1884.] THE EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCES OF THE FARM. 195 



permanency of our institutions is too obvious to need expansion 

 here. 



Again, the infinite variety in the methods and details of farm 

 woi-k educates the individuality of the child, and calls out and 

 trains a greater variety of talent than any other one vocation can. 

 The methods of the farm may be so varied, and yet successful, 

 that there is a constant training of the judgment. In manufactures 

 and trade, the larger establishments have great advantages over 

 the smaller, a,nd eventually crush them out. Not so in farming. 

 Here all the principles of production are very different, and in no 

 other vocation is the large and small operator on so nearly the 

 same level. In mixed farming, the small operator has certain 

 advantages ; the large operator cannot crush him out. As a mat- 

 ter of fact, wherever the laws permit free and cheap transfers 

 of land, the tendency is towards smaller and smaller farms. Not 

 only is this true in this country, it is so everywhere. Where we 

 see small farms diminishing in number and the ownership of agri- 

 cultural land increasing in average amount, it is where laws inter- 

 fere with the free and cheap sale and transfer of lands, or else^ 

 where land has a social or political value, in addition to its agricul- 

 tural value. 



So, in this country, it is the small or moderately-sized farm, 

 where mixed farming is carried on, that has the highest educa- 

 tional value. Farming on this scale (and, indeed, on any other) 

 does not hold out the highest inducement to those whose ambition 

 is for great wealth. Men do not become millionaires by farming, 

 or so rarely that you could count all such in this country on the fin- 

 gers of your haad — and it might be a mutilated hand at that. But 

 it is a good vocation, one of independence ; and if the farmer 

 rarely gets very rich, on the other' hand, he rarely becomes very 

 poor ; he may not gain a million, but you never hear of his failing 

 and not paying his hundred cents on the dollar, unless he goes 

 into some other business than farming. 



Now, a word more on the intellectual phases of farm education. 

 As a teacher, I have long marked the differences between city and 

 country boys in the higher studies. The conditions of city child- 

 hood are those of excitement and distraction. The city boy is 

 often sharp, quick ; he has a social polish the country lad often 

 lacks, but he is usually not so diligent nor persistent. Coun- 

 try boys are greater readers; they have formed reading habits in 



