28 WHAT THE SISTER ARTS 



Industrial Economy which I have already incidentally touched, 

 but have riot illustrated as its importance deserves, and as the 

 prevailing misconceptions render necessary. I refer to The Pro- 

 portion of Means to Ends, which the Artisan must always bear in 

 mind, but which the Farmer seems too often to forget. No artifi- 

 cer presumes that the labor and materials required for a fine table 

 will suffice for a piano-forte ; nor that a steam-engine can be con- 

 structed as cheaply as a churn. But the farmer, seeing trees and 

 plants grow around him with weed-like facility and tenacity, often 

 indolently imagines that any tree will grow so, and plants his 

 rare and delicate fruit-trees, if he plants such at all, as if they 

 were oaks or locusts. But Nature is inexorable in her require- 

 ment that the labor and care essential to the production of a 

 choice fruit or plant shall be proportionate to the value of the 

 product. You may grow Pine on yellow sand or Hickory on 

 blue clay ; but if you want choice Pears or Peaches you must 

 devote much labor and expense to preparing and enriching the 

 ground wherein your trees are to be set. Too many farmers, not 

 heeding this law, or supposing that Nature may somehow be cir- 

 cumvented, obtain worthless fruit or none at all, and so abandon 

 the culture in disgust and despair. 



There is not now one grape-vine or fruit-tree, except of the 

 coarsest and commonest kinds, where there should be twenty, 

 taking one State with another ; and one consequence of this is an 

 enormous and perilous consumption of flesh as food, to an extent 

 unknown in other countries. We are nationally surfeited with 

 pork and tainted with Scrofula, not because we are so fond of 

 pork, but because, for an important portion of each year, the ma- 

 jority of our population can get little beside. " The foolishness 

 of preaching" will never suffice to correct this aberration ; for 

 men who work must eat, though their food be not the best ; but 

 give us an abundance of the choicest fruits and vegetables, with 

 farmers who know how to grow them, and truly educated house- 

 wives, who delight in preparing and serving them, and we shall 

 enjoy health, elasticity and longevity to an extent now unknown. 

 A flesh diet is the dearest, the least palatable and the least whole- 

 some, and all that is needed to wean men from it is the presenta- 



