1883.] HINTS TOWARD SMALL FARMING. 291 



hunts the timid small farmer around the world, like a dread of the 

 assassin's knife or bullet. 



It would be strange if we forgot a hint toward the form of fit 

 buildings and the necessary tools for strengthening small farms. 

 We are not short of good patterns if we bring them together. 

 Some say we ought to cut our fodder green and trample it into a 

 first rate root cellar. The Italian government was afraid to let our 

 American pitch-forks go into use among its agricultural peasantry 

 because they were so sharp. If we wish our government to re- 

 spect the votes of its small farmers we must keep tools keen. The 

 bayonet-hoe of solid steel with socket shank and fuU knob handle 

 of ash, made at Collinsville, would, if forged straight, be as 

 good a weapon for defence or offence in a weedy civilization, as 

 the John Brown pikes made at Collinsville. 



If small farms are to be rigged for a paying business, farm 

 architecture will have to relearn its trade. We don't produce one- 

 third of what we might because we have no way of preserving 

 our goods. It is a great deal easier to find fault than to make 

 examples men of small means can afford to follow. The rambling 

 structures on some large farms are no better than they should be. 

 A reform of the civil service begins in the reform of farm service. 



In this chaos I give nothing but hints, and a charge to study 

 the nature of things before building. There is a new world of 

 increased business, manufacture and trade, scarcely explored in this 

 direction. The tool-market is full of rubbish — good enough, the 

 trader thinks, for those who have never seen or thought of any- 

 thing better. National growth is held stationary by unchanging 

 farm implements. 



Small farmers must learn, of course, what their land is fit for; 

 its history, the character of its top-soil and subsoil; what manures, 

 seeds and plants to put to it; what its fit relations are to other 

 industries around them, and how they themselves and their families 

 can be best related to it and its surroundings. Could I answer 

 these questions alone in one evening, even if I had known one of 

 you all my life, as we say, and you should go to work in my own 

 garden ? 



Verily, every one of us and everything we see grows different 

 every day of our lives, and there is no such thing as unchanging 

 good or evil. Creation is continually going on. Every morrow is 

 a stupendous novelty that the universe never saw before. If I 



