212 ■ Bureau of Farmeks' Institutes. 



The so-called commonest professions in our system — agricul- 

 ture, industry and commerce — represent the most vital and essen- 

 tial part, because through these are procured the daily bread, upon 

 which all other work depends. If these professions are made to 

 suffer, the whole social body must suffer; if they decay, the social 

 body must decay, as surely as the physical body decays if not 

 properly nourished. If necessary we could probably live without 

 lawyers, without journalists, without officials, even without phy- 

 sicians, but we could not live long without the farmers, who pro- 

 vide the food, nor without the manufacturers, who furnish the 

 objects and implements of essential use; nor without the traders, 

 who distribute indispensable goods to the places where the de- 

 mand exists. It is good for us to realize sometimes that we are 

 quite as important to the world as the w^orld is to us. Agriculture 

 is the most stable of all professions. It is not subject to sudden 

 changes like industry and commerce. It presents a regular rou- 

 tine from sunrise to sunset. A farmer who permitted his cows to 

 go unmilked would court disaster as surely as a manufacturer 

 who would allow the machinery in his mills to run without atten- 

 tion or service. The man with the milk pail may not go down to 

 posterity in a great picture, but he has his uses. 



Some farmers have a great fear of competition. The very word 

 somehow^ seems to express hard conditions — especially when it hap- 

 pens to affect us personally. Nevertheless, competition brings 

 about some good results. It compels people to greater industry. 

 It keeps things moving. Some one has said that man is as lazy 

 as he dares to be, and one of the early fathers thought that lazi- 

 ness must be the " original sin," it is so common. Prof. Hender- 

 son says: "The tendenc}^ of competition is to starve out the 

 feeble, the slow, the indolent, and to give the world and its soil to 

 the healthy, the vigorous, the cunning, the inventive." If this be 

 true, competition and kindred evils will eventually create a " Man 

 with the Hoe " class in America. A system whiqh serves to 

 " starve out " any of our people should be abandoned. The altru- 

 istic plan is better; help the feeble, encourage the slow and indo- 

 lent, rather than trample them in the dust to perish, as the race 

 moves on to finer achievements. 



The endowment of faculties is so unequal that the fortunes of 

 men must be unequal also. Abraham Lincoln stated this princi- 



