The Hartford Herald

Farmers and Newspapers.

We have been frequently surprised to see how many farmers well to do in worldly riches, neglect or refuse to take some good paper for the benefit of himself and family. They seem to think they have no interest in the affairs of the world: that they have to deal with nothing except the land they plow or the stock they feed, and their children rearing into ignorance. They forget they are a part of the human family, placed upon this orb to work out the plans of the good and wise Creator, and as such have no right to hamper the great streams of progress. The laws of progression are as unalterable as any others of nature and that man who impedes those laws with an offspring—children uneducated and besotted with ignorance—commits a sin which reacts not only upon himself but on his descendants for long years in the future.

Newspapers are made to spread intelligence and improve the morals of mankind. To the farmers above all men, they should be a necessity, from the fact that they afford him in his isolated condition the only means of mixing in the busy scenes of life. Man in his innate state becomes a personification of selfishness, caring only for himself. Development comes alone from associating with our fellow men, and appropriating to ourselves the advancement which they make. No farmer should do without this social schooling, both for his own good and that of his children; and in no way can it be obtained so fully and cheaply as through the newspaper and periodical literature of the day; and he who neglects to receive these advantages deprives himself of light, and lives out his days in worse than heathen darkness.