No. 4.] BUSINESS SIDE OF AGRICULTURE. 89 



the colleges and experiment stations is stimulating a lot of 

 bright, live, active young men who are producing a high 

 grade of agricultural products, and the man who keeps on 

 in the old way of producing goods of various grades has got 

 to be left in the race in a business way. 



We must learn to use good tools suitable for the work to 

 be done and the soil Ave have to work on. Accept all of the 

 new modern tools you can use with profit, but do not take 

 up with everything because it is new. Some of the old tools 

 are indispensable. The old hand rake and the smoothing 

 harrow are not out of place on every farm. They should be 

 there. For certain fields — and I have used all modern 

 harrows — I have to go back to the old "A" harrow with 

 long steel teeth that will cut through the turf and go over 

 the stones in the roughest sort of a place where no modern 

 tool would. You should get new tools and use them wher- 

 ever you can use them at a profit. A man wants all the 

 tools that can be profitably used in his business, and no 

 more. You can reduce the cost of labor with tools, but 

 do not forget the old tools. There is a wonderful chance 

 for the right use of them. An ordinary old hand rake, if 

 used in time, will hoe twice as fast as a hand hoe, and a good 

 deal better. The smoothing harrow for many of our small 

 crops, before they get very large, will beat the cultivator 

 and hand hoe, is more economical and the final results are as 

 good, if not better. 



A farmer must adjust himself to the conditions of his sur- 

 roundings, to the markets, etc. ; and the man who can most 

 quickly adjust himself to new conditions has a better oppor- 

 tunity than the man who cannot. Study constantly the 

 methods and the market conditions, and be ready to quickly 

 adjust yourself to new conditions, if they are better. 



Thorough culture of the soil is what is needed, — more 

 thorough culture. There is scarcely an acre of farm crops 

 produced in Massachusetts or in the country that receives 

 one-half the cultivation it ought ; certainly, the average of 

 the crops do not receive one-half the cultivation they ought, 

 to give the most profitable returns. It is more profitable to 

 harrow a field six or eight times than it is to do it only 

 twice. You may get along by cultivating two or three times 



