LIVE STOCK AND SUCCESSFUL FARMING 17 



furnishes an illustration of such profitable transformation 

 of food products. 



The significance of distributing labor on the farm 

 throughout the year, lies not so much in the greater prof- 

 its, which in the end it usually leads to, as in the salutary 

 moral influence which it exerts on the farmer and his 

 household. Those who grow and sell grain only are 

 overcrowded with work during seedtime and harvest, 

 while at other seasons they are unduly idle. The influence 

 on the parents is not good. It gives the husband too 

 much time to discuss the policies of the nation in the gro- 

 cery and gives his wife so much time to visit her sisters, 

 as to militate against good housekeeping. But the chil- 

 dren become the chief sufferers. They have a period of 

 practically enforced idleness during much of the year, 

 notwithstanding that they attend some school. This is 

 most unfortunate for the reason, first, that they do not 

 become inured to physical labor during the formative 

 period, and second, that such enforced idleness makes 

 labor distasteful through the inertia which it leads to. In 

 this way encouragement is given to drifting from the 

 farm. 



The importance of thus developing habits of industry 

 in the young people who grow up in farm homes cannot 

 be easily overestimated. Such habits usually make the 

 difference between success and the want of success in 

 farming. It is the possession of these more than anything 

 else that makes men reared on the farm leaders in indus- 

 trial centers when they center their thought on industrial 

 lines of work. They also tend to higher and more stable 

 citizenship wherever they are possessed. 



Bearing on intelligence. The general influence which 

 the growing and feeding of farm animals exercises on the 

 general intelligence of those thus engaged is unquestion- 

 ably beneficent. This is evidenced (i) in the nature of 

 the work, (2) in the necessities to which it gives rise, and 

 (3) in the equipment called for if it is to be successfully 



