9 



desirable, and if they were not checked or toned down, would re- 

 sult in great evil. We are extravagant and wasteful ; we are con- 

 tinually apeing foreign ideas, customs, habits and fashions ; we are 

 prone to go wild m our business enterpiises and speculations ; we 

 have a mania to get rapidly rich, and are not over-scrupulous as to 

 the means employed. We are excitable, running up to fever and 

 boiling heat over the current events of the day, politics or religion, 

 and ready to shout for the last ism that has been concocted. These 

 traits of national character have their principal development in our 

 cities and large towns, where the population is dense and engaged 

 in commercial and manufacturing pursuits, but rarely, or to a very 

 limited extent, among our rural population. In this respect the 

 farming community is the hojje of the nation, as the conservator of 

 our public morals, the controller and moderator of these extrava- 

 gances, the sheet anchor which holds the ship to her moorings, how 

 hard soever or from what quarter the tempest blows, the ballast 

 and rudder which keep her in position and send her surely and 

 steadily on her course. These are some of the ways and the extent 

 to which farming pays the nation ; and I may add, as including all, 

 tl)at if national life 'is desirable it pays, for though 3'ou might blot 

 out either of our other great industries without fatal results, yet 

 if agriculture were extinguished the nation itself would die. 



We pass now to our second consideration : Does farming pay 

 those who are engaged in the occupation ? And here I admit, at 

 the outset, that there are some men farming does not j^ay. Neither 

 would any other occupation, pursuit, or profession. Some men are 

 so constituted that everything they touch turns to poverty and lean- 

 ness. They might dig in the richest placers of California or 

 Nevada, or the most marvellous diamond deposit of Golconda, antl 

 yet they would be poor. Then there are others who set such a 

 priceless value on all theii* efforts, both mental and physical, that 

 hardly any compensation reaches their standard of deserved return. 

 Others look at this matter from an artificial or fictitious stand-point, 

 and of course come to very eri'oneous conclusions. They notice 

 that some individuals become suddenly wealthy in other business, 

 or without business, and jump to the conclusion, without analyzing 

 the case, that that is the thing which pays, while their own busi- 

 ness does not. Some have an insatiable longing for wealth, but are 

 utterly averse to the labor, care, responsibdity and frugality abso- 

 lutely necessary to acquire it honestly. They are after some busi- 



