116 HOW TO GET A FARM, 



cisely so with agriculture. Crops must be fed, or 

 they cannot be produced. In this case, the feeding 

 consists of thorough tillage and manure. Both are 

 costly items, but they are indispensable to success. 

 The great question is how to command them in the 

 largest abundance at the smallest cost. 



It is granted, on all hands, that the soil should be 

 saturated with manure. Mere hard work will not 

 procure it in the necessary quantity. Brains must 

 be made to come in as the leading helper. Hence 

 intelligence is necessary the mere land will be 

 found powerless to do all that too many expect it to 

 accomplish. Women, sick men, even absolute 

 cripples, unable to perform an hour s work, have 

 been highly successful farmers. But if deprived of 

 hands to work, they had heads to superintend. 



Just before the crash of 1857 came with such 

 desolating severity upon the country, a working 

 man, a resident of the city of New York, who had 

 somehow scraped together $4000, found himself 

 precluded from increasing it by high rents, dear 

 food, and the inevitable increase of expenses on 

 every side. In this dilemma, he addressed himself to 

 the Tribune, in these words : 



&quot; I want to know what chance a man would stand in the 

 country to take up farming not out in Kansas but say in 

 Jersey, or the western part of this State, or out West near 

 s ome improving location, so as to get away from high rents 

 and dirt, and breathe a mouthful of fresh air say a little 

 place of fifty or sixty acres, with house and barn, one horse, 

 three or four cows, a few sheep, some poultry, all paid for 

 and clear of debt, so as to have $1,000 or $1,500 at interest, 



