AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE 47S 



Let me call your attention to the fact that there are various kinds of 

 wealth. One type is the bank account; another is sweet contentment, 

 peace of mind, and joyous living. The latter is none the less real be- 

 cause it cannot be figured up. Every man sooner or later feels the need 

 of it. He may not need it in the morning, but the need and the desire 

 come as certain as the sun reaches the zenith, and it is the only s61ace at 

 sunset. This is no idle fancy, else why do the manufacturer and the 

 merchant long for a country home, and why do so many men come back 

 to the farm when the years have cooled their heads? The farmer's 

 wealth is not the city man's wealth. It is not of the kind that feeds am- 

 bition and makes display. Farming does not make men wealthy in gold; 

 but it may make them comfortable and happy. It is a pernicious evil, 

 this custom of measuring a farmer's success by the money he has. A 

 large part of his wealth is in the daily living. We are measuring agri- 

 culture by wrong standards. Here is a realm of living which lies beyond 

 gross ambition, beyond the greed of wealth, a place where unselfish 

 patriotism may grow unchecked. The future must see comparatively 

 fewer colossal fortunes and more financial thrift in the commonality of 

 the people. There is certain to be great change in society by means 

 of gradual evolution, and those pursuits which g(re most conducive to 

 useful and contented lives are certain to exert greater and greater in- 

 fluence. Give the farmer some leisure in which to think, and then give 

 him a desire to think, and the farm is no longer an inuendo. But at the 

 present time the farmer may be addressed too often in the language of 

 Ulysses to Laertes: "Great is thy skill, O father! Great thy toil. On 

 every plant and tree thy cares are shown; nothing neglected but thyself 

 alone!'' 



You may think this good teaching for Sunday, but it will not raise 

 bread and butter for the week days. You tell me that the farmer cannot 

 make his expenses, and cite me to wheat at seventy-five cents a bushel. If 

 the farmer cannot grow wheat and live, he should certainly spare him- 

 self the effort; but it may be profitable to examine this question, for it 

 is the one most frequently cited in support of the assumption of an 

 agricultural disease. The Cornell University estate was a run out hill 

 farm not many years ago, advertising its shame by fields of ox-eye 

 daisies. It has had no "fancy" treatment, and only small applications 

 of concentrated fertilizers; but it has had most skillful management. 

 For fifteen years the average wheat crop upon the regular fields of the 

 farm has been thirty-six bushels per acre, and the cost of growing and 

 securing an acre of wheat has run from twelve to fifteen dollars. As- 

 suming a price of seventy-five cents a bushel — which is under the aver- 

 age — the return from the grain is twenty-seven dollars. Straw sells 

 readily in central New York for five dollars per ton, and the average 

 is two tons to the acre. Here is an average income of thirty-seven dollars 

 earned by the expenditure of thirteen dollars, and the capital stock grows 

 better for the using. Adjacent land, of the same original quality, can be 

 bought for thirty dollars and forty dollars an acre, or for less than twice 

 the net earnings of any year. Two men, with modern implements, can 

 perform the regular work upon a hundred acre grain farm. If sixty 

 acres are in wheal, thorp may be an average net eai'nin;? of $1,440; leav- 

 ing forty acres for other uses, from which the incidental produce should 

 buy the incidental necessities. This is an unusual case only because of 

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