The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1881-12-16
FREE PRESS.
FRIDAY. DECEMBER 10. 1881.
Farming as an OCCUPATION

Boys raised in cities and surfeited
with schools, often imagine that they
would like to be farmers. Let them
follow the example / have given,
only extending it through whole
year, taking the same relative posi-
tions that they would be forced to
take in learning any other business.
Begin at the bottom, stepping on the
lowest rounds of the ladder, and
touching every one, until the top is
reached. This is the way to qualify
q man for managing farm. Young
men who have taken this way for
learning farming, though their early
years have been passed along paved
streets, and in schools, have made
some of our most successful farmers.
There is another road that is often
taken, but not often with lasting
satisfaction. Buy, or otherwise ac-
quire farm, subscribe for several
agricultural papers, purchase books
on farming, hire farmer, purchase
full set of tools and machinery
Learn by experiment, and if your
money and zeal last long enough, and
you work hard, you will finally make
u good farmer, but your education
will be II costly one. knew u case
quite like this: A farmers son was
"educated" as people say. He had
his four years of classical study al
lowed him by rule of the Court,
and spent nearly three years in u
lawyers office, when circumstances
made it necessary for him to go to
his fathers house, and assume the
management of nearly one thousand
acres of land-perhaps one third of
it called "improved;" that is, it had
been partly cultivated. Log heaps,
piles of stone, clumps of bushes and
swampy places adorned the fields.
The owner was just twenty.one years
old-withOut other knowledge of
practical farming than such us he
had acquired in observing the rude
processes of that long ago time,
during vacations and one Summer
with the hired men when a lad of
sixteen years. He found his lands
in the occupancy of tenants, who
must remain for one season. He
went into the fields with those ten
nants and worked without other COM
pensation, than instruction in the
use OF tools, and devoted the season
to trying to learn enough to justify
his attempting the management of
the farm. The next year he assumed
direction. Foremen were not yet in
vented to help incompetent farmers.
He had a team, plOw, is
own use. and for while worked with
his men, bHt soon learned that
seventy-five cents a day would pay a
better man than he was for holding a
plow, and that his eyes to overlook
the whole work, were worth more
than his hands driving team.-Hon.
George Geddes, an american Agricul-
turist for December.
Never turn down your kerosene
lamp so that it will burn low, in any
room that is to be occupied by human
beings. A lamp thus slowly burning
fails to consume all the gas that is
generated, and the gas will poison all
the air in an ordinary room long be-
fore morning. Many a woman after
leaving lamp burning low all night
has arisen to find herself suffering
from Il dull, oppressive headache,
and "feeling wretchedly" all over.
Many child, perhaps too young to
make its suffering known, is peevish
or ailing in the morning or absolutely
sick. Many sick man finds his vital
powers becoming more and more de-
pressed, and finally dies, when he
might have lived had he not been
poisoned by the gas evolved from a
lamp turned low in his sick room. A
lamp should be allowed to burn
brightly or extinguished entirely.
The famous Dalrymple farm of
$4,000 acres, in Dakota, is really made
up of smaller farms, with separate
ownerships; but all is under the
management of Oliver Dalrymple,
who owns 1900 acres outright, and
is likely to soon become half owner
of the rest. When he assumed charge,
the prOprietOrs of the various tracts
put in the land at a fair valuation,
and money enough to improve it,
charging 8 per cent. on the whole
investment. The important provi-
sion was that, whenever the profits
reached, over and above the 8 per
cent. year, a sum sufficient to re-
pay the entire outlay, half the land
should be his, At the time, it was
not supposed that much, if any, more
than the promised percentage could
be derived from the farm. But the
crops have been heavy, and nothing
but Il serious mishap will prevent
Dalrymple from realizing his hopes
within two or three years.
Everybody knows what an umbrel.
Ia is, and can tell of what it is con-
structed; but few are aware how large
an industry is represented in the stick
of this useful and generally missing
property. An official estimate, made
in September last in Kingston.
Jamaica, showed that there were
little over 500 900 sticks awaiting ex-
port to England and the United States
to be made into umbrella handles.
Facts and Not Fancy.
The citizens of Rochester, i'm this
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