Vermont farmer. [volume] (Newport, Orleans County, Vt.) 1870-1877, 1872-12-13

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will be most fruitful in bene6cent results.
And here let me urge upon you the impor-
tance Of establishing and maintaining clubs in
every section Of your county for from my ex-
perience it seems that the greatest want at
present is knowledge aud cooperation.
Remember that everybody knows more than
anybody. Your neighbor over the way out
strips you in some particular. His butter,
it may be, meets with more demand, and
commands higher price. His fields feed
larger herds of better cattle, and his barns
burst with more generous crops Be not
afraid to learn from him the secrets of his
success, and spur each other on by generous
rivalry. One of our most extensive butter
dealers in Vermont, assures me that not
more than three-tenths of the product can be
counted as first class. What an enormous
waste is this2 No one can deny but that
with equal intelligence as to the principles
Of butter making, and equal care, no such
difference should exist, and yet | presume
the same proportion would hold in other Sec
tions of our country. Revive, then, or estab-
lish your farmers clubs, divest yourselves of
prejudice, and whatever may have been or is
now your practice examine into it thorough
ly, and seek for improvement if it is attain
able. Have reason and be able to give it
for the faith that is in you.
remember an amusing incident at one of
our agricultural meetings of Vermont, where
a gentleman, eminently successful as a farm
or, narrated his early experience in the man
agement of farm, given into his entire
charge by his father, also farmer. Without
responsibility, he had before adopted un-
thinkingly the methods of his father, but wish
ing to know whether the highest wisdom die
tated such course, he, upon his accession to
the estate, accustomed himself with a spirit
of inquiry as laudable as it was unflial, to
bethink himself in every case how his father
was wont to act, and this settled, he tried
another way. OF course the experiment is
too hazardous and revolutionary to be gen.
orally recommended, but it may very easily
be seen to have been most beneficial and in
the hands Of one ingenious enough to devise
such an experiment, must have been, as it
was, productive of valuable results.
The most thorough education then is Of
the first and last importance. With it our
widest dreams may become glorious roali-
ties; without it the development of the fu-
ture is impossible. Necessity, that mother of
invention, will ever remain barren, driving us
to physical slavery and despair, but bringing
us no relief Ii any one doubts this let US
look at China, and compare her stink-pots
and gongs with our rif1ed cannon and ponder
GUS coumbiads, her cumberOus junks with
our resistless iron clads; their heather de-
vices and incantations to ward off storms and
tempests, with the systematic weather re-
ports of our own country. As China is in
the arts of war or peace, so is she in her ag-
ricuture to-day; but with our magnificent
strides IN military and industrial pursuits,
with the grand discoveries which has made
this nineteenth most memorable among the
centuries, with a development Of material
resources which has caused the sanguine to
herald speedy approaching millennium, it
must be confessed that agriculture has Jagged
far behind Do not misunderstood me, for
do | not see about me reapers and mowers,
in place of sickle and scythe? Are not our
tables filled with agricultural literature Do
not farmers clubs, and agricultural societies,
and fairs attest the gigantic strides which
agriculture herself has been making in the
general advanced Relatively then, only, is it
true that agriculture has been at a stand.
still; relatively she stands far in the rear,
when every interest demands that she be III
the fore front, for let us not yield to any
other the pre-eminent Importance of the ag.
riculturist. Upon his labors all the earth
depends for bread To him all others turn
for their raw material, the manufacture of
which gives employment to millions. When
he suffers the world sympathises; when he
prospers the world is made glad. An early
frost, destructive rain, the appearance even
of some little busy midge, brings not alone
loss to him, but CONSERVATION fills the souls
of all, capital is paralyzed, panic shakes the
financial centers, while into the doors of ten
thousand lowly homes stalks gaunt famine,
disease and death Is this picture too
strongly colored think you? Look at Ireland,
helpless and starving at the loss Of her crops,
Lool, at Persia desolate with famine and
pestilence, and there you may see the picture
of any people upon whose field the heavens
have not dropped fatness, or from whom
widespread disaster or blight have stripped
their wonted supplies.
Upon none, then, l repeat, do we so much
depend as upon the farmer for our very ex-
istence even, and though other interests may
suffer neglect, his should receive our most
earnest attention. Though other interests
may be presided over by ignorance and stu
pidity, his demands should receive the most
careful supervision of the highest education.
And in behalf of this is it necessary that
any plea be made at this day Rejoicing as
we do in the possession of those rich treas
ures which she has already poured into our
lap need we doubt but that they are only the
earnest of what she has yet in store for us2
We have many arts, the direct gifts of the
sciences to man; and, indeed. it is proverb
that if in the entire range of the arts practi-