VERMONT AGRICULTURAI. REPORT. 51 



its effects on unsuccessful competitors, thus permitting their con- 

 tinuance in business to gkit the market in which the more skillful 

 must dispose of their product. 



There are other causes which have contributed to limit the 

 wealth producing power of the farmer. In the years that have 

 gone the eastern farmer has suffered a competition unparalleled 

 in history due to the opening of the West, part of this necessary 

 and legitimate, much of it grossly unjust owing to the reckless 

 manner in which our public domain has been squandered. Again, 

 1 believe it admits of no dispute that an unjust share of the bur- 

 den of taxation has been imposed on the farmer by the state and 

 still more by the national government. But enough of this. Let 

 us look with ec[ual brevity at the other side of the picture. 



While the farmer cannot hope to become a billionaire or even 

 a modest millionaire, his occupation does offer a reasonable pecu- 

 niary compensation. There are farmers, too many of them, who 

 fail, but failures are not confined to agriculture. Go into any 

 city, follow through any line of business and see the proportion 

 of failures to successes. To learn that many farmers succeed 

 you have only to go through the valleys and amongst the hills of 

 our own State. Abandoned farms you will find, but they need 

 cause no one anxiety. The final word on this subject was spoken 

 when some one remarked : "Good farmers do not abandon good 

 farms." 



Again, to-day farming is practically the only occupation in 

 which the man of moderate means can do an independent business. 

 It may be true that the young man of to-day with his own way 

 to make has as good an opportunity for success as his father ; but 

 it certainly is not in the way of building up an independent busi- 

 ness, but rather and only by making himself useful to some ex- 

 isting corporation. The day of modest things has passed. The 

 man with a few thousands invests it in an independent business 

 at the imminent risk of having his fortune and his business wiped 

 out by the competition of capitalized millions. And the position 

 of the salaried servant of a great corporation is not in all respects 

 an enviable one. However high his salary, unless he controls the 

 stock, he is still but a servant. He holds his position subject to 

 the one test of results. If he can't pay dividends he must give 

 way to the man who can. Results, not methods, count. The 

 strenuous life may be all right, but too often it is followed at the 

 pace that kills, dwarfs and kills mentally, morally and physically. 

 And so I say that the farmer has not only the single occupation in 

 which the man of modest means may be independent, but also the 

 one in which he runs no risk of meeting a situation where he may 

 be compelled to choose between the sacrifice of all he has spent 

 his life to gain and the doing of some act inconsistent with the 



