No. 4.] FAEM HELP PROBLEM. 159 



settle here. I don't think it will be in competing with 

 Michigan or Minnesota in raising wheat at the present, but 

 the way will appear with fuller knowledge of conditions. 

 Many of our farmers are doing business in a little, pedagogue 

 sort of way. They are trying perhaps to keep their help 

 busy all the year round, and they have a little of this and a 

 little of that, and do not carry on any branch of farming on 

 a scale large enough so it can really be made very profitable. 

 What would you think of a man in these days, who, in the 

 shoe business, should try to work and keep himself busy the 

 year round in a little shop, such as many of you can remem- 

 ber, doing all the work himself, perhaps cobbling for his 

 neighbors in addition ? You would know he never would 

 become rich in that line of business. Conditions have 

 changed absolutely. Every farmer of us has got to seek a 

 location offering natural advantages for some branch of farm- 

 ing or gardening or fruit raising, and then, having found a 

 location, or if the location has been selected for him, having 

 studied the situation and found out what the locality is 

 suited for, then go into some specialty intelligently, studying 

 carefully, finding out all there is to know about it, and then 

 organizing in such a way as to do the business on a consider- 

 able scale. On these lines farming can be made much more 

 profitable than it is under present conditions. 



I don't fully agree as to the impossibility of our raising 

 grain or making meat. I think it could be done. I know we 

 can purchase land with buildings in many cases at prices 

 which will make it possible to carry on even the lines of busi- 

 ness which have been referred to with a fair degree of profit. 

 The price of the land here, plus the cost of all the improve- 

 ments necessary to make it possible to do the business on a 

 large scale, according to lines Professor Sanborn is advocat- 

 ing, — the original cost plus the cost of getting out the rocks 

 and stumps and burying the stone walls, and drainage, etc., 

 — will not equal the cost of land in the west. And other 

 conditions than simply the natural fertility in the soil de- 

 termine the possible profits. Climate is an important fea- 

 ture, and we have a better climate here than in the west. The 

 rainfall along any latitude increases steadily from the At- 



