Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884: A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and FiresideVarious
Science
Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884: A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside
Various
Agriculture -- United States -- Periodicals; Farm life -- Periodicals; United States -- Rural conditions -- Periodicals
It is a mistaken idea that many possess who think there is no brain work
needed on a farm. Farmers are usually looked upon as an ignorant class
of people, especially by many of the city friends who often do not see
the large, sympathizing feelings that lie hidden beneath the rough
exterior of country people. They are in many cases better educated than
they look to be, and they have a chance to use all the education they
have at their command in the performance of the many and different kinds
of duties that are to be done in the occupation of agriculture. There is
much work to be done and it requires to be done at the right time to
give a profitable return for the labor. To have things done properly a
farm requires a good manager to eke out the labor force in the way it
will do the greatest amount of work. Most farmers are willing to work,
and take pleasure in doing so. All perform the harder parts of farming
with an energy that is surpassed by no other laboring class in the
world. Farmers deserve praise for this, I think, for it requires a great
deal of pluck to work as hard as many of them do.
It is not, however, the actual hard manual labor that pays the best. The
hardest part of the work may be done and there still remain enough to
render the job far from complete. The minute parts of an occupation are
the ones that distinguish it from others. These parts constitute trades.
They require a special training to perform them, and the more perfectly
they can be performed by any one, the more successful will that person
be considered as a tradesman. A fine workman receives more pay for less
work than one who does rougher work, simply because it is the minute
parts that bring in the profit. This is so in the mechanical trades; it
is so also in farming and yet many seem to be unaware of the fact. How
numerous are those who leave out the minutia; mechanics learn a trade in
a short time at least well enough to make a living by it. Many farmers
have spent their whole lives upon farms and are still scarcely able to
make a decent living; and the reason of it is because they have left
undone those parts which would, if performed, bring in profit.
It is not the lack of an education that causes so much poor success. It
is a lack of care in action and a want of observation in seeing. A man's
experience is what makes him wise. He gains this experience by coming in
contact with and observing those things which he meets.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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