USE OF MINI) IN FARMING. 37 



THE USE OF MIND IN FARMING. 



From an Address before the Worcester South Agricultural Society. 



BY T. T. WATERMAN. 



Cultivated mind, gentlemen, speak of it adversely as some 

 may, through ignorance or prejudice accounting it of small 

 significancy, stands first as a power on the land and on fhe sea, 

 to the student, the statesman, the professional man, and, as 

 certainly, to the mechanic, the day laborer, and the farmer. 

 To do a thing well, the actor must know how it should be done. 

 This is equally true of all departments of industrial labor, of 

 the plough as of the quadrant, the spade as the telescope, the 

 hoe as the pen, in the corn-field, as in the chemical laboratory. 

 Ignorance and idiocy are no more honored, when acting in 

 agriculture, than in navigation or astronomy. If ignorant, 

 and thus incapable of judging correctly of instrumentalities 

 and of their just relations, a man, no matter in what division 

 of labor he acts, no matter what cloth he wears or how much 

 he struts, is weak and worthless. He might possibly answer 

 for a scare-crow ; though it is probable that even the black- 

 wings would outwit him and steal his corn. Such a man, at 

 best, can act only on uncertain, and it may be perilous experi- 

 ment. Not knowing what he ought to do, or how to do what 

 he attempts ; neither he, nor any one else, can tell what he 

 will do. 



All this is eminently significant on the farm. The great 

 purpose of farming is to furnish means of sustenance, and joy 

 to man and beast. Of course, upon success here, success in all 

 things else of flesh, bone and blood on the earth is suspended. 

 Let the wisdom and toil of the farmer cease, let his wagon not 

 go to market, and the fools of fashion and lords of genteel swell 

 in Broadway and Washington Streets, would soon cry for help. 

 Verily, are kings and nobles fed by the spade, pruning knife 



