276 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doe. 



edge. How can the farmer boy do all this? Bv doing to-dav the 

 thing he can do faithfully and well and reaching out for the next 

 higher thing. 



Lastly, I would say to the farmer boy or girl, get an education. 

 Emerson says: "Ko man can learn when he has no preparation for 

 learning, however near to his eyes is the object." It takes con- 

 scious effort to so fit ourselves that we may receive the highest and 

 best. "Dailv must we think and learn; dailv must we commune 

 with nature till old things become new; that is are seen in a new 

 light." 



EMPHASIS IN FARMING. 



BY J AS. P. McCALMONT, Paris, Washington County, Pa. 



We take it that '^emphasis in farming" means that the farmer 

 should engage in his calling as does the successful professional man 

 in his, or as the successful merchant, mechanic, or banker, engages 

 in their line of occupation, giving every phase of their business, care, 

 thought and energy. 



The idea that muscle is the only endov>'ment necessary for success- 

 ful farming has been long since exploded. True bodily strength in 

 any calling is a valuable adjunct and combined with thought, care, 

 and energy, will give reasonable success. The old time farmer with 

 jiractically virgin soil to produce his crop had less need for studying 

 questions of profitable farming than the farmer of the present day. 

 In my earliest recollection the average farmers' outfit consisted of a 

 team, wagon, plow, harrow, grain cradle, mowing scythe, axe, hoe 

 and mattock, and costing altogether about |200. At the present 

 the average farmers' outfit costs many times that amount and the 

 wear and abuse of this costly outfit largely determines the success 

 of the modern farmer. 



We are wont to compare the jjast condition of the farmer with the 

 I»resent and mourn for the prosperity of the past, but would we be 

 willing to accept the deprivation of our fathers? We as farmers 

 don't want to go back to the days of our fathers nor do we as a na- 

 tion want to go back to the old days of Thomas Jefferson. 



We do want the persistence of our fathers, and as a nation the 

 rigid honesty of Thomas Jefferson in high places. We do want as 

 farmers and citizens, to meet the trials and difiiculties of the times in 

 which we live. To sit, figuratively, on the fence and howl wnll not 

 remedy a single evil. We do not pretend that the farmer is in an 



