518 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



WHY I STAID ON THE FARM. 



CHAS. OTTO SANDON, BRKIHT, IND. 



[Read before Dearborn County Farmers' Institute.] 



There is quite a tendency among- the rural population to leave the 

 farm in search of pleasjire, more society, better educational advantages, 

 and what seems to be greater financial opportunities. 



But with the telephones, free rural mail delivery and good roads, the 

 people of the country are brought in closer contact with each other, and 

 have easier access to town, so that the isolation is becoming a thing of the 

 past. In fact it seems the delight of city people to have riu'al homes. 



The educational, advantages are continually improving. With our ex- 

 cellent school system, the concentrated school, the great efflciency required 

 of the teacher, the high school Avithin the reach of every country boy and 

 girl; the institutes, granges and other organizations and such splendid 

 agricultural literature; the traveling library, and lecture courses, composed 

 of men with the best minds that our country produces, afford wonderful 

 opportunities for development. 



Shut off from the vices that arise from idleness and people crowded 

 into too densely populated districts and surrounded by the beauties of 

 nature, the American farmer stands peer to any people in the richness of 

 thought and purity of heart. 



The rating of any country depends largely upon the husbandmen. We 

 can well judge of the civilization of a community by its farms. History 

 proves that the nation that has fostered agriculture has prospered, while 

 the country that has neglected it has decayed. 



Alexander Hyde, a successful farmer in Massachusetts, said: "While 

 we concede that the profits of farming are slow and sure, rather than rapid 

 and uncertain, we still maintain that no business pays better in the long 

 x*un for the capital and skill invested. Farmers rarely fail, while ninety 

 per cent, of those who enter upon the mercantile career become bankrupt. 

 It is an anomaly for a farmer to ask his creditors to take fifty cents on 

 the dollar. We never hear of farmer princes, and we can not point you 

 to millionaires among the husbandmen, Init we can point you to thousands 

 and tens of thousands among the cultivators of the soil who ai'e as inde- 

 pendent as any prince, and who live surrounded with the comforts, if not 

 the luxuries of life, all ))rought from the bountiful earth." 



A king might engage in agriculture without loss' of dignity. We love 

 to think of Washington, the farmer, as much as of Washington, the states- 

 man or general. Adams, Jefferson, Jackson, Van liuren. Clay and Webster 

 were all as dignificMl on their broad acres as they were at Washington, 



