THE FARMER'S CONFLICT. 81 



in the great art which feeds and clothes him made more mani- 

 fest, than in his constant endeavors to strengthen the hands of 

 those engaged in it. If you would estimate the true value of 

 all this effort, strike down for a season your societies and clubs, 

 close the doors of your schools and colleges, lay aside the inven- 

 tions of labor-saving machinery, and returning to the scythe, 

 the hand-rake, the flail, and the wooden plough, call upon the 

 East to gather its crops, and upon the West to send its seas of 

 grain to market, and see what answer you would get to the call. 

 So earnest do I consider the demand for agricultural education 

 in the popular mind, that I have no fear for the success of all 

 institutions devoted to this purpose. And I cannot doubt that 

 the application of machinery to the cultivation of the soil, will 

 one day become as accurate and effective as it now is to manu- 

 factures and the mechanic arts. I would have agriculture a 

 triumph of skill. Man cannot control the elements, I know ; 

 the drought will wither his tender plant, the floods will drown 

 it, the frosts will nip it. But relying on the great promise that 

 seed-time and harvest shall not fail, he can exert all his powers 

 to success in that conflict to which he was doomed, when the 

 decree went forth that in the sweat of his face should he eat 

 bread. 



In presenting this view of the agricultural effort of the pres- 

 ent as compared with the past, I find myself suddenly arrested 

 and called back to the tastes and traditions of the long line of 

 hardy, industrious and prosperous farmers from whom we 

 sprang. We must enter anew upon our new career, but we 

 may not forget the laws by which they subdued the earth, and 

 which have gone into our text-books of farming. We should 

 not forget their modes of cultivation, by wliich they raised ex- 

 traordinary crops, nor their attempts to improve the animals 

 upon their farms. And we should remember that it was they 

 whose strength civilized these hills, in whose hands the material 

 prosperity of our State rested half a century ago, whose ample 

 abodes still remain in our villages and along our roadsides, 

 whose social position was won by solid merit, who constituted 

 that intelligent rural population from whom the merchants, and 

 lawyers, and divines, and statesmen of our day have sprung, 

 and whose homes are still waiting a return of that wealth and 

 intelligence which long ago deserted them. In our busy and 

 11* 



