FARMER'S HOME, PAST AND FUTURE. 211 



The first question, then, that arises, is this : Is the tendency 

 in the future to be to a division of land into small farms, or 

 a swallowing-up of small farms into great estates? Some 

 of the monster-farms have been set up as samples of what 

 is to be ; and we have been told, that, as manufactures have 

 grown from the wheel and loom in the farmhouse, so the 

 great farm where machinery can be used on a grand scale 

 is to supersede the little homestead where the wheel and 

 loom once found a home. 



As examples of what may now be done, I shall refer to 

 two of these great estates, — one North, and the other South. 



The famous Dalrymple farms, or farm, of Dakota. The 

 first has fourteen thousand acres, all under cultivation. The 

 same man manages two other farms ; so that he has in all 

 about seventy-five thousand acres of wheat. The territory 

 under cultivation is equal to forty-five square miles ; that is, 

 a piece of land one mile wide and forty-five miles long. The 

 amount in highest cultivation is about thirty thousand acres, 

 divided into five-thousancl-acre lots. The combined farms 

 yield about six hundred thousand bushels of wheat and 

 seventy-five thousand bushels of oats for the horses and 

 mules. In harvesting, the manager uses a hundred self- 

 binding harvesters and twenty-four steam-threshers. The 

 straw is burned as fast as each pile is cleared of grain. It 

 requires two hundred thousand dollars to pay the bills of 

 the year. 



But now mark how much, or rather how little home-life, 

 this enormous production represents. In the spring, men of 

 all nationalities, hailing from no one knows where, apply for 

 work. It is the same all the season through ; and, when the 

 work is done, the men go as they came. In the first place, 

 then, we hardly see a trace of quiet home-life in all this vast 

 machinery ; and, should that great farm remain indefinitely 

 in one man's hands, there might indeed be a palace for the 

 owner, but there could be no farmers' homes there. There 

 could be nothing but hired laborers' homes, from the very 

 nature of the case, — a kind of tenantry analogous to what 

 we have in Ireland, except that they would receive wages, 

 instead of working land on their own account. 



But I think it would be conceded by all, that, in a country 

 like ours, such a farm would be carried on indefinitely only 



