago a farmer with a hundred acres 

 of hay to cut and a hundred acres of grain, had to hire extra men 



