Now if there were dearth of land, if the advancing population from the cities had sent up real estate values this would be a perfectly natural result. But the exact opposite is the case. The deserted farms sprinkled all through New England, farms left to grow up to waste timber, farms on the market for a song, would seem to prove that much. Idle pasture land around such farms as are worked further disproves that it isn’t lack of land that has brought this about. Then what in Heaven’s name is the cause of this wasted opportunity? I can answer only so far as I studied the men about me. The opening of the big western grazing fields did at first have its effect in sending down eastern values of live stock. Thousands of sheep fed by nature permitted a price even with a terrible waste, even with expensive marketing, that discouraged eastern farmers. But that was twenty-five years and more ago. To-day prices are different and should again encourage eastern stock raising at least for local markets. But in the meanwhile our eastern farmers have fallen out of the habit. It has become a proverb that sheep don’t pay--just as, for that matter, it has become a proverb that chickens don’t pay, cattle don’t pay, pigs don’t pay, hay don’t pay or, in brief and as Hadley was constantly reminding me, “Nothin’ don’t pay.” He spoke with more truth than he thought when he said that. It’s a fact that “nothin’ don’t pay,” but everything else does pay. Now as the Agricultural School expert insisted, a flock of one hundred sheep carefully looked after in the East can be made worth as much as five hundred or a thousand half neglected on the western plains. The only condition modern methods impose on modern farmers is that such things as are raised shall be cared for. There must be no waste. That is doing nothing more than carry to the farm the principles which govern all modern businesses. The day of allowing sheep, cattle, chickens, or produce to care for themselves and taking what is left, has passed. The only unfortunate feature of this new system is that it involves on the part of the farmer hard work. In getting out of the habit of raising such things as are raised to-day in a big way in the West, the New England farmer has gotten out of the habit of hard work. That’s the gospel truth in a nutshell as it was shown up in our town. With the pioneer movement shifted to the West, all the pioneer qualities went with it. Deserted farms don’t necessarily mean bad farm lands; they mean bad farmers, lazy farmers, uninspired farmers. Once again I find myself getting back to this as a fundamental truth and once again I bring up as proof the fact that the minute you place upon these acres an old-world pioneer like Dardoni you see the land spring to life as by magic.