Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 
223 
something. Their boys are going into the professions, and are going 
to take the active, laboring-oar in the nation in twenty-live 
years. They are not growing up in indolence. Therefore I like to 
take a hopeful position. If we are honest, independent, and get 
our bread, butter and clothes, I think we have reason to rejoice. 
Mr. Fokd. I have given this subject a great deal of thought, 
how I am going to keep my boys at home, and who is going to take 
my place when I am gone. Enthusiasm and faith won’t do it. As 
soon as my boys get large enough to go into the city, they are go¬ 
ing where they can have more money to spend. The fact is we 
have got to do something to make our farming pay, so that our 
sons and our daughters can ride in just as good carriages as our 
city cousins. Then they will stay at home. 
Mr. Robbins. My boys are going to stay at home on the farm, 
and they can farm twice as well to-day as I can or ever could, and 
we are going to have a happy home. We are not going to send 
our boys to the city. The fault is our own if we farmers cannot 
keep our boys at home, and the fault is nobody's else. We can just 
as well do that as to send them off to educate them. I have rented 
my farm to my boys, and I believe they will make twice the money 
out of it that I ever did. I was raised on a farm, but I hadn’t any 
tools to farm with. It would take three boys with the horse, to 
hoe an acre of corn a day, there were so many little round stones 
there. We used to have about ten acres of corn, and we were hoe¬ 
ing it nearly all summer, and when we came to harvest it we 
didn’t get but very little. That was in New York, forty years ago, 
and I have been here thirty-seven years and I havn’t done much 
of anything, but I have pretended to farm for over thirty years, and 
the farm is in a condition now, so the boys can make a living off 
of it. 
I don’t know anything about the ten per cent, business, for I 
never had a dollar to loan in my life. I belieye if I had the differ¬ 
ence between seven and ten per cent, which I have made myself, I 
would be worth a great deal more than I am to-day, but that don’t 
settle the question. I got the money and did the best I could with 
it. Now let us make folks think we are happy at home, whether 
we are or not. Let us delude our children and make them think 
we have got the happiest home in the world, and then they won’t 
want to leave it. That is the kind of home I have got. 
