Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 66, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 November 1917 — PHILOSOPHY OF WALT MASON [ARTICLE]

PHILOSOPHY OF WALT MASON

The farmer gets more good advice than any man beneath the sun; the magazines would treat him nice, so tell him once, and tell him twice, how all his duties should be done. And lecturers with bulging brows in country schools lay down the law; they tell him how to groom his cows, and how to raise blue ribbon sows by feeding artichokes and straw. The editors o’ weekly sheets, who never pushed a span of mules, sit in their chairs with leather seats, and tell him ho A to raise his beets, and for his guidance lay down rules. The men pursuing other trades, we all assume, know wfaat to do; no man the merchant prince upbraids, or chides the lawyer till he fades, or to the plumber hands a few. The sexton, he can dig a grave, we d> not stop to tell him how. or show the barber how to shave, or tell the tightwad how to save; the dairyman can milk his cow. But every man in town believes no husbandman knows how to farm; and so we criticise his sheaves, and tell him how to shear his beeves, and treat the old mare for the heaves, and bore him till he has the peeves, and to his shoulders rolls his sleeves, and tries to do us deadly harm.