230 Our Farming. 



were getting along now. They have great competition to meet. 

 He said, ' ' We have not sold as many machines this year as last, but 

 we have introduced improved methods of manufacture, so that we 

 have made them cheaper, and can thus show as large profits as 

 ever." A friend of mine has a lumber yard in an Ohio city. 

 Last fall he stopped here on his way to Cincinnati to get improved 

 machinery for planing mill. Competition drove him to getting 

 the very best and latest in the line of labor saving. Last winter 

 I stood in his shop and saw the improved machinery running. 

 Lumber is planed on both sides at once as it goes through the 

 huge machine, that has a capacity of 33,000 feet in ten hours. 

 This can be done at a profit for $1.50 a 1,000. The old planers, 

 where only one side can be planed at once, cannot do the same 

 work and live for less than $2, say nothing of profit. Yes, 

 this machine planes all four sides at once, if you want, or both 

 sides and matches, and many other wonderful things. This is 

 the way manufacturers work to overcome competition. The 

 weak must go to the wall. The pushing man who reduces cost 

 of production in every possible way comes to the front. Sur- 

 vival of the fittest. As long as the work is well done, and the 

 workmen fairly paid, I do not see how we can find any fault with 

 this. When it is carried so far that workmen are not paid fairly, 

 which is more particularly the case where females are employed, 

 and poor goods are worked off as better than they are, or any 

 product is adulterated and sold as pure, then we have a right to 

 object. Still buyers are largely to blame for this, because they 

 buy the cheapest and demand it. 



Now, my friends, we must meet competition in our line in the 

 same general way that honorable business men do in other lines, 

 if we want to succeed. When w r e do we can succeed even at 

 present prices. My friend Woodward, lately spoken of, said the 

 farmer might be pictured as between two walls that were pushing 

 up against him, most too closely of late. One was the cost of 

 production, and the other the price he could get for his products. 

 We cannot push back the last wall very much, except in the way 

 of raising a choice article, better than the ordinary, but we can 

 move the other one, the cost of production, considerably on most 

 farms. This is a legitimate and honorable way up, too, and practi- 

 cally the only way. For example, look at my potato growing. 

 I have in mind a friend who plants two or three acres a year in the 

 old way. Plowing out the furrows with a horse and plow, while 

 his son leads the horse, dropping seed by hand, covering by hand, 

 hoeing by hand. He works hard and faithfully, and still on soil 

 that is not tile-drained much and needs it badly. One year with 

 another, he doesn't get paid any more than fair wages for the time 

 spent. With drained land, machinery, clover rotation, not too much 

 to do, long rows, bushel boxes, etc., etc., we have so reduced the 

 cost of production that we get paid for our labor, and a very 



