Norwich bulletin., 1913-08-02
I'll. WAY OF THE WORLD THE WAY OF
 FARMERS
FARMERS

(Written Specially for The Bulletin.)
 Through the fog and dust of sixty years l can see the little boy l used 10 be- sitting on the back doorstep nursing some childish grievance: and through all the rattle banging of mothers voice half amused and half reproachful, but wholly sympathetic. saying: Was he a 'bused baby? It's to-o-o bad so it is"
 Most men and women continue to regard themselves as "'bused babies all through life. Each one is apt to feel that he hasn't been given a fair shuttle and a square deal in the big game It is a rare one who is always satisfied with the condition of life in which he finds himself Did you ever hear of newspaper man advis- ing younger fellows to take up his profession? How many blacksniths did you ever know who weren't sorry they didn't learn some other trade? How many lawyers or ministers or doctors who didn't more or less re- gret that they had chosen the career they were following?
 We have all got to live with our oWn skeletons. And the things are exceeding bony and knobby as each one appreciates. The point is that you and l feel our own bones, but don't feel the other fellows: he feels his. but doesn't understand where ours grate or bunch. Each one sees the others flesh covered and more or less rounded outside, and doesn't ap- preciafe the anguIarities and knobbi- nesses of the hidden framework
 Dropping metaphor and speaking directly. each one feels keenly his own deprivations and vexations but doesn't feel at all those of his neigh bor.
 In still another way of putting it. each one knows where his own shoe pinches.
 Farmers. think, would vote by big aiority, if the question were put 10 ballot, that the farmers lot is not a happy one It does seem to us fre- quentiy, as if all the forces of the world. the flesh and the devil were leagued against us We have to fight against birds in our cherry trees and berry beds. against bugs in our gardens. against blight in our fields. We are frozen by indecently late or early frosts and burned to cinders by implacabie drouths just when our crops are fairly boo-hoo-ing for rain. When we manage to save something out of the shindy and start for mar ket with it we have to run a gauntlet of scalping Apaches and banded "hold-up men" who label themselves the business interests" and want sixty-fiVe per cent. of our loads as the price of letting us sell the other thirty-five per cent We crook our backs and gnarl our fingers and seam our faces in the struggle: we get into the habit of going unshaven and uncombed because we have to milk cows or kill potato bugs when other people are prettying them selves up; we wear old clothes and coarse boots because we have to- and then our snug critics whose pock- cts are bulging with plunder that rightfully belongs to us sheer at us as "hayseeds' and lampoon us for our uncouthness.
 work and come to think that we are about the unluckiest and the most unhappy of men.
 In other words, we are apt to feel that We are bused babies, the very worst abused babies of the whole round Kindergarten.
 That's one side of it. But there never was shield which didn't have two sides. This one is no exception. might do some of us good.
 It's rather unthankful business to tell another fellow his faults or point out his shortcomings It's mighty risky. too, at times. But featuring the other fellow is never one-half so disagreeable as holding ourselves up by the scruffs of our own necks and sticking pins into our own faults.
 That hurts
 At the same time 1t may be, under some circumstances and to some characters, what the Indians would call good ~nedicine.'
 I've just been reading a letter from a big produce buyer out in Wisconsin who says that he doesn't like to buy direct from farmers and who very frankly tells the reason why he deals with middlemen and speculators. in- stead.
 For instance. potatoes: he buys them by the thousand bushels. but
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