III. The well supported Agricultural Society of a rich and populous county must be able, or should be able, to give two or three liberal premiums for general proficiency in farming. If $100 could be proffered to the owner or manager of the best tilled farm in the county, $50 to the owner of the best orchard, and $50 to the boy under 18 years of age who grew the best acre of Corn or Roots that year, I am confident that an impulse would thereby be given to agricultural progress. Our premiums are too numerous and too petty, because so few, are willing to contribute with no expectation of personal benefit or distinction. If we had but the right spirit aroused, we might dispense with most of our petty premiums, or replace them by medals of no great cost, and devote the money thus saved to higher and nobler ends.
IV. Much of the speaking at Fairs seems to me insulting to the intelligence of the Farmers present, who are grossly flattered and eulogized, when they often need to be admonished and incited to mend their ways. What use or sense can there be in a lawyer, doctor, broker, or editor, talking to a crowd of farmers as if they were the most favored of mortals and their life the noblest and happiest known to mankind? Whatever it might be, and may yet become, we all know that the average farmer's life is not what it is thus represented: for, if it were, thousands would be rushing into it where barely hundreds left it: whereas we all see that the fact is quite otherwise. No good can result from such insincere and extravagant praises of a calling which so few freely choose, and so many gladly shun. Grant that the farmer's _ought_ to be the most enviable and envied vocation, we know that in fact it _is_ not and, agreeing that it should be, the business in hand is to make it so. There must be obstacles to surmount, mistakes to set right, impediments to overcome, before farming can be in all respects the idolized pursuit which poets are so ready to proclaim it and orators so delight to represent it. Let us struggle to make it all that fancy has ever painted it; but, so long as it is not, let us respect undeniable facts, and characterize it exactly as it is.
V. If our counties were thoroughly canvassed by township committees, and each tiller of the soil asked to pledge himself in writing to exhibit something at the next County Fair, we should soon witness a decided improvement. Many would be incited to attend who now stay away; while the very general complaint that there is nothing worth coming to see would be heard no more. As yet, a majority of farmers regard the Fair much as they do a circus or traveling menagerie, taking no interest in it except as it may afford them entertainment for the passing hour. We must change this essentially; and the first step is to induce, by concerted solicitation, at least half the farmers in the county to pledge themselves each to exhibit something at the next annual Fair, or pay $5 toward increasing its premiums.