No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 209 



In thanking you for this kind greeting, we beg you to keep tempta- 

 tion away from us. Keep your conlidence and gold-brick men re- 

 strained. Put us to sleep where there is no gas to blow out. Stop 

 your street cars at night and have breakfast at 5.30 in the morn- 

 ing. These requests we make freely because you have greeted us so 

 kindly. In turn, we promise to overlook your short-comings when 

 you visit us in strawberry and spring-chicken time. 



THE PWKMER A MANUFACTUREK 



By PROF. FRANKLIN MENGES, York. Pa. 



1 might as well begin this discussion by stating what I do not 

 mean by making the farmer a manufacturer. I do not mean that 

 he shall go back to the early conditions in which his grandfather 

 lived. I do not mean that he shall use for lighting his house the 

 ancient tallow dip instead of the kerosene, the gasolene, denatured 

 alcohol, acetylene or electric light burners of the present day. 1 

 do not mean that he shall warm his house and couk his meals in the 

 log tilled fire place of the ancients, instead of with the modern hot 

 air, hot water or steam heating aj)paratus and the gasolene, de- 

 natured alcohol, and gas ranges of to-day. I do not mean that he shall 

 give up his high pressure water system furnishing him water for 

 his entire plant as well as better tire protection than most of the 

 small towns have, and go back to the old oaken bucket. I do not 

 mean that he shall change his factory-made clothing of the most 

 delicate weaves and the latest cut to the homespun and misfits of his 

 not distant ancestor. 1 do not want him to return to and depend 

 entirely upon the home grown viands of his grandmother, but I 

 would rather his table be graced with the delicacies of both hemi- 

 spheres. In short, I mean that the farmer's manufacturing plant 

 shall be equipped with all the labor-saving machinery of the day. 

 I recognize the fact that by introducing the farmer into the indus- 

 trial system, or rather into the manufacturing world where labor 

 is applied with the greatest economy, which necessitates the division 

 of labor, and also the introduction of varied and delicate machinery, 

 requiring trained mechanics to handle, and which economy leads to 

 new discoveries and consequent invention of still more intricate 

 machinery and a demand for large capital to conduct these ever en- 

 larging enterprises; i say I recognize that I am enlarging his sphere 

 immensely and introducing him into a domain for which he has 

 little adaptation, moreover I do not mean to do away with our 

 present industrial system and hand all over to the farmer and make 

 him the all and in all to all the world, but I mean in these vast 

 activities in which up to this time he has only been the producer 

 of the necessities of life and in many instances only the raw ma- 

 terial which he has handed over to a middle man to sell for him 

 and the middleman has sold to the manufacturer and in many in- 

 stances the manufacturer used another middleman to dispose of 



7—1910 



