380 WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
if you had not best stay there after you have gone. Those farm¬ 
ers who have to send the boys out into their only pasture—the 
roadside—whenever a white covered wagon passes, to keep the 
cows from following it from sheer force of habit, rarely are suc¬ 
cessful. • 
A cheerful acceptance of the fact that honest, steady, persist¬ 
ent work, year after year, some of it hard work, some of it disa¬ 
greeable, is necessary for the farmer, is another element of success. 
Farming is not so laborious a calling as formerly. Less exhaust¬ 
ing physical toil is required now than 20 years ago, and still less 
will be needed 20 years hence; but farming will never be easy 
work; it will never be a business in which everything will move 
along pleasantly and smoothly. It will always require some hard 
physical toil, and in the future more than in the past, it will re¬ 
quire work with the mind, and he who is not willing to work can¬ 
not hope to succeed as a farmer. But I do not know where he can 
go. Work either with body or mind, and the last is as exhaustive 
as the first, is necessary in every business. 
Intelligence, useful knowledge, general and special, I name 
among the great elements of success in farming. I have unbounded 
faith in the value, the money value, of useful knowledge, and I 
would have every farmer an intelligent man, intelligent as to general 
matters. I would have him as well educated as possible. Many 
men have succeeded without the aid of knowledge gained from 
books. All honor to the man who, amid all the disadvantages of 
a childhood of poverty and ignorance, has won for himself a com¬ 
petence and an honorable position, and the man who would sneer 
at him because he cannot read or write is far below him; but 
shame and dishonor to him if, because of his success, he is willing 
to allow his sons to labor under the same disadvantages! Can 
you tell the money value ot the ability to read and write and com¬ 
pute numbers ? We boast of our universal common school educa¬ 
tion; and yet all over our land we find thousands ot young men 
who seem in practice scarcely a whit the better for the education 
they received at these schools. They would flush with anger at 
the charge that they cannot read, yet they do not read, and it is a 
task rather than a pleasure for them to study out a page of a book 
