CHAPTER ]J. 



THE NEW FARMER. 



THE new farmer is primarily a business man. He is 

 assumed to know how to make crops grow, and usually 

 he does. The main question is whether he knows how 

 to produce crops which will sell for more than they have cost- 

 If he can not in the long run do this, his inevitable destiny 

 is to become the servant of some one who knows how to direct 

 his labor to profitable results. Below this lies the problem as 

 to whether the majority of men possess the business ability 

 requisite to successful farming under modern conditions, and 

 upon the answer to this question depends the future of our 

 rural civilization. If it be decided in the affirmative, the 

 race of independent small farmers will continue; if in the 

 negative, farm labor will come to be exploited by able men 

 conducting huge agricultural operations, just as mechanical 

 labor is now exploited by Captains of Industr3\ 



In this age no such life as is described in Chapter I is 

 possible to the farmer in America, nor, with our changed 

 habits and desires, would it be agreeable. It would involve 

 a distinct lowering of our present standard of comfort, which, 

 with all our complaint, is far higher than formerly, and would 

 not result in the same content and consequent survival which 

 the same conditions formerly induced. The impossibility of 

 the life will be seen by any farmer wdio will trace out what 

 would happen should he attempt it. Doubtless the farmer 

 could produce more for his own consumption than he does, 

 but, in the main, under the changed conditions of modern life, 

 he is compelled to sell, for money, most of his products, and 

 buy, for money, most that he consumes. The mechanical 

 facilities of modern times have enormously reduced the cost 

 of production, and improved transportation lias made every 

 farmer of the civihzed world the competitor of every other 



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