Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 151 
tools. If we were to decide the position of farmers by this test, how 
would they stand? More signal is the failure to keep well the tools 
they do have. How many plows, how many reapers still lie where 
they were last used, or are inadequately housed, or are the perch- 
poles of hens to the equal injury of both? Imagine a carpenter 
leaving his tools on the ground till the next season, or the next 
day’s work, even! Such stupidity as this sets a man apart to eter¬ 
nal poverty. It is not merely that the reaper will not last out 
half its days, but that it will unexpectedly—for everything is un¬ 
expected to this class of men—fail when most needed, and occasion 
vexation, delay and loss in the middle of the season. 
The farmer does not see his losses at once, as does a mechanic. 
He has no one to talk plain English to him and discharge him for 
his carelessness and poor work. He is both overseer and workman, 
and so is apologetic to shiftless ways., He must make bare his own 
back for his stripes, and so he lays them on with a gentle hand. A 
man buys farm produce without knowing or caring whether the 
land was at its best yield or not; while a poor mechanic is brought 
to a standard of efficiency every time he does a day’s work, or offers 
an article for sale. A farmer can do a little something in a weak, 
poor, careless way, and lay the rest to his luck. He wants some 
one to tell him what his luck is; not his laziness, but his stupid in¬ 
dustry. 
Farm-buildings are closely allied to tools in their offices and in 
the neglect they suffer. It would be unreasonable to expect in the 
West, that farmers should be able to show at once their disposition 
at this point by the erection of snug, adequate, comfortable barns. 
The destruction of the poor is their poverty, and many of our farm¬ 
ers must needs work till their land and stock are paid for, and the 
necessities of life provided, before they can devote their attention to 
farm-buildings, necessary as these are. Abundant traces, however, of 
the same faults and the same negligence which prevail in our older 
states, we fear, may be found with us in our beginnings. The chief 
mistakes in economy at thr* point, are too many, too small, too 
poor buildings, and buildings slovenly kept, and negligently dealt 
with. There is not a more dreary spectacle of waste, of loss, dis¬ 
comfort and heedlessness in our ph} r sical civilization than some 
barn-yards present, nor many sights more comfortable, stimulating 
and consoling than they can be made to present. A half dozen 
