700 IQWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



push and energy which must have an outlet. He has genius and inventive 

 powers which must have a scope. Give the boy a chance is as wholesome 

 advice today as it was when it was first given. But of what does that 

 chance consist, and where is it found. At the present time, when vast 

 fortunes are made in a day and often lost in an hour, the question should 

 confront everyone, Along what line shall my efforts be expended and 

 where shall the field of my operations be? The get-rick-quick schemes 

 may be very fascinating, but they are extremely deceptive and dangerous. 

 It is therefore wise for the boy to seek or have sought for him that line 

 of business that will be safe. 



So farm life may seem irksome and plodding to the boy, and he may be 

 enticed to the city to try his fortune, forgetting that in such a career he 

 has the sharpest competition by competitors who have been long in the 

 business. On the farm the only real competition he has is the example 

 of the thrifty farmer who is only an incentive by his successful methods 

 to help the boy to succeed. 



But it may not be best for our farmer boy to stay on the farm. He 

 may have real talent along other lines, and if it be bad policy to spoil 

 a good farmer to make a poor preacher, teacher or business man, it cer- 

 tainly is just as bad policy to spoil a good preacher, artisan or inventor 

 to make a poor farmer, for a boy whose genius is crying out for liberty 

 of action along some other line will make nothing but a poor farmer. 



What, then, shall be done with that boy"' 



First try to find out what he has real talent for. Then develop that 

 talent and help him get to the top. But at any rate give him a liberal 

 education. If he is a farmer it will do him no harm to go through high 

 school and college. Just recently someone has published the result of 

 extensive investigation in which he declares that in all branches of indus- 

 try the facts show that college men attain a greater degree of success 

 than those without a college education. In the present day a fair knowl- 

 edge of the common branches, mathematics and bookkeeping are almost 

 indispensable to the farmer. Then he needs to learn soil properties and 

 their adaptability to different crops. These things he may learn by experi- 

 menting on the farm, but he will learn them much more quickly and 

 thoroughly under proper teachers in the proper schools. 



Some months ago the Young People's Weekly told us of a man bowed 

 down under the weight of debt and hard work, while the soil of his little 

 farm yielded less bountifully year by year, while the mortgage grew no 

 less. But one day his son John came home from Agricultural College to 

 help his father and assume the heavy responsibilities, and the father, 

 worn out, eagerly submitted to John's new methods. It was soon found 

 that the farm which formerly had yielded a very light crop was now 

 yielding three times as much and of a far superior quality. What is 

 most needed by the farmers today is not more farming, but better farming; 

 not more land, but a better use of what they already have; more care in 

 the selection of profitable crops and stock and in cutting out the unprofit- 

 able; better cultivation and more fertilization. Once wheat was grown 

 here in abundance; now there is scarcely any grown, simply because 

 experience has taught the farmers that it doesn't any longer pay. The 

 years to come may and undoubtedly will reveal the fact that some of 



