300 BOARD or AGRICULTURE. 



I would encourage the development of this in every manner possible. 

 To this end I would let each child have the full control and ownership 

 of the plot allotted to it and of what was grown upon it. When my 

 brother and I were boys, fnlhor allotted to us four acres of land for 

 wheat, and he gave us Golden Ch:ilf seed with which to sow it. We 

 were to do all the work in putting it in and harvesting it, and were 

 10 have what we could raise as our own. He showed us how to do 

 the work, and I assure you it was well done. No other wheat in the 

 neighborhood got better work and attention than did that four acres, 

 and we were well rewarded for what we did, for we had more bushels 

 to the acre than anyone else in the neighborhood. Golden Chaff was 

 then a new wheat in the neighborhood, and our success with it made 

 a great demand for it, and consequently we got the top of the market 

 from our neighbors for our crop for seed wheat. The money obtained 

 for it was ours, and how proud we were of our success and of the fact 

 that we had money that we had earned. Father advised us how to 

 judiciously invest it, and the outcome of it was that when I left the 

 rarm I had enough money with which to commence and partially pros- 

 ecute a course in college. Somewhere, I have seen the picture of a 

 boy and his garden plot where, during the last year, he with his hoe 

 cultivated and produced eighty dollars worth of potatoes. This is the 

 manner of gardening which I am contending for, and well will it be 

 With us when we come to recognize that our cliildren are noi to be 

 treated as beasts of burden but are to be taken into our full coutidence 

 and companionship and that they are to have a proprietary interest 

 in what they produce. 



In addition to this, I would have especial attention given to the 

 directing of the minds of our children to a knowledge of the common 

 things about our homes, and especially those things upon which they 

 are expending their labor in their garden operations. I can not tliink 

 of a pleasanter and more profitable way for a farmer's family to spend 

 a winter's evening than looking up the life history of some tree, shrub, 

 vine, plant, bird, or insect common about their home. There is a real 

 fascination in such study, and when it is once entered upon there is 

 no limit to its pursuit. It is appalling when one reflects and realizes 

 that there are thousands of farmers and their families who spend their 

 entire lives without being able to give an intelligent account of the 

 life history of the most common things about them. The great open 

 book of nature is a perfect blank to them. Tliey are born, they work, 

 rest, eat, sleep and die, and that is all of what life has been to them. 

 The farmer's stock does as much. A most pitiful failure is a life thus 

 spent by a man, the highest of all creatures. 



I have said that I would have the wife and mother give attention 

 to the adornment of the garden. Among the pleasant memories of 

 my life is that of our garden, in which mother cultivated all of th^ 



