The Rural Voice, 1988-12, Page 38May the
I1olidays fill your home
with happiness,
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with us in 1988.
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36 THE RURAL VOICE
VOICE FROM
THE PAST
It's often been said: "The more thing's change, the more they
stay the same." But farm life has certainly undergone dramatic
and irreversible changes. Writer Wayne Kelly provides
evidence for both views: one, the changes in farming and rural
life have been so thorough that the past seems quaint; two,
"modern" problems really aren't so modern after all. Either
way, the "voices from the past" haven't lost their relevance.
P
PRACTICAL ADVICE FROM 1905
ractical advice is rarely
wasted when given to a wise
man. At the turn of the cen-
tury, when industrial fortunes were
running high, editor William Weld
understood the importance of offering
practical counsel and encouragement
to keep young men on the farm.
The following story from The
Farmer's Advocate of 1905 is typ-
ical of William Weld's sagacious
approach.
The Greatest Product
ofaFarm is Men
Once upon a time a student at the
Ontario Agricultural College was
working in the field beside Professor
Thomas Shaw, then farm manager of
that institution.
The student in question was a
sturdy young man who was putting
himself through college and working
overtime to pay his board. He was not
lacking in grit, but he couldn't help
contrasting the rich, friable soil on the
college farm with the stiff clay hill at
home.
The professor listened sympathet-
ically while the student told of the
disadvantages of the home farm, of the
steep clay hillsides that were so hard
to work and that baked like brick after
every rain, of the drought and winds
that reduced the crops, of the persis-
tent bluegrass that choked the grain
and often beat out the clover, of the
poor stabling accommodation for
stock, and of the need for economy in
the household.
The professor listened, and when
his companion was through he
preached a sermon with these words:
"Yes, my boy, but that's the kind of
country that produces men."
There are many such farms in
Canada and it is a matter for gratitude
that there are! They rear our clearest
thinkers, our true economists, our
strongest men. He who can wrest a
living or perhaps a competence from
nature's poorer spots develops a habit
of thrifty industry and a grasp of
economic business principles seldom
acquired to an equal degree by those
men more comfortably circumstanced
in early youth.
It is not a misfortune to be born on
a poor farm, unless one's own craven
spirit makes it so. Environment alone
does not make men of great moral and
intellectual fibre, but it is a powerful
factor in the process.
These stony, broken, hard clay
homesteads may not produce record
crops of corn or grain or roots, but
they afford food for a great deal of
hard earnest thought in their manage-
ment and cultivation.
From lands like that come men
of brain and brawn and character and
pluck! Such men rule the world, and
such farms have, in many instances,
by intelligent management and culti-
vation, been made to yield heavier
crops than many that are more
favoured as to natural conditions.0