The Goodland republic. [volume] (Goodland, Kan.) 1891-1907, 1896-02-07
TIE rhRMERls PROFESSION


The time has come when the word
profession as applied to the farmers
business means something. The old
saying that ANY fool can be a farmer"
|. is true in the same sense that any fool
can be a banker, lawyer or merchant,
but there is, also, a great and increas-
ing force Of truth in the modern maxim
that "a fool cannot be a good farmer"
Any fool can be a lawyer, and fair
percentage Of the idiots that cumber
The earth have undoubtedly reached
out in that direction, but the close,
hard work Of the profession requires a
well-trained brain in a sound body.
The lawyer destitute Of energy or sense
goes to the wall and is laid to financial
rest in the same last ditch with the in
competent farmer, merchant OF mech
anic and the same blanket Of debt
covers their unfortunate remains.
Farms are no more properly asylums
for human failures than law offices,
dissecting rooms, or the thronged halls
Of commerce and trade. Farming has
become an occupation for brains as
we'll as muscle. Inventive genius has
turned the business bottom upwardand
inside out during the last fifty years.
The true philosophic spirit which first
saw day in Lord Bacon is turning a
food of light upon every principle and
detail Of the farmers vocation from
the process of plant life to the killing
Of potato bugs. That spirit Of inquiry,
Of research, of painstaking inyestiga-
ton is constantly at work undermining
and blowing up popular humbugs, lay
ing firmly and deeply in right reason
and sound sense the foundation of az
riculturaI science, and running leads
in every direction for the golden grains
Of truth that may enrich and beautify
the farmers profession.
For farming is a profession. 1t was
not in the middle ages when tillers of
the soil were looked upon as human
yermin and Christendom applauded
ignorance and knightIy butchery; it is
not to-day in Egypt, where a forked
stick serves as a pillow and where it is
almost an act of treason to have a new
idea.
Butin this country where intelligent
labor is honored, and where labora-
tories and colleges and experiment
stations and newspapers and the active
brains Of the farmers themselves are
constantly moving the business to a
higher and broader plane it is pro
lession of such Importance and such
possibilities that no man should take
its name lightly. It requires health,
energy, knowledge, sense and grit to be
q good farmer.
A business like farming, which gives
play to taste, fancy, invention, origin
atty in thinking and working, can
safely be called a profession. The man
who pounds stone upon the highway
has no profession. There is nothing
in the business to call into play his
mental powers, and but few of his phy-
steal. The workers in the mills and
factories of the country move in the
deepest and narrowest ruts of mechani-
cal monotony. Numberless farmers
drifting around in the backwaters of
by-gone practices have no profession,
but the active, progressive, thinking
man who finds in the accumulated
knowledge Of agriculture food for his
memory, and in the changing seasons
and fuctuating markets, the ups and
downs Of the commercial barometer,
subjects for his reason, and in the I'M
explored mysteries Of the soil subjects
for enthusiastic research, has a profes-
sion for which no abilities are too great
and no mental culture can be too
thorough. The farmers profession has
the Same inherent nobility that any
other respectable occupation has and
no more. Honest labor in any calling,
whether in making shoes, selling calico,
editing newspapers, preaching the Cos
pei, counting a girl, driving mules or
splitting rails has the same stamp of
! divine oDDrOval