384 State Board of Agriculture, &c. 



_ 



improvement, do not sell or trade them off for larger ones, 

 and in so doing involve yonrselves in years of toil, perplex- 

 ity and even hardship, as this, in most cases, will be found a 

 mistaken idea and one that will not pay, in the true sense of 

 the word. 



No, rather save the money that is being made on the little 

 farm ; save the interest that w^ould be continually accumu- 

 lating upon a larger one unpaid for, and do not put it in a 

 bank where fire might consume it or rogues run away with 

 it, but employ it upon that little farm, arousing its hidden 

 energies, developing its latent resources until it becomes a 

 marvel of fertility and productiveness to yourself and all 

 who behold it, and worth as much, intrinsically, as many an 

 estate of three times its dimensions, as often managed, and 

 dearer than a farm of a thousand acres, with a slip-shod style 

 of farming entailed upon it. 



Do you think, brother farmers, that this is a fanciful idea, 

 hard to be realized, and that it would require a good deal of 

 faith in our occupation and its possibilities to be successfully 

 followed out ? I trust you will not, when you carefully 

 investigate the matter, with the sincere desire to arrive at a 

 just conclusion. It is fully as practical as the fact that a 

 cow that will make two hundred pounds of butter in a year 

 is worth three times as much as one that will only make 

 one hundred pounds in the same time ; and who that has 

 figured out this example will deny the truthfulness of the 

 result ? The most of us might and should, if we had means 

 at command to enable us to do, and a disposition to use 

 them carefully and practically for the purpose, double most 

 or all of the productions of our farms, at least above the 



