St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1911-07-05

tine. He finds the teachers repeat
ing facts and directing them how to
do certain problems. after rules
found in books.
The typical college professor is
more original worker. HE is apt to
proceed as if NO book on the sub
ject had ever been written, and as
if professor and student were origi-
nal explorers in an untried and un-
discovered field. This gives student
the habit of thinking out things for
himself, and discovering and creating
successes out of, situations where
others see only fallure.-I Rutland
News.
Reciprocity and the New England
Farmer
One who has studied the question
of reciprocity from broad stand
point and who in the combination of
Industrial leader and agriculturalist
has had unique opportunities to
measure its effect upon New England
expresses the following interesting
view:
.Signs are multiplying that the
tide of popular opinion which at first
set So furiously in favor of recipro-
city has begun to turn. There has
been time for sober second thought
on both sides of the boundary line
and this has tended to bring into
sharp relief certain phases of the pro-
posal which the first burst of en-
thusiasm ignored or concealed. For
reciprocity has mellif1uous sound.
1t apeals to the Imagination and slim
ulates the latent sentiment which lies
behind the concept of the brother
hood of nations.
But the chorus of universal APP
probation has been losing some of its
potency. Interests upon whose toes
reciprocity has trod have ar last
gathered the courage of their con-
V1ctlons and have ventured a protest.
The two American interests upon
whom the brunt of the adverse effect
OF reciprocity is destined to fall are
unquest1onably the farmers and the
paper manufacturers. The makers
or paper, representing large units of
invested capital, have naturally had
their side of the case stated with
great deliberation and completeness.
But the farmers, unorganized and
widely diffused over vast stretches of
territory, have been practically un-
represented. And strangely enough
the New England farmer, upon whom
reciprocity bears with especial seye-
stated. In fact to many of these
farmers the intricacies of recipro-
city are such that the direct appli-
cation of the principle to their New
england farms is not clearly discern
ible.
To make the matter entirely clear
1t is necessary to go back bit and
briefly review the causes which have
led up to the undoubted agricul-
tural renaissance now in full swing
in rural New England
A half century ago the agricul- |
tural dominion of this country had |
definitely passed to the west. New
England with its restricted arabic
areas and high-cost production was
no longer in the running. And it |
has only been within the last few
years,-in broad way within the |
last SIX or eight years,-that the re-
ylval OF New England agriculture be-
cause OF the operation of natural |
laws has really got under way.
AS the big open acres of the west |
nave filled in, as land values have
steadily risen and as the west has be- |
come an increasing consumer of it's /
own products the gap agriculturally
speaking between east and west has |
been steadily closing up. Cost of pro-
ouctlon mas grown apace until today
1t is actually possible for New England
hillsides, never barren except in the |
of the uninitiated. to
maintain real competition with the
closely titled farms of the middle and
far west.
To-day the best potatoes in the
country are grown in Maine; New
England-raised corn has taken ma
tlonal prize in the very citadel of the
western corn empire and New Eng
land farm and dairy products are
slowly but persistently taking
possession of the great seaboard mar
kets, the best in the world, from
which they are excluded by but few
hours of steam haul.
AND now reciprocity bobs up at a
most unpropitious time and threatens
to drive back the slow, grinding pro-
cess of operation of natural laws and
rob the New England farmer of the
adjustment which has been SO years
in the working out,
For reciprocity means that agri-
cultural New England will have to
compete with conditions In Ontario
and Quebec and other provinces of
canada as primitive as those which
obtained in New Hampshire and Yer
mont hundred years ago.
Unless one knows by personal OBJ
servation it is difficult to imagine the
immense contrast presented by the
farmers of Maine, and Vermont and
those just across the line. In Canada
life moves in the simple strain of
century ago. Each family is practi-
cally self-suficient unit. Every
member is worker and the results
OF the common labor centralize about
simple farm life which produces
the vast bulk of the necessities re-
CURED. Only the surplus product
is sold and this product is produced
at cost with which Vermont and
New Hampshire farmers cannot pos
sibly compete.
The New England farmer has adj
Justed himself to an entirely different
standard of living. For his children
he demands education and as reason
able share in the good things of life
as his means can provide. Inevitably