SUMMER MEETING AT CHILLICOTHE. 5^ 



SOME OTHER ROADS. 



Following is an interesting and able paper from the pen of Mrs 

 Helen Lauglilin, of College Springs, Iowa, read before the Farmers'' 

 Institute, held in Oregon, February 18 and 19, 1892: 



Not many years ago, people, who lived in cities and towns supposed them- 

 selves to be the sole representatives of all the education, refinement, general intel- 

 ligence and wit of the universe. Individuals even thought that if they were called 

 upon to "shullle olf this mortal coil," "wisdom would die with them." They 

 could not realize that occasionally the rural districts nurtured men and women who 

 were in every respect the equals and sometimes the superiors of anything a city 

 could produce, and they looked with supreme and lofty contempt and spoke with 

 scornful indiflVrence of all who lived on farms, delved in the soil, planted orchards 

 and dwelt, literally as well as tiguratively, under their own sweet-potato vines 

 and cucumber trees. 



Strange to say, the oddities, the ignorance and the general uncouthness of the 

 lower class of country folks— who are not and never have been farmers — were in 

 the past taken as a sample of what all farmers and farmeresses were; and those 

 who lived in the country.no matter how refined or intelligent, received their share 

 and a little more of derisive remarks, which passed for wit among people who did 

 not seem to know any better. 



It is a noticeable fact that there do not seem to be any new jokes current in 

 the " funny column" of our prominent newspapers about country people. The best 

 periodicals have outgrown all such foolish attempts to be witty at the expense of a 

 class of people who really are the heart and soul of the nation, and those poor 

 little weeklies that do keep it up only bring out some old "chestnut," and try to 

 make it appear new by an attempt to change, which deceives nobody but them- 

 selves. Nowadays, no one looks upon such things as typical of the farming popu- 

 lation, and the tide of public opinion sets in a very different direction. It is actually 

 becoming fashionable to be a farmer, and still more so — indeed rather ajsthetic — to 

 dabble in the profession of horticulture. 



There has been a great cry made in certain quarters about the number of 

 farmers supposed to be members of Congress from the various states. During the 

 session of that body in 1890-91 a prominent agricultural journal instituted an inquiry 

 as to how many farmers there were in the United States Senate. The astonishing 

 discovery was made that there was not a single simon-pure farmer in either branch 

 of Congress. There were men there who owned farms, and men who lived on farms 

 during the hot weather, but none who held the plow or who personally did any of the 

 rough work always to be done on a farm. Still, it is something to even have them 

 claim to be farmers, and is an indication of the direction in which public opinion is 

 drifting ; and not many years hence all the main traveled roads leading to the best 

 positions in the gift of the people will be filled with farmers traveling toward the 

 United States capital, and it will be the w^ide awake, progressive, thoughtful and 

 educated farmer who will "get there." None other need apply. 



Whenever I read the political papers, and I read all sides, from the bottom of 

 my heart I rejoice that I am debarred, just yet, from the privilege (?) of being an 

 unprincipled politician, and I rejoice still more that a man (or a woman either) may 

 be a politician and still retain his conscience, his honor and his patriotism. The 

 time will come, and many of us will live to see it, when only those men who are in 

 every way worthy of it will be elected to offices of trust and honor. 



