THE BONANZA FARMS. G5 



cheapen it in price, or lessen it in quantity, or both, 

 until at this time it has become a well known fact 

 that free labor is much cheaper than slave. That is, 

 it is cheaper to buy labor in the market, and use it as 

 wanted, than to be compelled to keep the laborer for 

 the whole year at the lowest cost of food and clothing. 



In this respect the condition of the small farmer is 

 worse than that of either the weaver or printer, be- 

 cause the vital work of the farm is limited to two 

 short seasons in the year those of seed time and 

 harvest and by no possibility can it be extended 

 beyond those seasons. Hence the amount of work 

 that can be done in either the shortest or most labori- 

 ous of those seasons, is the utmost measure of the 

 product which must provide subsistence for the whole 

 year for himself and his dependents. 



Before the present great division of labor the farmer 

 and his family, when not employed in planting and 

 reaping, were engaged in spinning and weaving, and 

 the other manufacturing operations of the farm house- 

 hold that provided the family, by their own domestic 

 manufactures, with the food, clothing, and shelter 

 necessary for a comfortable, and often luxurious, sub- 

 sistence. But now, through the changes that have 

 been wrought by machinery and new forces, all the 

 domestic manufacturing industries have been irre- 

 trievably destroyed, or developed under other forms 

 and conditions in the towns and cities, leaving to the 

 farm only the work of producing the raw products of 

 bread and meat. Even these raw products must go 

 into the market for manufacture before the farmer can 

 use the larger proportion of them for his own food, as 



