Oxford Democrat. [volume] (Paris, Me.) 1833-1933, 1909-08-17
Farms Are Not In Danger.

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People who become farmers usually
are those who like farming, just as in
every other calling in life. ALI the sons
of a farmer cannot be expected to become
farmers, any more than all the sons Of a
lawyer OF q mechanic or any kind shall
become lawyers or mechanics.
Personal choice has a good deal to do
with occupation, although it is true that
environment plays an important part. Ii
happens frequently that good lawyers or
clergymen or doctors or mechanicians
are lost in poor farmers, and good farm
ers are lost in poor lawyers or doctors or
clergymen or mechanicians.
Farming is a calling in which natural
aptitude counts for good deal, and a
man who engages in agriculture without
being.
1t is true, of course, that many young
men who might have made excellent
farmers have been swallowed up in large
cities, and have failed to realize any kind
of ambition; but this is not nearly so
often the case as it was few decades
ago.
When a farmers life meant issolation
and unrelieved drudgeyy, the glawor of
the city had an intense fascination for
the growing boy or girl whose romantic
nature was stirred by the bright pictures
of the rewards that awaited ambitious
youth in the crowded markets of trade.
That isolation has almost wholly dis
appeared, and the farmer in the country
today is in touch with the business man
in the city through the telegraph, the
telephone, the newspaper, the rural free
delivery, the railroad, the trolley car and
all those agencies that have brought the
country and the city so close together.
Improved methods of farming have
abolished great deal Of the drudgery
that formerly was the enevitable lot of
the tiller of the soil, and the up-to-date
agriculturist is a business man in every
sense of the word.
The grange has helped great deal to
bring all ends and corners of the rural
population into close central touch, and
50 multiply and deepen the social inter
ests of the farmers family.
So close have the country and the city
come to each other that no member of
the farmers family has any right to have
any delusions about the prizes OF great
value that may be picked up by any
stranger in the city streets. In the city
as well as the country it is generally un-
derstood now that hard work alone will
win the rewards of life.
The well-to-do farmer must know that
he enjoys many advantages over the
man of equal station in the city,
even if none but the physical advantages
of life in the country be considered. His
children are certain of fresh air and pure
food and the health and strength that
nearness to nature brings.
The exodus from the farms has pretty
well ceased, and there is to be noted a
disposition on the part of city people to
return to the country. Agriculture
promises to be more remunerative than
ever, and garden products especially will
continue to increase in value to render
the farmers efforts more profitable than
they have ever been.
| believe that in the natural order OF
things the farms will be populated to the
desirable degree, aud the complaint OF
the abandonment of the farms by the
rising generation will cease to have any
force.-J. Lewis Ellsworth, in Boston
Globe.