94 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Feb. 



son desires to obtain any particular breed of foAvls, 

 or a well-bred sporting or watch dog, he can almost 

 always find just what he wants at the shortest no- 

 tice. I think that those M'ho breed such animals, 

 either for amusement or profit, would find it greatly 

 to their advantage to heed this suggestion, — and 

 advertise in the J^ew England Farmer. 



Yours ever, A Country Gent. 



WHAT'S THE USE OF AGRICULTURAL 

 PAPERS ? 



Mr. Editor : — If one of the great objects of ag- 

 ricultural papers should be to induce the mind to 

 co-operate with the hands in the prosecution of 

 their laborious task, then it is a question of first 

 importance to those who conduct them, by Avhat 

 means can this object be attained ? 



The first thought that occurs to my mind, is, that 

 agricultural jjapers must show that farming is a 

 subject worthy of the mind. 



That it is not generally so considered, I am well 

 aware. In reading the life of Daniel Webster, we 

 find that his father was not satisfied with his busi- 

 ness, but murmured that it was his doom to plod 

 upon the farm, "unhonored and unknown," while 

 others, whom he regarded as only his equals by na- 

 ture, but who had chosen the "professions," had se- 

 cured both fortune and fame. And such is the 

 common feeling of farmers throughout New Eng- 

 land, at least. The farmer's son that would be 

 rich or respectable, looks away from the farm for 

 the means of attaining his object ; and he has a 

 perfect right to do so, if wealth and respectability 

 are not the growth of the soil. If all who become 

 lawyers, ministers, doctors, merchants, and mechan- 

 ics, live easier, make money faster, and otherwise 

 get on better than those who remain upon farms, 

 it appears to me an utterly hopeless task to satisfy 

 the mind that possesses a single spark of enterprise 

 or ambition with the business of agriculture. 



Here, then, we are; agricultui'al papers must go 

 to work, and prove that, all things considered, farm- 

 ing is as desirable a pursuit as any other. If they 

 cannot do this now, they must wait until the pres- 

 ent rush of young men from agriculture into every 

 other department of business, shall enable them to 

 do so. For until this is done, by facts that will 

 convince and by figures that do not lie, people will 

 not be satisfied with the business. No amount of 

 poetical fliglits nor of rhetorical flourishes — no talk 

 of Cincinnatus at his plow nor of the flocks of Job 

 — no descriptions of what agriculture has been or 

 ought to be — will answer ; they must show what it 

 is, and, by way of contrast, what other occupations 

 are. They must turn attention from the Websters, 

 the Lawrences, and the Chickerings, to the great 

 multitude of lawyers, traders, and mechanics, above 

 whom these individuals towered so high. We have 

 books for the million ; but we greatly need books 

 o/the million. The Life of Amos Lawi-ence has been 

 written, and printed, and read. But the lives of 

 the thousands whom that book shall entice to the 

 city, will never be written at all, (the number that 

 sleep in the watch-houses, it is true, may be men- 

 tioned in the daily papers, but who will look there 

 for the followers of a great man,) unless agricultur- 

 al papers shall follow up the history of her truant 

 sons, and give us a new phase of biography — lives 

 of the undistinguished. 



But to be more direct. I believe there is among 

 farmers great misapprehension as to the condition 

 of the mass of those who follow other professions, 

 especially of those congregated in our cities. I 

 think also that agricultural jaapers can furnish no 

 matter more interesting and valuable to farmers, 

 than honest statements of the actual incomes and 

 necessary expenditures — the toubles and anxieties 

 — the disappointments and vexations, which are in- 

 cident to professional, commercial, and mechani- 

 cal life. If this were to be done faithfully, many 

 causes of contentment and satisfaction with the 

 farm would be found, where in fact only reasons 

 for envj' and discontent are now seen. The Billy 

 Grays, the John Jacob Astors, and the Stephen Ge- 

 rards, are taken as a sort of basis for our notions of 

 the wealth of city merchants ; the ten to twenty 

 dollars a week that the overseers and foremen of 

 shops sometimes receive, gives us our impression 

 of mechanical wages ; to the few distinguished men 

 who force themselves upon our notice, in the vari- 

 ous walks of literature and learning, are we indebt- 

 ed for our ideas of the honors which attach to the 

 professions ; and the "glory of war" comes from 

 her Alexanders, and not from the thousands who 

 butcher each other on the field of battle, or die 

 still more miserably on the march or in the camp. 



When men come to form their opinions of these 

 professions from the great multitude who follow 

 them as the means of a livelihood, and not from the 

 few "great and shining lights" that, meteor-like, 

 occasionally rise up far above the ordinary level 

 of their associates, I believe that the humble claims 

 of agriculture will be better appreciated. 



Let agricultural papers, then, send their "report- 

 ers" not only to agricultural exhibitions, but among 

 the office-holders at Washington, among the 

 learned professions, among the "merchant princes" 

 and their clerks, into the shop and flictories of the 

 mechanic and artisan, and if you please let them 

 step into Scbasto])ol, where the three mightiest na- 

 tions of the earth have been making corpses as men 

 make hay ; let them pry into the "private affairs" 

 of these classes, learn what rents they pay, what 

 bills they have to meet, and just how their money 

 goes, then see how their children "make out" in the 

 world, and finally look into the probate office to as- 

 certain M'hat sums they leave for their heirs and 

 successors, and we shall thus have an account-cur- 

 rent which will greatly assist in making up our bal- 

 ance-sheet between them and agriculture — and ai'gu- 

 ments, too, for the decision of the question with 

 which we started, — Is farming a subject worthy of 

 the mind ? — Will it do for farmers, like good gen- 

 erals, to make the subject of the approaching "sum- 

 mer's campaign" the study of their leisure hours in 

 the "winter quarters" to which they are about re- 

 tiring ? Is it proper that, like the lawyer, the far- 

 mer should studiously hunt up the authorities and 

 precedents which bear upon the "case" in hand ? 

 May he, like the mechanic, have a "pattern" to 

 work by ? and hke the physician, have his "dis- 

 pensatory" to consult in administering to his un- 

 complaining patients ? 



If these queries must be answered in the nega- 

 tive, we may as well throw aside the agricultural 

 paper at once. Love stories and the Pirate's Own 

 Book can be read by our families, and ghosts and 

 hobgoblins, stamping tables and communicating 

 spirits, ugly neighbors and unruly cattle, may be 

 I discussed as well without a paper as with it; and 



