FARMS AND CROPS, The animus of the present age is toward the concentration of capital in gigantic enterprises. Thus within the last fifty years immense establishments have grown up for the extensive manufacture of almost every article required, ' either for ornament or use. Agricultural enterprises, as a matter of course, can not be carried out in the same direction except in a limited sense, as in the manufacture of but ter, cheese, the artificial feeding of stock in large numbers, and the carrying forward of the system atic raising of crops on a large scale, under the direction of the master and by means ota large outlay of capital. This however can scarcely suc ceed, except occasionally in the production of special crops, and while the land is new; for, it may be set down as a fact incontrovertible, that the larger the estate, worked by direct hiring, the smaller the average profits. So far, the history of these gigantic farms is that in the end the result has been failure; the only exceptions being when bodies of wild land have been secured at a very low price, sown to wheat, and the land disposed of at a profit at the end of a few years, or when the surrounding country had become densely enough settled so as to add many times in value to the original cost of the land. Hence in the set tlement of new districts of a country, it always holds good, that, as the inhabitants increase, farms are divided up, and become smaller and smaller in acreage, and that in proportion to the diminished size of the farms, the system of cul tivation improves. A case in point showing the effects of thorough Cultivation in the South will suffice to illustrate: In 1874, at the semi-annual convention of the Georgia State Agricultural Society, a Mr. R. A. Hardaway gave a detailed statement and comparison of his farming on fifteen acres, as against the average as indicated by the tax returns of the State. The total cash receipts from his fifteen acres, for the years named below, were as follows: Mr. Hardaway gives the cost of labor for the cultivation of these fifteen acres at $100 per annum, and adds to cash received from products of the farm, premiums amounting to $575; making his total cash receipts $10,052.20 for
the eight years, with but $800 deducted for labor. The returns of the tax-receivers of the State, made under oath, gives the following average yield of the three crops named, for the year 1873: Corn, five and one-half bushels per acre; oats, four and one-half bushels; and one bale of cotton to three and one-half acres of land. Comparing these results with the crops made on the farm mentioned, the comparison is as follows: 1868.—The two hundred and fourteen bushels of corn produced by me on six acres would require forty-one acres, and the seven bales of cotton made by me on nine acres would require twenty-four acres. Here, then, would be sixty-dye acres against fifteen acres, and an additional expense of $892.45 for cultivating the extra fifty acres.
1867.—The one hundred and aixty-nine bushels of corn produced by ma on five acres would require thirty-three acres, and the nine balea of cotton which I made ou ten acne would require thirty-one acres. The case standa thus, for this year: Sixty-four acres againat fifteen acres fort'-nine acme leas, and $39245 of extra expanse saved in cultivation.
1868. —Fourteen bales of cotton produced on fifteen acres, the amount of my crop for this year, would require forty-nine acres, with tba extra amount for cultivation. 1869.—Fitteen bales of cotton on fifteen acres, against the same amount on fifty-three acres; a difference of thirty-eight acres and $392.46 of extra expense in cul tivation.
1870.—I this year made eighteen bales of cotton on fifteen acres. Taking the State average,' it would have required sixty-three acre. to have produced thia crop—a saving of forty-eight acres and the difference in the expense of cultivation.
1871.—This year I made 168 bushels of oats on two acrea against thirty-seven; five hales of cotton on six acrea against seventeen; 168 bushels of corn on four acres against thirty-two, a saving of seventy-four acres with the Additional expense of cultivation.