36 WHAT I KNOW OF FAKMING. 



say, Buy just so large a farm as half your means 

 witt pay for. In other words, " If you are~ worth 

 $20,000, invest half of it in land, the residue in 

 Btock, tools, etc. ; and observe the same rule of pro- 

 portion, whether you be worth $1,000,000 or only 

 $1,000. If you are worth just nothing at all, I 

 would invest in land the half of that, and no more. 

 In other words, I would either wait to earn $500 or 

 over, or push "Westward till I found land that costs 

 practically nothing. 



This, then, I take to be the gist of the popular 

 criticism on our farmers as having unduly enlarged 

 their borders : They have more land than tJiey have 

 capital to stock and till to the ~best advantage. He 

 who has but fifty acres has too much if he lets part 

 of his land lie idle and unproductive for lack of team 

 or hands to till it efficiently ; while he who has a 

 thousand acres has none too much if he has the means 

 and talents wherewith to make the best of it all. 



I have said that I consider the soil of New Eng- 

 land as cheap, all things considered, for him who is 

 able to buy and work it, as that of Minnesota or Ar- 

 kansas that I urge migration to the "West only upon 

 those who cannot pay for farms in the old States. I 

 doubt whether the farmers of any other section have, 

 in the average, done better, throughout the last ten 

 years, than the butter-makers of Yermont, the cheese- 

 dairymen of this State. And yet there is, in the 

 ridgy, rocky, patchy character of most of our Eastern 

 faring, an insuperable barrier to the most economic, 



