Hard Work

A writer in the Ohio Cultivator thinks the farmer who works from eight to ten hours a day, and then devotes the rest of his waking 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 twelve to sixteen hours, and allows his brain-power to remain idle. Muscle may be a primary element of success in farming, as it may be in many other occupations, but sleeping [...] by a sound, active [...] mind, it will accomplish little.

"Wherever I go, about among farmers, I notice the wasteful system so manifest in that weak, haphazard 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 great as it is. I have seen men tugging with all their strength at [...] 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 that [wasteful] handling of those [stones] was simply an illustration of the way in which they did the whole of their farm work."