Decorah public opinion. (Decorah, Winneshiek County [Iowa]) 1895-1928, 1896-01-14
The Farmers Profession.

profession as applied to the farmers
business means something. The old
SAYING that "any fool can be farmer"
is true, but there is great and in
creasing force of truth in the modern
maxim that "a fool cannot be a good
farmer" Any fool can be a Law ser,
and large percentage of the idiots
that cumber the earth have undoubted-
ly reached out in that direction, but
requires well trained brain in
sound body. The lawyer destitute OF
energy or sense goes to 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 hui
man failures than law Offices, dissect-
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 first
saw day in Lord Bacon is turning
flood of light upon. every principle and
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
vestigation is constantly at work, un-
dermining and blowing up popular
humbugs, laying firmly and deeply in
right reason and sound sense the foun-
dations of agricultural science, and
running leads in every direction for
the golden grains of truth that may
enrich and beautify the farmers pro-
fessiOn. For farming is a profession.
1t was not in the middle ages when
tillers of the soil were looked upon
as human vermin and christendom APP
plauded ignorance and knightly butch
cry; it is not to-day in Mexico, where
forked stick serves as pillow and where
it 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
newspapers and the active brains of the
farmers themselves are constantly
moving the business to higher and
broader plan it is profession of such
Importance and such possibilities that
no man should take its name lightly.
1t requires health, energy, knowledge,
sense and grit to be good farmer.
do not believe that a natural taste for
the business is absolutely necessary for
the successful farmer. A man can be
good minister, or book agent, or poll
tician, or woman's rights man even Il
he doesn't like it. There may be lit
tie waste of talent, perhaps, in the
clash Of sentiment, but grit can nil
that gap and the man succeed. Poets
may be born to their inheritance or
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 BUSH
ness like farming, which gives play 20
taste, fancy, invention, originality 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 physical.
The workers in the mills and factories
of the country move IN the deepest
and narrowest ruts of mechanical mo-
notony. Numberless farmers drifting
around in the backwaters of by-gone
nr,ct;ooS apd ;daaS haya M profeSSiQn
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 pro-
fession 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 CALI
co, editing newspapers, preaching the
gospel, counting girl, 1rlVlng mules,
or running great railroad corpora
ton has the same stamp Of divine APP
proval--H. G. Adams.
Cork Trees in Georgia-A Georgia
correspondent Of the Galveston News
says About thirty-five years ago sew
eral young cork trees were sent here by
the government and set out to test
their adaptability to this climate. Three
OF four are yet living, but the largest
one is in the front yard Of the jack
son house, being two feet or more In
diameter. Last week it was stripped OF
its bark around the trunk under the
direction of Colonel Richard l.. Warth-
en,who manifests great interest in trees
Uf all varieties, and samples of the
cork will be forwarded to the agri-
cultural department at Washington aa.t
70 the Atlanta exposition. The bark, or
cork, is two and half inches thick.
and is good material. Colonel Warth-
en-. who has studied the matter closely,
Is confiden. that this is the first tree
that cork has ever been taken from in