1883.] HINTS TOWARD SMALL FARMING. 275 



indignant rural people sees its power, manufactured wares will he 

 allowed to come in free because they are supposed to be cheaper. 



My good German helper tells me that in his country, where 

 thrifty and intelligent small farmers are judged necessary for the 

 foundations of a state, that every farm cottager keeps a few sheep. 

 These sheep are recognized as property that must be protected as 

 a convenient source of mutton, leather, wool, etc., for local use 

 and possible sausage-skins and fiddle strings for exportation to 

 America. The sheep are combined in one flock by those methodic 

 German peasants, watched in the commune (common) field by a 

 trusty shepherd, regularly appointed for that branch of the civil 

 service, and folded so many nights in the year with each owner, 

 according to his number of sheep, to divide the manure fairly. 



In this way the common people continue to receive object-les- 

 sons from this small and useful domestic animal. Children and 

 dogs grow up to respect it as a regular source of broth and bones. 

 Grandmothers knit the tag locks into socks and mittens, and all 

 hands so learn the taste of tender, juicy meat, that is not dogged 

 or sickened alive between the stinking decks of a railway car, 

 that when picked peasant boys grow up, by any Cinderella chance, 

 to take a trick at the wheels of state — so to speak — they retain a 

 few bowels of compassion for the shepherd-peasants and their 

 flocks, and see that they are let alone, at least until some royal 

 war or wedding time for shearing. 



Now it is evident, without my illustration, that a monarchy can 

 be built in the gravy of juicy local mutton, but have we sufficient 

 hope of our ability to nourish young republican statesmen, gener- 

 ous or just to agriculture, on the tough fiber of sheep far-fetched 

 by feverish railway transit ? The stringy, jerked meat may be 

 twisted in barbarous railway schools into swinging lashes for 

 slaves, but the line about " Mary " having '' a little lamb," and the 

 poetry about the patient animal as a sacrifice, must grow out of our 

 literature, secular and religious, while we give the revenues of the 

 state over to an army of railway farmers who only know the sheep 

 as a railway product. 



Some may think it naughty to criticise our railways. It is 

 getting to be about as hard to run a railway as it is to run a farm. 

 Whom goodness loves goodness chastises. "We love the railway 

 too well to stand calmly by and see it driven astray. 



Only by the aid of railway power applied according to just laws 



