224 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



at the rate of a ton and a lialf per acre, and by comparing the 

 yield with that of other fields manured a little more sparingly, he 

 found that all the profit of the crop came from the last half ton 

 applied. This year he put on two tons per acre. 



Another farmer in my State has the past summer expended 

 some two thousand dollars in wells, pumps, wind-mills, and steam- 

 engines for watering his cultivated fields, and has made money by 

 it. Now, do not understand me as advocating the indiscriminate 

 use of large quantities of dearly purchased fertilizer, nor the erec- 

 tion of steam pumps upon all our farms for guarding against 

 drought; but you may understand that I am utterly opposed to 

 paying interest and taxes on idle and unproductive lands. But it 

 seems to me that this is what three-quarters of our farmers are 

 doing on three-quarters of their land. 



A man wanting to borrow a hundred dollars, and who could 

 use only that amount profitably in his business, would never be so 

 foolish as to borrow a thousand dollars and give his note for it, 

 letting the nine hundred lie idle in his pocket; and yet that is 

 about what many farmers are doing who run in debt for large 

 farms, of which not more than one acre in ten is made full use of. 



My own farm, some years ago, contained fifty acres of tillage 

 and pasture land, and kept about seven animals, including a horse 

 and a pair of steers. It required two men and a boy to do the 

 work among the rocks and stumps, and the profits were exceed- 

 ingly small. 



After a while one-half the area was given over to forest growth, 

 the only crop that such land can profitably be devoted to with 

 present values. The remaining twenty-five acres was so improved 

 by clearing and draining, that it soon carried double the stock the 

 fifty acres had previously supported. Still later greater improve- 

 ments were made, particularly by heavier manuring and double 

 cropping, and the stock was again doubled, the twenty-five acres 

 supporting four times the number that could be kept on the fifty 

 acres by the old system, while the net profits were many times 

 doubled, and. by the introduction of labor-saving implements and 

 horse power in place of hand labor, the number of hands employed 

 remained about the same as when the fifty acres were cultivated. 

 By the early management, the hired man, who received ten dollars 

 a month and his board, was enabled to lay up more from his wages 

 at the end of the season than could his employer from the profits 



