Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1875-05-22
Deserving the Farm,

Inc ono fuTnler refers 70 case
which is sufficiently typical to quote.
The husbandman alluded to had, by his
own exertions, accumulated handsome
competence, and at the age of fifty could
look with pride over his broad acres of
rich land, his fine herds and Aocks, and
comfortable buildings. He was out of
debt, and hal handsome surplus in the
bank. Two years ago, in an evil hour,
he was induced to invest in a dry goods
store. Last fall his farm and stock were
sold for debt, and he is reduced to the
necessity of day labor to support his
large and yet dependent family. All
the Accommodations of over thirty years of
hard toil-many of them years of priva-
ton, hardships, and the closest economy
swept away in a few months by his
demon, speculation. And this is not
solitary case. Every reader can count
similar ones in his own list of acquaint-
ances. A man who has lived all his life
on a farm stands but little chance to
compete successfully with the men who
have been educated and trained for
speculative pursuits. The two occupa-
tions are extremes, honest toll at one
end, and the tricks of trade at the other.
If you have good farm keep it, i'm
prove it, adorn it, be proud of it, and
when you are done with it, hand it down
to your children; the best inheritance,
with a good name and education, that
you could leave them.
Of the discomfort which exists among
the younger people, the great cause is
what writer in Scr'ibRer'S Monthly SO
aptly terms the " social leanness" or
social starvation of American agricultural
life. He says: The American farmer, in
all his planning and all his building,
has never made provision for life. He
has only considered the means of getting
a living. Everything outside of this
everything relating to society and Gull
ture-has been steadily ignored. He
gives his children the advantages of
schools, not recognizing the fact that
these very advantages will call into life a
new set of social wants. A bright, we'll
educated family, in a lonely farmhouse,
is very different material from family
brought up in ignorance. An American
farmers children, who have had few
terms at neighboring academy, re-
semble in no degree the children of the
European peasant. They come home
with new ideas and new wants, and if
there is no provision made for these new
wants, and they find no opportunities
for their satisfaction, they will be ready,
on reaching their majority, to fly the
farm and seek the city.
If the American farmer wishes to
keep his children near him, he must
learn the difference between living and
getting a living; and we mistake him
and his grade of culture altogether if he
! does not stop over this statement and
wonder what we mean by it. To get q
living, to make money, to become "fore-
handed this is the whole of life to
agricultural multitudes, discouraging in
their numbers to contemplate. To them
their is no difference between living and
getting living. Their whole life con-
sists in getting living; and when their
families come back to them from their
schooling, and find that, really, this is
the only pursuit that has any recogni-
ton under the paternal roof, they must
go away. The boys push to the centers
or the cities, and the girls follow them,
if they can. A young man or a young
woman, raised to the point where they
apprehend the difference between living
and getting living, can never be salts
fed with the latter alone. Either the
farmers children must be kept ignorant,
or provision must be made for their
social wants. Brains aid hearts need
food and clothing as well as bodies; and
those who have learned to recognize
brains and hearts as the best and most
important part of their personal posses
sions, will go where they can find the
ministry they need.
What is the remedy? How shall
farmers manage to keep their children
near thema How can we discourage in
{ tiux OF unnecessary-nay, burdensome
: populations into the Cities We an
) swer: By making agricultural society
attractive. Fill the farmhouses with
, periodicals and books. Establish CEN
, trail reading-rooms, or neighborhood
r clubs. Encourage the social meetings
of the young. Have concerts, lectures,
! amateur dramatic associations. Estab.
r fish bright, active, social life, that
t shall give some significance to labor.
l Above all, build as far as possible in vii
s lagos. 1t is better to go a mile to ones
1 daily labor than to place ones self g
mile away from neighbor. The isola-
ton of American farm life is the great
4 curse of that life, and it falls upon the
Q woman with hardship that the mar
cannot appreciate, and drives the edu
t Gated young away.
a
Hannu A,.sfI 70