Fortunes for Farmers 



phones (their farming telephones outnumber all 

 others), motor cars, and anything new and good 

 that offers. 



But English farmers are conservative. They 

 pride themselves on it, and the last thing to be seen 

 in their houses are books or magazines or reports, 

 even as the last thing to be thought of on their 

 farms would be experiments or trials of new pro- 

 cesses. I know one farmer who takes the Spectator 

 and one labourer who can repeat sections of Para- 

 dise Lost, but they are rare, and so is the farmer 

 who follows out the various trials and experiment 

 reports and attempts to utilize them. In no other 

 class of life is it possible to meet men of influence, 

 of good financial position, and of sterling common 

 sense, men to take perhaps a keen interest in public 

 affairs, who are so ignorant of the world outside 

 agriculture, reading neither papers, magazines, 

 nor books. They are out of touch with matters 

 common to the ordinary inhabitants of the town. 

 (This applies, of course, to England only, for I am 

 told in Scotland the ploughboys read Greek, so 

 the farmers must be a mass of erudition.) 



The average farmer will rebut this forcibly, 

 saying that he manages very well, that his fields 

 are his books, and that an ounce of practice is 

 worth a ton of theory. From the very nature of 

 farming it is true, as a rule, that practical men are 



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