Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 December 1874 — Good and Poor Farmers. [ARTICLE]

Good and Poor Farmers.

Farmers are apt to look outside for the cause of their failures. If the crops are poor the}-curse the weather, if the prices are poor they curse the market and middlemen. Sometimes they :re right and sometimes they are wro. g. Farming, like every other pursuit, requires industry and intellect. Cr ps won’t raise themselves, or sell th mselves. If yonr land is too wet, yotrmust di in it; if too dry, you must somehow ; rnish moisture. You can't control'“i ye elements and bring rain by wishing or it; or praying for it; but you must k< ep the ground stirred. The cultivator is he substitute for a shower. A fiele of corn pr potatoes cultivated every day will remain Siqist within an inch of ;he surface when your meadows and pas tores are as dry as a powder-house. We see fanners every day, working aide by side, both of apparently equal industry, the one always having good

though the parties most interested may not be able to see it. One may be too stingy of hi« seed, or too stingy to use good seed. One does his work in the right time, and always las his soil in the right condition, while thcothsr is always behind his work, and never half does it. The crops of the latter don’t seem to. look as they ought to, and he gazes over the fence at his neighbor’s tine fields and wonders a> the difference. He attributes the trouble either to his land or his j cursed bad luck, and' seldom sees his i own careless, slipshod w ays ot doing his i w ork. When he cqmes to marketing the dif- | ference is still more apparent. The I careful farmer starts out with a big adi vantage. His crops are first class, wellI grown and well-marketed, and the same ! painstaking care that raised them is : used in harvesting, packing and shipping, j while the careless grower is almost sure ; to be a careless harvester and shipper. W’e are apt to think that any fool is | smart enough to be a farmer. If our !. boy isn’t intelligent enough to practice jlaw or medicine, or preach, or is too stupid or honest for a merchant, we give him a hoe and set him to scratching for a living, and if he doesn’t succeed we j blame the busines and not his brains. [ The fact is, there is-no good opening any- ; where for fools, and the poorest openings for idiots are “ oak openings.” — New ■ Jmegti ran gerr- —‘—