state Convention—intelligent farming. 2S3 
others, if he could slave and toil from morning till night, with but 
little more thought beyond supplying the common wants of life, 
for himself and those around him than the oxen he drove, 
then he would do for a farmer. Gentlemen, let us thank God 
that those ideas have passed away. But do not think me draw¬ 
ing entirely a fancy sketch. I remember well, and it was less 
than fifty years ago, that my father subscribed for his first agricul¬ 
tural paper, and I believe it was then the first and only agricultu¬ 
ral paper in the United States, u The Cultivator,” published at 
Albany, 1ST. Y. And I remember too, that the neighbors laughed 
at the idea of his being a book farmer. 
In short, for hundreds of years the real cultivators of the soil 
throughout nearly all of Europe, and in a large part of our own 
country, had been either slaves or serfs, and as a matter of neces¬ 
sity must be kept in ignorance, for no educated people were ever 
kept in slavery. And in this country, and within the recollection 
of most of those who hear me, it was said by a man who had held 
the high position of Yice President of the United States and 
member of a Cabinet, and for many years a United States Sen¬ 
ator. that the hands that guided a plow should never be permitted 
to touch a ballot. These and many other prejudices honored with 
the belief of centuries, handed down from father to son, and from 
mother to daughter, some of them hoary with age, had to be up¬ 
rooted and destroyed before even a beginning in scientific agricul¬ 
ture could be successfully made. But for a farmer to take an 
agricultural paper, or a dozen of them, is no longer a disgrace to 
him, even in the eyes of those who are unwilling to follow his 
good example. And it has come to be an almost universally 
acknowledged fact, that no man can now attain any prominence 
either as a stock grower, a dairyman, a grain grower, or in fact in 
any branch of farming, without having some considerable infor¬ 
mation upon the particular subjects to which he is devoting his 
attention. And the more perfect is his knowledge of his business 
the more successful is he in it. Knowledge is his great lever. 
His farm is the fulcrum upon which he moves, and his knowledge 
of his business is his lever by which he makes himself successful. 
Gentlemen, knowledge is power, and in no business is it more so 
than in the cultivation of the soil. • The great want of our culti- 
