OCR Text |
Show FARM OPPORTUNITY better EVER City Dwellers Struggle for Their Meager Comforts. GOOD FINANCIAL PROSPECT Wisconsin Official Shows Why Young Men and Women Should Stay In Country and Help Make the) Nation's Real Wealth. (By MATTHEW 3. DUDGEON of Wisconsin Wis-consin Free Library Commission.) TEN years ago twenty years ago all the alert, energetic farm boys were leaving the farm for the city. They did this because they wanted to make money, because they wanted to see life. If they stayed on the farm, they were not only sure to be lonely and to be in unattractive surroundings, but they were sure to be poor. But times have changed. Today, if you go through & fairly prosperous farming community, you will find the telephone in nearly every farmhouse and a daily delivery of mail bringing the daily newspapers to every door. You will find many farmhouses farm-houses better fitted up with conveniences con-veniences and comforts than are the homes of the average city laborer. Because there are better roads and better horses and better buggies and more automobiles,, you will find that the farmer and his family are no longer long-er imprisoned in the farmhouse, but move about and have as much social life and as great an opportunity to meet each other as do the city man and his family. Many a farm boy who is ten miles in the country, with his automobile, can and frequently does, reach town in less time than it takes the average man in the big city to reach his business from his city or suburban home. The boy who stays on the farm need no lcnger look ahead to a lonesome, cheerless existence. Prices Going Higher. Never before has the American farm boy had so promising a financial prospect pros-pect as he has at the present time. Profits are surer than they ever were and they bid fair to increase. Prices are high and they are going higher. American consumers are demanding more and better farm products and stand ready to pay better prices. They are going more directly to the farm for what they want and the farmer la getting a bigger share of what they pay. The war and the disturbances that have gr-owa out of lt have interrupted, inter-rupted, if they have not permanently cut off, the channels of trade for foreign for-eign farm products, so that the American Amer-ican farmer is likely in the future to have open to him the markets of the world as they never before have been. Skill and experience In handling soils, in rotating crops, in selecting seeds, and in planting and tending, Is rendering a total failure of any crop unusual and unlikely. But as up-to-date farming is now carried on, the failure of a single crop la no longer long-er the disaster which it formerly was. No one is now a one-crop farmer. Today's To-day's successful farmer has not only a. variety of crops which constitutes reserve resources when the yield or the price of a single crop falls him, but he now gets revenues from a score cf sources, from his "corn and oats and wheat and potatoes as of old, but also from his truck garden, from his orchard and small fruit, from his fat hogs and cattle, from his purebred stock animals sold at fancy prices, from his dairy products, and even from his poultry. Big Financial Returns. In fact, the farmer who formerly was considered a plodder working at one thing, with one idea and one resource, re-source, is now getting to be a resourceful re-sourceful business man, aa administrator, adminis-trator, an alert student of the market mar-ket and finance, a well-read professional profession-al man who understands the science of his profession. The boy who stays on the farm to become a successful farmer is entering enter-ing into an occupation where brains, intelligence and study, energy and alertness are getting as large financial finan-cial returns as they are In any human hu-man activity. Moreover, he is entering enter-ing into an occupation where working work-ing and living conditions are more universally attractive and healthful than are the surroundings of any group of workers in the world. What more can he hope for if he goes to the city? |