Norwich bulletin. [volume] (Norwich, Conn.) 1895-2011, 1915-12-04

Written Specially for The Bulletin.
Those who still read the old books
and find them worth reading may re-
call the tremendous controversy which
ragged in Lilliput during -Gulllver's
memorable visit, between the Big
Endians and the Little Endians.
From the beginning of farming there
has been controversy between the
Big Farm and the Little Farm. Con-
sidering the instructive land hunger Of
man and considering also the almost
universal admiration for bigness just
because it is big, there need be no
wonder that the advocates of the Little
Farm usually find themselves in a
minority and with few sympathizers
Furthermore, having regard to the
average character of soils and the
average "slackness' of human nature
and the manipulations of markets by
wholly hostile thimble- Triggers, it seems
to be a demonstrable fact that the
Big Farm is apt to pay better in aggre-
gate money returns than the Little
Farm.
Bear in mind I'm admitting this as
a fact solely under and on account Of
present existing conditions.
And one of the widely existing pres
ent conditions is that a great deal Of
farming is durn poor farming!
Now. if that condition, along with
others, is going to exist forever-isn't
subject to amendment nor open to i'm
p%ovement-then we Little Farmers
would logically find ourselves com
PEELED to take a back seat and preserve
a decorous silence.
But some of us have lived long
enough to see quite a few changes
even in so conservative an occupation
as farming. We've lived to see the
moving machine supplant the scythe;
to see the silo fast taking the place of
the stover-stack; to see the gasoline
engine doing much of the drudgery
which formerly was done wholly by
hand; TO see the telephone in half are
farmhouses and a free mail delivery
to half the farmers doors; to see
vast change in our knowledge of fer
tilizing problems and great advance
in our opportunities to solve them, etc,
etc.
It is not prohahIe-at any rate, it
hasn't been proved-that we have al
ready reached the limit of progress.
One Of the wisest men the world has
ever known once declared. near the
close of his long and busy life, that
he had been only an infant picking up
chance pebbles along the shore of a
Emitless ocean of knowledge. The
longer he lived and the more he came
to know, by just SO much the more was
swelled his vision of the boundless Be
yond which he was powerless to enter
But he laid down his work, when the
time came with the firm assurance
that others, his successors would car
ry it still further and oper newer and
ever newer fields SO that in time, even
the advanced frontier of his latest
knowledge should be only a back
ground for the wider and fuller wis
dom of the future.
! feel just that way about farming.
We poor hayseeds have done quite a
few things and made quite a little
progress since the days when we were
tow-headed youngsters, driving the
cows to pasture of misty morning.
But don't think we have done it alb
solutely all. I rather suspect that
there are tow-headed youngsters of
today, driving their kline afield in east
ern Connecticut, who, before they ac-
quire our apportionment of gray hairs,
will look back to the way we now
farm it with about as plying a Won
der as we have for the grandsires who
used to NOV our meadows with
scythes and reap our grain fields with
tickles and harrow with "a" drags
and cultivate by blowing out" with
some old pillow too worn to be fit for
other use.
Vel, if the farming world is going