Farmers' Week in Agricultural College. 



89 



Martin." My early training I had received at home among the rocks 

 and bluffs to find a living out of those old hillsides where the Romans 

 used to farm 2,000 years ago, became very helpful to me to turn this 

 20 acres into a profitable home. The more the people talked about it the 

 harder I worked and made it what it is today, and it is not finished yet, 

 for "Home is what we make it." No man need to be ashamed to start 

 low. There is always plenty of room on top. Before rural life can be 

 held in the highest honor, farmers and their children must be more 

 broadly educated. Labor, no matter what or where it is, must be held 

 in honor. The hoe in the field and the family garden, the shovel on 

 the highway, the rake and the harrow in the field are all implements of 

 honorable and profitable industry. The impression that working in the 

 soil on the farm is degrading, and that it is more honorable to live in the 



Pear orchard at blooming time on tlie 20-acre farm. 



city and find employment is a wrong doctrine to preach on the farm. 

 Young men and old men, get your feet upon the soil instead of on a wood- 

 en floor in shops, and draw from the soil not only wealth but health, and 

 the joy of the earth, not only a living but life. Earth is your mother ; 

 honor her that your days may be long in this great land of ours. To 

 make a small farm profitable a man has got to have a good knowledge of 

 the soil and plant in that soil what is best adapted to it, that which 

 brings you the most dollars and cents and rolis the ground least of its 

 fertility. The more intensive the system of farming carried on the 

 more necessary the experience becomes. I have received many letters 



