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226 Annual Report of the 
boys that good cultivation of the soil will pay. We expect our 
boys to be cultivators of the soil, and they don't expect to be any¬ 
thing else, and we are training them for that purpose. 
I am satisfied that I am a better cultivator of the soil to-day than 
my father was at my age, and I know that my boys are a great deal 
better cultivators than I was at their ages, and if they live to be as 
old as I am, they will be much better cultivators than I am now. 
We never had any trouble to keep our boys at home, and the 
simple reason of it is, that we try to make our own home pleasanter 
for them than it is anywhere els?, and they are never away, and 
they are content with their labors. Two of them have bought 
land and are working for themselves, and the other two that stay 
at home, when they come of age, I pay them as much wages as 
they can get anywhere else. I teach my boys that I cannot pay as 
big wages as some other men get, but they are learning business 
that will support them, and by which they are learning to make 
money. I say to them, “If you went to Stewart’s, in New York, 
to learn his business you would have to work three years for noth¬ 
ing, while you get pay right along on the farm, and the chances 
are ten to one that you would fail in your business, while you are 
almost sure to succeed in intelligent farming, for if that business is 
well carried on it will pay.” 
Mr. Benton. I want to add two or three thoughts—one way that 
I educate my boys is this: I take a certain piece of land and I give 
them a share of the crops, and I noticed almost instantly one of 
the first things my boy did, was he sat down and wrote to a pub¬ 
lisher for a pamphlet on the cultivation of that crop which he pro¬ 
posed to raise on his ground, and the first thing that I knew, I saw 
him studying how to get the best results from that crop. Well, 
I found I had hit the nail on the head—he was seeking to find out 
how he could beat his father in getting big crops from that land. 
In the evenings we figure up how much our neighbors have 
made, and how much they have lost, and how to avoid their losses 
and short-comings. And then I find our boys and girls are inter¬ 
ested in various publications, and those they are interested in I 
buy for them, and let them have them to read; and they look for 
the mail to come just as if they were going to have a thousand dol¬ 
lars in it. In this way we discuss this matter of farm machinery, 
and we get those machines to help, so as to make our arms longer 
and stronger, with steel and iron. 
