Popular Science Monthly 



235 



before your eyes strike the northeastern cor- 

 ner of the tract. On that corner stand the 

 conical towers of the silos — fodder-storage 

 houses — in which is kept the winter's sup- 

 ply of corn for the farm's four hundred odd 

 cattle. This stock-farm, a pretty large 

 proposition for an 

 average farmer, is 

 however a 

 side 



issue. 

 Two 



Some of the buildings on the great farm, which has its own garages, power plant, machine 

 shops, smithies, maintenance shops, canneries, storage cellars and home communities 



discarded. It would waste a strip of muck 

 at least a foot wide, they reasoned — and 

 they would need such lengthy fences on the 

 big farm that the aggregate loss of tillable 

 soil would be enormous. When it came to 

 the labor problem and the horse-feed prob- 

 lem, the officials did not hesitate to blaze a 

 new trail in farm-operating annals. Of 

 course all modern farms have a few tractors, 

 but this corporate farm has them by the 

 dozen. Not only does the "steel mule" — 

 light tractor — save in operation over the 

 heavy-eating Dobbin — it saves the em- 

 ployers from the ever present (on the 

 ordinary farm) "hired man" problem. 



"We find that the young fellows of the 

 community just love to handle a 'mule' and 

 learn to take care of its mechanism. There's 

 something Twentieth Century about this 

 way of ploughing, harrowing and general 

 farm hauling that does not seem irksome. 

 No labor problem because of discontent on 

 this farm," the officials say. "Getting 

 teamsters is a chronic difficulty on farms; 

 we use 'steel mules' and other tractors — and 

 find no trouble at all. Electric light, run- 

 ning water, phonographs, clubhouses, tele- 

 phones, steam-heat and billiard tables in 

 our farm-hand dormitories — we count these 

 scientific ways of helping to solve the farm 

 labor problem, too." Which is sound effi- 

 ciency. 



A Farm Measured by Miles 



Stand on the hill where the headquarters 

 camp is located, on the southern side of the 

 big farm, and you can look for three miles 

 over a level expanse of coal-black muck 



miles to the south lie a group of apple or- 

 chards on the sloping uplands that surround 

 the muck. Various orchard gangs, under 

 trained fore^Jlen, run miniature water-tower 

 machines down between the rows of trees, 

 spraying with insecticides. It is but an in- 

 stance of the minute care given every wisp 

 of plant life on the big farm. Daily reports 

 on the condition of each orchard, each onion 



How the drainage canals were dug. With the 

 completion of each mile of dredged ditch, 

 immense acreages of submerged muck lands 

 of great fertility were released for tillage 



