THE FUNDAMENTAL EvSSENTIALS OF SUCCESSFUL 

 FARM MANAGEMENT. 



By I'rof. J. W. Sanmjorn, Gilmanton, N. H. 



'i'he kindly greetings of the citizens of Turner I receive with 

 pleasure. Some thirty or more years ago, under the auspices 

 of your distinguished citizen and my beloved friend, Hon. Z. A. 

 Gilbert, I first came to Maine, since which time, at irregular 

 but somewhat frequent periods, I have been speaking to Maine 

 farmers, and have come to feel that Elaine is a sort of foster- 

 mother of mine. 



Great changes have occurred in general industrial conditions 

 and in farm life. During the last few years these changes have 

 been of a semi-startling character. From the exportation of 

 $1,000,000,000 worth of agricultural products, we have rapidly 

 descended in the past few years to one-half the former amounts 

 in food products. The exportation of live stock has very nearly 

 disappeared. Available lands have been so completely taken up 

 that there is a" great movement from the West into the Canadian 

 Northwest and into our own southern states. Land, in the past 

 five years, has nearly doubled in our West, and has reached, 

 in parts of Illinois, to $200 per acre. Consumption has over- 

 taken production. Prices of farm products have increased with 

 such rapidity as to give rise, in our great manufacturing cen- 

 ters, to a cry for cheaper bread and cheaper beef, a cry that has 

 so often been heard in Europe and attended by bread" riots, 

 sometimes by bloodshed. It has given rise to a political revo- 

 lution such as seldom passes over the stable affairs of American 

 political life. This means that we are confronted with new 

 industrial conditions in which the more rapid rise of farm prod- 

 ucts than other classes of products has changed the whole out- 

 look of our farmers. It is evident that the old equilibria! con- 

 ditions between country and town are being changed ; that farm- 

 ing is to be an ascendant movement in the future and, relatively 



