Iowa County democrat. [volume] (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1877-1938, 1916-06-08
FARMING REQUIRES
HIGH intelligence

Farming is, as we have always nelQ,
the occupation which more than any
other gives the fullest and most va
ried employment to all the faculties
of man, to his physical, intellectual
and spiritual faculties.
That this is not recognized is due
to faulty education and the hypnotic
influence of bad tradition. The child
is blinded mentally and morally by
continued social suggestions that other
occupations are higher and more dig
nified.
We want an educational miracle
worker who will open the eyes OF
the blind and make them see that of
all human occupations, this connects
man more directly than any other
to the mysterious nature of which he
is part, of which substance his own
body is formed. He, as cultivator and
farmer, is continually drawing on the
mysterious fountain of life and en-
ergy in the earth; the clerk, the
trader, the workman, and, indeed,
most of the persons engaged in urban
occupations are, by the nature Of their
employments, divorced from that
mother nature. They get a kind of So
phisticated intelligence, they count up
rows of figures, make entries in books,
all trivial employments, giving kind
of mean quickness to the brain. How
anybody could have supposed that
such occupations had a greater dig
nifty than presiding over the growth OF
crops is one of those wonders philoso-
piers in a later, happier and saner
world will set themselves vainly to
solve.
We ourselves have always dealt
with agriculture as the most intellec-
tual of all occupations. We have
never tried to write platitudes about
it, because we believe that it is an oc.
cupation that requires the very high
est intelligence.
Doctors, biologists and scientists are
perhaps on a par with the farmers
for they, too, deal with real forces
and with life itself, But what other
occupations are there which invite Sc
much thought-w which, by their nature
bring man into contact with eternal
realities? Here in a field is the seed
That field is electric with hidden ener.
gies, chemical forces, which play On
the seed. What is in the seed? Who
knows? A spirit, perhaps-and other
kind of life differing from ours.
But how mysterious! It lays hold
on the energies in the earth, and out
of that tiny cell, as out of foun
tain, come the wheat, the barley, the
fields of green and waving leaves, the
swelling of tubeTs beneath the earth
all miracle and wonder if one stops to
think about it.
Does anybody believe that if in the
schools the young folks were made to
think about the things scientific men
have discovered, of the ways by which
these wonders come to pass; if they
knew about that marvellous vital chem
istry of the soil, would they ever for
a moment think that the work of the
farmer was not thousand times more
intellectual and dignifed than the triv.
iai occupation Of clerk writing rec
ords of trivial transactions in books
Never, never! They would feel in
an office as in a prison house, shut
out from all the light, wonder, glory
and beauty that the earth puts forth
for her children
We want all the brains possible put
into this industry of agriculture. We
have, as we say, always regarded it
as the most complicated and intellec-
tual of occupations, and have written
for farmers as if they were men of
intellect and varied knowledge. Their
occupation requires far more pro-
found education than the person who
is going to be that simple thing, a
bank clerk or bookkeeper, which oc-
cupation really requires very little ed
ucation at all, being mainly mechani-
cal and routine in character.-G George
w. Russell, in Irish Homestead.