THE BUSINESS SIDE OF FARMING. 237 



considered as all sufficient have been overturned by it. 

 Trades, manufacturing interests, transportation companies, 

 banking and commercial circles, land improvement com- 

 panies, fire and life insurance companies, and the hosts of 

 interests that constitute the business of the country have 

 been quick to see its advantages, and to secure them by 

 adopting it. All but agriculture. Individuality, both of 

 purpose and resources still characterize it. Co-operation is 

 now the progressive idea of the times. Farmers of Massachu- 

 setts, — descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers, who were the 

 leading representatives of the progressive idea of their day, — 

 are you ready to accept of it, and prove the purity of your 

 lineage; or have you lost the keenness and acumen that 

 charactized them, and feel content to take a low position in 

 the social scale reserved for the unsuccessful business man? 

 The successful business man is always the one who is in the 

 channels of business, and thereby gets his share of it. The 

 one who is without these channels receives but a stray posi- 

 tion now and then, insufficient for his maintenance. 



Should I ask any intelligent farmer in this audience, — or in 

 New England, for that matter, — to state the greatest draw- 

 back to Eastern agriculture, his reply would be the want of 

 capital. Granted that I am right in this, let me ask, how do 

 you, — an ambitious man and desiring to succeed in the world 

 and give a respectable maintenance to your family, — expect 

 to acquire it? To my mind there are only two ways, — wait- 

 ing lor an aged father or aunt to die and leave it to you, or 

 to get it through the business of the farm. Unfortunately 

 for us of the present generation, aged and wealthy parents 

 are not numerous enough to make a class of, and the aunties 

 who own dividend-paying stocks and bonds all have more 

 desen'ing nephews elsewhere ; leaving us to look to our 

 farms as our only hope. The questions, then, that are pertin- 

 ent are : Is the business of our farms brinoiug us in capital 

 to-day ? are we receiving gold, silver, or Uncle Sam's prom- 

 issory notes for our crops, or are we trading them away at 

 ruinously Ioav rates for "jack boots," overalls, treacle, kero- 

 sene oil, codfish, baking soda, and the prominent soap of the 

 day? Useful articles in themselves, but like the Chinaman's 

 " too muchee samee alle time, but no will buy circus ticket." 



