FOREWORD 



Hired hands were rare exceptions, and so were ten- 

 ants. Every man with every member of his family 

 worked his own farm; was industrious, independent, 

 and needed little that he could not raise. 



To go from that picture to the great factory mul- 

 titudes of to-day may well make angels weep. One 

 city family out of ten may own its own home, but 

 not one-half that number has a month's living ahead. 

 A panic is a disaster, and old age is a calamity. We 

 know from history that a country's yeomanry is its 

 strength and the city rabble its destruction. It 

 needs all the enlightenment and warning of books 

 like this to help stem the tide, and if possible to 

 turn it. 



You readers know that Mr. Powell has never writ- 

 ten a dull article, or misstated facts, or wasted a 

 paragraph on an idea not worth the while. But few 

 of you have seen, as I have, the nine acres on which 

 he has these forty years learned the solemn facts 

 which he is telling us. Nearly eighty years of age, 

 his farm and his pen are as prolific as ever. George 

 Jacob Holyoake wrote that great book, " Bygones 

 Worth Remembering," in his ninetieth year; Ed- 

 ward Everett Hale did some of his best work in 

 his eighty-ninth year; and Mr. Powell shows a de- 

 fiance of years in recently making himself a winter 

 farm home in Florida. He migrates with the wiser- 

 than-we birds to his New York home in time for 

 pruning and planting and to his lakeside Florida 

 home after harvesting. 



