112 Thirty-Fifth Annual Report of the 



stop, railroads cease to pay dividends and in fact all industries 

 are affected. 



Ever}' business to be successful must have practical men to 

 manage it, and in no other calling of the day do we need them 

 more than in farming. The practical farmer of to-day, not of 

 yesterday. What strides we are taking these days ! Did you 

 ever stop to think how farming was conducted in this state one 

 hundred or more years ago when the country was comparatively 

 new? In those days men of muscle were required, now we must 

 have muscle and brains working together, or we shall not keep up 

 in the race. 



In tlie town where I live and not far from my home, stands 

 the house of one of the earliest settlers of that section. He 

 came there, cleared a little land, built a log cabin, put in a crop 

 of wheat and then kept on clearing land. At harvest time he had 

 no barn and no place to save his crop, but "Uiecessity is the 

 mother of invention" so he took his axe, the principal farming 

 tool of that time, cut some straight basswoods, split them and 

 fitted them together for a floor, threshed his wheat and winnowed 

 it in the wind, and then took it on horseback twenty-five miles 

 through the woods to be ground into flour. He lived to be over 

 ninety years old and told my father that he had raised hundreds 

 of bushels of wheat since, but never felt as rich as he 

 did when he secured that first twenty bushels. We are not re- 

 quired to farm in that way now. We must adapt ourselves to the 

 tiroes and also to the locality. The branch of farming that will 

 pay in one place might be a failure in another. We should also 

 choose that branch to which we are personally adapted, in fact 

 we must like our business. If horse breeding, we must like 

 horses ; if dairying, we must like cows ; if sheep raising, we 

 must like sheep, and so on, for where our hearts are there our 

 m.inds will be, and the practical farmer must have his mind on 

 his business. 



A man with a good theory is all right biit if he cannot put it 

 into practice it is of no use. Theory and practice should go 

 hand in hand, but if we can have but one give me the practical 

 man. I knew a man who went up and down the country telling 

 people how to farm it and he died a bankrupt. He knew the 

 "how" but could not put it into practice. On th,e other hand how 

 many ignorant men are fairly successful because they are 

 practical. 



I would not deprecate knowledge. If any man to-day needs 

 an education it is the farmer. Let us have the "know how" and 

 then put it into practice. The more we get it instilled into the 

 minds of the young people, that it takes brains to run a farm, 

 the less trouble we will have in keeping them on the farm. Farm- 



