No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 237 



about their operations tliat there is not a lavish gain and the lack of 

 promptness in paying feed bills seems to verify the rumor. In these 

 operations, the milk is totally produced by herds and on the farms 

 owned by the operators. 



Now, Mr. Charles E. Hires, proprietor of the factory for con- 

 densing milk located in Malvern, in our county, has neither farms 

 nor herds, and, singular to say, because of this lack of farm and 

 herds, he may make money. The hardship seems to be in carrying 

 a farm and herd in a large operation including the manufacture of 

 butter and its delivery to customers. 



Can you remember, fellow farmers, of having seen in print any 

 statement showing profits from large farm undertakings, where large 

 acreage is involved and large capital employed in the matter of gen- 

 eral farming. You may have so read, but I have not. On the other 

 hand, the wail of Henry Ward Beecher and Horace Greeley is re- 

 membered by us older farmers to the effect that farms are expensive 

 luxuries. 



But we remember, I think, that from far off years up to yester- 

 day, statements have been continually made in public print of 

 profits from small patches of potatoes, the little orchard, the few 

 chickens, the eight or ten cows, the short rows of strawberries, the 

 narrow belt of asparagus — indeed, the little farm well tilled. 



Ought we not in this to be pretty well satisfied that a small acre- 

 age well tilled, and little money in farming well applied, does, as a 

 rule, reach farther in welfare to us than greater acreage and large 

 expenditure to the more wealthy and the esteemed fortunate. 



In this estimate I have often thought that it would be good policy 

 for some farmers who stand upon the brink of loss to sell out and 

 go back to the beginning, and, instead of feeding and manipulating 

 40 profitless cows, to start again with 15 big, hearty, first class cows 

 that will milk ''even up" with the 40 stags formerly owned. So with 

 horses, sheep, swine, or chickens. So with fruits, too, and crops. 



Labor and capital are costly. We should, I think, ask: "How 

 can we grow the best with the least labor and capital?" The answer 

 may be, simply by having no more to do than we well can do 

 mainly within ourselves and family. Should we trace the successes 

 in farming cited in the agricultural press, would we not discover 

 that those abundant returns in a money way come of the family 

 itself — father, mother, sons, daughters. These are intelligent, de- 

 voted, interested laborers. There is a difference as toilers on the 

 farm between a colony of southern negroes and the family whose 

 home is the farm on which they reside. So that, can we not con- 

 clude that a family operating a hundred acres carefully can get 

 as much out of that acreage in the way of profit as the negroes may 

 lose on 600 acres to the proprietor thereof. And this may be a 

 wonderful profit. 



