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Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
The Works of ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
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ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS.
1877
TO PLOW IS TO PRAY -- TO PLANT IS TO PROPHESY, AND
THE HARVEST ANSWERS AND FULFILLS.
I am not an old and experienced farmer, nor a tiller of the
soil, nor one of the hard-handed sons of labor. I imagine, however,
that I know something about cultivating the soil, and getting
happiness out of the ground.
I know enough to know that agriculture is the basis of all
wealth, prosperity and luxury. I know that in a country where the
tillers of the fields are free, everybody is free and ought to be
prosperous. Happy is that country where those who cultivate the
land own it. Patriotism is born in the woods and fields -- by lakes
and streams -- by crags and plains.
The old way of farming was a great mistake. Everything was
done the wrong way. It was all work and waste, weariness and want.
They used to fence a hundred and sixty acres of land with a couple
of dogs. Everything was left to the protection of the blessed
trinity of chance, accident and mistake.
When I was a farmer they used to haul wheat two hundred miles
in wagons and sell it for thirty-five cents a bushel. They would
bring home about three hundred feet of lumber, two bunches of
shingles, a barrel of salt, and a cook-stove that never would draw
and never did bake.
In those blessed days the people lived on corn and bacon.
Cooking was an unknown art. Eating was a necessity, not a pleasure.
It was hard work for the cook to keep on good terms even with
hunger.
We had poor houses. The rain held the roofs in perfect
contempt, and the snow drifted joyfully on the floors and beds.
They had no barns. The horses were kept in rail pens surrounded
with straw. Long before spring the sides would be eaten away and
nothing but roofs would be left. Food is fuel. When the cattle were
exposed to all the blasts of winter, it took all the corn and oats
that could be stuffed into them to prevent actual starvation.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS.
In those times most farmers thought the best place for the
pig-pen was immediately in front of the house. There is nothing
like sociability.
Women were supposed to know the art of making fires without
fuel. The wood pile consisted, as a general thing, of one log upon
which an axe or two had been worn out in vain. There was nothing to
kindle a fire with. Pickets were pulled from the garden fence,
clap-boards taken from the house, and every stray plank was seized
upon for kindling. Everything was done in the hardest way.
Everything about the farm was disagreeable. Nothing was kept in
order. Nothing was preserved. The wagons stood in the sun and rain,
and the plows rusted in the fields. There was no leisure, no
feeling that the work was done. It was all labor and weariness and
vexation of spirit. The crops were destroyed by wandering herds, or
they were put in too late, or too early, or they were blown down,
or caught by the frost, or devoured by bugs, or stung by flies, or
eaten by worms, or carried away by birds, or dug up by gophers, or
washed away by floods, or dried up by the sun, or rotted in the
stack, or heated in the crib, or they all ran to vines, or tops, or
straw, or smut, or cobs. And when in spite of all these accidents
that lie in wait between the plow and the reaper, they did succeed
in raising a good crop and a high price was offered, then the roads
would be impassable. And when the roads got good, then the prices
went down. Everything worked together for evil.
Nearly every farmer's boy took an oath that he never would
cultivate the soil. The moment they arrived at the age of twenty-
one they left the desolate and dreary farms and rushed to the towns
and cities. They wanted to be bookkeepers, doctors, merchants,
railroad men, insurance agents, lawyers, even preachers, anything
to avoid the drudgery of the farm. Nearly every boy acquainted with
the three R's -- reading, writing, and arithmetic -- imagined that
he had altogether more education than ought to be wasted in raising
potatoes and corn. They made haste to get into some other business.
Those who stayed upon the farm envied those who went away.
A few years ago the times were prosperous, and the young men
went to the cities to enjoy the fortunes that were waiting for
them. They wanted to engage in something that promised quick
returns. They built railways, established banks and insurance
companies. They speculated in stocks in Wall Street, and gambled in
grain at Chicago. They became rich. They lived in palaces. They
rode in carriages. They pitied their poor brothers on the farms,
and the poor brothers envied them.
But time has brought its revenge. The farmers have seen the
railroad president a bankrupt, and the road in the hands of a
receiver. They have seen the bank president abscond, and the
insurance company a wrecked and ruined fraud. The only solvent
people, as a class, the only independent people, are the tillers of
the soil.
Farming must be made more attractive. The comforts of the town
must be added to the beauty of the fields. The sociability of the
city must be rendered possible in the country.
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS.
Farming has been made repulsive. The farmers have been
unsociable and their homes have been lonely. They have been
wasteful and careless. They have not been proud of their business.
In the first place, farming ought to be reasonably profitable.
The farmers have not attended to their own interests. They have
been robbed and plundered in a hundred ways.
No farmer can afford to raise corn and oats and hay to sell.
He should sell horses, not oats; sheep, cattle and pork, not corn.
He should make every profit possible out of what he produces. So
long as the farmers of Illinois ship their corn and oats, so long
they will be poor, -- just so long will their farms be mortgaged to
the insurance companies and banks of the East, -- just so long will
they do the work and others reap the benefit, -- just so long will
they be poor, and the money lenders grow rich, -- just so long will
cunning avarice grasp and hold the net profits of honest toil. When
the farmers of the West ship beef and pork instead of grain, --
when we manufacture here, -- when we cease paying tribute to
others, ours will be the most prosperous country in the world.
Another thing -- It is just as cheap to raise a good as a poor
breed of cattle. Scrubs will eat just as much as thoroughbreds. If
you are not able to buy Durhams and Alderneys, you can raise the
corn breed. By "corn breed" I mean the cattle that have, for
several generations, had enough to eat, and have been treated with
kindness. Every farmer who will treat his cattle kindly, and feed
them all they want, will, in a few years, have blooded stock on his
farm. All blooded stock has been produced in this way. You can
raise good cattle just as you can rase good people. If you wish to
raise a good boy you must give him plenty to eat, and treat him
with kindness. In this way, and in this way only, can good cattle
or good people be produced.
Another thing -- You must beautify your homes.
When I was a farmer it was not fashionable to set out trees,
nor to plant vines.
When you visited the farm you were not welcomed by flowers,
and greeted by trees loaded with fruit. Yellow dogs came bounding
over the tumbled fence like wild beasts. There is no sense -- there
is no profit in such a life. It is not living. The farmers ought to
beautify their homes. There should be trees and grass and flowers
and running vines. Everything should be kept in order -- gates
should be on their hinges, and about all there should be the
pleasant air of thrift. In every house there should be a bath-room.
The bath is a civilizer, a refiner, a beautifier. When you come
from the fields tired, covered with dust, nothing is so refreshing.
Above all things, keep clean. It is not necessary to be a pig in
order to raise one. In the cool of the evening, after a day in the
field, put on clean clothes, take a seat under the trees, 'mid the
perfume of flowers, surrounded by your family, and you will know
what it is to enjoy life like a gentleman.
In no part of the globe will farming pay better than in
Illinois. You are in the best portion of the earth. From the
Atlantic to the Pacific, there is no such country as yours. The
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS.
East is hard and stony; the soil is stingy. The far West is a
desert parched and barren, dreary and desolate as perdition would
be with the fires out. It is better to dig wheat and corn from the
soil than gold. Only a few days ago, I was where they wrench the
precious metals from the miserly clutch of the rocks. When I saw
the mountains, treeless, shrubless, flowerless, without even a
spire of grass, it seemed to me that gold had the same effect upon
the country that holds it, as upon the man who lives and labors
only for that. It affects the land as it does the man. It leaves
the heart barren without a flower of kindness -- without a blossom
of pity.
The farmer in Illinois has the best soil -- the greatest
return for the least labor -- more leisure -- more time for
enjoyment than any other farmer in the world. His hard work ceases
with autumn. He has the long winters in which to become acquainted
with his family -- with his neighbors -- in which to read and keep
abreast with the advanced thought of his day. He has the time and
means for self-culture. He has more time than the mechanic, the
merchant or the professional man. If the farmer is not well
informed it is his own fault. Books are cheap, and every farmer can
have enough to give him the outline of every science, and an idea
of all that has been accomplished by man.
In many respects the farmer has the advantage of the mechanic.
In our time we have plenty of mechanics but no tradesmen. In the
sub-division of labor we have a thousand men working upon different
parts of the same thing, each taught in one particular branch, and
in only one. We have, say, in a shoe factory, hundreds of men, but
not one shoemaker. It takes them all, assisted by a great number of
machines, to make a shoe. Each does a particular part, and not one
of them knows the entire trade. The result is that the moment the
factory shuts down these men are out of employment. Out of
employment means out of bread -- out of bread means famine and
horror. The mechanic of to-day has but little independence. His
prosperity often depends upon the good will of one man. He is
liable to be discharged for a look, for a word. He lays by but
little for his declining years. He is, at the best, the slave of
capital.
It is a thousand times better to be a whole farmer than part
of a mechanic. It is better to till the ground and work for
yourself than to be hired by corporations. Every man should
endeavor to belong to himself.
About seven hundred years ago, Khayyam, a Persian, said. "Why
should a man who possesses a piece of bread securing life for two
days, and who has a cup of water -- why should such a man be
commanded by another, and why should such a man serve another?"
Young men should not be satisfied with a salary. Do not
mortgage the possibilities of your future. Have the courage to take
life as it comes, feast or famine. Think of hunting a gold mine for
a dollar a day, and think of finding one for another man. How would
you feel then?
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS.
We are lacking in true courage, when, for fear of the future,
we take the crusts and scraps and niggardly salaries of the
present. I had a thousand times rather have a farm, and be
independent, than to be President of the United States without
independence, filled with doubt and trembling, feeling of the
popular pulse, resorting to art and artifice, enquiring about the
wind of opinion, and succeeding at last in losing my self-respect
without gaining the respect of others.
Man needs more manliness, more real independence. We must take
care of ourselves. This we can do by labor, and in this way we can
preserve our independence. We should try and choose that business
or profession the pursuit of which will give us the most happiness.
Happiness is wealth, we can be happy without being rich -- without
holding office -- without being famous. I am not sure that we can
be happy with wealth, with office, or with fame.
There is a quiet about the life of a farmer, and the hope of
a serene old age, that no other business or profession can promise.
A professional man is doomed sometime to feel that his powers are
waning. He is doomed to see younger and stronger men pass him in
the race of life. He looks forward to an old age of intellectual
mediocrity. He will be last where once he was the first. But the
farmer goes, as it were, into partnership with nature -- he lives
with trees and flowers -- he breathes the sweet air of the fields.
There is no constant and frightful strain upon his mind. His nights
are filled with sleep and rest. He watches his flocks and herds as
they feed upon the green and sunny slopes. He hears the pleasant
rain falling upon the waving corn, and the trees he planted in
youth rustle above him as he plants others for the children yet to
be.
Our country is filled with the idle and unemployed, and the
great question asking for an answer is: What shall be done with
these men? What shall these men do? To this there is but one
answer. They must cultivate the soil. Farming must be rendered more
attractive. Those who work the land must have an honest pride in
their business. They must educate their children to cultivate the
soil. They must make farming easier, so that their children will
not hate it -- so that they will not hate it themselves. The boys
must not be taught that tilling the ground is a curse and almost a
disgrace. They must not suppose that education is thrown away upon
them unless they become ministers, merchants, lawyers, doctors, or
statesmen. It must be understood that education can be used to
advantage on a farm. We must get rid of the idea that a little
learning unfits one for work. There is no real conflict between
Latin and labor. There are hundreds of graduates of Yale and
Harvard and other colleges, who are agents of sewing machines,
solicitors for insurance, clerks, copyists, in short, performing a
hundred varieties of menial service. They seem willing to do
anything that is not regarded as work -- anything that can be done
in a town, in the house, in an office, but they avoid farming as
they would a leprosy. Nearly every young man educated in this way
is simply ruined. Such an education ought to be called ignorance.
It is a thousand times better to have common sense without
education, than education without the sense. Boys and girls should
be educated to help themselves. They should be taught that it is
disgraceful to be idle, and dishonorable to he useless.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS.
I say again, if you want more men and women on the farms,
something must be done to make farm life pleasant. One great
difficulty is that the farm is lonely. People write about the
pleasures of solitude, but they are found only in books. He who
lives long alone becomes insane. A hermit is a madman. Without
friends and wife and child, there is nothing left worth living for.
The unsocial are the enemies of joy. They are filled with egotism
and envy, with vanity and hatred. People who live much alone become
narrow and suspicious. They are apt to be the property of one idea.
They begin to think there is no use in anything. They look upon the
happiness of others as a kind of folly. They hate joyous folks,
because, way down in their hearts, they envy them.
In our country, farm-life is too lonely. The farms are large,
and neighbors are too far apart. In these days, when the roads are
filled with "tramps," the wives and children need protection. When
the farmer leaves home and goes to some distant field to work, a
shadow of fear is upon his heart all day, and a like shadow rests
upon all at home.
In the early settlement of our country the pioneer was forced
to take his family, his axe, his dog and his gun, and go into the
far wild forest, and build his cabin miles and miles from any
neighbor. He saw the smoke from his hearth go up alone in all the
wide and lonely sky.
But this necessity has passed away, and now, instead of living
so far apart upon the lonely farms, you should live in villages.
With the improved machinery which you have -- with your generous
soil -- with your markets and means of transportation, you can now
afford to live together.
It is not necessary in this age of the world for the farmer to
rise in the middle of the night and begin his work. This getting up
so early in the morning is a relic of barbarism. It has made
hundreds and thousands of young men curse the business. There is no
need of getting up at three or four o'clock in the winter morning.
The farmer who persists in doing it and persists in dragging his
wife and children from their beds ought to be visited by a
missionary. It is time enough to rise after the sun has set the
example. For what purpose do you get up? To feed the cattle? Why
not feed them more the night before? It is a waste of life. In the
old times they used to get up about three o'clock in the morning,
and go to work long before the sun had risen with "healing upon his
wings," and as a just punishment they all had the ague; and they
ought to have it now. The man who cannot get a living upon Illinois
soil without rising before daylight ought to starve. Eight hours a
day is enough for any farmer to work except in harvest time. When
you rise at four and work till dark what is life worth? Of what use
are all the improvements in farming? Of what use is all the
improved machinery unless it tends to give the farmer a little more
leisure? What is harvesting now, compared with what it was in the
old time? Think of the days of reaping, of cradling, of raking and
binding and mowing. Think of threshing with the flail and winnowing
with the wind. And now think of the reapers and mowers, the binders
and threshing machines, the plows and cultivators, upon which the
farmer rides protected from the sun. If, with all these advantages,
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS.
you cannot get a living without rising in the middle of the night,
go into some other business. You should not rob your families of
sleep. Sleep is the best medicine in the world. It is the best
doctor upon the earth. There is no such thing as health without
plenty of sleep. Sleep until you are thoroughly rested and
restored. When you work, work; and when you get through take a
good, long, and refreshing rest.
You should live in villages, so that you can have the benefits
of social life. You can have a reading-room -- you can take the
best papers and magazines -- you can have plenty of books, and each
one can have the benefit of them all. Some of the young men and
women can cultivate music. You can have social gatherings -- you
can learn from each other -- you can discuss all topics of
interest, and in this way you can make farming a delightful
business. You must keep up with the age. The way to make farming
respectable is for farmers to become really intelligent. They must
live intelligent and happy lives. They must know something of books
and something of what is going on in the world. They must not be
satisfied with knowing something of the affairs of a neighborhood
and nothing about the rest of the earth. The business must be made
attractive, and it never can be until the farmer has prosperity,
intelligence and leisure.
Another thing -- I am a believer in fashion. It is the duty of
every woman to make herself as beautiful and attractive as she
possibly can.
"Handsome is as handsome does," but she is much handsomer if
well dressed. Every man should look his very best. I am a believer
in good clothes. The time never ought to come in this country when
you can tell a farmer's wife or daughter simply by the garments she
wears. I say to every girl and woman, no matter what the material
of your dress may be, no matter how cheap and coarse it is, cut it
and make it in the fashion. I believe in jewelry. Some people look
upon it as barbaric, but in my Judgment, wearing jewelry is the
first evidence the barbarian gives of a wish to be civilized. To
adorn ourselves seems to be a part of our nature, and this desire
seems to be everywhere and in everything. I have sometimes thought
that the desire for beauty covers the earth with flowers. It is
this desire that paints the wings of moths, tints the chamber of
the shell, and gives the bird its plumage and its song. Oh
daughters and wives, if you would be loved, adorn yourselves -- if
you would be adored, be beautiful!
There is another fault common with the farmers of our country
-- they want too much land. You cannot, at present, when taxes are
high, afford to own land that you do not cultivate. Sell it and let
others make farms and homes. In this way what you keep will be
enhanced in value. Farmers ought to own the land they cultivate,
and cultivate what they own. Renters can hardly be called farmers.
There can be no such thing in the highest sense as a home unless
you own it. There must be an incentive to plant trees, to beautify
the grounds, to preserve and improve. It elevates a man to own a
home. It gives a certain independence, a force of character that is
obtained in no other way. A man without a home feels like a
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS.
passenger. There is in such a man a little of the vagrant. Homes
make patriots. He who has sat by his own fireside with wife and
children will defend it. When he hears the word country pronounced,
he thinks of his home.
Few men have been patriotic enough to shoulder a musket in
defence of a boarding house.
The prosperity and glory of our country depend upon the number
of our people who are the owners of homes. Around the fireside
cluster the private and the public virtues of our race. Raise your
sons to be independent through labor -- to pursue some business for
themselves and upon their own account -- to be self-reliant -- to
act upon their own responsibility, and to take the consequences
like men. Teach them above all things to be good, true and tender
husbands -- winners of love and builders of homes.
A great many farmers seem to think that they are the only
laborers in the world. This is a very foolish thing. Farmers cannot
get along without the mechanic. You are not independent of the man
of genius. Your prosperity depends upon the inventor. The world
advances by the assistance of all laborers; and all labor is under
obligations to the inventions of genius. The inventor does as much
for agriculture as he who tills the soil. All laboring men should
be brothers. You are in partnership with the mechanics who make
your reapers, your mowers and your plows; and you should take into
your granges all the men who make their living by honest labor. The
laboring people should unite and should protect themselves against
all idlers. You can divide mankind into two classes: the laborers
and the idlers, the supporters and the supported, the honest and
the dishonest. Every man is dishonest who lives upon the unpaid
labor of others, no matter if he occupies a throne. All laborers
should be brothers. The laborers should have equal rights before
the world and before the law. And I want every farmer to consider
every man who labors either with hand or brain as his brother.
Until genius and labor formed a partnership there was no such thing
as prosperity among men. Every reaper and mower, every agricultural
implement, has elevated the work of the farmer, and his vocation
grows grander with every invention. In the olden time the
agriculturist was ignorant; he knew nothing of machinery, he was
the slave of superstition. He was always trying to appease some
imaginary power by fasting and prayer. He supposed that some being
actuated by malice, sent the untimely frost, or swept away with the
wild wind his rude abode. To him the seasons were mysteries. The
thunder told him of an enraged god -- the barren fields of the
vengeance of heaven. The tiller of the soil lived in perpetual and
abject fear. He knew nothing of mechanics, nothing of order,
nothing of law, nothing of cause and effect. He was a superstitious
savage. He invented prayers instead of plows, creeds instead of
reapers and mowers. He was unable to devote all his time to the
gods, and so he hired others to assist him, and for their influence
with the gentlemen supposed to control the weather, he gave one-
tenth of all he could produce.
The farmer has been elevated through science and he should not
forget the debt he owes to the mechanic, to the inventor, to the
thinker. He should remember that all laborers belong to the same
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS.
grand family -- that they are the real kings and Queens, the only
true nobility.
Another idea entertained by most farmers is that they are in
some mysterious way oppressed by every other kind of business --
that they are devoured by monopolies, especially by railroads.
Of course, the railroads are indebted to the farmers for their
prosperity, and the farmers are indebted to the railroads. Without
them Illinois would be almost worthless.
A few years ago you endeavored to regulate the charges of
railroad companies. The principal complaint you had was that they
charged too much for the transportation of corn and other cereals
to the East. You should remember that all freights are paid by the
consumer; and that it made little difference to you what the
railroad charged for transportation to the East, as that
transportation had to be paid by the consumers of the grain. You
were really interested in transportation from the East to the West
and in local freights. The result is that while you have put down
through freights you have not succeeded so well in local freights.
The exact opposite should be the policy of Illinois. Put down local
freights; put them down, if you can, to the lowest possible figure,
and let through rates take care of themselves. If all the corn
raised in Illinois could be transported to New York absolutely
free, it would enhance but little the price that you would receive.
What we want is the lowest possible local rate. Instead of this you
have simply succeeded in helping the East at the expense of the
West. The railroads are your friends. They are your partners. They
can prosper only where the country through which they run prospers.
All intelligent railroad men know this. They know that present
robbery is future bankruptcy. They know that the interest of the
farmer and of the railroad is the same. We must have railroads.
What can we do without them?
When we had no railroads, we drew, as I said before, our grain
two hundred miles to market.
In those days the farmers did not stop at hotels. They slept
under their wagons -- took with them their food -- fried their own
bacon, made their coffee, and ate their meals in the snow and rain.
Those were the days when they received ten cents a bushel for corn
-- when they sold four bushels of potatoes for a quarter -- thirty-
three dozen eggs for a dollar, and a hundred pounds of pork for a
dollar and a half.
What has made the difference?
The railroads came to your door and they brought with them the
markets of the world. They brought New York and Liverpool and
London into Illinois, and the State has been clothed with
prosperity as with a mantle. It is the interest of the farmer to
protect every great interest in the State. You should feel proud
that Illinois has more railroads than any other State in this
Union. Her main tracks and side tracks would furnish iron enough to
belt the globe. In Illinois there are ten thousand miles of
railways. In these iron highways more than three hundred million
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ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS.
dollars have been invested -- a sum equal to ten times the original
cost of all the land in the State. To make war upon the railroads
is a short-sighted and suicidal policy. They should be treated
fairly and should be taxed by the same standard that farms are
taxed, and in no other way. If we wish to prosper we must act
together, and we must see to it that every form of labor is
protected.
There has been a long period of depression in all business.
The farmers have suffered least of all. Your land is just as rich
and productive as ever. Prices have been reasonable. The towns and
cities have suffered. Stocks and bonds have shrunk from par to
worthless paper. Princes have become paupers, and bankers,
merchants and millionaires have passed into the oblivion of
bankruptcy. The period of depression is slowly passing away, and we
are entering upon better times.
A great many people say that a scarcity of money is our only
difficulty. In my opinion we have money enough, but we lack
confidence in each other and in the future.
There has been so much dishonesty, there have been so many
failures, that the people are afraid to trust anybody. There is
plenty of money, but there seems to be a scarcity of business. If
you were to go to the owner of a ferry, and, upon seeing his boat
lying high and dry on the shore, should say, "There is a
superabundance of ferryboat," he would probably reply, "No, but
there is a scarcity of water." So with us there is not a scarcity
of money, but there is a scarcity of business. And this scarcity
springs from lack of confidence in one another. So many presidents
of savings banks, even those belonging to the Young Men's Christian
Association, run off with the funds; so many railroad and insurance
companies are in the hands of receivers; there is so much
bankruptcy on every hand, that all capital is held in the nervous
clutch of fear. Slowly, but surely we are coming back to honest
methods in business. Confidence will return, and then enterprise
will unlock the safe and money will again circulate as of yore; the
dollars will leave their hiding places and every one will be
seeking investment.
For my part, I do not ask any interference on the part of the
Government except to undo the wrong it has done. I do not ask that
money be made out of nothing. I do not ask for the prosperity born
of paper. But I do ask for the remonetization of silver. Silver was
demonetized by fraud. It was an imposition upon every solvent man;
a fraud upon every honest debtor in the United States. It
assassinated labor. It was done in the interest of avarice and
greed, and should be undone by honest men.
The farmers should vote only for such men as are able and
willing to guard and advance the interests of labor. We should know
better than to vote for men who will deliberately put a tariff of
three dollars a thousand upon Canada lumber, when every farmer in
Illinois is a purchaser of lumber. People who live upon the
prairies ought to vote for cheap lumber. We should protect
ourselves. We ought to have intelligence enough to know what we
want and how to get it. The real laboring men of this country can
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS.
succeed if they are united. By laboring men, I do not mean only the
farmers. I mean all who contribute in some way to the general
welfare. They should forget prejudices and party names, and
remember only the best interests of the people. Let us see if we
cannot, in Illinois, protect every department of industry. Let us
see if all property cannot be protected alike and taxed alike,
whether owned by individuals or corporations.
Where industry creates and justice protects, prosperity
dwells.
Let me tell you something more about Illinois We have fifty-
six thousand square miles of land -- nearly thirty-six million
acres. Upon these plains we can raise enough to feed and clothe
twenty million people. Beneath these prairies were hidden millions
of ages ago, by that old miser, the sun, thirty-six thousand square
miles of coal. The aggregate thickness of these veins is at least
fifteen feet. Think of a column of coal one mile square and one
hundred miles high! All this came from the sun. What a sunbeam such
a column would be! Think of the engines and machines this coal will
run and turn and whirl! Think of all this force, willed and left to
us by the dead morning of the world! Think of the firesides of the
future around which will sit the fathers, mothers and children of
the years to be! Think of the sweet and happy faces, the loving and
tender eyes that will glow and gleam in the sacred light of all
these flames!
We have the best country in the world, and Illinois is the
best State in that country. Is there any reason that our farmers
should not be prosperous and happy men and women? They have every
advantage, and within their reach are all the comforts and
conveniences of life.
Do not get the land fever and think you must buy all that
joins you. Get out of debt as soon as you possibly can. A mortgage
casts a shadow on the sunniest field. There is no business under
the sun that can pay ten per cent.
Ainsworth R. Spofford gives the following facts about
interest. "One dollar loaned for one hundred years at six per
cent., with the interest collected annually and added to the
principal, will amount to three hundred and forty dollars. At eight
per cent. it amounts to two thousand two hundred and three dollars.
At three per cent. it amounts only to nineteen dollars and twenty-
five cents. At ten per cent. it is thirteen thousand eight hundred
and nine dollars, or about seven hundred times as much. At twelve
per cent. it amounts to eighty-four thousand and seventy-five
dollars, or more than four thousand times as much. At eighteen per
cent. it amounts to fifteen million one hundred and forty-five
thousand and seven dollars. At twenty-four per cent. (which we
sometimes hear talked of) it reaches the enormous sum of two
billion five hundred and fifty-one million seven hundred and
ninety-nine thousand four hundred and four dollars."
One dollar at compound interest, at twenty-four per cent., for
one hundred years, would produce a sum equal to our national debt.
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS.
Interest eats night and day, and the more it eats the hungrier
it grows. The farmer in debt, lying awake at night, can, if he
listens, hear it gnaw. If he owes nothing, he can hear his corn
grow. Get out of debt as soon as you possibly can. You have
supported idle avarice and lazy economy long enough.
Above all let every farmer treat his wife and children with
infinite kindness. Give your sons and daughters every advantage
within your power. In the air of kindness they will grow about you
like flowers. They will fill your homes with sunshine and all your
years with joy. Do not try to rule by force. A blow from a parent
leaves a scar on the soul. I should feel ashamed to die surrounded
by children I had whipped. Think of feeling upon your dying lips
the kiss of a child you had struck.
See to it that your wife has every convenience. Make her life
worth living. Never allow her to become a servant. Wives, weary and
worn, mothers, wrinkled and bent before their time, fill homes with
grief and shame. If you are not able to hire help for your wives,
help them yourselves. See that they have the best utensils to work
with. Women cannot create things by magic. Have plenty of wood and
coal -- good cellars and plenty in them. Have cisterns, so that you
can have plenty of rain water for washing. Do not rely on a barrel
and a board. When the rain comes the board will be lost or the
hoops will be off the barrel.
Farmers should live like princes. Eat the best things you
raise and sell the rest. Have good things to cook and good things
to cook with. Of all people in our country, you should live the
best. Throw your miserable little stoves out of the window. Get
ranges, and have them so built that your wife need not burn her
face off to get you a breakfast. Do not make her cook in a kitchen
hot as the orthodox perdition. The beef, not the cook, should be
roasted. It is just as easy to have things convenient and right as
to have them any other way.
Cooking is one of the fine arts. Give your wives and daughters
things to cook, and things to cook with, and they will soon become
most excellent cooks. Good cooking is the basis of civilization.
The man whose arteries and veins are filled with rich blood made of
good and well cooked food, has pluck, courage, endurance and noble
impulses. The inventor of a good soup did more for his race than
the maker of any creed. The doctrines of total depravity and
endless punishment were born of bad cooking and dyspepsia. Remember
that your wife should have the things to cook with.
In the good old days there would be eleven children in the
family and only one skillet. Everything was broken or cracked or
loaned or lost.
There ought to be a law making it a crime, punishable by
imprisonment, to fry beefsteak. Broil it; it is just as easy, and
when broiled it is delicious. Fried beefsteak is not fit for a wild
beast. You can broil even on a stove. Shut the front damper -- open
the back one -- then take off a griddle. There will then be a draft
downwards through this opening. Put on your steak, using a wire
broiler, and not a particle of smoke will touch it, for the reason
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS.
that the smoke goes down. If you try to broil it with the front
damper open, the smoke will rise. For broiling, coal, even soft
coal, makes a better fire than wood.
There is no reason why farmers should not have fresh meat all
the year round. There is certainly no sense in stuffing yourself
full of salt meat every morning, and making a well or a cistern of
your stomach for the rest of the day. Every farmer should have an
ice house. Upon or near every farm is some stream from which plenty
of ice can be obtained, and the long summer days made delightful.
Dr. Draper, one of the world's greatest scientists, says that ice
water is healthy, and that it has done away with many of the low
forms of fever in the great cities. Ice has become one of the
necessaries of civilized life, and without it there is very little
comfort.
Make your homes pleasant. Have your houses warm and
comfortable for the winter. Do not build a story-and-a-half house.
The half story is simply an oven in which, during the summer, you
will bake every night, and feel in the morning as though only the
rind of yourself was left.
Decorate your rooms, even if you do so with cheap engravings.
The cheapest are far better than none. Have books -- have papers,
and read them. you have more leisure than the dwellers in cities.
Beautify your grounds with plants and flowers and vines. Have good
gardens. Remember that everything of beauty tends to the elevation
of man. Every little morning-glory whose purple bosom is thrilled
with the amorous kisses of the sun, tends to put a blossom in your
heart. Do not judge of the value of everything by the market
reports. Every flower about a house certifies to the refinement of
somebody. Every vine climbing and blossoming, tells of love and
joy.
Make your houses comfortable. Do not huddle together in a
little room around a red-hot stove, with every window fastened
down. Do not live in this poisoned atmosphere, and then, when one
of your children dies, put a piece in the papers commencing with,
"Whereas, it has pleased divine Providence to remove from our midst
--." Have plenty of air, and plenty of warmth. Comfort is health.
Do not imagine anything is unhealthy simply because it is pleasant.
That is an old and foolish idea.
Let your children sleep. Do not drag them from their beds in
the darkness of night. Do not compel them to associate all that is
tiresome, irksome and dreadful with cultivating the soil. In this
way you bring farming into hatred and disrepute. Treat your
children with infinite kindness -- treat them as equals. There is
no happiness in a home not filled with love. Where the husband
hates his wife -- where the wife hates the husband; where children
hate their parents and each other -- there is a hell upon earth.
There is no reason why farmers should not be the kindest and
most cultivated of men. There is nothing in plowing the fields to
make men cross, cruel and crabbed. To look upon the sunny slopes
covered with daisies does not tend to make men unjust. Whoever
labors for the happiness of those he loves, elevates himself, no
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS.
matter whether he works in the dark and dreary shops, or in the
perfumed fields. To work for others is, in reality, the only way in
which a man can work for himself. Selfishness is ignorance.
Speculators cannot make unless somebody loses. In the realm of
speculation, every success has at least one victim. The harvest
reaped by the farmer benefits all and injures none. For him to
succeed, it is not necessary that some one should fail. The same is
true of all producers -- of all laborers.
I can imagine no condition that carries with it such a promise
of joy as that of the farmer in the early winter. He has his cellar
filled -- he has made every preparation for the days of snow and
storm -- he looks forward to three months of ease and rest; to
three months of fireside content; three months with wife and
children; three months of long, delightful evenings; three months
of home; three months of solid comfort.
When the life of the farmer is such as I have described, the
cities and towns will not be filled with want -- the streets will
not be crowded with wrecked rogues, broken bankers, and bankrupt
speculators. The fields will be tilled, and country villages,
almost hidden by trees and vines and flowers, filled with
industrious and happy people, will nestle in every vale and gleam
like gems on every plain.
The idea must be done away with that there is something
intellectually degrading in cultivating the soil. Nothing can be
nobler than to be useful. Idleness should not be respectable.
If farmers will cultivate well, and without waste; if they
will so build that their houses will be warm in winter and cool in
summer; if they will plant trees and beautify their homes; if they
will occupy their leisure in reading, in thinking, in improving
their minds and in devising ways and means to make their business
profitable and pleasant; if they will live nearer together and
cultivate sociability; if they will come together often; if they
will have reading rooms and cultivate music; if they will have
bath-rooms, ice-houses and good gardens; if their wives can have an
easy time; if their sons and daughters can have an opportunity to
keep in line with the thoughts and discoveries of the world; if the
nights can be taken for sleep and the evenings for enjoyment,
everybody will be in love with the fields. Happiness should be the
object of life, and if life on the farm can be made really happy,
the children will grow up in love with the meadows, the streams,
the woods and the old home. Around the farm will cling and cluster
the happy memories of the delightful years.
Remember, I pray you, that you are in partnership with all
labor -- that you should join hands with all the sons and daughters
of toil, and that all who work belong to the same noble family.
For my part, I envy the man who has lived on the same broad
acres from his boyhood, who cultivates the fields where in youth he
played, and lives where his father lived and died.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS.
I can imagine no sweeter way to end one's life than in the
quiet of the country, out of the mad race for money, place and
power -- far from the demands of business -- out of the dusty
highway where fools struggle and strive for the hollow praise of
other fools.
Surrounded by pleasant fields and faithful friends, by those
I have loved, I hope to end my days. And this I hope may be the lot
of all who hear my voice. I hope that you, in the country, in
houses covered with vines and clothed with flowers, looking from
the open window upon rustling fields of corn and wheat, over which
will run the sunshine and the shadow, surrounded by those whose
lives you have filled with joy, will pass away serenely as the
Autumn dies.
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Biographies and writings of famous persons, and especially of our
nations Founding Fathers. They will include philosophy and
religion. all these subjects, and more, will be made available to
the public in electronic form, easily copied and distributed, so
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The Free Market-Place of Ideas.
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and information for today. If you have such books please contact
us, we need to give them back to America.
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Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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