Norwich bulletin., 1913-04-05

I've attended quite number or I farmers institutes in the course of my i life and I've heard some surprisingly 1 silly stuff talked at them, now and then. I've read good many farm papers and agricultural bulletins. and I surely agree that some of the things ! I've read in them have seemed to me about the last word in nonsense. I've also heard al institutes and read in farm publications may things which
 were helpfuliy suggestive. to say the very least for them.
 The question seems to be one of our selves: what we are looking for. If we hunting after something to find fault with. to sheer at, to denounce, We can find it. occasionally. in the words or deeds of almost anybody.
 If we're looking for useful informa- jion or helpful suggestion We can often ind them outside The shadows of our own hat-brims.
 There is hardly a farmer in the United States, raising potatoes in commercial quantities. who doesn't
 have to control the potato bugs by
 some sort of poison spraying. Did
 his own experience tell him to use
 Paris green or arSenate of soda
 Not much: he learned it from the ex
 perience of some predecessor. who
 learned it from some one else. and the , first teaching came from no farmer at all. but from the laboratory of some chemist. Did the farmer make his OWE spraying pump? Not much He trusted to the experience and skill of some professional pump maker to con
 Struct one which would do the work.
 All the way through the farm year
 we are all of us using and profiting
 from the experience of others This experience of others helps US. some
 times. by showing us what to avoid
 doing: sometimes by telling us what to
 do.
 At the same time. our. own eXperi-
 ence is helping other in like ways.
 You for example, have developed certain phase of farm production till you're admittedly high hook in that line. Your neighbors watch your methods and pattern after them. or get your advice and follow it. You'll admit that your own methods are all right. and your own advice sensible won't you? What should change the value of those methods or that advice if you should put them into print 7? If the methods and the advice you put in type were the same you used in dirt or spoke in words, wouldn't they be just sensible?
 And you really can't mean that you actually consider yourself the one and only being on earth capable of follow ing right methods or giving sensible advice,
 Then why be absolutely inhospitabIe to other peoples ideas, whether they come by observation by word of mouth, or from the printed page?
 I'll agree with you, right off, that your own experience must be the fin l al arbiter in your own farming. It is 1 the chief-justice of the highest court ] of appeal on your particular farm But i you don't expect the chief justice to | be also detective and turnkey; to be | states attorney and defendants coun- 1 sel. as well as judge.
 Experience is to test and decide up- 1 on the value of farm ideas or plans, | bat it isn't capahte. also, of fnding or jnventing all the farm ideas and plans 1 which are of value. Nor is that it's i business.
 They used to say that two heads were better than one, even though one were a cabbage head I don't care how good your eyes may be; a thous- 1 possibly can. I don't care how clever | and inventive you may be, you can't 1 invent more things than Watt and l Stephenson and Bell and Edison and a thousand others in g. bunch I don't 1 care how wise you may be, the com bined wisdom of the world is greater than your own.
 Then, in the name of common sense why not take advantage of what other :, eyes see, and make use of what other minds invent, and seize profit from the wisdom of the world and the ages?
 Laugh all you please at the occa- ;ional foolishnesses of the passing show, but for heavens sake keep your 'arm gates open to admit anything which gives promise of helpfulness. TT..1-