402 MISSOURI STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



cess. They poured into Philadelphia and Baltimore an overwhelming: 

 torrent of peaches, which the people of the cities devoured in vain., 

 and the price fell until peaches were destitute of commercial value,^ 

 and were thrown into the river by the boat load. 



At present these transient trifles of the market share the rank and 

 dignity of grain and cotton. They are dealt with in masses. They 

 are quoted in the price-currents of foreign commerce. They have 

 become important objects of commerce. Even the strawberry, to 

 which nature assigned such a brevity of existence, can be preserved 

 with even an increase of its delicious flavor. The strawberry, indeed, 

 is now the incomparable preserve. 



Poor Richard notified the people of the last centui-y that ''he who 

 by the plow would thrive, himself must either hold or drive." That 

 was true for the people of the last century, but the opposite of it is be- 

 coming the truth for the competent farmer of to-day. We now find 

 that the directing hand ought not be also the toiling hand. 



The successful farmers of the future will as little think of holding 

 the plow as a Corliss or a Hoe thinks of wielding the sledge hammer. 

 Everything great and commanding is done through a subdivision of 

 labor. The head man of anything extensive and complicated is of 

 necessity exempt from manual toil; but, in return for this exemption, 

 he secures to those who labor under his dire -tion a happier lot than 

 manual toil alone has ever enjoyed. 



This, of course, implies the possession of capital. " How am I to 

 get the capital "?" a young man may naturally ask. [ can tell him how 

 'one young man got it, to say nothing of the well known instances, some 

 of which I have mentioned. This young man of whom I now speak, 

 fresh from England, found himself in Illinois thirty years ago, with lit- 

 tle property beyond a trunkful of good clothes. The farmers about 

 him were " land poor," as the saying was, and he offered his services 

 to one of them as a farm hand. The farmer replied, after some parley- 

 ing : " Work for me two years and I will give you a deed for eighty 

 acres." It was a bargain. At the end of the two years, through utiliz- 

 ing all his chances, he came into possession of his land, with ten acres 

 of the prairie broken, with three calves and a log cabin. That was his 

 beginning. Within five years he was farming, cattle-raising and "opera- 

 ting" on a considerable scale. In a word, he was growing up with the 

 country, and asked favors of no man. 



If any young fellow should ask me, Shall I be a farmer? I should 

 have to reply by asking another question: Are you man enough ? 



JAMES parto:n\ 



