CHAPTER I. 

 TO THE PROSPECTIVE TRUCK GARDENER. 



O the city man, living on -a salary, often in a 

 dark or stuffy office, always an underling, 

 working in a narrow groove, dependent on 

 today's wages for tomorrow's food, the inde- 

 pendent countryman's life must appeal, for he 

 is a free man, master of himself, is conversant 

 with nature in its many moods, enjoys the first 

 fruits of the earth with the gleam still on them, 

 and all its first impulses and pleasures. Often, as we hear country 

 boys, on the threshold of manhood, taunted with being farmers, it 

 makes me feel that the city boy requires training other than agri- 

 cultural to teach him relative values. 



City people sojourning in the country for fresh air and cheaper 

 living, looking down on the farmer as inferior, will scarcely 

 believe that it requires more brains to run a farm properly than 

 to sit over a ledger, nor can they fathom the many experiences 

 that the countryman must necessarily first master before he can 

 be classed as a successful landholder. 



The city, glistening with its many frivolities, has drawn young 

 people from the country to such an alarming extent that universal 

 comment has been aroused, much the larger percentage of our 

 population being today engaged in other than pastoral pursuits. 

 This in itself would not be so alarming, were it not that the vitality 

 of our nation is being drained proportionately, for it is a well- 

 known fact, if the country should today cease to replenish the city 

 with new blood, the city would soon die for want of population. 



No wonder, then, the cry of today is, "Back to the farm and 

 nature." And back we must and will go, for this threatening 

 catastrophe is too appalling to be passed by unchallenged. 



