Bedford inquirer. [volume] (Bedford, Pa.) 1857-1884, 1867-02-15
farla, Gatlen 4 a)p0sGhpld,
WHENCE THE IMPROVEMENT IN
EApAfTNyG

TIMOTHY TITcoNB, in his Rural Life, says:
"The improvements made in farming and
farming implements have not been made by
farmers themselves, but by outsiders, me
chanics and men of seience,-who have mar
veled at the brainless stupidity which toiled
on in its old track of unreasoniug routine,
and looked with suspicion and discourage
ment upon innovations. The reason why the
farmer has not been foremost in improving
the instruments and methods of his own bust
ness is that tis mind has been untitled for
improvement by the excessive labors OF his
body. A man whose vital energy is directed
to the support of muscle, has, Of course, none
to direct to the support Of thought. a man
whose strength is habitually exhausted by
labor, becomes, at length, incapable of men
tai exertion; and I cannot help feeling that
half the farmers in the country establish in
superable obstacles to their own Improvement
by their excessive toll. They are nothing
more than the living machines of calling
which so far exhausts their vitality that they
have neither disposition nor power to improve
ElAutA llAGHAaGANNs VI bAANAA St-AAAA5s
There is no doubt about the fact that life
whose sole energies are expended in hard,
bodily labor, is such life as God never in
tended man should live.
~ am perfectly aware that am not re-
vealing pleasant truths. We are much in the
habit of glorifyiug rural life, and praising the
intelligence and virtue of rural populations;
and if they believe us, they cannot receive
this with pleasure. But the question which
most interests them is not whether these
statements are true. Is the philosophy sound?
Does a severe and constant tax on the mus
cular system repress mental development,
and tend to make life hard and homely and
unattractive? Is not the American farmer,
generally a man who has sacrificed free
and full mental development, and all bis
finer sensibilies and affections, and gener-
ous and genial family and social life, and the
dignities and tasteful proprietes ola well-ap-
pointed home, TO the support of his muscles!
There are instances Of a better life than this
among farmers, and I should not have writ
len this if those instances had not proved that
this everlasting devotion TO labor is unneces-
sary. There are farmers who prosper in
their calling and do not become stolid-whose
homes are the abode of refinement, whose
watchword is improvement, and whose aim
is to elevate their calling. If there is a man
on the earth whom I honestly honor it is a
farmer who has broken away from his slavery
to labor, and applied his mind to his soil.
''Mind must be the emancipator of the
farmer. Science, intelligence, machinery
these must liberate the boudman of the soil
from his long slavery When I look back
and see what has been done for farming with
in my brief memory, am fall of hope for the
future. The plow, under the hand Of science,
has become a new instrument. The horse
now hoes the corn, mows the grass, rakes the
hay, reaps, threshes and winnows the wheat
and every year adds new machinery to the
farmers stock, to supersede the clumsy i'm
plements which once bound him to his hard
and never ending toll. When farmer be-
gins to use machinery and to study the pro
cesses of other men, and to apply his mind
to farming so far as he can make it take the
place of muscle, then he Eliminates his call
ing with new light and lifts himself into
the dignity Of man.