The change that is now taking place, especially in New England, is toward the greater economy of living, and the harder work and closer management of business, that comes with immigrant proprietorship; and this element is by no means to be depended upon for the improvement of our farming. It may result in a more money-making agriculture, but it will supplant our best political element by the introduction of what has thus far seemed to be one of the worst.
Look at this question as we will, it is difficult to see how else than by improving the race of American farmers we are to accomplish any result whose good effect will be radical and lasting. This brings us around to that threadbare subject of the vague discussion of agricultural writers: "How to keep the boys on the farm."
The devices recommended for accomplishing this result have thus far failed of their object. The average farmer boy is not a sentimentalist, and he is not likely to be moved by the sort of talk so often lavished upon him. To use a vulgarism, he has an extremely "level head." He fails to realize the attraction and the dignity which are implied by what he is told of the nobleness of his father's calling, of the purifying and elevating influences of a daily intercourse with nature. He is not to be caught with this sort of chaff. His cultivation has not been of that æsthetic character that he has an especial drawing toward nobleness, or purity, or elevation. Nature, as he knows it, shows at times an unattractive side; and he fails to recognize precisely what is meant by Mother Earth as a source of dignity. To him Mother Earth is an exacting parent, calling for constant and regular toil, and whipping him on day by day with weeds to be hoed, dry gardens to be watered, snowdrifts to be shovelled, and an almost endless round of embarrassments to be overcome. As for the purity and simplicity of the farmer's life, he knows very much better than to pin his faith to it. To him the farmer's house is too often a place where the mother is overworked, tired, wearied with constant annoyance, and made peevish and fretful. The conversation of hired men and young neighbors and brothers is not marked by refined delicacy and simplicity, as he understands these terms. At the end of all our preaching he will say, at least to himself, that this is probably the sort of talk that we consider appropriate to the occasion, but that, if we knew what he knows about farming, we should see how little effect it is likely to have. If he sought our motive in saying it, he would conclude that we were interested in keeping up the supply of farm labor; and that so far as _he_ was concerned, since he must work for a living, he would work at some other industry if he could get a chance, and leave those who were less fortunate to work on the farm.