cotton spinning is to young manufacturers. They must see in it a field for profit- 

 able work, a field of good promise 



We can effect no radical change for the belter, until we can tie the artery by 

 which our reddest heart's blood is flowing to the factories, to the cities, to the 

 West, to the professions, anywhere to get away from its native field of action. 

 We must keep our best young men at home : "Keep the boys on the farm" is 

 the hackenyed phrase. Very good! How shall we do it ( The old recipe of mak- 

 ing home delightful, and teaching the cherub that agriculture is an occupation 

 that has been vastly honored by all generations of men, and is the most certain 

 of all to secure a comfortable ol.l age, and a peaceful death in lied, has been 

 tried a hundred times over, and has a hundred times failed. Our cherub does not 

 want a delightful home where he milks fourteen cows before breakfast, and 

 spends his winter evenings with his overtasked family, in a room heated by a 

 close stove; he cares nothing for the abstract opinion of any generation of 

 men, past or present ; old age is too far away for him to heed whether it is to 

 be comfortable or not ; and he would not give the snap of his fingers to die in 

 bed. He does not consider dying at all. What engages him now is to know 

 how he shall live; and the sentimental influences that have been tried so long 

 have failed to convince him that he will live as well on the farm as away from 

 it. What your young man wants is precisely what your middle-aged man wants. 

 There is one word that expresses all our desires, or rather, a leading desire of al 1 

 our hearts, and that is ''money.'' He wants to be rich. Whatever form his 

 ambition may take, we can translate it for him into the word 'money 1 and he 

 will resolve it into its equivalent at his own sweet will. 



Is it all sordid love of money then? Is there no poetry in farming? To be 

 sure there is, just as there is poetry in all exereise of the mind. There is none 

 in the turning of a damp sod, as the plow creeps under and around it ; but what 

 poetry may there not How through the mind of him w T ho, leaning over the plow- 

 stilts, watches its life-like heaving before it settles to its bed, and rests on its 

 curling edge the feet of a thought whose head is in the skies. The poetry is in 

 the snggestiveness, and there are suggestions, thank God, in every occupation. 

 He is a blind dolt who can go through this marvellous world without finding it 

 at every step and on every side. But our present business is with the more prae 

 tical side of the case. We want to know what can be done to keep our young 

 men on the farm, to keep eastern men from emigrating to the West, and to give 

 to all enterprising farmers an incentive for more thorough and more succssfu* 

 work. 



\\ e desire to accomplish a practical result ; we must adopt a practical means. 

 We want to keep our young men in the profession to which they are born ; we 

 must give them as strong an incentive to stay as the world gives them to go. \i 

 we can show them that — in money or money's worth— for every dollar they 

 could make in a factory, (after deducting insurance against risks) they could 

 make a dollar on the farm, and that they can make it with as little personal sac- 

 rifice, they will no more think of leaving the soil than they will think of leaving 

 earth. If our son thinks he is sure of an income of $5,000 a year if he studie 



