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can t get along as mechanics in town do with ten hours 

 work. We can't afford to hire help. We can't afford to 

 have holidays. We can't get time to make a vegetable, 

 flower, and fruit garden, and supply our wants with veget- 

 ables, flowers and fruits, We can't get time to make a 

 lawn and plant trees around the house.' You can't? You 

 can't? Then what are you farming for? As men, as citi- 

 zens, as fathers, as husbands, you have no right to engage 

 in a business which will condemn yourself and your depen- 

 dents to a life of unrewarded toil. If the calling of agri- , 

 culture will not enable you and yours to escape physical 

 degredation, and mental and social starvation; if it does 

 not enable you to enjoy the amenities, pleasures, com- 

 forts and necessities of life as well as other branches of bus- 

 iness, it is your duty to abandon it at once, and not drag 

 down in misery your dependent family. But I do not be- 

 lieve we need be driven to this alternative. I do believe 

 that agrculture, followed as a business, with a reasonable 

 regard to business principles, can be made a business suc- 

 cess. I believe that by keeping steadily in view the prima- 

 ry end of life our happiness, our comfort, our bodily 

 health, our mental improvement and growth they can be 

 as well attained or better than in any other calling. Right 

 here is the great difficulty; right here with ourselves is the 

 remedy: We work too much and think too little. We 

 make qur hands too hard, while our brains are too soft. 

 The day is long past when muscle ruled the world. Brain 

 is the great motive power of this age, and muscle but a fee- 

 ble instrument. The locomotive, tearing along, jarring 

 the earth below, outstripping the wind above, and bearing 

 in its train the beauty, honor and treasure of a State, rep- 

 resents brains. The dusty, sweaty footman, wearily plod- 

 ding along, carrying a pack on his back, symbolizes mus- 

 cle. The self-raking reaper, driven with gloved and un- 

 soiled hands, sweeping down like a fable, the golden grain, 

 represents brains. The bowed husbandman, painfully 



