418 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



fall down"; but they did not fall down, and so far as I know are standing 

 there yet. 



But what has all this to do with choosing an occupation? This much: 

 Any of us can do almost anything well that ought to be done, and we 

 can do one thing as well as another. So when you are casting about for 

 something that shall employ you profitably and honorably do not cast too 

 long but jump in where you are needed most. If you wait until you are 

 fifty you will not get a better pointer on a question as to what you are 

 fitted for. 



Then we might safely advise young men in this wise: If there is 

 a great scarcity of lawyers in your part and likely to be for some years 

 to come, if what lawyers you have are working full time, cannot do the 

 business but have to turn large numbers of clients away, then study law 

 if you want to. If there is a dearth of school teachers in your county 

 or state, if school boards by all their efforts are still unable to find 

 enough school teachers, then learn to teach school. If people are sick in 

 you neighborhood and you have no doctors and none in reach and that 

 condition seems to have some permanency, then by all means study medi- 

 cine. Why not look at all kinds of business from this point of view? 

 Where there is an opening for your services go in; where there is al- 

 ready a jam, a crush, keep out. That which should furnish the highest 

 incentive to do your best work will be present where you are needed, but 

 absent, wanting, nil, in any profession already over-supplied with labor- 

 ers. 



Anyone who will look about him just a little can see that almost 

 every kind of business except farming is furnished with help far beyond 

 the number for which there is any steady demand; the fact is notorious. 

 Should any untoward thing happen to general business conditions, imme- 

 diately thousands of people will be out of, or short of living employment 

 in many trades or professions, but not in the business of farming. The 

 farmer is sure of steady, living employment — sometimes more, sometimes 

 less profitable, but always of living employment. Even if no one should 

 want his products he can eat them and live. I am willing to go on record 

 as saying that at this time all conditions point to farming as the most 

 promising, the most inviting, the most profitable business for young men. 

 For the young man already on the farm, who owns his farm or whose 

 father owns one, the inducements to stay there far exceed those to leave 

 it and engage in other business. If money be the measure, young men 

 farmers are making more money than young men in other pursuits. If 

 social standing be the measure, that is assured to the intelligent Ameri- 

 can farmer from this time forth. Farming is coming to its own, and so- 

 cially the intelligent farmer is now regarded by good society the equal 

 of any. I do not know of any business by which a young man may more 

 easily and surely gain a home and a competence than by farming. It is 

 practicable for the hired man even, who will save as much as he can of 

 his wages, to lay up a thousand dollars in four or five years. The kind 

 of hired man who saves a thousand dollars from his wages can easily 



