This is a good time for the well-trained farm-minded young man or woman to go into agriculture; but one should be sure that he has the qualifications.
There is no need that farming provide only a narrow and deadening life. One may express there all the resources of a good education.
The college man is now beginning to affect the sentiment and the practice in rural communities. Formerly a college man going back to the farm was likely to be the subject of distrust and even ridicule. This attitude is passing very rapidly in the good rural regions.
In his public relations, most of the ambition of the countryman has been to hold office. It is a form of small political entertainment, too often with no thought of any particular service to the community. We have a wholly distorted idea of the "honor" of holding office; there is no honor in an office unless it contributes something worth while to society. We cannot expect strong leadership to develop in the open country until there are better things to look forward to than merely to hold the small political places. Many opportunities for rendering prominent public service will now arise in the farm country; perhaps this book will suggest a few of them. And it ought to be some satisfaction to a young man or woman to know that he or she is part of a world-movement, and to feel that it is no longer necessary to explain or to apologize for being a countryman or a farmer.
We have been living in a get-rich-quick age. Persons have wanted to make fortunes. Our business enterprises are organized with that end in view. Persons are now asking how they may live a satisfactory life, rather than placing the whole emphasis on the financial turnover of a business. There is greater need of more good farmers than of more millionaires.
My reader may wish to know what constitutes a good farmer. I think that the requirements of a good farmer are at least four:
The ability to make a full and comfortable living from the land;
to rear a family carefully and well;
to be of good service to the community;
to leave the farm more productive than it was when he took it.