1884.] FARM LABOR IN NEW ENGLAND. 107 



disintegration has been even more rapid during the last decade. 

 This is hopeful, for it asserts the fact that the .unprofitable 

 ambition to own large farms is giving place to a true and more 

 intelligent ambition to test the productive capacity of smaller ones. 

 In conversation with one of the most successful gardeners whom I 

 know, not long ago, I asked him how many acres he cultivated. 

 He answered, about fifteen, and, as I said to him, that is enough 

 for one man to care for, his reply, as significant as unique, was, 

 "My dear sir, you can raise more upon fifteen acres than you will 

 upon twenty-five." He understood the secret of success. Quite a 

 number of years ago, there appeared from the pen of one of 

 Connecticut's most charming authors, himself an amateur in farm- 

 ing, a little book, entitled, "Ten Acres Enough," and though, like 

 Noah's dove, it found no resting place in the convictions of the 

 farming community, it still was the herald of a better, because 

 more thorough, system of culture for these half starved fields of 

 ours, and, no doubt, awakened inquiry upon this vital subject. 



I know a mechanic in a city of New England, who, having lost 

 his health, thought he might regain it by outside employment, and 

 purchased two and a half acres of land in a rich farming district, 

 just outside the city, for that purpose. It was a rough and 

 unpromising little farm at first, but, having erected some cheap 

 buildings, purchased a team, and hired a man, he went to work 

 with a will. His capital was small and his first outlay soon 

 exhausted it, but he invested his own labor and that of others 

 until the rocks and bushes were removed and the soil ready to 

 return dollar for dollar in wisely-selected products. In a short 

 time he was free from debt, and after paying expenses, was able 

 to count his profits in large sums, so that his neighbors who 

 owned large and well-appointed farms admitted the fact that his 

 profits exceeded theirs. Imagine, if you can, the time when a 

 system as thorough and intelligent as his has become the rule, 

 rather than the exception, all over New England. 



And why not, instead of thus taxing our imagination to sketch 

 such a millennium, begin to realize it at once ? Instead of forty 

 bushels of corn per acre, which is about the usual amount grown, 

 we should double the average; and instead of one hundred bushels 

 of potatoes as an average, there might be two or three hundred 

 grown. The cash prize offered by the Massachusetts Agricultural 

 Society, a few years ago, for the best acre of potatoes, was awarded 



