Harper's Weekly

“ And what is any book but the record of observation and thought?
Probably Senator Morton has heard many a farmer in Indiana laugh at book-farming and declare with an air of superior wisdom that he farms by experience, and not by book. And on his way home the farmer will chat with a neighbor, hanging over the fence, about the care of stock, and methods of planting and tillage, wondering that men can be such fools as to be book-farmers. But if the wise farmer were only a little wiser, he would know that the book which he despises is only his neighbor talking to a thousand farmers instead of one ”

“ Book-farming is farming with all the aid of knowledge and experience. Book-financiering is treating the questions that most interest us in this country at this moment with the assistance of the most sagacious observation and thought. Jealousy and contempt of the recorded knowledge and wisdom of great men and of other countries will hardly increase our own knowledge and wisdom.
Senator Morton's theory of the situation is that the volume of the currency should be inflated a little ”

“ If the Senator means to deny that there is a science of political economy, or laws of the currency, or principles of finance, and that the whole subject is guess-work or dogmatic assertion of what a man calls his experience or the experience of practical men, which usually means a very prejudiced and limited observation, with very imperfect powers of analysis and deduction, his remarks are intelligible, otherwise they are not well considered. ”