Southern standard. (McMinnville, Tenn.) 1879-current, 1884-06-28
Esprit of the Farm.l
Diversified Farming Adapted to the
Best Interests of Tennessee.

peSI 1uteIeSCS OI IeuueSSee.
Address by Joel B. Fort, of Robertson
County, to the Live Stock, Dairymen's,
and Farmers Association, at Nashville,
May IA, 1884,
Mr.. Chairman, and Gentlemen Of the AssO.
citation.
The subject assigned me, you are
well aware, embraces a wide range of
thought. A State situated as is ours,
in the most temperate part of the
globe, covered with a soil adapted to
the growth of almost every variety of
grain, grass, and vegetables; coursed
by the most magnificent rivers and
beautiful purling streams; rich in all
manner of minerals and metals, and
furnishing greater diversity of soil
and climate than any other State of its
size, finds in this subject field as broad
as the latitude of agricultural thought,
and as deep as the tomb of buried
ages, crystalized into the wealth of
mineral gems. / make the assertion
boldly, and without the fear of cavil,
that totally isolated from the rest Of the
world, the boundary lines of Tennes-
see furnish the habitation for a people,
who, by industry, could become an
ideal race of civilized, progressive men,
possessing all the conveniences and
comforts of life. When this is said OF
a country, what more could be added
Complete in natural resources, it is a
little world within itself, and demands
of those who possess it to diversity
their pursuits and products proportion
ate with its variety of soil and climate,
While all other callings have their
peculiar merit and are a necessity, that
of agriculture must hold the first rank,
not from its antiquity, not from its gift
to man by the hand of Divinity, but
by priority of claim and public neces.
sity. No country has ever attained a
prominence in civilization without an
advanced state of the agricultural art.
All other occupations depend upon
this one industry for a livelihood, and
rejoice at bountiful harvest yet,
with all these facts before him, the
farmer has never been made to realize
his lordly situation has never had the
hardihood to rise in his own might anG
assert the rights and maintain the pc
sition which is justly due him as tillel
of the soil. In England and most o.
the old countries he is but serf, q
slave-but in our country of equality
he is lord of all he surveys, if he bu
wills it, and honestly possesses it. Free
from all the injustice of land tenure
our State, with all its diversity of sol
and climate, with a diversified agri.
culture, opens up grand field of hop'
for its future, l speak not for indivi
dual interest, not for sectional interests
but for the interest Of the great Stat
of Tennessee, and claim that, under ;
system of diversified farming, sh,
must take the lead of all her siste
States. 1t is but short.sighted poll
ey to encourage one department of on
agricultural interests and suffer al
others to wane and decay. Let on
crop engross, as it too often does, tn
attention of all, and with easy ant
quick transportion the surplus is carried
from us and another brought in re
turn from a State no more adapted t
its growth than ours; and yet it is tn
untutored bent of the human mind t
follow the popular breeze till the over
production of one crop makes droutI
in another. Why should the farme
go heedlessly on in the production O
corn, wheat, tobacco, and cotton, Will
the over-production reduces them to
point near their cost, and at the sam
time buy from other places that whicI
could be easily and profitably raised a
home? 1t is a fact that requires n
argument, that in State situated a
is ours, diversity of crops is absc
lutely necessary to the prosperity o
the State as whole. The Western
States, whose outstretched plains la
out as far as the eye can see; acros
whose bosom the latest improved ma
chinery for sowing and harvesting ca
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