Missouri Country Life Conference. 199 



And the country papers have come in, too, for their share 

 of this fun. It was only a year ago last summer when they were 

 holding an institute over at Lansing Agricultural College. I 

 got into the city the night before institute began. I picked up 

 one of the daily papers at the hotel and in great headlines there 

 was the following: "The country parsons of the State of Michi- 

 gan have come together to consider seriously the problem of 

 making a living. They will consider poultry raising and horti- 

 culture as lucrative side lines. They think it too much of a 

 comedown from painting mansions in the sky on Sunday to 

 painting barns on week days." 



I put the newspaper in my pocket and went to the con- 

 ference, and I read those lines to those men, sixty rural parsons, 

 that had come together to study. "Now," I said, "How many 

 of you brethren have come here to consider seriously the problem 

 of making a living out of horticulture and poultry raising as 

 lucrative side lines?" Well, of course, we all had a good laugh 

 and there were no less than half a dozen newspaper reporters 

 from Grand Rapids and Detroit and the principal cities of Michi- 

 gan, and by the looks of them they had come there to have a 

 good time at the expense of the country parsons, but they re- 

 ported the conference in a good way, faithfully, and there was 

 no more poking fun at country people or at the rural parson. 



It is getting so now you can hardly tell a country audience 

 from a city audience in the matter of dress and looks. I have a 

 good deal of trouble now distinguishing or telling the farmers 

 from the ministers. I was attending a rural conference recently 

 and there were supposed to be some farmers there as well as 

 preachers, and I stepped up to a well-dressed looking man and 

 I asked him if he was a minister. "No," he said, "I am a 

 farmer." Then I stepped up to another well-dressed looking 

 man and asked him if he was a farmer. And he said, "No, I am 

 a minister." Just on the way over here I took an editor for a 

 farmer, and this is hopeful. 



Every once in a while at one of the conferences a good, 

 well-dressed farmer, intelligent, gets up and commences to speak, 

 and almost invariably he begins his introduction with an apology 

 that he is only a farmer, and that there is not much expected of 

 him. Now it is about time we country people quit depreciating 

 our own business and began to glorify it. I think that we are 

 responsible ourselves for this attitude that has been taken 

 against country life and against farming as a business in the 



