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Profitable Hiring. — The One-Horse Subsoil Plough. Vol. VIL 



For the Farmers' Cabinet. 

 Profitable Hiring. 



In these times of difficulty and embarrass- 

 ment, when the farmer scarcely knows what 

 to do with the surplus produce of his fields ; 

 when taxes are threatening to accumulate 

 upon us, and the means of paying them are 

 withering on every side ; it is an important 

 inquiry whether we have yet found the 

 cheapest methods of cultivating our farms. 

 The state of Pennsylvania is now nearly 

 forty millions in debt. The interest of this 

 sum constitutes a heavy draft on the resources 

 of the common weal tli. If we can find a me- 

 thod of retrenching the expense to that 

 amount, without diminishing the productions 

 of our farms, we escape the disgrace of re- 

 pudiation, and yet retain the enjoyments 

 which our land has been accustomed to sup- 

 ply. 



On most farms of any considerable extent, 

 one or more hired men are usually employed. 

 These men are commonly engaged to work 

 against time. Their wages are not depend- 

 ent upon the quantity of work performed, but 

 upon the time employed in performing it. 

 In hiring our agricultural labourers, we pay 

 them for the physical force, rather than the 

 intellect, which is supplied. We do not ex- 

 pect that they will devote much thought to 

 their business. They are required to receive 

 their directions from their employers, and to 

 conform to those directions, whether they 

 are judicious or not. 



Now we must agree that the intellect is 

 the better part, or, as our farmers would say, 

 the larger half, of a man. A man who is 

 employing his own powers for his own bene- 

 fit, generally finds the contriving mind quite 

 as efficient as the performing hand. And 

 the hand itself will actually perform much 

 more in a given time, when urged by an en- 

 ergetic mind, than when the intellect is lan- 

 guid or dormant. 



It is no uncharitable charge on the labour- 

 ing class, to repeat what has been often said, 

 that the difference between working by the 

 day, and working by the job, is strongly 

 marked in the quantity performed. There 

 are probably few of us who fully appreciate 

 the energy infused into the limbs, by a mind 

 stimulated by interest, to the execution of a 

 maximum amount of labour. It would per- 

 haps not be unsafe to assert, that a man thus 

 stimulated can perform, without injury, an 

 amount which would be fatal if extorted by 

 compulsion. 



Besides this, we may remember, that in- 

 terest is Argus-eyed. The man who has a 

 direct interest in the proceeds of his labour, 

 can see many things which ought to be done. 



and which may be done at very little expense 

 of time, which the mere hireling does not 

 see, because he is not looking for them, 

 Probably few men have had much to do with 

 hirelings, without having occasion to wonder 

 at the stupidity of men whose intellects per- 

 haps were very little inferior to their own. 



As the mind acquires strength and facility 

 by exercise, in whatever way it is employed, 

 it is evidently important that as large a part 

 of the community as possible should be trained 

 to such habits of thought and action, as tend 

 to develope the resources of the country and 

 to preserve from waste, whatever our fields 

 and workshops are capable of producing. 

 Hence it seems to be undeniable, that the 

 earlier and more extensively the labouring 

 class, the very bone and sinew of the com- 

 munity, can be engaged in a manner to feel 

 that they have a direct interest in the results 

 of their toil, the more prosperous and wealthy 

 we may reasonably expect to become. 



The practical result to which this reason- 

 ing leads, would be an effort on the part of 

 proprietors, whether of farms or workshops, 

 and particularly of farms, to regulate their 

 business in such manner that the operators 

 should have a direct interest in the produce 

 of their labour ; and thus become the manu- 

 facturers of their own fortunes. 



Having sufficiently indicated the princi- 

 ples, I shall leave the details to the sagacity 

 of my readers. 



A Pennsylvania Farmer. 



For the Farmers' Cabinet. 



The One-horse Subsoil Plough. 



Sir, — I am an advocate for the use of the 

 subsoil plough, but believe, as a correspond- 

 ent in your last number expresses, that the 

 system is destined to receive, through the 

 mismanagement of its friends, a woful dis- 

 comfiture. How is it, Mr. Editor, that so 

 many of us still believe that a saving of 

 expense, is of itself a gain? It is, generally 

 speaking, a loss in the hands of a judicious 

 cultivator — the man who is not afraid to 

 trust the management of his capital to his 

 land : and in no instance will the error be 

 more prematurely developed, than in the 

 highly important operation of subsoiling- — 

 the inquiry after a one-horse subsoil plough, 

 being quite decisive on that point. I know 

 not how it is, that even sensible men are so 

 easily led astray by such fallacies; it was 

 but the other day that a first-rate cultivator 

 of the soil inquired, while I was describing 

 the " modus operandi" of the improvement', 

 and detailing its advantages to soils such as 

 his, which are rather thin and wet, whether 

 it would not be found an expensive business, 



