EQUIPMENTS NECESSAEY 91 



vantage and profit. Assuming that we own our 

 farms, how are we to make them successful, and 

 what equipments are necessary to that end? 



The very foundation and the success of the busi- 

 ness of farming is based upon the soil. It is the 

 raw material from which farm products are to be 

 fashioned. If the soil be unproductive, shorn of 

 its fertility, then we only produce the limited 

 amounts of farm products that scarcely, and in 

 many instances, do not pay the cost of production, 

 and so the business of farming such soils becomes 

 a failure. 



And if our soils even be so fertile that they will 

 produce products that pay a profit, yet if we farm 

 such soils for a series of years without a thought 

 or action towards doing those things that maintain 

 soil fertility, we will soon pass them into the class 

 that does not pay a profit. Therefore, that thing 

 which is essential to the success of the business 

 of farming should receive our most careful con- 

 sideration, and yet we have shown how it has been 

 neglected in the past. When our soils were new, 

 or at the time they were first submitted to the task 

 of growing crops, they were so rich in fertility, 

 and free from weed and insect pest, that they 

 would grow bumper crops with little effort on the 

 part of the husbandman. The pioneer could plant 

 his corn in a shallow plowed soil between the 

 stumps of his newly cleared ground, or in the few 

 inches of upturned prairie sod, give it a little 

 cultivation, and be assured of an enormous crop. 

 Such a system of planting and cultivation in our 

 soils that have been in cultivation for a half cen- 

 tury or more, would mean utter crop failure. 



