Norwich bulletin., 1914-07-18
SPECIALIZE AND WIN THE PRIZE

because they have the knack for just that branch.
 But, just at present, it seems as hopeful to preach cooperation to New England farmers as it would be to preach meat diet to calf-pen. What, then, areiwe to do, in the meantime
 Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, in his lofty serene way, that if man could make any one thing better than anybody else in the world even if 1t were but mouse trap, the world would wear path to his door. though hs lived in a cabin in the wilderness.
 This is giving the world credit for more discrimination and less laziness than my own experience of it would warrant. But there is big truth in the idea, alice -samee.5
 Other things being equal, the worlG manifestly prefers really truly good thing to a second-rate imitation It will take some little trouble to get that really truly good thing if 1t knows the way. Right here comes in one of the advantages of speciality farming. Mind you, I'm not arguing against general farming, nor advocating specialization for everybody. There's too much to be said on both sides for me to become a partisan of either
 But, assuming that you're fond of chickens; that you have a genuine knack for making them lay January eggs and produce May-June broilers; that you have place adapted to keep ing them, and a market within handy reach:-don't you think. yourself, that you'd be more likely to get a dollar now and then by devoting yourself to hens and henneries than you would by keeping on with hap, oats and potatoes; :; not one Of which can you raise any bet ter than the average, and work on which is. to you. just dreaded drud- gery?
 Or, if your natural tastes run to gardens, don't you suppose that you'll get earlier and better peas and higher prices than the fellow who hates put tering round" a garden as the devil is said to hate holy watere
 Or, again. If you're a stock man. just loving your horses or your cows, find ing pleasure in working over them and tending them and coddling them, knowing them as a cat knows her kit tens. and able to get more out of them than any of your neighbors, don't you think that you'd be likely to do better With stock than with some other phase of farming, which you don't take to and haven't any special aptitude for?
 There's a big stock farm out in
 
 10 De known as master farmer among his neighbors. When a recent visitor asked him what was the secret or his success, he responded with the following which he called the ''funda- mental doctrine of farming:
 Everybody is always looking for something better. When you've gut nrst class stuff somebody'n always be hunting you up and making you take a nrst class price for it. When you've got second class stuff you've always got to go to the trouble to hunt up sonepody and coax them to pay you even second class price for it.''
 
 fhis particular man is a stock far. ner. He keeps and will keen only pure bred stock. For some years peo- pie living near him have been learn ing that any animal they buy from him VIII be a bang-up good beast and worth bang-up price Every wear that knowledge spreads a little wider. lie won't sell a scrub nor have one about his farm After a while every body in town knew this. Then every Dody in the county knew it. Now half the farmers of the state know it. and a good many in other states. He does n't have to sell his stock. now.
 It sells itself
 simply because. as puts it, "when you've got first-class stuff somebodv'll 1i"dyS De hunting you up and makin2 you take a first class price for it'
 This idea is worth considerino rather more generally than it seems to be Because you can raise good things is no evidence that you are, also, a good salesman. Rather it indicates just the opposite. But if, by raising and selling only hrst-class, gilt edged. A No. One stun. you can gradually work up such reputation for your stuff that it w1ll sell itself. then you don't need to stuoy the other tricks of the salesman's trade As, owing to the sorry limitations ot human nature. no one man is likely to be able to surpass others in more thar single direction. the inevitable con clusion is that he should stick to tha, single speciality If he wants to sur ass and get the reputation of surpass- ing. See?
 We all know the omnipresent Jack of-ar-trades and master of noner Many of us have fallen into listless and supine accordance of the idea that this is just what every farmer is and has got to be. May be so in some