The Honorable Calling of the Farmer
IT is a matter about which it is useless to moralize, perhaps, but one of the most distressing tendencies of the times is the drift of young men from the country to the city. It is a trite saying and true that the country boy is the backbone of the town. The successful business and professional men of our cities are probably more than half country boys. Hence there is always present to the imagination of the country boy the alluring prospect of brilliant success in the city. We would not discourage any boy who cherishes an honorable ambition, but the truth is, that of the country boys who come to town only a small percentage succeed. A number, through ability, force of character, and good luck force themselves to the front. But in doing it they climb over the shoulders of other country boys — and not always by the most scrupulous methods. Morally and financially the average country boy will be better off in the end for staying in the country. If he goes to town, he may become a great merchant or financier, but the chances are about one hundred to one that he will become and remain a small clerk or a small book-keeper, eking out a bare living on a meager salary, a mere inconsequential cog in one of the small wheels of the vast machinery of the city, a thing of no particular account, and on the whole not able to call his soul his own. On the contrary, the boy who remains on the farm is his own master. He may not get rich, but he is apt to become a man. There may be mud on his boots, but there is not apt to be mud on his character — and mud comes off the boots, while it doesn't come off the character. But taking it purely as a financial proposition, the average boy will do better by staying on the farm than he will by going to town. If he has the stuff in him to succeed in town, he will succeed on the farm. And there is to-day plenty of money to be made on the farm by exercising only a tithe of the care and forethought required to succeed in business in the city. When all is said, however, the occupation of the farmer is the most honorable and the most independent in the commercial world. He is his own master upon the free expanse of his own acres. He does not have to cringe to this man, dissemble to that, and economize the truth to the other. The hundred dubious devices by which men climb in the cities are of no use to him. He has to do with the sunshine and the rain and the outdoors that know no hypocrisy. He does not have to compromise with his conscience or pad his principles to make them fit the occasion. He is a lucky man, and his son will do well to follow his footsteps in the furrow. — Norfolk Virginian-Pilot.