Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1911-12-15
The New Farm Boy.

The new farm boy lives in a third dis
pensation. The sciences began to take
hold of the land at least so years ago,
but there was an off-clearing necessary.
The transition period was protracted
mainly because the land was already in
possession of a race of farmers that must
die off. The agricultural college ap-
piled the sciences to tillage and to crops
and to animal life on the farm 20 years
ago. 1t was slow work, not only to
awaken the farmer but to investigate,
discover, and then to apply. The age is
now rapidly falling into the hands of
men who are alive to the great fact that
production has never yet approached its
maximum. The orchard, has, all this
while, thanks to moths and caterpillars,
become more and more an chronological
laboratory. Gradually it has come about
that not a thing can be grown on the
land without fight. This has not by
any means been a permanent loss, but
has awakened a spirit of scientific ex-
animation and determination to master
conditions. The microscope and the cru
chile are as necessary today as the pillow
and the hoe. The farm boy is not with
out stimulus, nor is he without interest
ing conditions; rather 1t will now take
the brighter boys to do the farming
The development of farm machinery,
land has gone on at the same time. The
Mccormick reaper may be credited with
having opened the procession, that just
now is marked by electric plows doing
the work of 80 or 40 men; while the
steam threasher goes from barn to barn
covering a whole township. In every de-
| partment of the home, in the house as
| well as in the barn, machinery takes the
| place of men, and the help problem is
now driving us to a still more complete
| age of mechanism. Our books are COM
! PEELED to light and heat our homes and
run our barn machinery. Telephones
| connect the remotest homestead with the
town, and with the metropolitan mar
kets. The trolley Is not far away al
any time and the automobile belongs to
the village more than to the city
There is no lot on earth so enviable
today as that of an American farm boy
or girl. He has room, fresh air, beau
tiful surroundings. while the arts and
sciences are involved in his work
and isolation is absolutely abolished
Now that the conditions are ennobed
the youngsters themselves must be of a
new sort; their education must be in
! spiration. They must learn to know a
new sort of facts, and their emotional
natures must be attuned to nature. The
town school as graded is now almost
equivalent to a college while the agri-
CulluI al COlltBt OlltTS DOM Dogs and
| girls winter courses at a trifing cost
| Every day the country home is increas-
ing its relative advantages, The trolley
without poles and without wires is not
| far off, and it doesn't seem improbabl
| that the wireless telephone will cover
most of the needs of the country home
! The rural carrier will soon bring par
| GELS, and carry them as well. Market
| rates the country man can learn every
morning by telephone, and the boy does
not need to be born at the metropolitan
| centres in order to have daily view OF
| the world affairs,
Nothing can be gained any longer by
| quitting the farm. 1t stands for every
| thing that is attractive, wholesome and
| profitable but at the same time 1t stands
| for the new and the stimulating
| Country life cannot be made dull, UNI
less it wilfully sewers itself from ad'
vantages that are freely offered. The
! city clerk has close confinement, mo-
notony of detail, and not often anything
else to show for it but clean hands and
clever wit, He does not have the free
dom of action or of choice that Is IT
country work. The country boy nc
longer need be any less of a gentleman
than the city bred 1t looks now as II
surburbanism would take in a very large
part OF the whole land-[Independent.