THE CONQUEST OF NATURE 



borhood. Any live stock intended for a distant market 

 was driven on foot across the country to its destination. 

 Each town and city, therefore, drew almost exclusively 

 for its supply from the immediately surrounding 

 country. 



To-day the small farmer has become almost obsolete, 

 and the farms of the eastern states that were the na- 

 tion's chief source of supply a century ago are largely 

 allowed to lie fallow, it being no longer possible to 

 cultivate them profitably in competition with the rich 

 farm lands of the middle west. In that new home of 

 agriculture, the farm that does not comprise two or 

 three hundred acres is considered small; and large 

 farms are those that number their acres by thousands. 

 The soil is turned by steam ploughs; the grain is 

 sown with mechanical seeders and planters; the corn 

 is cultivated with a horse-drawn machine, having blades 

 that do the work of a dozen men; harvesters drawn 

 by three or four horses sweep over the fields and leave 

 the grain mechanically tied in bundles; the steam 

 thresher places the grain in sacks by hundreds of 

 bushels a day; and this grain is hurried off in steam 

 cars to distant mills and yet more distant markets. 



Meantime the raising of live stock has become a 

 special department, with which the farmer who deals 

 in cereals often has no concern. The cattle roam over 

 vast pastures and are herded in the winter for fattening 

 in great droves, and protected from the cold in barns 

 that, when contrasted with the sheds of the old-time 

 farmer, seem almost palatial. When in marketable 

 condition, cattle are no longer slaughtered at the farm, 



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