The Hancock Jeffersonian. [volume] (Findlay, Ohio) 1857-1870, 1869-04-02
Home, Farm and Garden.
Why / Want Boys to Learn Farming.
BY HORACE, GREELEY.

BY HORACE GREELEY.
sf& eiuet
Every pursuit or calling that min
listers to the sustenance. comfort oil
enhghtment of mankindrisr honorable
and laudable. That is narrow and
essentially false conception which
regards the farmer as more bene-
factor than beneficiary, and stig-
matIzes as drones and cormorants
all who do not directly contribute to
the production and increase of mate
rial wealth. The upright, able law
yer, the studious, skillful physician,
the pious, loving clergyman, are
workingmen, as truly and quite as
nobly as though they were wood
choppers or bricklsyers.s He who,
by whatever means, helps to dimin-
ish the fearful aggregate of Ignorance,
sin, and suffering in the world, and
diffnse, instead, knowledge, virtue,
and happiness, is worthy of all
honor, and far from me be the wish
to discourage and degrade HIM
Aud yet ! hold it to be the duty of
every father to look well to the
physical and industrial training of
his sons and daughters-to see that
each of them is early Injured 10 me
form of manual labor, and thorough
ly trained to efficiency in some
pursuit which ministers directly to
the material or physical needs OF
mankind. My reasons for this
conviction are summed up as fol.
lows: o. Tr
1. The demand for intellectual
labor or its products, and even for
mercantile capacity, is exceedingly
capricious. In a season of com
mercial prosperity, great city af-
fords employment to thousands as
clerks, teachers of music, book
keepers, teachers of languages, etc,
ETC., vino will nearly all be left high
and dry by the ebb of the tide. War,
pestilence, bad harvest, a business
revulsion, throws them suddenly out
of employment, and no merit or 'ex
cellence on their part can avert the
catastrophe | would have every
one SO armed and equipped for the
battle of life, that, if suddenly un-
horsed, he can fight on efficiently and
un.iismayed on foot.
III. The professions are fearfully
crowded. A western village is half
peopled by doctors, lawyers, and
clergymen, who have rushed in ahead
OF the expected food OF immigration.
Like miners in the Sierra n evada or
Rocky Mountains, they have severally
staked out their claims, and are
waiting tor others to come in and
help develop and work them to
mutual profit. But, "while the grass
grows, the steed starves.'' What
ever may be their fortune ten or
twenty years hence-and events are
constantly interposing to blast their
sanguine hopes-doctor. lawyer,
minister, are often winning but
meagre, precarious support for the
present. 81 cannot dig to beg am
ashamed" is the plant which many
would utter if they could afford to
be frank and outspoken. Thousands
suffer and stagger on, oppressed by
want and ever-increasing debt, who
would gladly take refuge in produc-
tive industry, if they had been
trained to familiarity wi b pftehforks
and pillow handles. They would out
grow their present embarrassment
If it were not for the neao doctor,
lawyers, and clergymen annually
ground out to compete with them for
practice or parishes, and whose train
ing is as helpless and one sided as
their own. l would qualify the
professional men who shall hence
forth be trained for broader and
more assured usefulness than that of
their older brethren. -. /,
III. New York City swarms with
hungry, needy, shivering, covering,
cringing fellow -mortals, all in esger,
hopeless quest of ''some
thing to do" To the reproach of
what passes for education must say
that a majority OF those have had
considerable money spent in school
ng them for lives of susefulness.-I'
They are qualified I presume) to
Keep books or copy manuscript, or !:
each languages, or act as govern
,sses, or follow some other of the
over-stocked vocations.
But when / say to one of them,
sThe work you seek is positively !.
lot to be had, since ten want to do
t where one wants 1t done; you =
must strike off into the broad free II
and ask farmer after farmer
Q give you work till you find it,
he general response, 81 know p
othing of farming,'' strikes on my o
ar like knell. Even at seasons {
rhen the farmers were intensely s.
urried by their summer harvest, Ift
nd ready to pay largely for any d
eip that was not hindrance, l have o
nown our city to be thronged with o.
'eary, sad petitioners for something 81
, do.' If our current education il
ere not a plunder or fraud. this u
0 Md not be. lie