SEVENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK -PART X. o71 



Forty years ago just anybody could be a farmer. Strength of muscle, 

 rather than strength of mind, was the test, if any test was required. To- 

 day, too many persons still have the idea that "just anybody" can farm. 

 Too many yet think that if a man can do nothing else, he can farm; 

 but he who tries it is very liable to reap a non-profit-making harvest. 



In the pioneer days of this wonderfully fertile valley, the soil was 

 more than ready to give a bountiful crop to any hand that held the plow. 

 Today this same land is just as willing to pour into our barns and our 

 bins an abundance of her products, but because of our abuse of her 

 strength she can not do what she would. 



I think I am safe in saying that it takes more brains to feed a pig 

 than to sell chewing gum or chocolate carmels. To do the latter, a per- 

 son must be able to tell a good nickle from other coins. A slot machine 

 can do that; but a slot machine could not properly feed a pig. There is 

 more in feeding a peg than the mere operation of throwing a few ears of 

 corn over the fence. 



In these days of department stores, when nearly all goods are done up 

 in packages requiring little or no measurement, it takes very little knowl- 

 edge to stand behind the counter and hand out the packages to the cus- 

 tomers. The cashier at the desk must be able to make change rapidly and 

 accurately, but the one handling the goods has little of that kind of work 

 to do; and having but one kind of goods to handle, the prices can be read- 

 ily learned and used. Such workers are not much more than machines. 

 True, they are not the heads of the departments or the managers or 

 owners of the store. Neither would these same workers be owners or 

 successful managers of a farm. The day is fast approaching when every 

 one will recognize that the farmer needs an education (not exactly the 

 same kind, of course) just as broad and just as certain as that of his 

 merchant or banker friend; aye, just as good as that of his family 

 physician. 



I never saw a field of wheat harvested by the old hand sickle; but I 

 have read about it and have heard our grandfathers talk about it, and I 

 can readily make a mental picture of such a scene. I can see each man 

 gather the grain in his left hand and then cut it by the sickle held in the 

 right hand. Such a process seems so slow to us in this day of progress 

 that it makes us tired even to think of it. In the days when such a 

 method of harvesting was used, some one was doing some thinking, and 

 I imagine I heard him say to himself, why not arrange the fingers of the 

 left hand above the sickle to catch the grain as it is cut and use both 

 hands to swing the sickle? This thought took the material form of the 

 very useful grain cradle which made it possible for one man to cut in 

 one day as much wheat as several men did with the sickle, and do it 

 better. 



Then Cyrus H. McCormick must have said to himself, why not put the 

 cradle in such a form that the horse could swing it, and let the man rake 

 the grain into bundles and bind it into sheaves. Cyrus McCormick thought 

 for twenty long years before his har\'ester went into the field for prac- 

 tical use. This harvester of sixty years ago with a man standing on the 

 platform behind to take the grain into bundles, has been of incalculable 

 value to the agricultural progress of this country and of the world. The 



