THE HARDWOOD RECORD. 



13 



world that the rules are what they should 

 be. The secretary informs us that he has 

 received several resignations since tlie 

 rules were published, about equally di- 

 vided between tliose who consider the 

 rules to severe and those who consider 

 them too lax. If the criticisms were all 

 on one side there would more than likely 

 be justice in them, but as the criticism is 

 about equally divided it indicates that the 

 rules strike a happy medium. 



The critics may talk and argue, but the 

 rules can stand it. 



Long life and prosperity to uniform in- 

 spection. 



CHANGE FOB THE BETTER. 



A visit to a rich agricultiu'al country 

 such as one finds in northern Illinois 

 shows a visitor that there has been a vast 

 change in the life of the farmer during 

 the past twenty-five years. It used to be 

 that the life of the farmer was a hard 

 and lonesome life. To-day it seems the 

 finest and most desirable life in the world. 

 The last few years have brought enormnus 

 prosperity to the agricultural dii-tricts, and 

 have also brought many things which the 

 farmer ma.y buy with his increased earn- 

 ings. The luxuries of life and the iwwer 

 to purchase them have come to the farm- 

 ers at the same time. 



The wealthy farmer, and any thrifty 

 man owning as much as a hundred acres 

 of fertile soil throughout the corn belt, is 

 wealthy, may have practically all that a 

 city man of equal means has, and many 

 things which the city man cannot get. 

 Through all that region to .which we refer 

 nearly ever.v residence is connected with 

 nearly every othsr residence in the county, 

 and with the stores and offices of tlie 

 smaller cities by telephone. If a farmer's 

 wife's clock stops nowadays, she doesn't 

 need to go out and look at the sun and 

 make a guess; she simply calls up the 

 nearest telegraph office and gets corrected 

 standard time. If a farmer wants to or- 

 der repairs for a broken machine or if rlie 

 doctor be needed in a hurry, he .simply 

 steps to the telephone and gets immediate 

 action. 



It used to l>e that the only time a farm- 

 er's wife had a chance to gossip with the 

 neighbors was at "meeting" on Sunday; 

 140W she may sit down to the telephone any 

 hour in the day, call up anybody in the 

 county and exchange that gossip which is 

 a large item in a woman's life. 



Or if there is a theater in a county town, 

 where a good play is to be presented on 

 a certain night, anyone in the farmer's 

 household may call up the box office by 

 telephone and have seats reserved, board 

 the trolley car at 7:00 or T:30 p. m., attend 

 the theater and be at home again before 

 midnight. 



The old time when a farmer did all his 

 work by main strengtli and awkwardness 

 has gone by. He dots not need to work 

 any harder than liis city brother. .N'early 



everything is done by machinery and the 

 work is comparatively light. 



It used to be that the farmer who went 

 to town for his mail oftener than once a 

 week was considered more or less shift- 

 less. He would get his county papers, and 

 maybe a city weekly, on Saturday after- 

 noon and before Saturday afternoon had 

 come around again the entire family would 

 know the papers by heart, advertise- 

 ments and all. To-day the farmer gets 

 his mail delivered at his door every day 

 and has his city daily to read at noon 

 time of the day it is published, or at the 

 latest on the evening of the day it is pub- 

 lished. 



.Such conditions will surely work a revo- 

 lution in the class of people who live on a 

 farm. Dunng the last fifty years it was 

 the ambition of every farmer to accumu- 

 late enough that he might remove with 

 his family to some city; it was the am- 

 bition of every bright farmer's boy to get 

 away from the farm with its lonesome nar- 

 rowness, and if a farmer's daugTiter could 

 marry a man who could take her away 

 from the farm's dreary drudgery she was 

 pleased to death. The great wave of mod- 

 ern progress which swept over this coun- 

 try, beginning some forty or fifty years 

 ago, and which brought many luxuries 

 within the reach even of the mechanic of 

 the cities, did little for the farmers until 

 within recent years. Daily newspapers, 

 electric lights, steam heat, theaters and 

 all such things were not for the farmer. 

 His life was a life of lonesome drudgery 

 in comparison with the life of his city 

 brother. 



This condition was very much to be re- 

 gretted. Farm life is the cleanest and 

 purest life in the w-orld. It is a life largely 

 free from the petty cares and annoyances 

 which occupy the mind of the city man 

 to an extent which renders that medita- 

 tion and contemplation which is essential 

 to the best development of character im- 

 possible. 



Xow, however, that all that made the 

 farmer's life undesirable, its isolation, its 

 drudgery, its lack of touch with the bust- 

 ling world outside, is to be removed and 

 its largness, its security, its freedom from 

 the vice, the petty, nerve racking annoy- 

 ances, the fierce rush and desperate com- 

 petition, which renders the third genera- 

 tion of city people scarce worth the powder 

 it would take to kUl them, are to be re- 

 tained, the life of the farmer becomes the 

 ideal life; the life which many men of 

 culture and refinement will choose and 

 which many more would choose if choice 

 •were open. 



The well-to-do farmer, luider modern 

 circumstances, is a man to be envied. He 

 has all that is best in modern life within 

 easy reach and yet his working hours are 

 spent in the peaceful, fragrant quiet of 

 the open fields; his neighbor's dog and his 

 neighbor's cliildren do not vex him; the 

 clanging street car and fire patrol do not 



make him afraid: he may stretch him limbs 

 without hitting a stone wall and meditate 

 upon the mysteries of creation without 

 danger of being run down by a delivery 

 wagon. In short, all that is desirable in 

 city life he now may have with him. while 

 all tlie heat and worry, the rush and 

 clamor, the dust and dirt, the filth and 

 hideousness pass him by. 



The American farmer boj-s, being driven 

 from the farm by intellectual and social 

 starvation, have gone into the cities and 

 developed into the gi-eatest mechanics and 

 artisans, the greatest busine.ss men and 

 ananciers that the world ever saw The 

 strenuous life of the cities did that much 

 tor them; and now if we can keei> them 

 on tlie farm, under the new condition we 

 will show the world a race of poets, states- 

 men and philosophers which will make all 

 that have gone before look like thirty 

 cents. -^ 



III the old colonial- days the home of the 

 sentleman was in the countrv. There 

 dwelt the culture, refinement, wealth 

 beauty, wit and intelligence of the laud' 

 It was the ambition of the city man to 

 accumulate enough that he might retire 

 in the country. AVashington, JeiTerson, 

 and in fact, about all the great men of our 

 eaHy history lived on their country estates 

 and lived like lords. 



But then came the age of mechanical 

 improvements, railways, daily papers 

 electrically lighted and steam heated thea- 

 ters, paved streets and boulevards tele- 

 Ki'aphs and telephones, and all for the 

 eities. Then the tide changed and only 

 those remained on farms who were com- 

 pelled, or were of such dull minds as 

 knew httle and cared little for the grace* 

 and beauties of life, or (and a most sturdy 

 and estimable class of people they werej 

 those who, even under such circumstances 

 believed the sterling advantages of the life 

 on the farm outweighed its disadvantages 



But those who led in the intellectual 

 and social life of the nation left the coun- 

 try for the city, and the farmer became 

 after a time, but a high-class laborer, pro- 

 verbial for his uncouthness. Not that he 

 lacked intelligence; for no man of health- 

 ful mind, given even the rudiments of an 

 education, can spend his life in God's 

 open fields without developing mental 

 powers which will command respect, but 

 he was awkward and abashed in the pres- 

 ence of men immeasurably his inferior in 

 everything but the readiness and ease 

 which comes from contact with cultured 

 people. But all that is going to be 

 changed, thank the Lord, and the healthy 

 mind in the healthy body is to be given 

 every advantage which modern life affords 

 to develop in a healthy atmosphere. 



Out upon the cities, anyhow, with their 

 dust and dirt, their roar and din, their 

 pushing and jostling! AVho Avould live in 

 them if he could live on a farm and still 

 have his daily mail, his telephone and his 

 trolh'y line to the theater? 



