LECTUKES AND ESSAYS READ AT INSTITUTES. 389 



his occupation as any other man. The farmer cannot bury his mistakes out 

 of sight like the doctor; they remain above ground where they are seen and 

 known by all men. Having thus briefly spoken of what agriculture demands 

 of him who engages in it, let us now notice what it has to give him in return : 



First, with regard to the money there is in it. As we are sometimes accused 

 of worshiping the almighty dollar, I thought I might as well put this first. 

 *' Money answereth all things," says the proverb. That is not quite true, but, 

 after all, we cannot get along without money, and I would advise you to keep 

 away from any occupation that hasn't any money, if it were necessary to give 

 any such advice. 



If the farmer's occupation does not yield a fair remuneration for the 

 thought, and care, and toil that he bestows upon it, then it is not the calling 

 ing that I should recommend, nor the one that you would be likely to choose. 

 I think, however, it can be shown that farming properly conducted will yield, 

 as compared with other occupations, a fair return in money, while the risk of 

 loss and failure is incomparably less in this than in most other pursuits. 

 Because some farmers do not make anything is no proof that nothing can be 

 made at farming unless it can be shown that the cause of failure is not in the 

 man but in the occupation. Although as a class farmers are an industrious, 

 frugal people, yet there are to be found idle, shiftless, worthless farmers who 

 neither achieve nor deserve success. Yet even they manage to live along in a 

 kind of a wa"y, and are generally able to indulge in the luxury of tobacco and 

 plenty of time to smoke it, and of keeping two or three dogs to prey upon their 

 neighbor's sheep or pick up their living in some other disreputable way, {i. e. 

 the dogs, I mean, not the men) ; but to the industrious, intelligent cultivators 

 of the soil, agriculture is not niggardly in the reward she renders for all such 

 well directed industry. In this new country of ours being so rapidly developed, 

 sometimes the return from the investment of capital is out of all proportion 

 as compared with ordinary gains. "We are too apt to leave out of considera- 

 tion the element of hazard and uncertainty connected with such investments, 

 and thinking only of the rapid gain, the mind is apt to become distracted and 

 unsettled and so unfitted for those steady business habits that in ninety-nine cases 

 out of a hundred constitute the foundation of financial success. Farming does 

 not hold out this prospect of rapid gain, neither on the other hand does it 

 involve the risk of moral and financial ruin which environ and so frequently over- 

 whelm the great schemers and speculators of the day. Wealth that is gained 

 without labor is often squandered without wisdom, while that which is acquired 

 by industry is preserved with care ana expended with judgment. I have been 

 through most of the older settled counties of this State and find that a very 

 large proportion of the wealth of these counties is in the hands of the farmers. 

 As a rule, the men employed in mercantile business do not become rich. In 

 conversation with one of the leading merchants of Detroit a short time ago I 

 got a sort of inside view of matters. I had just been conducted through the 

 establishment ; five floors all occupied with goods ; nearly a hundred persons 

 employed. In conversation with this gentleman in his private office I remarked 

 that before I should assume such a care and responsibility as he had I should 

 want to be pretty certain that I could make in about ten years all the money I 

 should want during the rest of my life. He replied that in view of past 

 experience the prospect was not very encouraging. "I could," said he, ''show 

 you to-day a number of men who were among the leading merchants of this 

 city ten years ago, who are now working for a daily pittance behind the desks of 

 the men who are the merchants of to-day ; who of us may be there ten years 



