CHAPTER XL 



HOW TO TILEJ DRAIN. 



EFORB going any further, I want to say to you, 

 friends, that in the great majority of cases it will be 

 best for you to learn all about this matter yourself 

 and do the work yourself, with your regular or some 

 extra help, during the wet weather, in fall, open 

 winters, and early spring. At any rate, you should 

 know just how it ought to be done, and see that it is so done. 

 Nothing has put tile draining back so much as the poor class of 

 work that has been done by so-called professional ditchers. I do 

 not say they are all poor workmen ; I know they are not, but I 

 do know that a great many are not to be trusted. Many of them 

 are honest, but not skillful. A man who helped me some, and 

 would dig all right under my direction and constant watch, was 

 employed by a neighbor to lay a lot of tiles by the job, for so 

 much per hundred tiles laid. The drain proved worthless, and, 

 when taken up, they found tiles buried often two in a place. Had 

 the owner of farm hired this man to dig the ditch and get it ready, 

 and then gone there and known the grade was all right, and then 

 laid every tile with his own hands and put a little earth over them, 

 leaving the man to do the rest, all would have been well. We 

 ought to boss our own work, particularly such work as this, that 

 will be of no use if not done just right. We ought not to expect 

 a man who works for a dollar and a half a day to be a skilled 

 laborer, whose judgment can always be trusted, even if he is hon- 

 est. If he were such, he would not be long going about laying 

 tiles for others at low wages. I have never known but one man 

 whom I would trust to lay tiles for me. 



There is a feeling among farmers that ditching is beneath 

 them. I have seen this. When advising some such to drain some 

 land I have felt this, and I know they went and hired a man to do 

 it, and generally got badly cheated. Well, I have never felt this 

 way. I have laid every tile on my place and done much of the 

 digging. There is a difference between ditching and digging a 

 neat, narrow place for tiles, where skill and thought can save 

 much labor. A gentleman who visited here once, and had read 

 my articles in the papers, actually took my hired man one side 

 and asked him whether it was true that I got right down in the 

 ditch myself! Friends, if I hadn't I never would be writing 

 this. 



