The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-12-20

started out and pursue our courses along more conservative lines.
 This is an opportune time to again call the attention of our readers to the farms and to the fact that farmers of this age are offering young men better opportunity than they ever had before. The farm is not only most profitable place, but 1t is the safest place at such a time as this, and can be made the most pleasant place wher we may if we will have great many comforts and luxuries of life, as well as in the cities.
 While great many other industries or professions may be very advanced, yet agriculture in this country is yet in its infancy. But I would not have the read CT conclude that the inexperienced man who has never had any training in agri- culture could go out and succeed at farming. Things are changing along this line for the farmer of today who makes the success of his calling, that he must be educated to know something along agricultural lines. There will be great amount to be learned by the man who leaves some profession in the city or the laborer who has been in some factory all of his life, before they will be able to succeed at farming. Such men should commence farm life on a small scale and work up in the business as their means and experience will allow them. They will have this advantage over many of us who engaged in farming 40 years ago, they will be surrounded with men of experience and can find in almost every neighborhood some one farmer or more who have so well conducted thelr farm operations that they are making a success of everything on their farms These men will help a new beginner. Besides this, there are many other agen- cies or sources from which the beginner of today can obtain information. we have our agricultural papers in all sec tions, we also have many of the most successful farmers who are giving their experiences through bulletins covering all most every phase of agriculture and this information Is within the reach or all and can be had simply for the asking. While 1t is to be hoped that this financial condition may turn out all right in the end that 1t will serve to help solve the labor problem that it may cause us to know more of the value of money, ana that 1t may assist in pl.-cing our agricul- tural conditions on a higher plane yet at the same time let us hope that our agriculture will not need to be built up through the detriment of any other pro fession or industry, but that Ill of these may be placed upon a firmer foofing. While the farmer may be the most inde- pendent of all. yet his prosperity in de- gree is measured by the general pros perity of all these other interests, and the conditions of the country at large The more prosperity that our laboring people have and the more wages they receive the better able they will be to purchase the products of the farm. So that it would not be at all desirable to see any one business built up at the expense of some other industry. But we do believe that too great per cent of labor has been taken from the farms and has been given employment in other places and that for us to have the national prosperity that we ought to have, that more of the laboring class or people must return to the farms.