40 THE NEW AGRICULTURE. 



the wreckage is continually removed from view and the fright- 

 ful accumulation of it is prevented from becoming an object 

 of our contemplation. If a dozen men attempt to do business 

 in merchandise and make money in a community which can 

 only support three, it is certain that nine of the twelve will 

 fail. There will be a period of fierce competition, more or less 

 prolonged by the staying qualities of the men, their financial 

 resources and power of will, but in the end nine men will fail 

 and must fail. But you may double the number of farmers in 

 any community whatsoever without dooming one of them to 

 failure or appreciably affecting the profits which any one of 

 them may reap as the reward of his toil. If the entire body 

 of business and professional men who, in their present pur- 

 suits, are barely maintaining an existence and there are thou- 

 sands of them should betake themselves to the soil to-mor- 

 row, the calling of agriculture would not be less profitable to 

 those already engaged in it, while the entire population of 

 the country would doubtless be greatly blessed and benefited. 

 A competent business man or a wide-awake professional man 

 may, by no fault of his own, be starved out of a given locality, 

 but probably no one ever heard of an intelligent, energetic and 

 frugal farmer who failed to make a comfortable living, and, 

 unless disabled by disease or accident, such factors have usually 

 secured for him who exercised them an independent income, 

 albeit, perhaps, a modest one, before age and decrepitude de- 

 prived him of his ability to labor. 



To whatever extent false ideals may have driven out the 

 true in other avenues of life, however widely money and power 

 may have come to be accepted as the most desirable things in 

 the world, and however high the social standing attained and 

 maintained by those who in the pursuit of these things have 



