Better Management Needed.

A little forethought on a farm is a good thing. It saves time, money, and much of the vexation that is liable to come without it. Like the watchman on a ship a good farmer must always be looking ahead. He must be quick in his judgment of what should be done at the present time, and he should have a good perception to show him the best thing to do for the future.

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.

In schools children are taught from the works of men. These works are arts, and since art is but the imitation of nature, all education is but imitation of that which the farmer boy has the chance of seeing before it becomes second hand. There is no place that has greater facilities to give observation its full scope than a farm. All farmers can, with the aid of the right kind of books and papers, be reasonably well educated, and most of them have a better comparative knowledge than they think they have. Many of the city cousins are superficially educated. City people can talk, but the greater part of the talk of many of them might be more properly called chattering. No farmer need feel below them because he is more retired and has a greater amount of modesty.

It is true, perhaps, that one can not seem more insignificant than he really is. Great men are constantly dying, but the living move on just the same. Each person's position seems valuable to few, and yet there is almost an entire dependence of man to man. Every one can not fill the highest positions, but they should make the best possible use of the faculties that are given them. If this is done there will be no regrets in the future in regard to what might have been done in the past. Life will then be thought worth living and much more happiness will cluster around it than now does.

There is no greater lack of education, perhaps, in agriculture than in the other vocations of man, and most farmers have a good share of well developed muscle to aid them in their work. The requisites are supplied. How many use them, at least in the way they should be used. All of the work could be done, but there is too small a number of good managers to oversee and carry out the performance of the little jobs that require to be performed at the right time.

There are some people in every business who, in the race for success, far outrun their competitors. This may be noticed on a farm. It takes but a short time to tell by the work a man does whether he is a good farmer or not. If a person is a good farmer and unites that quality to that of business management he will be successful in his attainments. Through success he will be honored by the members of his profession. He will be praised by all other people, and above all he will in the silent thoughts of his own mind have the satisfaction and pleasure of knowing that he is not a cipher in the vast human family. He will be pointed out as an example to those who are perhaps bowed down by discouragement. He will in all probability be called lucky when his success is really due to decisions that are arrived at by the experience and close observation of the past. If more farmers would be content to give their thoughts, as well as time, to farming, there would be more success and happiness in the occupation that depends above all others on good management.

S. Lawrence. Quincy, Ill.