THE TIM BUNKER PAPERS, 



No. 1. A STROKE OF ECONOMY. 



The farm is a good school of economy in many repecte. 

 The age of homespun is yet fresh in the memory of many 

 of the living, and its close calculations are yet visible on 

 many a homestead. Time was less valuable in that age 

 than in this, and money far less valuable now than then. 

 But multitudes have not yet waked up to the fact, and 

 often spend several dollars worth of time to purchase 

 what is not worth fifty cents at the market price. When 

 every proprietor s time is worth two dollars a day in the 

 legitimate business of planning and directing the labor on 

 his own farm, he is in poor business, doing work which 

 another will do for him at one-quarter of the price. 



We have already begun to divide the labor of the farm, 

 and have reaped very great advantage from it, and this 

 division can be carried to a still greater extent with profit. 

 The horse and the cultivator do a great deal of work 

 once done by the hoe and human hands. ISTo wise man 

 will use the latter when he can avail himself of the former. 

 The mowing machine is doing the work of a dozen men 

 every fine hay day of July. How long will shrewd cal 

 culators break their backs over the old-fashioned scythe ? 

 Is it not about time to upset the old stumps, and put pow 

 der into the rocks that have been plowed, harrowed, hoed, 

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