Norwich bulletin., 1916-09-23
WHY DO FARMERS STICK TO FARMING!,


 and time are considered in connection with ones definition of success. Of course, if one's only ambition-in life is the possession of Warty garden toad, then such mans cap-
 ture of his toad is success,-to him. But it wouldn't be to you and l, or to most other people.
 A toad in a garden is some sort of help towards success in gardening ber cause the toad eats bugs which oth-
 erwise would eat the gardeners plants.
 Similarly, the possession of money sometimes helps one towards real success, by showing him when to swap it for the success. But neither | the amassment of many garden toads nor of much money is true success. Now, we farmers are usually ex- | ceedineIy matter -offact folks; emil | nently "practicar' people, if ever | there were any. We are not given to sentimentality, nor inclined to fine spun theories of things. We prefer | substantial matters between our | teeth.-When I am selling green corn l have to be careful not to pass out | to my farmer customers the same sorts city visitors demand. What the people from town call such delicious ' iy lSIlQeI yOuIlS COIn Ily nSlSnDOT | hayseeds wouldn't thank me for of fering them. T want suthin' beside | blisters on a cob," they indignantly l assert 'Hain't ye got no mans size | corn?.' Jams and jellies; soups and
 salads are not so much to the farmers
 taste as pork and potatoes. pie and 1 plum pudding.
 But, praematists and almost mate | rIalists as they are, 1 find that 2 good | many farmers have a sounder idea | of what constitutes real success than l their city guests who are accustomed to measure it only by the dollar | mark
 Of course there are farmers as
 well as others who seem to think only | of money. There are farmers whose | talk is so solely about it and whose
 thoughts are always upon it. The 1 very fact that there are such dis i closes one difference:-other farmers | are inclined to look on such crit | ters" either with pity or a sort of
 mild contempt They are not looked | up to as sound business men nor even
 as good farmers. The fact that they | deliberately make money y-getting their
 avowed aim leads their neighbors to l dislike them as "misers', or to sheer
 at them as ''skinf1ints". or to avoid
 them as "too stingy for anything"
 They are not set up as models before l
 school; they are not pointed out to l visitors asf- eminent" OF even "repre-
 sentative citizens.
 i Not far apart from each other in the hillside burying ground of my i so long dead and gone that we can 1 all afford to speak unvarnished truth 1 of them.
 Both of them lived to old age. One
 accumulated in his long years the
 title deeds to a score of farms, be-
 ual landowner in the neighborhood.
 He lived in one of the biggest and
 most imposing houses. He had some l sort Of deposit in every savings bank
 within fifty miles, besides other in | Vestments of which no one but him.
 self knew. He never spent a cent
 which he could avoid CT gave one to l help another He was so penuri>us
 mat he drove his own children out
 or the home, enc by one, as they beA | came old enough to understand: so
 money-mad that he finally became
 known to all the country side as that
 old miser". When he died, his heirs | driven to the opposite extreme by | hatred Of his example, speedily made
 ducks and drakes of all. his savings
 Ioday they, too, are all dead; dead of l tnelr own excesses and the poison
 which that wretched old man had in i stilled into their lives.
 l The other old farmer left but a l small farm and not much more money l than was necessary to pay his, burial | expenses. But he left, to begin with, d fragrant memory in the community which still quotes him and refers to | nm with love. and honor: he left a | small farm but one which he had so
 improved and devresified that it is now l in the hands of his heirs proving
 wonderfully productive and proftabIe 1 as farms go: he left heirs of his bodv 1 trained to right living and worthy
 working and home loving, whose daily l lves are services and inspirations to | all their netghbors. In short he was
 real success while living and 9. sl1c- cess that protected itself into the | years after he died
 | mere Is no question in this nar- l tlcular rural community which of these | two men succeeded.
 ] suspect that some farmers stick to
 It because they can't find anvthine.
 else to do that they could earn a | nVlng at. l suspect that some stick
 to It because they're too blamed lazy to | change -''N' 'o But. over against these. I am con-
 Vlnced that a whole big lot of farmers 1 SUCK to the farms because they see | rlsnt on them the biggest chance the world offers for the biggest sort of
 success it permits, which lies not in | moneys getting but in character- l building.
 They may not reason it all out in