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Ancient Rome was right, for the prosperity of a nation is de- 

 pendent on her agricultural resources and her agriculturist. 

 As our farnoing methods improve, and our farmers become 

 more scientific and skillful, our country will progress and 

 achieve great renown among the nations of the world ; so it 

 has been and so it will be. While inventive genius has been 

 busy in devising ways and means to lessen and facilitate man's, 

 labor, the agriculturist has received the highest consideration. 

 No kind of labor was formerly more arduous and full of drud- 

 gery than the work on the farm. This is now materially 

 changed ; the term farm implements once included little more 

 than the scythe, sickle, shovel and rake, and the farmer was 

 ii. ?very sense a laborer. To-day the farmer is an engineer, 

 for the well equipped farm is provided with a score of modern 

 implements, and often a steam engine. The successful farmer 

 of the present day is a man of enterprise, broad, intelligent, 

 educated, and destined to command the honor and respect of 

 his countr5\ Young men should look to agriculture as a pro- 

 fession, worthy of their greatest efforts. 



I regret in passing through many parts of the country to 

 find farms vacant, young men having left the country, popula- 

 tion in some of the counties having fallen off very materially. 

 Various causes are assigned for this, and I am not going into 

 any discussion of the point raised. Governments, both local 

 and Dominion, have done and are doing much to encourage 

 agriculture, but the farmer must not depend nipon government 

 aid. He must rely mainly upon his own individual efforts, 

 and by his example encourage his sons to take a warmer 

 interest in the cultivation of the soil. Has he done all he 

 could to keep the young men at home ? Has he given them 

 Ml the encouragement on the farm that they require ? It 

 strikes me very forcibly that going back as far as forty years ago 

 if the farmer of that day had divided his farm with his sons- 



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