242 PROSPECTS OF AMERICAN AGRICULTURE. 



farming in Kansas or California. lie is the scientific farmer who 

 makes the most of his labor and capital. And there is just as 

 much necessity for scientific farming to-day as there will be 250 

 years hence. And true scientific farming will be just as profitable 

 at the present time as it ever has been in the past or ever will be 

 in the future. 



I greatly mistake the signs of the times if, in the near future, 

 we shall not find as many, and as true scientific farmers in America 

 as are to be found anywhere in the world. 



Take up an English agricviltural paper and, no matter what sub- 

 ject is under discussion, you will not read far before allusion will 

 be made to the question of "Tenant Rights." A farmer's club 

 cannot discuss the science and practice of feeding stock without 

 getting excited over the malt-tax. " If we could feed malt," they 

 say, we could then raise cheap beef and mutton. If we could get 

 compensation for our exhausted improvements we could employ 

 our skill and capital to advantage. We are not without our 

 troubles here. We have some burdens that are hard to bear. 

 But, at any rate, we are our own land owners. Any improvements 

 we make are made on our own land. Our land is not entailed. 

 We can transfer it as easily as any other property. 



We sometimes grumble because our best farm laborers so soon 

 leave us. They want farms of their own. I have a man who has 

 worked for me 12 years, and who has now, out of his savings, 

 bought a nice farm of his own. I lose a good man, but he will 

 work quite as hard for himself as he did for me and put more 

 thought, care and skill into his labor. It may be a loss to me but 

 it is a gain to the country. He will be able to earn more money 

 and will have more to spend. 



American farmers, as a class, work harder than any other farmers 

 in the world. We occasionally find a drone in the hive, but on the 

 whole, we are a nation of workers, and it makes a great difference 

 whether a man is working for himself or for others. We all know 

 what a difference it makes in the amount of work done whether a 

 man is working by the day or by the piece. Last autumn I had 

 men digging potatoes by the day, I paid them $1.25 per day. 

 Digging, picking up and pitting, cost me over 6 cents a bushel. 

 1 then told two of the men I would give them 5 cents a bushel to 

 do the work. They took the job, and these two men dug and 

 pitted 100 bushels every day and then went home, they sometimes 

 got through by 4 o'clock in the afternoon. I got the work done 



