AMERICAN AGRICULTURE. 
429 
of his life; what are his prospects? The farmer’s son who leaves 
the farm and turns carpenter, brick layer or mason, may become a 
builder and contractor, and the owner of a dozen blocks, the quar¬ 
terly rent from any one of which would buy his father’s or his 
brother’s farm. 
Another farmer’s son turns blacksmith, and having learned to 
make nails and horse shoes by hand, thinks he can make them by 
machinery, and becomes a millionaire. Another is a shoemaker, but 
does not stick solely to his last. He becomes, after a few years, 
the president of one of the largest boot and shoe manufacturing 
companies in the world. x\nother studies law, and becomes an 
O’Connor or an Evarts. 
But I need not go through the list. We all know, and the young 
men on the farm know, that there are great prizes to be won in the 
learned professions and in trade, commerce and manufactures. And 
they will try for them, and work for them, and I do not object to 
it, and if I did, it would make no sort of difference. A business in 
which there are no prizes will have little attraction for a young 
man full of hope and energy. 
Are there any prizes to be won in the field of agriculture, and, if 
so, how shall we go to work in order to get them? 
Farming is said to be a slow business, but sure. The man wdio 
cannot work and wait will not succeed. But the agriculture of to¬ 
day, or of the future, is very different from the agriculture of the 
past. 
The improvement in agricultural implements and machines is 
something wonderful. We can hardly realize the advantages w^hich 
the men of science, inventors and manufacturers, have bestowed 
on agriculture. Many of the operations of agriculture are depend¬ 
ent on the weather. A large factory making shingles goes on, no 
matter what the weather may be, but a single shower will stop a 
whole field of haymakers. 
Twenty-five or thirty years ago, a farmer with a hundred acres of 
hay to cut, and a hundred acres of grain, had to hire extra men for 
a month or six weeks, paying extra w^ages, and converting his home 
into a large boarding house. And he could not cut all his grass 
and grain just at the right time. But now how is it? 
We start a couple of mown'ng machines in the afternoon; ted the 
grass the next morning; rake it into windrows; ted it again once 
