BRAINS IN FARMING. 141 



Mr. Slade. Well, perhaps yon have a secret that I do 

 not know any thing about. I could not live on it. It does 

 seem to me that a man should not hesitate to chansre his 

 crop, if he sees that another will pay him better. Mr. Mur- 

 ray told us at Haverhill, when he lectured on the horse, " I 

 have changed my mind. In fact," he says, "I would not 

 give a farthing for a man who cannot wake up in the night, 

 turn over, and change his mind." There is a good deal in 

 that. There was a time when I confined my farming opera- 

 tions to growing corn, potatoes, and grass. I succeeded 

 about as well as my neighbors. I did the best I could any 

 way; but I found that I could not live in doing that. It 

 seems to me that there is nothing plainer than that the West 

 should raise the corn and pork, and that we should raise 

 something that the city or village close by will consume. 

 That is the way it seems to me. It is no use for us to 

 attempt to raise corn, or beef, or pork, because thousands 

 and thousands of hogs that have been fed on corn that 

 does not cost more than twelve or fourteen cents a bushel, 

 can be brought here by freight-trains every day ; and I think 

 that it should be raised there, and we should raise those 

 crops that are needed close by home. 



Mr. Peeey. Tell me what to raise. 



Mr. Slade. I cannot do that. Every man, as has been 

 said, must have brains, and exercise them. Science may do 

 almost every tiling for a man ; but it will not furnish him 

 with brains : it will simply furnish him with facts, which 

 he is to look at. We come here and hear all these state- 

 ments, year after year. One man says this, and another says 

 that ; and Dr. Nichols will tell us that science teaches so and 

 so. Well, I don't know what a man would become, if he 

 should follow all these directions. It is not intended that he 

 should. They are all well enough ; they are all helps : but 

 a man must exercise his own brains. I was reminded of it 

 yesterday afternoon. I did not feel like crying, because I 

 have had such experience before. I had ploughed in thirty 

 or forty cords of manure, and we were told it was all going 

 down to China or Japan, or somewhere else, and, if it was, I 

 should not get any crop. Two or three years ago, when our 

 meeting was at Fitchburg, Dr. Fisher gave us a lecture on 

 the cultivation of the grape, and in the course of his lecture 



