The independent-reporter. [volume] (Skowhegan, Me.) 1909-1955, 1911-07-13
WHERE BRAINS GAN Be
USED
This Product of the Body Can Come
in As Handy ON the Farm as Any
Other in Life.
From the Youths Companion. }


Not many years ago farming was
looked on not as a profession, or even
as business, but as condition of
life to which certain persons could
not help being born, and from which
it was desirable to get away at as
early an age as possible.
Those who remained envied their
comrades who went away to clerk in
the general store of the county-seat,
or to become lawyers or doctors
They walked in a different world, a
world where a man had soft hands,
a white shirt BOSOM and untold
wealth.
No doubt parents were partly re-
sponsible for their boys seeing city
visions and dreaming city dreams.
Not by saying in SO many words that
they hoped to see them clerking in
city stores, but by talking about the
city relatives, and how much better
off they were than the people in the
country. Perhaps they were, but
there is room for doubts. At any
rate, many a boy left the farm, only
to come to it again in later years
with clearer vision of what 1t holds
for a young man with brains and
energy.
Brains come first. Almost anybody
can exc out an existence on piece of
land, but it takes real business abil-
ty to make one-hundred- dollars-an-
acre land net the owner five per cent.
The modern farm is factory, and
the successful farmer must be not
only operative. but superintendent as
well. And this managerial skill has
market value far above the hand
labor which we too commonly think
of AS constituting all there is to
farming. A recent actual case will
Illustrate the point.
boy about sixteen years old want
ed to be bookkeeper. He had spent
his winters going to school and his
summers herding cows He was a
bright boy, but without means, and
his parents were too poor to help
him. He confined his wish to a
young man just out of college, who
persuaded him to take the short
course in the agriculture school of
larger university. This course
runs through the winter months only,
and is completed in twenty-eight
weeks.
Now You cannot learn a great deal
IN that time, especially when you
start out with only a common school
education, and when every minute
you have to spare must be occupied
with earning money to pay your
ooard and room rent; but Robert, as
we will call him, started in, and soon
oecame interested in dairy cattle. He
got work as helper about the dairy
osfh and besides earning a little, he
picked up great many practical de
'diis OF dairy management that the
"ere book student never gets.
That summer he worked as barn
10y on a large dairy farm. In the
autumn, having given up the idea OF
"elhg bookkeeper, and definitely de-
.'ueo to be dairyman, he returned
10 the school for another year. When
spring came, he received a diploma
'n'"ihg that he had completed his
"orh-and an offer from the dairy
1"h Tor whom he had worked the
summer before of a place on his farm
40 regular employee, at wages some
"hat less than he could have made
at ordinary labor.
robert took the place. At the end
VI the first year he was rehired, al
al increased salary. The passed, and
que day the dairyman came to him
'Ho said, Robert. you've learned