72 MISSOURI AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



old probably and so often repeated that it makes no impression scarcely 

 upon us when we hear it, but a fact nevertheless, that "Upon the for- 

 tunes of the farming classes of the community depends the entire pros- 

 perity and adversity of all else besides in the world." 



Farminsf as a business has chauGfed remarkablv within the last bun- 

 dred years, even within the last tifty years. It used to be simply a busi- 

 ness ; it is something more now, not only a business, but it combines the 

 sciences of chemistry and geology. All the researches of science and 

 learning are necessarily interested in its development and in its pro- 

 motion. There are many problems which often confront the farmer 

 with which he has to deal. I think that I have been connected enough 

 with the craft to realize and appreciate something of the discouragement 

 and disappointment through which he has to pass, and yet there comes 

 to that life and belongs to it exclusively an independent far above that 

 of any other calling. If some idea or some method could be devised by 

 which the young men of this country to-day could be impressed with 

 the importance, the necessity of getting out into the country and engag- 

 ing in the farming business, instead of crovi'ding tlie cities and the pro- 

 fessions in a mad unseemingly struggle for life, what a great progress 

 would be made, and the great change that would come over the country 

 would be manifest indeed. How few of us realize that it is in the country, 

 from the farming community springs the best men of the nation. Some- 

 times I think there used to be, and probably is yet, an idea among the 

 young men of certain classes, that there is something about farming of 

 vvhich they need to be a little ashamed and do not like, are trying to get 

 away from it. To leave the farm and get to town is the tendency of the 

 age and has been for the j)ast generation or two. It seems to me it is 

 increasing rather than diminishing. There is a wrong, a radical wrong- 

 somewhere about it. It is only iu the country and with those who are 

 brought in contact and hold communion with the sky, the air, the earth 

 and all living things — only those it seems to me appreciate life to its 

 fullest extent. From that class, from those in the country rather than 

 those in the city, from the crowded trades and professions, arises the 

 energy that tends to make and create a perfect mind. We tind it so in 

 the history of the past that when a great man is needed for any particu- 

 lar thing you generally find he came from the country, and that the sur- 

 roundings had been that of a countrv life. What seems to me is lacking 

 to a great extent among the farming community and manifest in this com- 

 numity to-day, in fact manifested throughout the country wherever we 

 go, is a lack of enthusiasm for the calling, lack of interest taken; these 

 things must not exist where there is any substantial progress and success. 



