ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN’S ASSOCIATION. 51 
there is hardly roomYor the sheep’s noses while they are cropping the 
grass between the rocks. Such a farm would be the despair of any 
but a New England farmer ; while the . Western farmer realizes his 
ideal of a farm (all clear room for agriculture) on the praries, where 
the Eastern farmer would have to learn a new art. But either on the 
New England or prairie farm, one attached to society might feel lost 
in desolation. 
If one might select a farm with as varied advantages as possible, 
say, if you please, a well-ordered dairy farm with a surface alike satis¬ 
factory as to scenery and grazing land, and situated near enough to 
the railroads to enable the farmer to reach the markets and social life 
of civilization, then there is room on the farm for artist, naturalist, 
poet, man of society, or the farmer who combines the tastes of all in 
his own person. 
There is a great deal of room wanted for life in this day. Room 
in various directions for culture is demanded by all classes of people, 
to an extent it never was before. The great tendency seems to be to 
regard city or town life as desirable, and to think the farm has not 
room for the education and the tastes developing with advancing civi¬ 
lization. Certainly the perfection of polish and culture is only reached 
through the most intelligent, appreciative experience in both country and 
city life, but we have had admirable examples to prove that there is 
room for us on the farm for all the culture and refinement a man may 
gain in his own or other countries. Still, young America thinks there 
is not room enough on the farm for him. Probably few farmers 
would dispute him, or care to keep the typical young ilmerican. He 
would be anything but profitable to keep. 
The misfortune of the young generation leaving the farm is very 
greatly and generally regretted. It doubtless is an old suggestion 
that the trouble is farmers’ sons and daughters are not taught to re¬ 
spect the farm as they ought ; that they do not know how much room 
there is on it, and are not helped to develop its resources of education 
for themselves. 
Of course, in years past, boys, cradled in hardships and reared 
in privation, have left the farm, developed, educated men in mind, 
men fit to command, fit to govern, fit to serve the _ world gloriously, 
as many familiar names in American history testify. It is not to be 
supposed, however, that because the farm has produced men with 
such characters in all the poverty of pioneer life that the way to make 
sure of the boys amounting to anything is to give them as hard and 
dry a life as can be got on the farm. 
America had stuff to make men stout-hearted enough to endure 
any hardship, and with brains able for any emergency. None-the-less 
can America produce men of integrity and sense without the buffets 
of poverty and misfortuue. And the farm is the place that ought to 
produce such men ; they are needed now as. much as they ever were. 
Nay, it sometimes takes better material, in the Nation’s building, to 
endure fair weather than stormy. 
The younger generations know that civilization has traveled a 
mighty distance ahead for them, from where it was for their fathers. 
And if they cannot get enough of what seems their right on the farm, 
