American Agriculture. 
425 
The greatest curse that can befall a man or nation is voluntary or 
involuntary?’ idleness. “ Nothing to do ” means poverty and misery. 
The 1 ess a man does the less he is inclined to do. The more he 
does the more he can do. Idleness leads to weakness and inability. 
Work gives strength and skill, it banishes despondency and brings 
in hope, and hope leads to continued effort. If we fail one year, we 
try again. We get to have faith in the soil and in ourselves. We 
have to compete with our brother farmers and with the farmers of 
the world. We feel that farming is no child’s play, and we must 
try to acquit ourselves like men and be strong. 
Of oar many blessings, therefore, not the least is the fact that we 
have now, and shall have for years to come, plenty of work to do on 
our farms. 
There are farmers who thought that when their farms were cleared 
of the forest, and when the barns and fences were built and roads 
made, there would be little to do. Philosophers also told us, and 
truly, that trees absorbed carbonic acid from the atmosphere, and 
that when we cleared up a district we not only removed these nat¬ 
ural purifiers of the atmosphere, but when the trees were burnt or 
decayed, large quantities of carbonic acid were thrown off, and also, 
that man and beast were daily and hourly polluting the atmosphere 
in the same way. All the processes and operations of civilized life 
produced enormous quantities of carbonic acid, and we at the same 
time were removing the trees which nature had provided to purify 
the atmosphere. Now all this was true enough, but the great fact 
was not then known, that an acre of corn would take up probably 
five times as much carbonic acid as an acre of forest trees, and 
that wheat, barley, oats, grass and clover, and all our cultivated 
plants were much more efficient purifiers of the atmosphere than 
the native forests. The fear that this continent would become a 
black hole of Calcutta has proved groundless; and so the idea, that 
when we have done the pioneer work of agriculture there will be 
little to do, is equally erroneous. The better we farm, the farther 
we advance; the more improvements we make, the more work will 
there be to do. Let us be thankful. On my own farm, I have little 
or no wood to chop in the winter, and yet I find no difficulty in 
keeping nearly as many men at work in the winter and spring 
months as during the month of harvest. In fact, wages being much 
less, I employ more men in the spring than during the summer. 
