FARMING. To those who can look back to the days when the labors of the farm were the merest drudgery; when a one-horse and a two horse plow, a harrow, the crudest hoes, rakes, scythes, and reaping cradles constituted the working implements of the farm, and compare those of to-day, when plows of every conceiv able pattern, with and without wheels, harrows, and scanners, for a great variety of purposes, rollers, grain drills, gang hoes, reapers and mowers, horse-rakes, threshers, hay-tedders, hay sweeps, horse forks and carriers, horse corn and cotton planters, cultivators, corn harvesters, huskers, stalk cutters, seed planters of every . kind, nearly all of which may be operated with out the driver being obliged to walk. To those, we say, who have witnessed all this, and, more over, steam harnessed to the plow and threshers, and made to do the work of twenty horses at once, the change is surprising indeed. The power machinery of every half section farm now often represents more money than the entire value of a good farm forty years ago. In other words, the application of science to agriculture has increased our productions ten-fold, and enabled the farmer to feel that his calling is not all mere drudgery. Not only has great progress been made in the application of machinery to the farm, but the investigations and labor of countless experi menters has given us improved varieties of grain, vegetables, fruits and flowers, and farm animals so improved, that the farmer who died half a century ago, if he could come back,would not recognize his country nor even the earthupon which he once had lived. In these days, especi ally in the West, it is the capital invested in implements, machinery, and stock, that gives the measure of success in farming. It enables the farmer to accomplish high farming at the lowest possible cost. It enables him to make a com plete crop of corn, ready for husking, at less than one-and-one-quarter days' labor of a man and team per acre, and in favorable seasons he may accomplish sixty-five acres to the man and team Modern improvement has enabled the farmer to raise crops of wheat at an outlay of $5 per acre, including cost of seed and harvesting. So, with all other crops, the intelligent use and care of machinery has not only increased the acreage, perman, six-fold, but has increased the average yield as well. Fbis is all there is to high farming—the raising of maxi mum crops at a minimum cost. Mr. T. S. Gold, one of the best farmers in Connecticut, and Secretary of the State Board of Agriculture, and a close observer, has this to say about farming in New England: It is true that little judgment was used in first settling the country, and that many farms, or even larger districts, were cleared from the forests that should have been allowed to remain, to furnish timber for manufacturing and building, and shelter for fruits and crops. The introduction of agricultural machinery is render ing the culture of these rough portions and the gathering of the hay relatively more expensive than upon smoother land, and there is no doubt that some entire farms thus circumstanced fail to return to their owners a fair equivalent for the labor and capital employed, and that many other farms have some portions which are a drag upon their better parts, a sinking-fund to swallow up the profits derived from successful culture else where. I do not refer to those expensive labors in clearing rocky land, or draining wet land, or reclaiming sandy land by ashes and limeor green crops, but to the continued culture of rough and impoverished lands, the gathering of hay from rough meadows, still mowed because they were once productive, and other like practices followed because under other circumstances they 'were profitable. Lands so situated that they cannot profitably be manured or even cultivated, because they are so difficult of access, must be classed here as not paying for the labor required. Wherever we find farmers laying aside these old-time ways, concentrating their energies upon their better lands, adapting their farming to the changing conditions of the times in stock, crops, and improved implements and machinery, we find them thrifty, enjoying the comforts and luxuries of life, with means to support society, to educate their children, laying up a comfort able competency for old age, and to give their children abetter start in life than they themselves enjoyed, Again, if farming does not pay, how is it that all the cultivators of the soil live? They always get their living by their occupation, not by dependence upon other callings. The agri
cultural laborer always has his sustenance and always secures his wages. The failure of a farmer to meet his obligations, unless he becomes involved by some outside venture, is a rarity so great that it may be said never to occur, while every community can show examples of ruined fortunes, involving many other parties, in the more enticing walks of trade and manufactures. Agriculture absorbs and employs all men who fail in other avocations either from physical disability or other causes. The disjointed parts of lives spent in other callings, which absorb their mental powers and their physical training in periods of rest, are mostly spent in the culture of the earth. Agriculture has to feed all these and their families. Adventurers of every kind take rest and find renewed strength on the farm for new enterprises, and come back again' often with blasted hopes and shattered health and for tunes. As showing the advantage of capital in farming, in England, and the rule will hold good everywhere, the capital being expended judi ciously, Mr. Mechi, the well known and successful English farmer, who went into farming because he thought it would pay better than any other sure business, stated that for his farm of one hundred and seventy acres he paid £23 per acre, and invested nearly as much more in buildings, drainage, roads, clearances, and machinery. These outlays he regarded as constituting his invested capital as landlord, claiming in return, as yearly rent, £2 per acre, or about four and one-half per cent. Further outlay considered as capital invested by him in his capacity of tenant farmer, averaged per acre as follows: December 31, 1868, live stock, £6 10s. ; farm houses, £1 1i; tillages, manure, etc., £3 15s. 6d.; implements and machinery, £2 10s. ; hay, corn,, etc., unsold, £2 5s. ;—total per acre, £16 1s. 6d. With this tenant's capital of £16 per acre, he has for several years obtained from the farm.an annual surplus of more than £600 available for rent and profit, after paying all expenses. The statement carried out for the one hundred and seventy acres shows a landlord's capital of about £7,800, giving a rent income of nearly four and one-half per cent. ; and a tenant's capital of £2,720, giving a profit of over £260, or nearly ten per cent., after payment of rent and expenses. Mr. Mechi states, however, that his average annual profit as tenant for a course of years has been twelve and one-half per cent. His large outlay for live stock, which he feeds mostly on purchased food, is the key to his frequent and extraordinary crops and large profits; for through this means he is enabled to apply great quantities of rich manure to his deeply cultivated land. Such a system accounts for his production of forty tons of mangels per acre in 1869, and for his frequent productionkof forty-eight to sixty-four bushels of wheat per acre. Yet the soil of his farm was naturally poor, needing more outlay to keep it in condition than would be required on better land; and experience had convinced him that he could have done better with a tenant's capital of £20 to £25 per acre. Many farmers tin Norfolk and Lincolnshire employ a capital of £20 to £30 per acre to advantage. It is beyond question that a difficulty with many farmers, is, they farm in a haphazard way. They fail to understand that to the plants to be grown, the soil, climate, rain fall and other conditions must be adapted. Thus they lose much valuable time and money in try ing crops neither adapted to the soil or climate. A case in point, undertaken by the French gov ernment, and later, still another by the United States, in tea and coffee culture; will illustrate the point: M. Naudin illustrates the losses of time and money which arise from inattention to the meteorology of acclimation by, the attempt made many years ago to introduce tea culture into France. The experiment, made at a large expense, failed for the reason that the temperature and the degree of atmospheric moisture necessary for the profitable culture of the plant did not exist in that country. The costly trial was undertaken with out a proper preliminary investigation. The suc cess which has attended the recent enterprise of the English government in the cultivation of the cinchona in India, was the consequence of a care ful of the conditions, climate, etc. , of the South American habitat of the tree, and a selec tion of localities in which those conditions could be sufficiently approximated.