88 THE IRRIGA TION A GE. 



in reading and traveling about looking at irrigation works and other 

 nonsense that uses up time, you cannot have much of our surplus." 



To which I reply, with many another, "To the deuce with your 

 surplus, I don't want much of it at the going price. I like to sleep 

 while you are walking the floor. I like to pull a trigger while you 

 are pulling a friend's leg and cast a fly on the whirling water while 

 you are casting your accounts to see if somebody is not going to leave 

 you in the lurch on your interest for the month. I have no relatives 

 ,praying for my translation to a better sphere and don't have to be a 

 slave in my own house to a lot of servants who would look at me in 

 horror if I should venture to help myself to my own victuals without 

 waiting the requisite period in a swallow- tailed coat." 



This is the independence of the farmer, and he ought to be proud 

 of it. But there are many who think work is not exactly respectable 

 and some even think it degrading. Atone of the last presidential con- 

 ventions two years ago, a delegate from Texas deploring the dread- 

 ful state of the country, "with tears in his eyes" told another how his 

 daughter, "a lovely girl, had to help him pick cotton" the year before. 

 "We are not informed as to how many young men this "lovely girl" 

 could dance off the floor on a long winter night; but as no point was 

 made on her health it is fair to presume there was no suffering of that 

 kind. Lovely women in New England and many states have helped 

 raise a family by picking cranberries and other berries, husking corn 

 and a score of things within the limits of their strength, and no one 

 ever sniveled over it. Twenty-years ago, during a spell of im- 

 pecuniosity caused by loss of health and business, I worked four 

 months for my board. I could only do half a day's work and light 

 work at that. Yet I did all the irrigating on a seven acre orchard and 

 a garden. I did not feel at all degraded or in any way hurt. On the 

 contrary, it was good for my health and I would do the same again to- 

 morrow rather than contract debts for board that I did not see my way 

 clearly to pay. All notions that work in the ground is menial are un- 

 American in these days; however sound they may have been in the 

 south in the days of slavery. Working the ground where it does not 

 exceed one's strength, a matter generally within one's control, is far 

 less disagreeable than nine-tenths of the daily cranks on which one 

 has to grind from twelve to fifteen hours in the city to get a living no 

 better than the farmer has, but with far more annoyance, risk, in- 

 somnia, dyspepsia, Bright's disease and a score of things of which the 

 farmer knows almost nothing. 



The last census showed some seventy per cent, of the farms of 

 the United States free from mortgage. There is not a city of any ac- 

 count that can show fifty per cent, of its lots free from mortgage, and 

 plenty have less than twenty five. The difference in the struggle for 

 existence between city and country can be seen in a dozen other ways 



