Year: 1868

Farm.


By N. L. HoLBRooK, n. D.


While visiting some friends in North
ern Ohio, recently, the question came
up in conversation why is it that so
many of our boys, as soon as grown up,
leave the farm for trade or profession.
On counting over the childrec of a
number Of families, we found that
three out of every four boys whose par
ents were farmers, had Quilted the
occupation of their fathers to try what
they could do in other fields of labor
and yet parents cannot understand
why it is so. 1t seems TO US that there
are several causes which lead to this re-
suit. First, the education which most
young men of the present day secure
is one which tends to produce a love
for bookkeeping, writing. speaking,
teaching, or some occupation that Is
largely intellectual.


If boy spends several years OF his
life in study which are of the nature of
these kinds Of labor, it is not strange
that the tendencies of his mind would
be to choose q business that will furnish
him through life with the work he had
been accustomed TO Nerform at school.
Men naturally seek TO do what they
have been trained in ; and then again
few years of sedentery, studious life
often weakeus the body, or so diYerts
the vital forces from body to brain, that
physical labor becomes irksome and
distasteful, and men shrink from it
intellectual occupations also furnish
better opportunities for intercourse
with our fellow men than are found on
the farm, ard such associations are
highly priced by educated men.


And then again, boys are nowhere
educated fer farmers. Agriculture is
not taught to them in schools. Their
attention IS brought hundreds of times
to poetry, literature, art and classics,
even to tie laws of trade or commerce.
and to Law, while rarely are the laws of
farming the subject of remote allusion;
and is it altogether likely that they
will seek as an occupation the kinds Of
labor which have been ignored by them
in education


But perhaps the greatest of all reas-
ons why agriculture is not faYorably
thought of by a greater number of
young men is that the pursuit, as at
present conducted, is more or less dis
tasteful. From ten to twelve hours
each day of hard, muscular labor, at
work that is not, perhaps, very agreea-
BILE, leads young men to ask if there
are not other ways of getting a living.
We think there are very few who
would not prefer to do almost any sort
of work to huskIng corn on a cold day
out Of doors; picking apples when the
thermometer is at the freezing point !;
making cider; butchering hogs, or
sheep; carting fertilizers in the muddy
days of spring; cleaning stables; milk
ing cows, grooming horses, washing and
shearing sheep, or, what is harder yet,
reaping a poor crop Of grain or fruit for
the tolls of the year, or fighting those
combined enemies of tie farn-insects,
drouth, frost, blight, and a multitude
of pests of the farm that make the pur-
suit too much a matter of chance and
uncertainty.


The remedy FOR this evil lies in
educating young men carefully and
early in the principles of husoandry.
Let every farmer who would have his
sons follow his pursuit, see thst they
are instructed in whatever relates to it
during boyhood. Then we must seek
to make agriculture more successful
Emerson somewhere says of the manu-
facture of cutlery in Sheffield, that
there is no luck in making good steel;
that they make no mistake every
blade in q hundred and thousand is
good. This is because the art is we'll
mastered by the workmen, and agricul-
ture is an art in which there need be
as little luck, particularly after a few
generations of successful endeaVor to
the contrary. Farming ought also to
De made more pleasant and more
lucrative. More brains and capital en-
ployed in the business would make it
so. More machinery should be used,
and many sorts Of work should be done
away with entirely, and more pleasant
kinds substituted. Farming, and par
ticularly horticulture, furnish opportu-
mites for the most elaborate thought,
but it is rarely given. Every operation
Of growing a plant, rotation of crops,
right adaptation Of soils, proper fertili-
zers, understanding, sub-soiling, ETC.,
may be applied as a means of scientific
education or experiment, and thus the
farmer be the best informed and most
intelligent man in the community.