1883.] HINTS TOWAED SMALL FARMING. 283 



minds to close application before they ever cared for farming. 

 The ability to apply one's self counts as power, and the continuous 

 and skillful application of power passes for genius in agriculture. 



Pending the time when capital, the savings of the poor, shall 

 be permitted to organize small farm homes for the poor from our 

 neglected territory at home, we shall have to help ourselves, stick- 

 ing in a home here and there the best way we can, wherever there 

 is an opening. If any one says, "This, after all, is the best way, 

 let the people make their own homes," I reply, in these days of 

 divided labor, it is a wasteful and extravagant way. Wljy make 

 anything or think of anything, for anybody ? If we manu- 

 facture parts of homes for market with tolerable success why may 

 we not hope for the art, bye and bye, to make complete homes for 

 a market ? It is a Christian idea, you know. The Master said, 

 "I go to prepare a place for you." If we would only let the 

 people go and let all their industries alone, no doubt they would 

 be able to build complete homes for themselves and no mistake, 

 as the birds do. The modern man of "business " too often says 

 to himself, I go to set a trap for you. 



During the war, I happened to be knowing to a trade out in 

 central New York, where a man who had recently struck oil 

 bought a ready-made home complete. I forget the price. It 

 might have been $25,000. I never saw a couple of fellows better 

 pleased with a bargain than they were, on both sides. The buyer 

 paid his cash, the seller and his family were allowed to pack their 

 trunks and vacate, while the other party got their baggage into 

 the house in time for the dinner that was waiting. We could do 

 this same thing by wholesale for small farming if we had a mind 

 to turn our building energy that way. 



This may seem an entirely fancy speculation, but I'll bet a barrel 

 of turnips that we have a thousand families, in our midst, this 

 minute, willing to buy a thousand bran fire new small farms, ready 

 furnished for business, faster than we can make them. These 

 families would lose half the needful price of a home if they 

 undertook to build for themselves. 



Let us consider an imaginary scheme of this kind, for a mo- 

 ment. Locate it, if you please, in some intervale country, with 

 higher land, timber, and upper tables, near enough to build on, 

 where the drainage of the lower land might be too costly for one, 

 but cheap for many, where the height of mill-dams is settled 



