Savannah courier. (Savannah, Tenn.) 1885-1979, 1896-02-20
FARMER AND PLANTER.
THE FARMERS PROFESSION.

sAny Fool Can be . Farmer" but "a Fool
Can not be n Good Farmer"
The time has come when the word
profession, as applied to the farmers
business, means something. The old
saying, that ''any fool can be farm
err" is true, but there is great and in
creasing force Of truth in the modern
maxim that "a fool can not be good
farmer Any fool can be lawyer,
and large percentage of the idiots
that cumber the earth have undouht-
edly reached out in that direction, but
the close, hard work Of the professions
requires a well-trained brain in
sound body. The lawyer destitute
of energy or sense goes to the wall
and is laid to financial rest in the
fame last ditch with the incom-
petent farmer, and the same blan-
ket of debt covers their unfortu-
nate 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 occu-
patton for brains as well as muscle.
Inventive genius has turned the busi-
ness bottom inward and inside out
during the last so years. The true
philosophic spirit which first saw day
In Lord Bacon is turning a flood of
light upon every principle and detail
OF the farmers vocation, from the proc
esses of plant life to the killing of po-
tato bugs. That spirit of inquiry, of
research, of painstaking investigation
is constantly at work, undermining
and blowing up popular humbugs, lay
ing firmly and deeply in right reason
and sound sense the foundations of
agricultural science, and running
leads in every direction for the
golden grains of truth that may enrich
and beautify the farmers profession.
For farming is profession. 1t was
not in the middle ages when tillers of
the soil were looked upon as human
vermin and christendom applauded
ignorance and knightly butchery; it is
not to-day in Mexico, where forked
stick serves as a plow and where 1t is
almost sin against the Holy Ghost to
have new idea. But in this country,
where intelligent labor is honored,
and where laboratories and colleges
and experiment stations and newspa-
pers and the active brains of the farm
ers' themselves are constantly moving
the business to a higher and broader
plan 1t is profession of such possibili-
ties that no man should take its name
lightly. 1t requires health, energy,
knowledge, sense and grit to be good
farmer. do not believe that natural
taste for business is absolutely nee
essary for the successful farmer A
man can be a good minister, or book
agent, or politician, or woman's rights
man, even If he doesn't like it. There
may be little waste of talent, per.
haps, in the clash of sentiment, but
grit can fill that gap and the man sue
ceed. Poets may be born to their in
heritance of imagery and song, but the
farmer who is born into the require
ments of his business is as scarce as
angels among the business men of Chi
cago. A business like farming, which
gives play to taste, fancy, invention
originality in thinking and working
can safely be called profession. The
man who pounds stones upon the high
way has no profession. There is moth
ing in the business to call into play
his mental powers, and but few o
his physical. The workers in tn,
mills and factories of the coun
try move in the deepest and mar
rowest ruts of mechanical monotony
Numberless farmers drifting around il
the backwaters of by-gone practice
and ideas have no profession, but tn
active, progressive, thinking man, VIII,
finds in the accumulated knowledge O
agriculture food for his memory, an,
in the changing seasons and fuctuat
ing markets, the ups and downs of tn
commercial barometer, subjects for hi
reason, and in the unexplored myser
les of the soil subjects for enthusiast
research, has profession for which n
abilities are too great, and no menta
culture can be too thorough. Tn
farmers profession has the same in
herent nobility that any other respect
able occupation has and no more
Honest labor in any calling, whethe
: in making shoes, selling calico, edith
newspapers, preaching the gospe
! counting girl, driving mules, or rur
ming great railroad corporation ha
l the same stamp of Divine approval