ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 67 



we fathers and mothers have a great work to do and one reason 

 why so many of our boys and girls have left the farm is because 

 it has not been done. 



Fathers and mothers, what is your attitude to farm life? Do 

 you feel that it is a moloch to be fed and that to it you must 

 give every energy of your being, your time, your thought, the 

 whole of yourself, that it must be one continual grind, grind, 

 from year's end to year's end, that you must not only dig 

 yourself but compel every member of your family — wife included, 

 — to dig just as you do and for the same and only purpose, — for 

 money — and when you get that money, plant it right in the 

 T^ank, don't spend any of it buying a piano for your daughters, 

 or a wheel for the boys, or to even take yourself and wife and the 

 boys to the dairymen's association; don't buy any books or take any 

 more magazines or papers — the boys and girls might fool away 

 their time reading them, might possibly learn something that you 

 do not know and want to put it in practice. Just keep on, work- 

 ing and grumbling — grumble if it rains, grumble if it doesn't, 

 grumble if you have to work, and grumble if you should be 

 sick and could not, grumble if you think the boys have shirked 

 a little on a day's work, because they wanted to quit early and 

 go somewhere. Be sure you grumble if they want to take a 

 horse and more if they hint that they should like a carriage. 

 Above all, do not give them — the boys or the girls — any money. 

 Let them know it comes hard and goes harder. Be cross and 

 grumpy if company comes, especially young company. Keep 

 telling what a dog's life a farmer's life is, how you hate the sight 

 of the farm, and only farm it because you have to, and you are 

 in a fair way to aid your last child to leave the farm, and who 

 could blame him.? 



On the other hand can you look your bright boy in the face 

 as he slips between your knees on a winter evening and say, 

 **My son, I live in the country because I love the country, I work 

 upon the farm because I love the farm. Every field is a friend 

 tried and true. I know these fields so well that I can count to 

 almost a certainty as to what they will return to us, for the labor 

 and care I shall bestow on them.?" Return to us. I like to hear 



