About Farming in Illinois
To Plow is to Pray — to Plant is to Prophesy, and the Harvest Answers and Fulfills.

by Robert G. Ingersoll
(1877)

From The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll (Dresden Edition, 1900–1902), Volume 1.
Source: https://thegreatagnostic.com/works/about-farming-in-illinois/
Public domain. CC0 / Public Domain Mark 1.0.

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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.

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 run 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.

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 raise
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 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, shrub-less, 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?

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 be useless.

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, 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 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 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 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 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? 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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 delighful 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.

I can imagine no sweeter way to end one's life.
