(We can't go 'round meeting the
folks all day. We really must give a glance at the exhibition.)
And I am one of those who hold to the belief that while the farmers
can raise ears of corn as long as from your elbow to your fingertips,
as big 'round as a rollingpin, and set with grains as regular and
even as an eight-dollar set of artificial teeth; as long as they
grow potatoes the size of your foot, and such pretty oats and wheat,
and turnips, and squashes, and onions, and apples and all kinds of
truck, and raise them not only in increasing size but increasing
quantities to the acre I feel as if the Republic would last the
year out anyway. Not that I have any notion that mere material
prosperity will make and keep us a free people, but it goes to show
that the farmers are not plodding along, doing as their fathers did
before them, but that they are reading and studying, and taking
advantage of modern methods. There are two ways of increasing your
income. One is by enlarging your output, and the other is by
enlarging your share of the proceeds from the sale of that output.
The Grand Dukes will not always run this country. The farmers
saved the Union once by dying for it; they will save it again by
living for it.
The scientific fellows tell us that we have not nearly reached the
maximum of yield to the acre of crops that are harvested once a
year, but in regard to the crops that are harvested twice a day it
looks to me as if we were doing fairly well.
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