with all his strength, but he must work for f/tr love of money, and as only the 

 love of money can make him work. 



Modern enterprise takes the form of a quest for material prosperity. In the 

 olden time its form was conquest, and military glory. Helpless nations were 

 trodden under the feet of the successful men of the Dark Ages. In our day and 

 in our land, it is not helpless nations but helpless individuals that must fall. In 

 manufacturers the helpless men have become operatives ; in trade they are 

 broken down clerks and porters ; in agriculture they are the small hand-to-mouth 

 farmers, who starve a few animals and a feeble crop on their thin soils, and do 

 odd days 1 work for their more prosperous neighbors. These men — in whatever 

 station of life they may be — are the poor hiefiicients, who count for just so 

 much as their labor is worth, and nothing more. It is of little use to trouble 

 ourselves about them until they show the energy to wake up and help themselves. 



The man who is to be benefited by our efforts, and who is to benefit us in 

 return, is tlie restless enterprising man, who has a steam-boiler in his stomach, 

 an engine in his muscles, a galvanic battery in his brain, and a lion in his heart. 

 To such a man we may look for work that tells. No matter whether he is a 

 farmer or something else : he will succeed ; and it would be a good short bit of 

 advice to every young farmer to say "Go thou and do likewise." 



If only we could ensure their following of the advice ! 



Do you say that this is enthusiasm ? So it is — the enthusiasm of money-mak- 

 ing. Our energetic man has worked, as only such a man can work— with a con- 

 sciousness of the good he was doing, no doubt, and with a delight in the doing 

 of it — but with the hope of gain as his most constant incentive. There may 

 be exceptions — men who work to their wits' ends solely for the benefit of the 

 human f amily ; but they are not many, and I would pit a good reliable money- 

 maker against the best of them in a race to see which should lay the world under 

 the greatest obligations. 



Money, after all, is only an expression of the progress that work accomplishes. 

 The freedom with which it is used, and the comforts it secures, mark the solid 

 advancement of our own time. The men of every occupation, taken as a class, 

 are becoming, year by year, more prosperous ; there is more comfort, more lux- 

 ury, more intelligence, more cultivation, less ill-health, less contemptible mean- 

 ness among them, (though this last quality holds its own bravely,) than there used 

 to be. This progress is mainly due to the leaders of each class, men whose 

 wealth has of course added some weight to their example, but where great effect 

 has been produced on the world by their work and by the activity their work 

 has engendered in others. 



It would be folly to say that agriculture has not felt and profited by the influ- 

 ence of the same sort of example, or to suppose that there is any cause for dis- 

 couragement in the farmer's condition. All that I desire is to draw attention to 

 the fact that it is to the influence of untiring work — work done in the hope of 

 gain, done in pursuit of personal wealth, — that we must look, for that still 

 further progress that is needed to make New England farming, and, indeed, all 

 other farming, as attractive to the better class of young fanners, as New England 



