Daily Kennebec Journal

A writer in The Boston Cultivator thinks the farmer who works from eight to ten hours a day, and then devotes the rest of his working hours to study and to planning for future work, nine times out of ten will be more successful, will live longer and live happier, and exert a wider and better influence among his neighbors, than he who labors from 12 to 16 hours, and allows his brain-power to remain idle. Muscle may be a primary element of success in farming, as it must be in many other occupations, but unless controlled by a sound and active intellect it will accomplish little. He adds:

When I go among farmers and note the want of system so manifest in their work, the hap-hazard way in which they manage their affairs, and the amount of time and labor which they absolutely waste through ignorance, carelessness, and lack of forethought, I wonder that their reward is as good as it is. I have seen men tug with huge stones, when by taking advantage of one of the most simple of mechanical laws, they might have moved the stone in much less time, and with but a trifling expenditure of muscular power; and the lifting of these stones was simply an illustration of the way in which they did the whole of their farm work.