Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1883-01-11
The AMERICAN FARMER
His Progress, Advantages and
PrOpects as COnirasted with
the European Agri-
: -.-rT ,cqliHrist.
An Address Before the Tri-COunty
Agricultural Institute, Held at st.
5a. Clairsyille, Ohio. on the
i'26th and 27th of
Dec, 1882.
: BYA W. CAMPBELL, OF WHEELING, W. VA.

IL would have taken much larger vol
ume TO tell the world what the author
did not know about farming. Mr.. Gree
ley really knew great deal about farm
ing, as all who have read his letters and
addresses on agriculture are well aware.
And,yet he was not a successful farmer
in the ordinarily understood meaning
of success. ~
Very many Intelligent men are in the
same fix as Mr.. Greeley. 1t IS said that
every A merican believes that he could
successfully run farm or a hotel, if he
owRed one y training or experience is
not consider ed necessary for these two
kinds of business. This conceit on the
part of good many people accounts for
two occupations.
You have heard of the partnership p
that was formed between the man who
had cash but no experience, and the man
who had the experience but no cash. The
result was at the end of the partnership
tile man Of cash had accumulated the
IexperieEce and The man of experience
had pocketed the cash.
1t is dangerous position to have cash
and conceit and no experience, whether
the owner of the cash aspires to run a
hotel. a farm or any other branch of bu-
siness. 1t too often results in Il dear
bought experience.
+ And yet the world is greatly indebted
to its theoretical farmers-to the men
who have an idea that they want to work
out, or fancy that they desire 10 in
dulge.
There was a man in the Panhandle of
West Virginia many years ago who had
made great deal of money in branch
of business in which he had been train
ed, and whose success had been such as
to inspire him with the idea that he
could make great success out of farm
ing-especially stock farming. He had
large amount of cash and he spent it
right and left in u royal manner. He
fbuilt fine house-laid out the grounds
around it with great deal of taste
planted choice shrubbery and a noble
orchard of choice fruits built brick
barn and also brick cattle sheds-Dought
the latest and best implements of hus-
4bandry-had good water conveyed to his
house and his grOunds-and altogether
/ he had the most attractive place in West
| Virginia. Everybody named 1t but to
praise it. And yet, sorry to say, the
owner failed to make success of his
experiment He failed, and his stock,
his farm and all its belongings were
closed out sacrifice. He had ex-
changed his cash for experience. The
good fortune that had attended and ell
riched him in the business to which he
had been bred did not follow him in
farming.
| nd vat h,f r1nar1nr,bIn
was worth all it cost-not of course to
the Immediate victim of it-but to the
Panhandle farmers of West Virginia
to his neighbors and to their neighbors.
They have all been the better of it.. The
farm stock of that region was improved
by his profuse puIc chases of blooded an
mails, and the agricultural and horticul.
tural tastes Of the farmers have been
elevated. They had an example set them
of esthetical farming which they all
needed, and while they all deprecated
his misguided plans and purposes, and
wondered how he could so far lose sight
Of practical results, yet they all received
Il good paying dividend out of his expe-
riment.
II is il fortunate circumstance, in one
sense If the word, that all farm oWnerS
are not. either from choice or from in
experience. good calculators on a cent
per cent. basis. We owe much to these
fancy farmeIs-t to men Of large means
in the cities siid towns who take no.
tion to buy a farm, and to make it a
model farm after some ideal of their own.
Some of these men keep farm on the
principle that they keep 4 yatch-for the
mere pleasure and pride of ownership. l
made a short voyage to sea once en- a
yatch for which the owner had paid
100000, and on which he maintained a
captain, a mate and crew at a heavy
expense-and yet the owner, who was a
rich Wall street man, had never been
on his yacht but once. Still, everybody
knew that he had yacht, and that fact
alone was pleasure to the owner and
of conrse he was always expecting to
take sail at some leisure day, during a
luH perhaps in speculation.
1t is a real pleasure no doubt to Hen
ry Ward Beecher to know that he owns
one of the best and most expensive
farms in Westchester county, n. York,
and he does not seem to think it hard
ship to preach, to lecture, to write, or to
; otherwise cudgel his brains as a com
mittee of ways and means in order to
raise money to keep his estate in splen-
did condition.
He is doing what Mr.. Greeley did in
his day, and what Mr.. Leonard Jerome
did in his day, giving the farmers a
: much needed example of esthetical farm.
ing. And while of course the Surround.
. ing farmers. who have so much more
experience than cash, are avoiding these
profuse expenditures, and living wisely
within their income, yet all that part OF
the country has felt and is feeling the
beneficial effects, in an elevation of theiI
own standards, and investing their oc.
cupation with something else than a
mere dollar and cents phase, of the ex-
amples set them by Greeley, Beecher
jerome and other sentimental farmers
!. Many parts of our country have theil
Greeleys. Beechers and Jeromes on e
small scale. God help the occupation OF
the farmer if this was not the case. GC
into those parts of the country where
they have never had any sentimental
farming and see the difference in thu
prevailing style Of cultivating the soil
Visit for instance some Of the interior
parts of West Virginia. remote from
u railroads and navigabfe waters, wher,
!. farming is carried on in primitive style
: and where all the surroundings CORES
/, pond to it. There is a painful absenc,
: of good OF good houses, good barns, goos
fences, good stock, good implements
good roads, good school houses; and al
in door and out door life is on the sam,
dead level. The people lack in intelli
gence and in intellectual tastes. The,
are not readers of books or papers
Families, male and female, grow III
7 without the refinements. praces amani