THE NEW CALL TO THE FARM. 39 



shiftless, the indolent will fail. Those to whom farm life 

 in general is distasteful, who do not like its solitude and who 

 do not love nature, who can find no delight in growing things 

 and in the marvelous processes of season and soil and seed 

 to such the farm would be a weariness not to be endured and 

 they had better seek a livelihood elsewhere. 



But even as we write the elements are being foretold, and 

 as we shall see in a succeeding chapter, there are other means 

 at the farmer's command for his protection against unfavor- 

 able atmospheric conditions, so that less and less is blizzard 

 and flood and drouth to hazard the rewards of his toil. If 

 it is suggested that labor on the land is sometimes repulsive, 

 we recall that the work of some of the professions is equally 

 so the physician, the nurse, the soldier, for instance. As for 

 the difficulties which beset him in the diseases which afflict his 

 cattle and his crops, these are yielding to the same applica- 

 tions of intelligence that are proving so efficacious in the treat- 

 ment of the various diseases to which human flesh is heir. It 

 is the fact of modern science successfully combating the dis- 

 couraging and destructive factors in the farmer's occupation 

 that gives vitality and persuasive power to the cry of the new 

 gospel of Agriculture, "Back to the soil." 



But aside from the fair promises and glowing certainties of 

 the future in agriculture, there is no other calling in which 

 success is anything like as nearly certain as in this. Our most 

 reliable statisticians estimate that ninety-five men fail where 

 five succeed in the pursuits of traffic and trade. This estimate 

 may possibly be too high, but probably it is close to the facts. 

 Failures in these walks of life are so frequent and constant 

 that they would seem tragic but for the fact that for every 

 man who fails another immediately takes his place, so that 



