418 AGRICULTURAL PROGRESS. 



the company, educated at an agricultural college. The 

 majority consent to the sale, and the remainder are forced 

 to consent by a law of the Legislature, placing it in the 

 power of corporations, " established for the public good," 

 to seize upon any refractory individual's estate, after pay- 

 ing him what a body of commissioners have declared an 

 eqtiivalent. These mammoth agricultural companies, by 

 means of political intriguing and bribery, would easily 

 obtain sufficient influence over any legislative body to 

 cause the enactment of such a law. This any one will 

 believe who has had political experience, and who knows 

 how easily the most tyrannical and unjust measures may 

 be carried by making them party tests. 



Let us now observe the consequences, after this little 

 village of happy and independent laborers has been con- 

 verted into a mammoth farm, owned by a company and 

 carried on by steam-power. At the beginning, all the 

 pleasant old farm-houses are removed, because they stand 

 in the way of tillage, which is performed as much as 

 possible in large undivided lots. All fences and bounda- 

 ries, except those by the roadside, are for the same reason 

 taken down, to open all the small fields into one ; for it 

 has been ascertained that no single field can be worked 

 with the best advantage, unless it contains at least five 

 hundred acres. The larger the field, the more profitably 

 can it be worked by steam. Hence the preliminaries for 

 steam-farming are necessarily a work of devastation. 

 Many delightful groups of trees and shrubbery, some that 

 skirted a winding brook, others that bordered the fences, 

 including many standard oaks and elms, are swept to the 

 ground, rooted up by some giant infernal machine as easily 

 as a farmer pulls up weeds. All abruptly swelling ridges 

 and other eminences, the charm of many a landscape, 

 some of them beautifully crowned with trees and shrubs, 

 and others fringed with wild flowers and covered with 



