382 Report of Farmers' Institutes 



lessons of thrift and economy, woTtli in themselves many times 

 the effort. Of course, there are instances where the mortgage has 

 ,been as a millstone about the neck and has brought gray hairs 

 with sorrow to an untimely grave ; but these were the results of 

 poor judgment, overconfidence, or unforeseen economic changes, 

 such as took place after the opening of the virgin prairies of the 

 ■West, easy now to understand from a ])ackward look, but not so 

 easily foreseen a half-century ago. The song often sung in our 

 granges — " Do ISTot Mortgage the Farm " — is one of those dan- 

 gerous half-truths to which I have alluded and. unqualified, is not 

 good advice. 



TTNPRODUCTIVE LANDS 



Much cheap sentiment has been indulged in relating to the 

 so-called abandoned farms of New York and New England. As a 

 matter of fact, of those really abandoned in the sense that nothing 

 is done with the land, there are comparatively few. Many such 

 ought to have been abandoned a generation ago. If one stops to 

 consider, it will be seen that, had this country been settled from 

 the Pacific eastward, thousands of acres that were taken up because 

 of their accessibility by the early settlers in the East would never 

 have been touched by the plow. It is a sign of intelligence and 

 progress when men come to realize that to spend their energies in 

 wringing a scanty living from a naturally sterile soil on the hill- 

 sides, away from markets and the refinements and advantages of 

 the centers, is a useless waste of energy and a deprivation of those 

 things that make life worth while, when less effort would bring 

 manifold more returns if expended in the valleys, which are crying 

 for workmen. At best, on these back hill farms, they can only exist, 

 nor can they expect the succeeding generation to remain there 

 unless such are deficient in vision. A region peopled with this sort 

 of folk soon deteriorates into a condition of things both degrading 

 and pagan. Far better let such land lie idle or be attached to 

 fertile lands in the valley as pasture or woodlands. When the. 

 time comes that there is an increase of population and the better 

 lands are utilized to their full measure of production — which 

 as yet has not come to be approached — such lands may again 

 be profitably farmed, but not now. 



