THE POSSIBILITIES OF AGRICULTURE. 79 



year from Manitoba, are grown almost entirely in farms 

 of one or two "quarter-sections," i.e., of 1 60 and 320 

 acres. The ploughing is made in the usual way, and in 

 an immense majority of cases the farmers buy the reap- 

 ing and binding machines (the " binders ") by associating 

 in groups of four. The thrashing machine is rented by 

 the farmer for one or two days, and the farmer carts his 

 wheat to the elevator with his own horses, either to 

 sell it immediately or to keep it at the elevator if he is 

 in no immediate need of money and hopes to get a 

 higher price in one month or two. In short, in Mani- 

 toba one is especially struck with the fact thar7~~Sven 

 under a system of keen competition, the middle-size farm 

 admirably well competes with the mammoth farm, and 

 that it is not manufacturing wheat on a grand scale 

 which pays best. It is also most interesting to note that 

 thousands and thousands of farmers produce mountains 

 of wheat in the Canadian province of Toronto and in 

 the Eastern States, although the land is not prairie- 

 land at all, and the farms are, as a rule, small. 



The force of " American competition " is thus not in 

 the possibility of having hundreds of acres of wheat in 

 one block. It lies in the ownership of the land, in a 

 system of culture which is appropriate to the character 

 of the country, in a widely developed spirit of associ- 

 ation, and, finally, in a number of institutions and 

 customs intended to lift the agriculturist and his pro- 

 fession to a high level which is unknown in Europe. 



In Europe we do not realise at all what is done in 

 the States and Canada in the interests of agriculture. 

 In every American State, and in every distinct region 

 of Canada, there is an experimental farm, and all the 

 work of preliminary experiment upon new varieties of 

 wheat, oats, barley, fodder and fruit, which the farmer 

 has mostly to make himself in Europe, is made under 

 the best scientific conditions at the experimental farms, 

 on a small scale first and on a large scale next The 



