Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 October 1875 — How to Keep the Boys on the Farm. [ARTICLE]

How to Keep the Boys on the Farm.

Too little care is taken to encourage the boys on the farm and to make them feel that they have an interest in its success. Agriculture is sustaining constant loss of ability and tlie failures in life are being needlessly increased through the inexcusable neglect of fathers to make farm life attractive to their children. It is never profitable to make a simple machine out of a human being. Slavery, for this reason, was never in any sense profitable, and never will be. Men and children have minds which are restless and aspiring, and constant work without compensation or the hope of reward is as unencouraging as an attempt to batter down a mountain with a bottle of Colognewater, and is but the work of a soulless machine; The boy will think of something; his thoughts cannot be fettered. If nothing of interest connected with the farm is furnished him for contemplation his mind will center its energies upon something else, and where the mind goes and lingers the heart will soon go also. His hands may hold the plow, but his thoughts will be far away from the field, shaping castles in other and untried spheres; and soon he will leave the farm for greater excitement and embrace, apparently, more favorable opportunities. The city is largely indebted to this cause for its constantly-increasing country immigration. The city is always noisy, and the bustle of its industry and the sound of its gayety is easily heard amidst the quiet of farm life. If the mind of the boy is unoccupied by something which interests it, it is readily captivated by the noise of the city ana agriculture soon loses him from its ranks. Well, how can he be interested in the farm ? As has been frequently remarked in these columns, everything which tends to make farm-life cheerful will have a tendency in that direction. Flowers, music, books, newspapers, in fact all that a city home possesses of comfort and the means of culture, besides those features which belong to the country exclusively, should be studiously provided and fostered. But still more can be done. The boy can have his interest excited by a system of remuneration for his labor, which system would be more certainly productive of good results if it provided that such remuneration be in stock. His time and thoughts would thus be occupied in the care of his cattle, sheep or hogs, and it would take more glitter than the city generally produces to attract that boy’s attention.

A subscriber to the Western Rural informs us that this is his system with his twelve-year-old boy, and that no stockraiser in the country is more interested in his herd than this boy is in the animals which he has earned and which he knows are absolutely his own. He is confident that his boy will never be allured from the farm, anti in all probability he is correct. The pi &n is at least an easy and reasonable experiment, and is worthythe consideration fathers who believe their sons will be happier and safer on the farm than in the city.— Western Rural. -i The embezzlement of Paxton, the gay and festive teller of the Mechanics’ Bank of Montreal, is swelling its fair proportions. As far as now ascertained, the amount is over |IOQ,OOO, with some back counties still to bear lrom.