238 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



live in towns, as the European farmer does. My conception is quite 

 the reverse. There is the greatest necessity that a f^ood man live actu- 

 ally on the faini. You cannot look after a farm when staying in the 

 town; and the better the man the better also ought to be the farming. 

 The greater com])lexity of the farming business, the greater is the 

 necessity, of a good man being constantly with the business. The far- 

 mer has a different relation to his business from that of anv other 

 man. The merchant or manufacturer may plan his business from a 

 distance and may not live in his store or his shop. The farmer is in 

 his business day and night and is a part of the weather, and the crops 

 and the soil. 



I sometimes wonder what the farmer is going to do with all the ad- 

 vice he is now receiving, I wonder if he is going to be confused with 

 the multiplicity of leaders, whether he is going to assimilate all the 

 new work and make use of it. But with all the advice and talk and 

 exhortation, the farmers have never yet been in a stampede or riot. 

 That is not so true of city conditions. It is because they themselves 

 are so closelv in touch with the fundamental situation that thev do 

 not lose their heads. The new ideas are to be worked out, if at all, 

 by persons who are a part of the situation. I would not capture a 

 man and put him into a community for the purpose of working out 

 any idea I may have. I would prefer to drop the ideas into 

 the midst of the farming people and let them discuss them, 

 and work them out in detail and slowly and fundamentally. 

 There will be the teacher and preacher, the good farmer and forward 

 man and woman here and there who will take up the work and try 

 to work it out. If the new" notions are allowed to be freely discussed 

 by the farmers themselves, all those which are impracticable and 

 chimerical will not persist, and those that are useful will in time bear 

 fruit. AYe may count on the wild notions to fall on stony ground. 



Again, in regards to fairs. I do not know how it is in Pennsylvania, 

 but I am convinced that in general no money is given for agricultural 

 purposes which produces such small results as that given to the fairs. 

 Now, the difficulty with fairs is that they have grown away from their 

 natural purposes and reasons. They are gaudy Avith gimcracks and 

 geegaws and all kinds of extraneous and meaningless things. I know 

 many fairs that are serving their communities admirably, but, I am 

 speaking in the large. I would not eliminate the county or local fair, 

 not by any means. A man came into my office last winter and said, 

 "our town fair is dead ;" I said, "good." But he also said "we want to 

 reorganize our town fair;" and I said "good" again. I suggested that 

 lie ask twenty of the best farmers whether they would come together 

 for a plowing match with their best turnouts, their best men, harness 

 and plows, and exhibit the most skillful practice in plowing. Why not 

 make this the centre of a town fair rather than horse jockeying, and 

 gather the other things around it, with good entertainments and good 

 games, and bring into it all the good speaking you can about the good 

 art of j)lowing; and around this centre build up exhibitions and ex- 

 hibits of real value to the small locality. I think a local fair should 

 exist (miy for educational purposes. I use '-education" in the broadest 

 sense. Of course, I would have recreation. I would have games and 

 good entertainment, but I should try to have the enterprises develop 

 out of the real affairs of that community as rapidly and as fast as pos- 



