46 THE NEW AGRICULTURE. 



est inducement to substitute one thing for another that he 

 may reap an unearned advantage, he finds that the behests and 

 encouragements of Nature are all and always on the side of 

 that which is recognized in the last analysis to be most worthy 

 in man truth, righteousness and rectitude. 



There is probably no other calling which is so conducive of 

 thoroughgoing manliness as that of farming. Nobody ex- 

 pects the farmer to cringe or try to curry favor. In other 

 words, he is, and is recognized to be, the overlord of his own 

 life. He is never tempted to hide his opinions in the hope of 

 more successfully dealing with his fellow-men, nor is he fearful 

 that, if outspoken, he may discount his prospects of prosperity. 

 He may be orthodox or heterodox as to his religion : Repub- 

 lican, Democrat, Prohibitionist or Socialist as to his politics ; 

 he may hold and teach absolutely any sane conviction at which 

 he has arrived, but neither Nature with whom he deals on the 

 one hand, nor the markets with which he has to do on the 

 other, will take the slightest cognizance of any of these things. 

 Nature asks only that he be intelligent and industrious ; and 

 the markets, only that his offerings be of intrinsic value. ' Ag- 

 riculture is rapidly coming to be one of the few callings in 

 which the individual man may be himself, think and express 

 his own thoughts, carry out his own policies, shape his own 

 life, and wield with his might all the powers that he feels lie 

 latent within him. In almost every other avocation in life the 

 man is hampered and hindered, and perhaps denied the exer- 

 cise of his most profound convictions. If the place he occupies 

 is an humble one, so much the worse ; but even though he oc- 

 cupy an exalted position which carries with it large remunera- 

 tion, he finds always in attempting to carry out his policies, 

 however vital he may feel these policies to be, that there are 



