The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1889-08-30
THE Farm.
Farmers, Gardners, Horticuiturists,
Dairy and Stockmen are requested to
Write for this Department.
Home Day at Chautauqua.

great summer school was spent by the
farmers.
1t was Grange Day, August I'd, on
the programme. But Chautauqua is a
prism which reflects each day many
widely-varying phases of life, and this
day each one of its many angles had in
it fash Of home-iight.
At eight o'clock in the morning Mrs.
Emily Huntington Miller presided
oyer the Woman's Club in the Hall of
Philosophy, the theme far consideration
being "Woman as Wage-Winner."
The wages of woman and her ability as
worker touches the happiness of more
homes than most people imagine.
At nine o'clock Mrs. Fanny Barnes
gathered the young lalies, and a good
many whose heads were beginning ro
show silver frosts, in the same airy
open room and told them in an earnest
but unaffected way about what young
woman should do to keep the great
blight of iutemperance from falling
upon her own home and the homes also
of others.
At eleven o'clock the platform of the
great amphitheatre had been transform.
ed into bower of beauty with it smass.
cs of tempting fruit, and bowls of old
fashioned flowers, gorgeous dahlias and
sweet peas. The audience room from
pit to outmost seat overlooked with
people, whose substantial lunch baskets
and broad, blue, gold fringed badges
showed that they were Changers.
Changers, indeed, but without any
hayseed in their hair, and with thought.
full, intelligent faces which showed
them to be the peers Of any equal mum.
Der Of men and women who had ever
met in that immense auditorium. From
fist to last the great audience gave
marked and sympathetic attention.
Mr.. Whitehead, the National Grange
Lecturer, is farmer, but his crisp,
ringing sentences, his strong way Of
putting facts, figures and arguments
where they would do most good, show,
that he had reaped as effectively from
the fields of thought as from his own
acres.
One of Mr.. Whitehead's most telling
illustrations of the truth that if farmers
would make themselves respected, il
they would secure their just rights and
exercise their legitimate influence in
social and political matters they must
combine. was the route step of military
life. In the war of the rebellion, when
divisions of troops were to be thrown
over rivers on pontoon bridges, the
command was given to take the route
step-that is, each soldier was to march
by himself. The solid tramp of the
column would have shaken the bridge
apart, but when it was broken into
thousands OF separate steps the structure
was not at all injured. So when the
great Brooklyn bridge was opened, the
military bodies again received the order
to take the route-step in crossing it.
That wonderful structure, though cost.
ing Sl4, 100000 and three years of toll,
was not to be exposed to the pressure
of SO many feet coming squarely down
together upon its surface, but scattered
and without concert of action no num-
Der of feet could do it harm.
The farmer, Mr.. Whitehead said, had
been taking the route-step for long
time, each man marching in his own
mental line and around his own farm.
Because farmers had been taking this
route,step from ''time immenorial,"
politicians had wheedled them into act.
ing directly contrary to their best in
terests, dishonest schemers had used
them as tools for questionable ends,
and professional men had admired their
Drawn and despised their brains.
Slowly the trouble had dawned upon
farmers. They are abandoning the
route-step and taking to the march, de.
termined to make themselves respected
as the owners of most of the land in the
United States, as very large proper
ton of producers and voters of the
country, and as intelligent citizens.
When, through the Grange, they had
made their drill perfect, the strong
united tramp, tramp, tramp of farmer
citizens would be heard along all the
highways of the Nation, aud the cor
rupt politician and the shyster would
shrink back abashed into their native
darkness, while the professional man
would take off his hat in genuine adj