The progressive farmer and the cotton plant., 1905-01-24

and city ideals--books In which the beauties and
wonders of agriculture and nature study found
no place. The city allured the more ambitious
pupils; the others turned blindly and stolidly to
tasks whose deeper meaning was never to be re-
vealed to them. Ancient and costly farming meth
DDS remained unchanged, for the Man With the
Hoe" was content with the ways of the fathers.
Four or five days in each year, this farmer helped
to fill up the larger ruts in the roads, but there
was no permanent highway improvement. Sea-
son after season bad roads kept him from profta-
BILE trips to market; times Vulnerable they kept
his isolated family from needed visits to friends
and relatives. Once a week, possibly twice, some
one went to the little crossroads postofice to get
the letters and papers-if perchance there should
be any; these trips were not regular or frequent,
because each one meant the loss of half a day
from work. With such slow and costly system,
that the farmer wrote few letters and took few
papers is not surprising. Then, too, if he wished
to summon a doctor, speak to a %neighbor, or order
from his merchant, a slow horseback trip over
bad roads was the only available means of COM
nrunication; the rural telephone was not dreamed
of. But the tragedy of this mans life was that
he was a drudge, a mechanical "slave to the wheel
of labor" He was blind to the beauty of rural
life and ignorant of the wonderful natural forces
with which he had to deal.
How different the progressive farmer of to-day!
Five months in each year his children go to
school, and the teaching has given them a new
interest in their environment and IN their daily
work. The old one-room schooEhouse has given
way to an attractive modern structure. Instead
of an occasional book bought from the itinerant
agent or borrowed from a neighbor, the school
library puts the choicest of literary treasures at
the disposal of the whole family. The old quilted
highway is gone and a well-graded road sweeps
by the farmers house. Instead of the weekly
PAPER and the occasional letter brought from the
old postofice, the rural mail-carrier brings a city
daily each morning, and letters and magazines in
refreshing abundance. To confer with a neighbor
no longer means a ride of an hour or two; one or
two minutes at the telephone sufices. Other ad-
vantages have followed. With better school meth
DDS have come more regular attendance and more
enthusiastic pupils; better roads and increased
travel have developed a new pride in the appear
ance of grounds and buildings; with better mail
facilities there is more thought as to the quality
Of the periodical literature. And on this mans
farm there is no d~rudgery. knowledge has en-
nobled every task, and to him "every common
bush is afre with God" His are the advantages
of both town and country. Pan still pipes by the
riverside, while the ring OF the telephone and the
distant shrek of the locomotive mingle with the
music of his flute.
Do not understand me to say that the new
farmer here portrayed is as yet the typical ru-
ralist. He is not, by any means. The old-time
farmer is yet many times as numerous. But the
future is with the new farmer. The modern
leaven will yet leaven the whole lump.
And this renascence of agriculture, as l init
mated at the outset, is not a matter of Indifference
to any class of our people. All sorts and condi-
tions of men have suffered because the titanic