Evening capital and Maryland gazette. (Annapolis, Md.) 1910-1922, 1910-07-23
FARMERS DO GOOD WORK
Governor CrOthers' Idea May
Lead To Excellent Results
FARMING is NOT DRUDGERY
As A. Business II Produces Beneficial
Financial Results Citizen Farmers
Opinion OF La Plata Meeting

OPthiOh w Ia hdAd ftNSbh6
Among the thirty and more Anne
Arundel county farmers who attended
the great meeting at La Plata on
Thursday was Mr.. George 7. Melvin,
who is himself a successful farmer
and deeply interested In every move
ment looking TO the betterment of
farming conditions. Referring to
the meeting Mr.. Melvin said to the
editor of The Capital:
THE intelligence and enthusiasm
of the gathering at La Plata, the
initial meeting of the kind planned
by the Governor, showed clearly
that the rural sections are ripe for
the education and encouragement of
this movement Farming is not oil
isolation and drudgery. As a bus.
mess, it certainly produces -er can
be made to produce beneficial finan-
cial results, in a greater degree and
to greater number of people, than
any other single occupation; and as a
vocation, its prosecution is attended
with the most pleasant. .and. .inspiriting
conditions. The great lack of the
past has been neighborhood co-opera-
tion, the interchange of experiments
and results, united efforts to raise
and advance community standards.
1t is good thing to paddle your
own canoe, but no man, in the ave
nues whereby he gains his daily
bread, lives TO himself alone. Here
and there, an exceptionally endowed
man, more often than not favored by
circumstances over the rest of his
fellows, seems to be all-sufficient, but
the masses are dependent upon team
work. " Frequent personal inter
course and interchange of opinion,
knowledge and observation, are neces-
sary to the progress of all classes and
conditions in the industrial and com
mercial world.
Farmers associations and oranges
have done good work, and have shown
the desire for, as we'll as the neces-
sity of, cooperation. This idea of
Governor Crothers is a most excel
lent thing for Maryland, and will lead
to grand results. It's chief recon-
mendation, at this time, is that it
arouses enthusiasm and ambition
among the farmers, as a whole. To
every man or woman, living on the
farm, or interested in any of the
many divisions of agriculture, there
are open sources of advice and knowl-
edge which have not been adequately
recognized. The work and problems
of the farm, in their scientific and
practical relations. engage the ear
nest study and engross the time of
thousands of the most intelligent and
competent men and women in the
country.
The Department of Agriculture
at Washington, our own Agricultural
College and Experiment Station, and
practical and successful specialists
throughout the State, are mines of
information for our people, and the
more general is the diffusion of the
rich streams of study, experimentIand
practical results of these agencies,
the more rapid will be the progress,
as a whole, of our farming sections
1t has long been the complaint that
the farmers Institutes were appre-
ciated only by the more successful
and progressive farmers, and that at
tendance upon them, as a rule, has
been out of all proportion to the i'm
portance of the work. While this is
true, it has not been, and should not
be. cause for discouragemeht. Of all
the American people. the farmer is
naturally the most conservative, the
most difficult to reach and to interest
in new things, or new ways of doing
old things.
However, he is waking up in
Maryland, and the great gathering
at La Plata, in the most isolated sec
ton of the State-in Southern Mary
lands a gratifying evidence of the
new era. Our farmers are not behind
the average of any class in intelli-
gence, judgment and capacity for
thought, as we'll as energy, and Gov
ernor Crothers' campaign through the
State in their interest will have
great and lasting results if the La
Plata meeting is an index of the fu-
ture activity and strength of the com
mission