No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 123 



we are at all times subject to late spring frosts, drouths in summer, 

 long winters and frequent shortages in some of our various kinds 

 of feed crops, and at all times is prepared for the emergency by a re- 

 source supply of feed, is not the man who is ambitious to sell his 

 farm in this community of home markets and go west. As we 

 think over the list of names of farmers of our acquaintance in almost 

 any neighborhood, we observe this fact; that, with possibly the 

 dairyman excepted, who has all the necessary help within his own 

 family, the farmers have been the most prosperous and progressive 

 who have carried out a i)lan of mixed farming or mixed husbandry. 

 Farmers who have not gone wholly into sheep raising every time 

 sheep were high in price, or principally into horses when they were 

 the most wanted, or into something else at the time of its boom; 

 but, on the contrary, have gone on in the even tenor of their way, 

 keeping some of most all kinds of stock, whose ideal standard is 

 ever a good and marketable quality, instead of quantity, and whose 

 ideal life as a farmer is independence and contentment, for content- 

 ment, if under comfortable circumstances in the middle walks of 

 life," is independence. And it is an old proverb always truthfully 

 told, that the greatest wealth that a man can possess is content- 

 ment. 



There never was a successful manufacturer of any kind of a 

 commodity, or any man who had under his care and control a com- 

 plication of affairs, who had foresight and discernment enough to 

 direct, govern, and successfully manage his own business, but what 

 was necessarily an independent thinker. This is equally true con- 

 cerning the farmer. A man may follow some antiquated system of 

 management, as he has always done, and also his ancestors before 

 him, or he may sell goods for such a percentage of gain, and me- 

 chanically complete the circle of an annual business by rule. But 

 the man v, ho stands master of the situation in his business in anv 

 calling in life, must realize that we have entered an age of improve- 

 ment, and under the almost startling ehanges from the old modes to 

 the new ways, which are to-day successfully engaging our attention, 

 he must think and act for himself or get left in the race. And any 

 move that he may make in any way in the management of his affairs, 

 should be made so far as possible w-ith a knowledge of what others 

 are doing in the same line of business as his own, but with a con- 

 siderate independence of the course they are pursuing in that line 

 of business. If the majority of mepchants througliout the country 

 that are engaged in the dry goods trade, should change, and go into 

 the hardware, or into some other specialty, because the merchants 

 in that line of trade had done the best during the past year, that 

 business then would be overdone and maaiy of them would see hard 

 times and even fail. 



