The best farmers, the real bone and sinew of the country, are the kind that raise the crops themselves, without much help from the outside. They grow nearly every thing they eat, and exchange their surplus for the food and clothing that they can't raise. There is a type of farm life where the family is brought up on the principle that what is too poor to sell is good enough to eat. The boys and girls of such a family are too good for such a life. They do not stay in the country. Like the big apples, the prize potatoes, and the gilt-edge butter, though raised on the farm, they are consumed in the city.
The country is the best place in the world for boys and girls to grow up in, just because it is the country. But there are ways in which country life can be improved and if the grown folks are too busy raising crops, the young folks must head the campaign which is to make the country a better place to live in.
Since this is a book on outdoor work we cannot consider ways of making the life indoors more attractive, more comfortable, more convenient, and more sanitary, but concern ourselves with outdoor problems only.
Boys and girls, stop and think. What can you do to make your own particular corner of the country a better place for you and your companions to live in? When a crowd of boys meet together, what do they talk about? Are they interested in local affairs or do they tell each other of the great things they expect to do when they get away? A wise old man once said, "In a republic you ought to begin to train a child for good citizenship on the day of its birth."
Are you going to be a good citizen? Are you patriotic? Do you salute the flag at school, and then go out and break the game laws? Train now for citizenship. There is more patriotism in obeying the laws of your home, your school, your town, and your state than there is in parading with flags and band in the National Guards. Good citizenship begins at home. How can you make your own home a more desirable place for your brothers and sisters to live in? Take a look at the house. Is it plain and unadorned and uncomfortable? Are the surroundings bare and ugly? Have you had experience in building, painting, and planting? If you can help build a corn crib, you can make a porch over the front door or a sidewalk connecting the back door with the pump or the milk house. If you can help paint the barn, why not the house? If you can plant trees in the orchard, why not shrubs in the door yard, and vines over the porch? Don't think you must have expensive pillars and fancy railings. They will not look as well as rustic work or pillars of home-made cement. The vines will soon cover the porch with their greenery if given half a chance.
OUTDOOR CLUBS
Have you a boys' club in your neighbourhood? Or a girls' club? You used to have a literary society in school, and it failed? Why was that? The boys didn't take any interest in it.
Why not have a club that the boys will take an interest in and a club that the girls will take an interest in? What kinds of clubs do boys like? Athletic clubs where they wrestle, box, turn handsprings, have jumping, skating, walking, and running matches, and play such games of skill and endurance as hare and hounds, pitching horseshoes, and baseball. They like all sorts of clubs that get real things done, like raising prize corn or cotton or pigs or training colts or steers or dogs. Boys and girls like to compete for prizes. How boys or girls will work to do something so much better than any other boy or girl in the crowd that the judges will award the prize to them. It is hard in contests like these to be able to walk up like a true sportsman and congratulate the winner. But a boy can learn to do it; so can a girl. All over the United States boys are banding together to raise better corn, better cotton, better chickens, better fruit. North, west, east, and south, thousands of boys are raising corn. They test their seed, prepare the soil, plant, cultivate, and harvest the crop, weigh it, take it to the exhibition where they compare it with other boys' crops, and see for themselves who has the best yield. One boy, a member of the Winnebago County Farmer Boys' Experiment Club took first prize of fifteen dollars in gold for the best ten ears of corn. This club has about eleven hundred members. There is a Winnebago County Girls' Home Culture Club with an equally large membership. These boys and girls are growing up to be good citizens right there in the country, where they were born. They don't have to go to the city to find education or good manners or a good time. The fathers and mothers, the school teachers, the ministers, and the county superintendent of schools all work together in Winnebago County, Ill., and they can everywhere.