Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 September 1894 — GIVE THE BOYS A CHANCE. [ARTICLE]

GIVE THE BOYS A CHANCE.

Bome of the Reasons Why They Leave the Farms. Briefly, It is too much “The boy’s colt is thi father’s horse,” says a writer in the Southern Mercury. I have had a talk with a number of young men who left the farm last spring after the crops were tended. One says, “I fended forty acres of corn, besides other crops; last winter I chopped twenty cords of wood to sell besides all we used and enough for summer use. 1 thought that ought to fetch suit of clothes, but it didn’t, so I left home.” To another, who had just left home, I asked how he was getting along. He said, “Not very well. 1’ \ e worked two weeks and been laid off two weeks, and the latter I had to pay my board, and it don’t pay working in town. The farm suits me the best, and tomorrow I’ll strike out and get a job. You know it’s no use to expect anything of the old man, although I'd rather be home than anywhere else.” The boys do not get the show they deserve. An old Kentuckian did little else than hunt, and if there was game within-miles of him he would have it, but his success was due to one of the most ordinary-looking purps I ever saw. I remarked one day that it was strange such a mongrel as his was such a good hunter. Said he, “Do you know, ueighbor, what makes that air dorg so good? It's because he always gets his share of the game.” I came to the conclusion that that was the whole secret. Farmers in general are a unique kind ol’ men, and have more legitimate ways of making money than any class of men I know. If crops are good, prices are low; if on the other hand, crops are poor, are prices not correspondingly high, and if should happen to cut both ways, viz., good crops and high prices, then it is a grand chance to pay off that little mortgage or buy a lot of new machinery, which, as prudent men, they hate to run in debt for, or the good woman sees a chance to get that little addition to the home, or some new furniture, which she has been promised. The boy generally gets left, and it is no wonder he feels disgusted. No wonder he feels Like tbe old Qunen’.s arm That Granther Young Brought back from Concord busted. Give your hoys a show. Say to them, “Here are two or three acres of land; put it into whatever you have a mind to.” Assist them to cultivate, harvest and market it, and whatever they raise on it, give to them. Do not go on the principle of “The hoy’s colt is father’s horse.” The seed may be yours, but let the crop be the boys’.