RURAL NEW ENGLAND. 123 



in the city; have taken summer boarders, raised pouhrv, market 

 garden truck and milk; and I beUeve that a woman can farm as well 

 as a man, but she must know what she wants done and when i.t is 

 done rightly. She must be her own manager; look a long way 

 ahead and be willing to carry a heavy load of responsibility and not 

 complain about it. If a woman wants a place for herself in life 

 and a home for aged parents and has the aptitude for it she has a 

 reasonable hope of success on a farm." 



From a commission merchant in Worcester I learned that there is 

 a great opportunity for the farmers to enter into the poultry business ; 

 he said, "that last year he had shipped from the West 15,000 crates 

 of eggs and each crate contained thirty dozen, and he further said 

 that there were several other merchants in Worcester who handled 

 as many if not more than he did." A few years ago, the Secretary 

 of the State board of Agriculture of Kansas asked every farmer to 

 raise eggs enough to pay the taxes on his farm. They began the 

 work and now they not only raise enough to pay the taxes on their 

 farms but more than enough to pay the taxes of the whole state, and 

 some of the Kansas eggs come to Massachusetts. 



In some way through our various agricultural organizations we 

 should know what our markets need and it seems as if the New 

 England farmers could supply those markets with certainly better 

 and as cheap products as are shipped here from the Western States. 

 The West is a great agricultural country but their money is not made 

 from an acre of land but from the immense number of acres they 

 cultivate and one man is expected with the improved farm machin- 

 ery to care for 160 acres of land. In Southern Minnesota where 

 we spent one winter, the average yield of wheat per acre was four- 

 teen bushels and you all know if wheat is SI a bushel that the farmer 

 gets a good price for it. What would a New England farmer think 

 of an income of $14 per acre for his land ? 



A western farmer coming to New England for the first time leaving 

 behind him his 2000 acres of corn and wheat fields, wrote home to his 

 family that here in New England they call six hens and a rooster and 

 four acres of land a farm, and often times a part of that four acres 

 is a graveyard. He also wrote home that nearly all of our cows 

 were bow-legged, caused by eating on our hillsides, and that the 

 Massachusetts farmers were always sure of one good crop and that 



