50 Our Farming. 



takes the mason, the tinner, the slater, perhaps, and the painter, 

 as well as the worker of wood ; every man to his trade. Little 

 by little you are improving in this direction and feeling the value 

 of one of the grandest improvements of the century the division 

 of labor. But have you carried the improvement as far as others ? 

 Have you carried it anything like as far as you might now with 

 profit and pleasure to yourselves and with entire safety ? I think 

 not, and I would not for any money lead you one inch beyond the 

 safe line. I was looking at a window in a farmhouse not long 

 since, and the builder told me the lumber of which the sash and 

 frame was made came from Michigan, the glass from Pittsburg, 

 the sash was made in Cleveland, the mouldings and blinds in 

 Cuyahoga Falls, the blind hinges in Buffalo, the sash fastenings 

 in New Britain, Conn., the sash lifts and pull-down plates in 

 Philadelphia, the nails came from Wheeling, the screws that the 

 casings inside were put on with came from the Cleveland Screw 

 Co., the sash weights from Akron, the cords to which they were 

 attached from Connecticut, and the pulleys for these cords to run 

 over from Buffalo, the green paint for blinds came from New 

 York, and the paint on the window casings from Philadelphia. 

 Bach one of these things was made by a specialist cheaper and 

 usually better than a farmer (or carpenter) could do it himself. 

 And these manufacturers consume the products of the farm, 

 carried cheaply now to all parts of the country, and thus make a 

 market for specialists on the farm, so that, instead of four cents a 

 pound for cheese here on the Western Reserve, we get two or 

 three times that, and some forty cents, on the average, for pota- 

 toes, instead of six cents, as before the days of division of labor 

 and markets and railroads. And why cannot we take advantage 

 of special production to supply cheese and potatoes and many 

 other products to the many consumers ? It is an actual fact that 

 men used to haul cheese from about where I live on the Reserve 

 to the Ohio River, with ox teams, and think they did well if they 

 got four cents a pound. And if they wanted a barrel of salt they 

 had, perhaps, to go to Cleveland or Pittsburg for it. My good 

 old neighbor and friend, A. Holcomb, now dead, has told me 

 that when he first came here he drew once 40 bushels of potatoes 

 eight miles to Cuyahoga Falls, and traded them for a hat, and it 

 wasn't much of a hat, either. Another time he drew a load to 

 the same place, and sold it for 6^ cents a bushel. Those were 

 the days when it was absolutely necessary for a man to grow 

 about what he wanted for his own use of every product of the 

 farm. Now nearly every product is readily sold for cash by those 

 living in reach of railroads. No actual necessity exists any 

 longer, in most localities in Ohio at least, for the farmer to 

 continue to raise such a diversity of products on the ground that 

 if he raises a surplus of one or two crops he cannot sell it, or 

 that he cannot with the money buy everything that he may need. 



