Norwich bulletin., 1909-10-09
A FARMERS TALK TO FARMERS
Why Farmers Do Not Get On-Ignorance of Science of Agriculture and Lack of Skill the Cause.-The Reck- less Ways of the Middle Class-CarefuI Farming Gives Good Returns.

| CWritten Specially for The Bulletin.) I once used to wonder why so many farmers didn't "get on;' why they were l always hard up; why they had to live so poorly and haveAso few of the extra comforts of life.
 Now that I've had about twenty years to study them as neighbors and co-workers, close at hand, I've lost that wonder. What astonishes me now is that more of them dcn't bring up ill the penthouse. That they dont-that they manage to get along from winter to winter-that they keep from actual need, is, in the case of some of them, due rather to the mercy of Providence than to their own deserts.
 Of course, there are farmers and farmers-just as there are bankers and bankers. Some are good and some are bad and some are indifferent. And, seems to me, the indifferent lot is the least use of all, whether in a money bank or on a sand-bank. We are go- ing to assume that you and I are in the first class; we're going to ignore the third class; we're going to make a few feeble remarks about the second class, which we can pick out from among our fellow farmers according to cur own judgment.
 Ignorance of the science of asricul- ture and lack. of skill in the art of farming are prolific causes of farmers failures. Please note the great differ ence between the science of agricul- ture" and the 'art of farming" Science is knowledge; art is knowledge applied to practical use. You may know the last letter in agricultural science and yet not be able to raise good corn be- cause you are not skilled in the prac- tical art of corn growing. Don't get the absurd idea that science means just astronomy and electricity and a few such things. The man who knows how and why his corn grows, how and what it feeds on, how it breathes, what the roots do and what the rootlets do, what the leaves are for and how they work, the meaning of the tassels and the mystery of the "silks'-that man possesses science as honorable and as valuable as he who knows the dis tance of Orion or the weight of Polaris. Likewise avoid the silly notion that art has solely to do with painting pie lures or carving marbles. Those things are but phases of art. The man who has taken an abandoned swamp and bv drainage and cultivation and fer tilicatiun and careful skill made it produce f, cd enough for the seasons SupP1y tL d NllldSe udS NOn d LIluInpH in the application of knowledge which is art.
 Lots of us farmers are not scientific. We dent know and we don't want to knoW-at least not enough to take the trouble to find out. (Let it be said in rasstng that those who know the least are usually the most contemptibly self conce.ted about the things they don't ki3W.I Lots of us, too, arc unskilfuI in applying our knowledge-lack the art Of usiIe to best advantage what we know. But there's always hope for an igE0I ant man who really wants to learn, ard the awkward workman who sincerely strives to attain skill will always succeed in some measure. I once knew a mighty good ball player wto was called "Butterfingers' to the day O. lbs death because, when he be- gan to try to play ball, that phrase ac- cUTa5ely described his clumsy inept- ness a; ball and bal. His art came by practice sDd perseverance.