84 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



thought that was in my mind, and it is this ; that, while in 

 the olden times a good many of the older people here made 

 money out of farming, they do not make money out of farm- 

 ing to-day very largely because the times have so much 

 changed that farming is out of joint. I have so often seen 

 this thing exemplified in various parts of the country that I 

 cannot help speaking about it. I suppose you all know 

 that every sort of business, every sort of profession has 

 been obliged, during the last fifteen, twenty or twenty- 

 five years, to make new adaptations, and fit itself to 

 new conditions, new environments ; and yet agriculture 

 in all its branches, with a very few notable exceptions, is 

 carried on upon the same basis that it was twenty-five years 

 ago ; and you will find that those very exceptions show that 

 agriculture may still be made a profitable business. I can 

 illustrate that very well from my own experience. My 

 father is still living on the farm upon which I was born. 

 The farm was devoted to two entirely different purposes. 

 My father was a New Englander, and took very naturally to 

 sheep and other stock. We were located near the Chicago 

 market, on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. As soon as 

 I got old enough to take some interest in agriculture, our 

 farming resolved itself into two distinct branches ; one was 

 stock raising and the other was fruit raising, which I under- 

 took more particularly, and I am free to say it was profit- 

 able. There came a change in the condition of affairs along 

 in the seventies. My father had grown older, and while, 

 fifteen years ago, he made money out of that farm, to-day he 

 barely lives. The fruit interest has very largely gone by, 

 because he is not particularly interested in it. He finds the 

 same condition of overproduction and lack of markets which 

 has been mentioned here. But I am positive that I can find 

 a score of young men in that town, of ages varying from 

 twenty to thirty-five years, who are making money upon the 

 same kind of farm that he is failing at the present time to 

 make any money upon. They are simply fitting their busi- 

 ness into the general competitive business of this age, while 

 he, drifting on and becoming old, has let his farming oppor- 

 tunities slip by one by one, until he is no longer able to 

 make any money out of the farm. Now, the fact that there 



