STATE AID TO AGRICULTURE. 9 



mated brute force and power of brute endurance, as all the farmer 

 needed to enable him to accomplish his mission, and that mind and 

 thought and education were as useless to the farmer as the fifth 

 wheel to a coach. To dig and delve for a living, to drudge like a 

 slave, live like a raiser, and die like a brute, with no higher con- 

 ception of life than that it was a little span in which to hoard mam- 

 mon and be filled with greed — such was the verdict pronounced 

 upon the toiling farmer, who ^ade the earth bloom with perennial 

 beauty and autumnal fruitfulness. Hence, serfdom, servitude and 

 drudgery, clownish countrvmen, mudsills, and small fisted farmer's 

 pursuits, that degraded and animalized the soul, together with other 

 patented utterances, were flung at the farmer and his mission in the 

 by- past times. 



There were other causes which tended to rivet the low concep- 

 tion to the farmer's mission upon public sentiment. Professional 

 men were too prone to get perched upon high towers of self conceit, 

 and instead of aiding with tongue and pen and influence to enlarge 

 and liberalize the mind of the toiling farmer, their policy was to 

 keep their noses fast down to the grindstone, arrogating to them- 

 selves the proud assumption that all knowledge was shut up in a 

 learned profession, and was only charmed thence with the magic 

 influence of the college sheepskin. 



How did the farmer awaken to the realizing sense of his mission 

 as a man of the age? The answer is at hand — by remoulding those 

 wrong conceptions of farming, which regarded it as a sort of chat- 

 tel-hood ; by impressing upon the public mind the fact that it was 

 not the man's calling or profession that made him a nobleman, but 

 the amount of mind and thought, and honor and power of manhood 

 he brought to bear upon that calling or profession. Thus did farm- 

 ing begin to arise to its true dignity, and accomplish its true mission. 



Da}' by day, as the farmers have become better educated, labor 

 and intelligence have been conquering all things with its strength 

 and patent skill, and the sons of toil have embodied the attributes 

 of true manhood, rising above the miserable expedients of color or 

 sect, conquering the stern duties of life with their sweat and toil. 

 This is the magnet that has linked humanity together in the bonds 

 of kindred brotherhood and S3'mpathies. The freedom and enlight- 

 enment, the dignit}' and ennoblement of this, is the great truth that 

 lies at the foundation of all progress and reform, hence to educate 

 the boy is to make the man ; to make the man is to fix and deter- 



