No. 4.] THE AGRICULTURAL SITUATION. 71 



sands of poor scrub steers, the product of scrub parentage, 

 and still scrubbier ideas of scrubbiness, flood the markets. 

 From tip of horn to tip of tail you cannot see the faintest 

 record of the use of any brains whatever in their produc- 

 tion. They are raised and sold solely for fun. The average 

 farmer is a man of " infinite humor and jest." Two years 

 ago in Canada I saw buyers from Boston, New York and 

 Philadelphia buying mutton sheep and paying five or six 

 cents a pound for them and an additional cent a pound taritf, 

 to get them into the very market which belongs to the 

 United States farmer. At the same time thousands of farm- 

 ers over here in the United States were shivering over the 

 expiring embers of their thought and pluck, and declaring 

 " Farming doesn't pay." 



Why was it the buyer went to Canada ? Because he found 

 there a set of English and Scotch farmers who had educated 

 themselves into an understanding of the meaning of the word 

 "mutton." They had made themselves intelligent, first, in 

 the breeding of mutton sheep ; second, in feeding and handling 

 mutton sheep, so that the primary object of the breeding 

 should be carried out to suit the demand of the market. Is 

 there anything occult or difficult in this ; anything that the 

 mind and brain of the American farmer cannot readily grasp 

 and accomplish ? No ! Why, then, should not the American 

 farmer supply his own market with just as great success as 

 the Canadian farmer? What is lacking in the American 

 farmer? Simply the same intelligence and energy to carry 

 out that intelligence to a practical end. 



What, then, do the necessities of the agricultural situation 

 demand of the American farmer? I answer, in brief: He 

 must cast aside the old, worn-out prejudice against what he 

 terms " Book Farming." He can see, if he has any practical 

 discernment, that his old notions do not fit the situation. 

 Under the guidance of these notions he has been selling out 

 his farm by the bushel, destroying the original capital God 

 gave him in the first place to do business with. He has been 

 trying to wring reluctant success out of a class of farm stock 

 that are incapable of meeting the demand. Steam and elec- 

 tricity have changed all -the relations of men. They have 

 compelled new adjustments in the order of our civilization, — 

 new adjustments of law, new adjustments of medicine, new 



