SHALL I BE A FARMER? 5 



manual work of any kind rarely become successful farmers. 

 The time to train the muscles is when they are young. 

 The prospective farmer who is skillful with his hands 

 and likes to do manual labor has two of the very 

 desirable traits for a farmer. 



But some persons ask if the farmer should not spend 

 all his time with business affairs and leave the manual 

 work to hired help. There are instances on large planta- 

 tions where the farmer need do no manual work, but the 

 great majority of 'farmers must always work with their 

 hands. In the factory one manager can supervise the 

 work of a thousand men and can see all these men in a few 

 minutes, but with most kinds of farming this would be 

 men enough for half a county. If this factory manager 

 can increase the effectiveness of each man by a little, he 

 will earn a good salary. With most kinds of farming the 

 farmer can use but one to five men. To have one idle 

 manager for so few workers would make the expense of 

 supervision ruinously large. The simple fact that the 

 workers must always be scattered makes it necessary 

 that the farmer be a worker as well as a manager. 



The man who works with his men and who treats his 

 men as equals usually gets them to do much more work and 

 at the same time keeps them better contented. Where 

 cheap labor is used, this is not always desirable, but it is 

 the best way when the hired-man is the farmer's equal, as is 

 the case in most parts of the United States, where the hired- 

 man is a neighbor's son. We have learned how to plow 

 with a team of three to six horses. We no longer have one 

 man to hold the plow and one to drive, but we have not 

 yet outgrown, nor are we likely ever to outgrow, the 

 thought of Benjamin Franklin : 



