LABOR OMNIA VINCIT. 151 



expense of the improvement ; so that the State would be fully 

 justified in loaning the money, and have increased security in 

 the value of the land. The young farmer, who is struggling 

 along in narrow circumstances, would be benefited, and the 

 State would be benefited. Massachusetts is perhaps the best 

 State to try that experiment, which I do not doubt can be done 

 with safety and entire success. 



Then, we not only want more capital, but more labor — a 

 great deal more of it. There is nothing in which our farmers 

 come so short as in the employment of labor on their farms. 

 In a recent conversation with Dr. Heximer, who is a very skil- 

 ful farmer, and makes a specialty of raising potatoes and culti- 

 vating small fruits, and who has now a gross income of about 

 five thousand dollars, from a farm of about sixty acres, I asked 

 him what was the expenditure in which he took most satisfac- 

 tion on his farm, and which paid him the best, and he said, 

 unhesitatingly, " Labor. I get more returns, better returns, 

 for the money I invest in labor than from that which I invest 

 in manure, in land, or anything else." The profit comes from 

 skilful working of the land. Now, in order to work land thor- 

 oughly, and cultivate it four or five times, as it should be, our 

 grain crops and our hoed crops must have a great deal of labor. 

 If we are going to subsoil, if we are going to underdrain, if we 

 are going to have high farming, we must lay out a great deal 

 more labor upon our acres. Instead of one man and a boy to 

 one hundred acres, we must have five men, or even ten men. 

 Believe me, the more labor we lay out upon a farm, other things 

 being equal, the better returns we shall get. 



And we not only want more labor, but we want, in order to 

 the most profitable farming, a good rotation of crops. AVe have 

 something of that in New England ; but it is not followed sys- 

 tematically. Our common rotation here is, the sod turned over 

 for corn ; then, perhaps, grain the second year, or potatoes ; 

 then oats ; and tiien the land is stocked down, and it remains 

 three, four, five or six years in meadow — as long as we can get 

 half a ton of hay per acre in return from the land. Instead of 

 this unprofitable system, having no definite term when we will 

 turn over the sod, we want a regular system, such as they have 

 in the grain districts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In a 

 trip through that region last summer, I found in all that well- 



