CROPS AND PROFITS 



due to the secure tenure by which they hold 

 their property. The shopkeeper who turns his 

 capital three or four times in a year, and who 

 knows that an old stock of goods will involve 

 heavy losses, is stimulated to constant activity 

 and watchfulness. The farmer, on the other 

 hand, inheriting his little patch of land, and 

 feeling reasonably sure of his corn and bacon, 

 and none of that incentive which attends risk, 

 yields himself to a stolid indifference, that 

 overlays all his faculties. Yet some of the 

 Agricultural papers tell us with pride, that 

 bankruptcies among farmers are rare. Pray 

 why should they not be rare? The man who 

 never mounts a ladder, will most surely never 

 have a fall from one. Dash, enterprise, spirit, 

 wakefulness, have their hazards, and always 

 will; but if a man sleep, the worst that can 

 befall him is only a bad dream. This lethargy 

 on the part of so many who are content with 

 their pork dinners and small spendings, is very 

 harmful to the Agricultural interests of the 

 country. Young America abhors sleepiness, 

 and does not gravitate, of choice, toward a 

 pursuit which seems to encourage it. The con- 

 clusion and the conviction have been, with ear- 

 nest young men, that a profession which did 

 not stimulate to greater activity and larger 



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