New laws.—The next legislative work on drainage should be to revise and consolidate the law. On some points the law is duplicate, and on one triplicate. It is generally demanded that the law shall be less cumbrous and more summary. This can be done to some extent when it shall be found that the courts favor drainage. So far they have had a very tender feeling for complaints. When drainage shall be acknowledged to be lawful, laudable, and necessary, like plowing, laws may be greatly simplified and made more effectual.
River districts.—Illinois being generally level, many of our inland streams waste a large amount of land by overflow and drift. Roads, crops, and bridges are insecure. To a large extent this may be remedied by straightening the channels, and hereafter keeping them in repair and clear of drift wood. If the lands along these rivers, which would receive benefits from this work, were made into a district and classified according to benefits, the burden on them for proper improvement would not be great, and it is believed that dollars would be realized for cents expended. This waste is growing worse year by year. Enough land could be reclaimed along the Kaskaskia, Little Wabash, Big Muddy, Saline, and Henderson to more than make a New England State. The State may well afford to do the engineering and give an enabling act, that the people interested may organize as they decide to improve their respective rivers. When so improved, it will become practicable to more effectually drain the district by lateral works.
Illinois being so generally level, and much of our black soil resting on clay, here is to be the favorite field for the ditcher and tile-maker. Invention has an inviting field, and already foreshadows rich results. Your association, though a private one, touches the public interest very broadly. You reveal and make possible new sources of wealth, which promises to agriculture a new era of development. You may do much to settle true principles and proper public policy, so that this great drainage enterprise may move along harmoniously. The law-maker and the tile-maker are necessary factors in this grand march of improvement.
Other valuable papers were read which we shall take occasion to publish at some future time.
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.