Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 
225 
the average of those 'vvho go into the city, they are not doing any 
better than their brothers who stay at home. A man said to me 
to-day, “when I was getting fifty dollars a month for certain labor, 
I didn’t lay up as much as I did when I got sixteen dollars a month.” 
I believe the smaller wages that restrict our boys and keep them 
from the temptation of extravagant expenditure is worth more 
than the larger wages they can get by leaving farming. I know of 
young men who have left their parents arid entered other pursuits 
with large prospects, who are a great burden to the old farm now. 
Mr. Webster. I came into this state in 1842 at Fort Atkinson, 
Jefferson county, and when 1 arrived there I had some three dol¬ 
lars and fifty cents, and I loaned that, and I never got a cent of it 
back again, and I commenced then on my own hook and tried to 
do something. I own a good farm and I am content on it. 
I have two boys, one seventeen, one nineteen. I think the trouble 
is we don’t educate our boys enough. I think we try to work them 
too hard and keep them at home too much. I am now trying to 
educate my boys well, and I am going to educate them for farmers, 
and when I see that they are not smart enough for farmers, and 
their heads are not good enough for that, I propose to make profes¬ 
sional men of them, or something else. I think we don’t educate 
our boys; they need to be educated for the farm as well as for the 
professions. That was one trouble with me; I wasn’t educated. I 
didn’t know how to farm right. So I say to farmers, don’t fail to 
educate your boys for the farm. 
Mr. Smith. I have not said here that I thought farming was very 
remunerative as it is now prosecuted, but I think if it is carried on 
as it ought to be, it will pay. I maintain that cultivating the 
soil well, so as to get good crops, will pay. I have raised some 
poor crops in my time, and I never had a poor crop that paid well. 
I have raised some very large crops and I never raised a large crop 
that did not pay me handsomely. I know when the year comes 
around what my land has cost me and what my crops have cost me, 
and paid me, and I know that big crops pay, but poor ones don’t 
pay It seems to me there is a panacea for the evils we are suffer¬ 
ing, and a better time for all of us, when we will have something 
to sell, something for the railroads to carry. In other words, when 
we get big crops we can afford to quarrel with the railroads and 
make them pay big prices for what they get of us. So teach all the 
15 A 
