The Red Cloud chief., 1896-01-17
The Farmers Profession.

profession as applied to the farmers
business means something. The old
saying that ANY fool can be a farmer
Is true, but there Is a great and Ia
creasing force of truth in the modern
maxim that "a fool cannot be a good
farmer" ANY fool can be a lawy,l,
and a large percentage of the idiots
that cumber the earth have undoubteG-
ly reached out in that direction, but
the close, hard work of the profession
requires a well trained brain in u
sound body. The lawyer destitute OF
energy or sense goes 10 the wall and
is laid to a financial rest in the same
last ditch with the incompetent farm
er and the same blanket of debt covers
their unfortunate remains. Farms
are no more properly asylums for hi
man failures than law offices, diss"ct-
ing rooms. or the thronged halls OF
commerce and trade. Farming has be
come an occupation for brains as well
as muscle. Inventive genius has
turned the business bottom upward and
inside out during the last fifty years.
The true philosophic spirit which tlrs'
saw day in Lord Bacon is turning u
Hood Of light upon every principle II
detail Of the farmers vocation from
the processes of plant life to the kill
ing of potato bugs. That spirit of in
quiry, of research, of painstaking in
V~estigatiOn IL constantly at work, un-
dermining and blowing up popular
humbugs. laying firmly and deeply III
right reason and sound sense the touG-
dations of agricultural science, aai
running leads in every direction tor
the golden grains of truth that may
enrich and beaut.ify the farmers pro-
fession. For farming is a professor.
IL was not In the middle ages whCn
ullers OF the soil were looked Upon
as human vermin and c~hristendom ap-
plauded ignorance and knightly butch
cry; II Is not to-day in Mexico, wherp a
lorked stick serves as a plow and where
IL Is almost n sin against the Holy
Ghost TO have a now idea. But in his
country. where intelligent labor IS
honorcd, and where laboratories ana
colleges and experiment stations ana
newspapers and the active brains of the
armers themselves are constantly
moving the business to a higher and
broader plan it Is a profession OF such
Importance and such possibilities that
no man should take its name lightly.
IL requires health. energy, knowledge.
sense and grit to be a good farmer.
l do not believe that u natural taste Tor
the business Is absolutely necessary for
the successful farmer. \ man can be
a good minister, or book agent, or poll
tician, or woman's rights man even IL
he doesn't like 1t. There may be IA lit
tie waste of talent, perhaps, in the
clash of sentiment. but grit can ill
that zap II the man succeed. Poets
may be born to their inheritance OF
imagery and song, but the farmer who
Is born into the requirements of his
business is as scarce as angels among
the business men of Chicago. A bust
ness like farming. which gives play TO
taste, fancy. invention, originality in
thinking ard working. can safely be
called a profession. The man who
pounds stone upon the highway has
no profession. There Is nothing III the
business to call into play his mental
powers. and but few of his physical.
The workers in the mills and factories
the country nov IN the deepest
and narrowest ruts of mechanical mo-
notony. Numbcrlcss farmers drifting
around In the backwaters of by-gone
practices and ideas have no profession.
but the active, progressive, thinking
man who finds in the accumulated
of agriculture food for his
memory, and in the changing seasons
and ~ilnCtuating markets. the ups and
downs of the commercial barometer,
subjects for his reason, and in the I'M
mysteries of the soil subjects
for enthusiastic research. has Il pro-
for which no abilities are too
great, and nc mental culture can be
90 thorough. The farmers profession
las the same inherent nobility that any
other respectable occupation has and
whether in making shoes, selling cali
20, editing newspapers, preaching the
counting a girl, driving mules,
Dr. running a great railroad corpora
ion has the same stamp of divine ap-
)roval.-H. G. Adams.
Cork Trees in Georgia-A Georgia
correspondent Of the Galveston News
avs: About thirty-five years ago sew
raj young cork trees were sent here by
he government and set ont to test
adaptabillty to this climate. Three
II four are yet living, but the largest
me is in the front yard of the jack
on house, being two feet or more in
diameter. Last week it was stripped Of
Is bark round the trunk under the
Of Colonel Richard l.. Warth-
n who manifests great interest In trees
4 all varieties, and samples of the
ork will be forwarded to the agri-
department at Washington n
, tho Atlanta nvnp.itinn m. 1T