120 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



furnish employment for more intellect or for intellect of any higher 

 order? There isn't a more commonly or a more grievoush' mistaken 

 notion than that farmers are not so good business men as the followers 

 of other vocations. Let me give you an illustration: 



It befell me to spend three years of my early life as assistant cashier 

 of a bank in a village of this State containing 3,500 inhabitants. It was 

 an essential part of my duties to acquaint myself with the business his- 

 tory of that town, with the business history of every man doing business 

 in that town and in the surrounding community. I well remember my 

 great surprise in learning that of all of those who had been engaged in 

 mercantile or manufacturing pursuits in that village for the previous 

 twenty-five years, only 9 per cent had escaped making an assignment, 

 only 5 per cent could properly be termed fairly successful from a busi- 

 ness point of view, onh' 2 per cent could be classed among the decidedly 

 successful, and exactly one-half of 1 per cent had attained sufficient 

 success to attract the attention of the outside world. Turning to the 

 country, for our business was largely with the country people, I found 

 results ten-fold better than in the village; indeed, I found that of all the 

 wealth represented in the village at that time, 90 per cent of it had been 

 brought to it from these self same farmers and their predecessors, and 

 bad been made upon those self same farms. 



Only a few years ago, being about to make some investments in a city 

 of 6,000 inhabitants in Southern Michigan, I made similar investigations 

 with practically the same results. My experience has taught me that 

 those conditions were the ordinary, and their counterpart can be found 

 in almost every village and small city in the State. 



My friend^, this great wave of discontent that has sometimes threat- 

 ened to engulf our agricultural homes, and which has been responsible 

 for the sweeping of hundreds and thousands of our most ambitious 

 young men and young women from the farms for which they were fitted 

 to the cities for which they had had no training, is all an illusion; an 

 illusion caused by our fixing our eyes on the one-half of the 1 per cent 

 who have won in the cities, and foolishly closing our eyes to the 99^/2 

 per cent who did not win. It is a fact, and for thirty years has been a 

 fact, that the opportunities for reasonable business success are ten-fold 

 greater upon the farm than in any other vocation under the canopy of 

 Heaven. 



Then shall we conclude that farmers are such good business men that 

 we have nothing to urge upon their attention along the line of better 

 business management? If you so think, go with me, one week, two 

 weeks, three weeks, and all too often even months after the harvest is 

 completed, and see the hundred dollar binder still standing, unhoused, 

 exposed to sun, wind and rain. See the plows, cultivators, harrows, 

 mowers and hay rakes in the fence corners or unsheltered in the barn- 

 yard. See the gates hanging on one hinge, causing enough loss of time 

 each day to repair the damage for a decade to come. See the many 

 things lying around unprotected, going to ruin faster than when they 

 are in active use. It is not putting a word too strongly when it is 

 stated that enough monej" is' wasted each year by the careless use of 

 farm machinery and failure to properly protect it when not in use, to 

 pay one-half the interest of the farm mortgage indebtedness of the State. 



These are matters easily corrected, and it is difficult to explain why so 



