Neat fences, well kept up, marked off the fields, and, even to Bessie’s eyes, although she was far from being an agricultural expert, the crops themselves looked better.  She spoke of this to Eleanor.

“These aren’t just ordinary farms,” Eleanor explained.  “My father and some other men who have plenty of money have bought up a lot of land around here, and they are working the farms, and making them pay just as much as possible.  My father thinks it’s a shame for so many boys and young men, whose fathers own farms, to go rushing off to the city and work in stores and factories.  And they started out to find out why it was that way.  They’re business men, you see and as soon as they really began to think about it they found out what was wrong.”

“Why the boys went to the city?” asked Bessie.  “I should think that would be easy to see!  It was around Hedgeville.  Why, on a farm, the work never is done.  It’s work all day, and then get up before daylight to start again.  And even Paw Hoover, who had a good farm, was always saying how poor he was, and how he wished he could make more money.”

“I’ll bet he was always buying new land, though,” said Eleanor, looking wise.

“Yes, he was,” admitted Bessie.  “He always said that if he could get enough land he’d be rich.”

“He probably had too much as it was, Bessie.  The trouble with most farmers is that they don’t know how to use the land they have, instead of that they haven’t enough.  They don’t treat the soil right, and they won’t spend money for good farm machinery and for rich fertilizers.  If they did that, and studied farming, the way men study to be doctors or lawyers, they’d be better off.  How many acres did Paw Hoover have?  Well, it doesn’t matter, but I’ll bet that my father gets more out of one acre on his farm than Paw Hoover does out of two on his.  You see, the man who’s in charge of the farm went to college to study the business, and he knows all sorts of things that make a farm pay better.”

“Paw Hoover was talking about that once, saying he wished he could send Jake to college to study farming.  But Maw laughed at him, and Jake couldn’t have gone, anyhow.  He was so stupid that he never even got through school there in Hedgeville.”

“I suppose he is stupid,” said Eleanor.  “But after all, Bessie, when a boy doesn’t get along well in school it doesn’t always mean that it’s his fault.  He may not be properly taught.  Sometimes it’s the school’s fault, and not the pupil’s.”

“Other people got along all right,” said Bessie.  She wasn’t quite prepared to say a good word for Jake Hoover yet.  He had caused her too much trouble in the past.

“Why,” she went on, “I used to have to do his lessons for him all the time.  He just wouldn’t study at home, Miss Eleanor, and in school he was so big, and such a bully, that most of the teachers were afraid of him.”

“That just shows they weren’t good teachers, Bessie.  No good teacher is ever afraid of a bully.  She has plenty of people to back her up if she really needs help.  I don’t say Jake Hoover is any better than he ought to be, but from all you tell me, part of his trouble may be because he hasn’t been properly handled.  But let’s forget him, anyhow.  Look over there.  Do you see that white house on top of the hill?”