DAIRY MEETING. 1 39 



home and business, the small land holdings that shall yield food 

 on every acre ample for the needs of a cow per year. Were 

 I posing as a philanthropist I would raise the cry of New 

 England for New England people, and had I the power, I would 

 reach out to the cities, and bring back to the country every one 

 of her heart sore sons, and locate them on small land holdings, 

 and teach them, until they were masters of some of the farm 

 industries, that they might live among the hills where they were 

 raised and breathe in the pure air that comes all the way over 

 the old north woods, instead of the d,ust and smoke of the city's 

 streets and factories. I would teach them to plow, pulverize and 

 till the land until they made available the great stock of plant 

 food that now lies locked up in these soils, under their brown 

 autumn blankets and winter snows, waiting, only for the plow 

 to turn the furrows that will surely open up the riches they 

 contain. 



Almost every neighborhood in our State has hundreds of acres 

 of naturally good arable land that every year yield crops, that are 

 worth but little more than the cost of harvestry. It is labor and 

 a little money that are required to change these lands into condi- 

 tions of profitable productiveness. Labor will loosen and pul- 

 verize the ground, and nature will generously give her aid of air, 

 sunshine and rain in covering the brown soil with crops of 

 luxuriant green. It is not. as has been so generally supposed, 

 great money expeditures for chemicals that is necessary for crop 

 growth, but rather moderate outlays for fertilizers and generous 

 expenditures of labor. The young man has his labor at his com- 

 mand, and after he has accumulated earnings sufficient for the 

 purchase of a small farm, I believe he will prefer to work for 

 himself, upon his small land holding, where he can build his 

 home and work out his life's plans, rather than labor for the 

 landed master, even though he might receive greater money for 

 doing so. 



I have been told that twenty acres is but a garden spot, and the 

 person who occupies it must of necessity ever remain a small man. 



I often wonder if the men among us who have hundred acre 

 farms that feed fifteen cows will ever realize that a cow per 

 acre — the year through — is an easy matter, and that the labor 

 and risks from droughts and crop failures are far less on the 

 thoroughly worked farm than on the other. 



