Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1890-02-06

be, l believe it to be much more impor-
tant that every farm own good farmer.
4 good farmer will make thrifty living
and life a success on even poor farm,
while poor farmer will make but Scant
living and life itself failure on a very
good farm. So that my first ideal of the
farm is, that every farm shall own good
farmer. And now how shall this most
desirable result be attained?
| answer by saying that as a first step
we farmers must get rid of the erroneous
notion that the farm is no place for brains:
that higher education is altogether mis-
spent and wasted on the boy who expects
to follow the plow, or the girl who ex
poets to be his wife: that. like putting
new wine in old bottles, it is dangerous,
that the district school is good enough
for the farmer, and when he gets beyond
that he is such genius that nothing short
of a profession will do. There are too
many tirSt-rate farmers being spoiled to
make second and third rate preachers and
lawyers. Where is the vocation In life
that affords a broader or more honorable
field for applied knowledge than the farm !?
You cannot be ignorant of the wonder
full extent to which nearly all the arts
and sciences enter into intelligent, pay
ing and progressive farming The Sc
lecting, grading and raising his tiockS
and herds; the cultivating and improving
of his various soils; the economic adap-
tation of crops and their harvesting and
marketing; the making and beautifying
of home and surrounding 1t with the
comforts and elegancies of civilized life;
the education and training of his chill
dren, besides the thousand other demands
of hearth and field. Do not these afford
the farmer ample scope for supplying all
the knowledge that can be attained by a
higher education? But how can the best
results of farm-life be wrought out by
other than trained and intelligent farm
ers, any more than you would expect the
best results of the pulpit or bar or of
medicine from other than trained and IN
.telligent members of those VOcatlOnS !?
Success in this world is seldom if ever
accidental. And here let me remind you
that the best results of farm-llfe are not
to be measured altogether by dollars and
cents, or fiocks and herds. There is the
fire-side and the family, children with
hearts, hopes and a future; parents with
gray hairs and declining years; life was
not intended to be all blood and bones,
er life worth living here, there is future
beyond the grave. These things admitted,
it necessarily follows that higher educa
tiOn is necessary factor to produce the
best results of farm-life, and an essential
qualification of the ideal farmer.
Another step towards the realization
of our ideal, is to keep the farm abreast
of the times, that is abreast of the city,
the railroad, the telegraph and printing
press abreast with the intelligence and
invention of the day. In some respects
it is already, and in some it is not. In
scientific labor-saving machinery 1t is
well up with the times. Many of the
proudest achievements of modern inYen-
tion are to be found to-day performing
labor of the needle, the sickle, the scythe
and the fail. We are justly proud of
our sewing-machines, washing machines
and Swing-churnS; of our mowers, har-
vesters and threshers. And yet notwith
standing all this machinery, how little is
the progress we have made on the farm
in the actual saving of labor: for do not
farmers and their wives toll as many
hours and equally as hard as did their
ancestors, who stitched with the needle,
moved with the scythe and threshed
with the fail? How are we to account
for this? Does all our labOr-Saving ma
chinery after all save us no labor? 1t
certainly has a better effect elsewhere.
We are told that single shoe factory of
Boston contains machinery that performs
the work of thirty thousand ShOe-makerS,
and that as a consequence, the shoe
makers of Boston now work from eight
to ten hours day for about ten months
in the year, while the old time shOemak-
ers pegged away from twelve to eighteen
hours day all the year round. In al
most every other trade and vocation than
farming eight to ten hours is a days work,
and besides they have (what would be a
great novelty on the FARM a vacation
once ayear. Who ever heard of a farmer
or farmers wife regularly taking va
cation once year-going to the seashOre
OF White Mountains during the heated
season. Now there have been great
many nice things said shout the dignity,
the honor and the nobility of labor; but
there is a limit at which even labor
ceases to be a virtue-when the head
aches and the bones ache and the heart
aches from over work, it is neither dig
nified nor noble; the nobility of it is gone;
it is sin. Now over-work must some
how be eliminated from our ideal for the
future of the farm. Why is it that all
our labor saving machinery has got rid
of so little of it? In the first place while
we have been keeping abreast of the
times our expenses have increased. We
live differently from what We formerly
did. We have more of the conveniencieS
and luxuries of civilization about us.
We have more newspapers and maya
zines in the sitting-room, more patents
on the farm and more bills at the store
The plain old spinning wheel and homely
loom, once so common in the cabin, have
given place to the sewing machine and
piano. And while would by no means
condemn these, and the legien of other
similar changes, which we, of the passing
generation, have witnessed on the farm,
| see in their train one of the reasons why
labor has rather increased than decreased
on the farm.
But while the farm is so well up with
the times in machinery, it is not so in
everything. For instance, our cities have
public libraries and reading g-rOoms, insti
tutes, lecture halls, and museums; and
better than all else they have high schools
equal to colleges kept up by the tax
payer for the higher education of the
youoH VI ullC Cley. Due Couu1ly CllliuiCl
have not these advantages-the district
school, with its meagerly paid and very
meagerly qualified teacher for a few
months in the year, is good enough for
the farmers children. Would it not be
cheaper for us to keep up frst-class dis
trict school-a country high school for
that matter-with a competent teacher,
and good library like the tax payers in
cities keep up, then to send our children
off to college to learn what is taught in
the ordinary high school? Something of
the kind is necessary in order for us to
realize our first ideal-a good farmer for
every farm.
My second ideal for the future of the
wife. Certainly good wife is a great
blessing in this lonesome world, whether