The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1902-09-16
CURRENT EVENTS THE DRIFT OF THINGS AS
WE j. IT.

We began this department last week with q
lword of comment on"the dearth of news for sever
al weeks past" Nevertheless the world has doubt
less been going forward about as rapidly as ever
during this season of comparative quiet, perhaps
more rapidly-certainly so if we are to accept the
view which Carlyle sets forth in the earlier pages
of his "French Revolution" Because the subject
is we'll worthy of thought we have copied the
grabbed old philosophers opinion, and present it
herewith:
TT oak grows silently, in the forest, a thou
sand years; only in the thousandth year, when
the woodman arrives with his axe, is there heard
an echoing through the solitudes; and the oak
announces itself when, with far-sonding crash, 1t
falls. [But] n n when our oak lowered, or
put on it's leaves Cits glad Events), what shout of
proclamation could there be? Hardly from the
most observant a word of recognition. These
things befel not, they were slowly done; not in an
hour but through the fight of days: what was to
be said of it? This hour seemed wholly as the last
was, as the next would be. It is thus everywhere
that foolish Rumor babbles not of what was done,
but of what was miSdone or undone, and foolish
History (ever, more or less, the written eptiomiz-
ed synopsis of Rumor) knows so little that were
not as well unknown"
And so our author goes on to say that while
history treats so nearly exclusively of battles and
inVasions and crusades, ("mere sin and misery;
not work but hindrance of work"), the world has
been carried forward and made glorious not by
these noisy and sensational actions, but by Ma
lures kind harvests, and by "the hand of the
craftsman and the mind of the thinker"
Mr.. Carlyle's view is not entirely correct; the
good, as well as the bad, at times speaks in thun-
der tones, and History hearing, takes note of a
Declaration of independence, of a Magma Char
ia wrung from King John, or of an Emancipation
Proclamation freeing millions of slaves. But it
is true that the larger part of the worlds progress
is made gradually and quietly, by steady growth
like that by which the oak clothes itself in green,
bears its acOrns, and grows to be the giant of the
forest. And the real news of the world, if we are
only watchful and far-seeing enough to under
stand the things before us, is not of the lashing
and foaming and eddying of the surface, but of
the deeper and less noisy current that is guiding
all and carrying humanity onward. So it is that
this department is to deal not so much with iso-
lated bits of news, considered separately, as with
the general trend of thought-"the Drift of
Things" The reader, of course, will not always
agree with us in what we shall say, and sometimes
ne will be right and we wrong. But this liability
to error is the common misfortune of all men,
and no man has a right to keep silent when he
1eels that he ought to speak, or to fold his hands
when ne feels that he ought to work, simply be-
cause Providence didn't see fit to make him infal-
hble. 1t is ours only to speak the truth and de-
lend the right as God gives us to see the truth
and the right.
A rather lengthy foreword is this, but as it is
our purpose to make this a regular department
OF The Progressive Farmer, it is perhaps worth
while Tor the writer and the reader to confer to-
gether at the outset as to the object in view.
X X
ONE FORWARD MOVEMENT.A fact Of