The Columbus journal., 1911-10-04
The Change In Farm Ideas.

he Change In Farm Ideas.
Our older readers can remember
the time when men did not farm for
the purpose of making money. The
farm was to them a place they could
call their own, and where they could
rear family at the minimum expense.
If in the timber country as in Pennsyl-
vania, Ohio, Michigan, or Wisconsin,
they cleared a few acres and built a
home, added few acres each year by
clearing, allowed their cattle to pasture
in the woods and expected to supple
ment their supplies by hunting and
fishing. If on the prairie, they built
home of some sort broke up part of
a quarter, perhaps settled along
streams for fuel and protection from
wind. allowed their cattle to Craze on
the prairies and depended on this for
winter forage. These We're the "good
old days" that old people talk about
and there We're good things about them.
but better in the way of "reminiscences
than of realization at the time.
Railroads came in and the farmer
changed his ideals somewhat. He
could secure home, rear family and
make some money besides; for the
railroads provided him with market.
The ideal of the farmer then was to
get rich by growing grain. After the
appearance of the reaper he aspired to
do it in wholesale way. His ideal
of a farm was that of q bank which
permitted of an unlimited checking.
Unconsciously he became a miner of
the soil rather than a creator of real
values. Those also We're good days
better in retrospect than in reality.
The failure of spring wheat, the
introduction of corn pests, rusts and
smuts. and the diminishing yield fin
ally gave farmers new ideal, that
is. some of them; for quite a large
of farmers in all sections of
the country have not passed beyond the
second stage just mentioned. This
ideal is a much higher one than that
of the mere grain raiser, and it is the
ideal of a large percent of our readers
now. 1t is a good one, elevating,
compelling the farmer to
broaden his field of knowledge, to study
breeding. to study markets, to keep
in touch with the dOings of this great
world generally. But this is not, af-
ter, all the highest ideal. We must |
pass beyond this.
The next ideal will be that of COM
munity life, of rural civilization,
of state society that will furnish
the maximum of comfort and pleasure
with minimum of toll and expense.
The farmers object is not merely to |
raise family, nor merely to increase
the number and quality Of his live
stock, nor to add field to field and farm
to farm until there is no place for
neighbOrs and schools and churches:
but to rear amid culture and refine
ment a family of bright. intelligent,
refined, stalwart sons and fair daugh-
ters, who can take their places in gov.
in society, in all that is
really valuable and lasting, along
side families grown under other con-
litiOns in town or city. We must
earn to think al out the farm as an
deal place to live, not merely to rear
children, but the strongest and best
children; not merely as a place to eat,
rink and sleep, but to have the max
mum of the comforts and the oppor-
which our modern civiliza-
ion affords. If we stop short of that
We shall fall short both of our privi-
ege and our duty.
The old days as We look back upon
hem, were good days; but there is a
better day before the farmers of the
West than realize, a loftier ideal than
hey now entertain. In those days
here will be a revived country church,
, rural school that will afford an edu-
:atiOn such as can be found now not
even in the cities, an education with
'ut the temptations of the cities, an
that can be applied on the
arm and in social and political life.
Ne shall not reach this until We form
IN ideal, for man never gets any in
ldvance of his ideals. - Wallaces'
Farmer.