1883.] HINTS TOWARD SMALL FARMING. 281 



chiefly in small industries, which employ the mothers as well as the 

 fathers of men in taking natural advantages and conquering nat- 

 ural difBculties, are the elements engendered for all really great 

 organizations of force. 



Since it is found that the earth no longer " laughs a harvest " — 

 not a snicker or giggle worth a cent — unless we apply the straw 

 we tickle it with just so, the idea is becoming fairly current that 

 brains are required to succeed with the soil. This is no new idea, 

 either, for the fact was always so. For our own credit it is well 

 to maintain that our immediate farming ancestors were not mon- 

 keys — but men of the keenest wit and soundest judgment. They 

 took time to learn their trades, however, and if they found diffi- 

 culty enough with a virgin soil in their time, can we expect to do 

 better than they did with an exhausted soil in our time unless we 

 learn our trades? If we expect to plant a profitable orchard 

 among our grandfather's stumps we must apply our minds to sur- 

 rounding conditions now as they had to apply themselves then. 

 Where they fought with the sight of a musket, we may need to 

 fight with the sight of a microscope. ' There are two new micro- 

 scopes, by the way, ready to be manned and used for our service 

 at the Storrs Agricultural School. 



Connecticut health and pomology needs nearer two thousand of 

 them in active service to-day. Let us have schools of agriculture, 

 where the wealthy young men of the country may learn to repay 

 the ground for their bones. 



Men value largely what they are taught to value at school. We 

 believe our schools have been in recent years, if not traitors, then 

 wretchedly ignorant of our everlasting landed interests. If we 

 have no schools teaching and proving by actual practice the 

 values latent in the soil; if homes are few across the half of town- 

 ships and counties, where the earth is loved for its diviner attri: 

 butes — its innate fitness for the footstool of goodness, its power 

 of producing every conceivable form of beauty; if farm-houses 

 are scarce, in some parts of the State, where an angel coming un- 

 awares can get a decent meal of victuals and a comfortable 

 night's lodging; if farm laborers don't know how to plow, chop, 

 and whet a scythe; if farmers themselves have forgotten or have 

 never known how to grow corn and turnips, then it is no wonder 

 that small farming is despised by statute law or the ruling of 

 courts, and that so many acres of our inheritance continue in 



