240 PROSPECTS OP AMERICAN AGRICULTURE, 



will make a man just and liberal. If a barber in Kansas refuses 

 to shave a farmer for less than two bushels of corn, the farmer can 

 let his beard grow. And if a shoemaker wants 50 bushels of 

 potatoes for a pair of boots the farmer yiiay have to submit to the 

 exchange. But such a state of things in a free and intelligent 

 community will not last long. The farmer or his son will turn 

 shoemaker, and by and by the shoemaker will want to turn farmer. 

 This matter of the exchange of labor or its products must be left 

 to regulate itself. Monopoly, extortion, and all forms of injustice 

 seldom prosper in the end. 



To me, the prospects of American agriculture never were so 

 bright as at the present time. There is plenty of work to he done. 

 The greatest curse that can befall a man or nation is voluntary or 

 involuntary idleness. "Nothing to do" means poverty and 

 misery. The less a man does the less he is inclined to do. The 

 more he does the more he can do. Idleness leads to weakness and 

 inability. Work gives strength and skill, it banishes despondency 

 and brings in hope, and hope leads to continued effort. If we fail 

 one year we try again. We get to have faith in the soil and in 

 ourselves. We have to compete with our brother farmers and 

 with the farmers of the world. We feel that farming is no child's 

 play and we must try to acquit ourselves like men and be strong. 



Of our many blessings, therefore, not the least is the fact that 

 we have now, and shall have for years to come, plenty of work to 

 do on our farms. 



There are farmers who thought that when their farms were 

 cleared of the forest, and when the barns and fences were built 

 and roads made, there woula be little to do. Philosophers also 

 told us, and truly, that trees absorbed carbonic acid from the 

 atmosphere, and that when we cleared up a district we not only 

 removed these natural puriBers of the atmosphere, but when the 

 trees were burnt or decayed, large quantities of carbonic acid 

 were thrown off, and also that man -and beast were daily and hourly 

 polluting the atmosphere in the same way. All the processes and 

 operations of civilized life produce enormous quantities of carbonic 

 acid, and we at the same time were removing the trees which 

 nature had provided to purify the atmosphere. Now all this was 

 true enough, but the great fact was not then known, that an acre 

 of corn would take up probably five times as much carbonic acid 

 as an acre of forest trees, and that wheat, barley, oats, grass and 

 clover, and all our cultivated plants were much more efficient 



