ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 65 



not go far to find it. It is a good thing once in a while to have 

 a reckoning with ourselves. We frequently chide and blame 

 others when they are not to blame, we often lay things at other's 

 doors, when they are to be found at our own hearthstone. Is it 

 the fault of the boys and girls that they leave the farm, or has 

 there, through every year of their young lives, been a sure but 

 slow process of weaning them from it.-^ 



In childhood the child loves life in the country, it seems to 

 be the legitimate life for him. He loves the sunshine and the 

 rain, the grass, the birds and the flowers; he loves the woods and 

 fields, every animal upon the farm possesses a rare charm. He 

 revels in fruit and fun, and life is all a gala day, but when this 

 young life must begin to share the toil of the farm, when he 

 must become a part of its machinery, bearing its burdens, and, 

 shall we say, sharing its joys, the love for it grows gradually 

 weaker and weaker until soon he wonders if there is anything in 

 it that can make life on the farm endurable. 



There must be an education for the farm and to the farm. 

 The successful farmer to-day must be an educated man. He 

 must make a special preparation for it, not only that he may 

 make a success of the farm, but of the farmer. His boys and 

 girls are thinking, reasoning beings; their eyes are quick to see; 

 their ears quick to hear. Have their faculties been trained for 

 the farm that they may succeed as farmers, and above all as 

 men.? Has their school life been such as shall fit them for the 

 farm, and let me ask, has their home life been such as shall 

 bind them to the farm with bonds that can only be severed by 

 death.!' Now, friends, we do not want to talk sentiment but 

 fact. 



Would you be willing to trust your life or the life of your 

 child in the hands of an unskilled, untrained, uneducated doctor? 

 Would you trust a case at law in the hands of an attorney in 

 whose ability you had no faith because of his lack of knowledge of 

 law and jurisprudence.'^ Would you be willing to ride over these 

 great trunk lines, with their almost incessant rumble of trains if 

 you did not know that skilled hands held the lever and that men, 



