The Fat of the Land | Page 2

nowadays; but we were more than comfortable for ourselves and our children, though I should never earn another dollar. This is not the common state of the physician, who gives more and gets less than most other men; it was simply a happy combination of circumstances. Polly was a small heiress when we married; I had some money from my maternal grandfather; our income was larger than our necessities, and our investments had been fortunate. Fate had set no wolf to howl at our door.
In June we decided to take to the woods, or rather to the country, to see what it had in store for us. The more we thought of it, the better I liked the plan, and Polly was no less happy over it. We talked of it morning, noon, and night, and my half-smothered instinct grew by what it fed on. Countless schemes at length resolved themselves into a factory farm, which should be a source of pleasure as well as of income. It was of all sizes, shapes, industries, and limits of expenditure, as the hours passed and enthusiasm waxed or waned. I finally compromised on from two hundred to three hundred acres of land, with a total expenditure of not more than $60,000 for the building of my factory. It was to produce butter, eggs, pork, and apples, all of best quality, and they were to be sold at best prices. I discoursed at some length on farms and farmers to Polly, who slept through most of the harangue. She afterward said that she enjoyed it, but I never knew whether she referred to my lecture or to her nap.
If farming be the art of elimination, I want it not. If the farmer and the farmer's family must, by the nature of the occupation, be deprived of reasonable leisure and luxury, if the conveniences and amenities must be shorn close, if comfort must be denied and life be reduced to the elemental necessities of food and shelter, I want it not. But I do not believe that this is the case. The wealth of the world comes from the land, which produces all the direct and immediate essentials for the preservation of life and the protection of the race. When people cease to look to the land for support, they lose their independence and fall under the tyranny of circumstances beyond their control. They are no longer producers, but consumers; and their prosperity is contingent upon the prosperity and good will of other people who are more or less alien. Only when a considerable percentage of a nation is living close to the land can the highest type of independence and prosperity be enjoyed. This law applies to the mass and also to the individual. The farmer, who produces all the necessities and many of the luxuries, and whose products are in constant demand and never out of vogue, should be independent in mode of life and prosperous in his fortunes. If this is not the condition of the average farmer (and I am sorry to say it is not), the fault is to be found, not in the land, but in the man who tills it.
Ninety-five per cent of those who engage in commercial and professional occupations fail of large success; more than fifty per cent fail utterly, and are doomed to miserable, dependent lives in the service of the more fortunate. That farmers do not fail nearly so often is due to the bounty of the land, the beneficence of Nature, and the ever-recurring seed-time and harvest, which even the most thoughtless cannot interrupt.
The waking dream of my life had been to own and to work land; to own it free of debt, and to work it with the same intelligence that has made me successful in my profession. Brains always seemed to me as necessary to success in farming as in law, or in medicine, or in business. I always felt that mind should control events in agriculture as in commercial life; that listlessness, carelessness, lack of thrift and energy, and waste, were the factors most potent in keeping the farmer poor and unreasonably harassed by the obligations of life. The men who cultivate the soil create incalculable wealth; by rights they should be the nation's healthiest, happiest, most comfortable, and most independent citizens. Their lives should be long, free from care and distress, and no more strenuous than is wholesome. That this condition is not general is due to the fact that the average farmer puts muscle before mind and brawn before brains, and follows, with unthinking persistence, the crude and careless traditions of his forefathers.
Conditions on the farm are gradually changing for the better. The agricultural colleges, the experiment stations, the lecture courses which are given all over the