892 Transactions of the American Institute. 



hay crop is harvested at a cost of from fifty cents to $1.50 a ton. It 

 is easier to keep up the fertility of a meadow than of a grain field 

 or a truck patch. Such mineral and condensed manures as lime, 

 ashes, plaster and bone-dust will make restoration to meadow lands, 

 and enable their owner to sell hay, without selling his farm, by the ton. 

 But to cart hay to market and restore nothing to the meadow, is 

 ruinous policy. In attempting to work without grasses the farmer is 

 lifting without a lever ; he is pulling a load with the weight on the 

 hind wheels ; he is cutting with a dull saw ; he is chopping with a 

 broken ax. With grass as a basis, grains, fruits, roots, quantities of flesh, 

 all the triumphs of our art are possible. To sum up, I would say, first, 

 to all who propose to buy farms east of the mountains, look sharply 

 into its capacity to grow nutritious grasses, and learn what means may 

 be available for fertilizing such meadows. You may convert that 

 grass into milk and its products, into flesh, into manure for grains, or 

 you may sell it by the ton, according to the facts of your particular 

 locality. I would not advise any one to talk about farming as his 

 business, unless he has twenty acres of good land, a surface that can 

 be made to give two tons to the acre. The greatest thrift and profit 

 I have seen among the eastern farmers is on tracts of about 100 acres. 

 West of the mountains, and especially on black lands, the conditions 

 of thrift are different. While eighty acres give a sufficient homestead, 

 and all who can should secure such, a tract as the foundation of an 

 independence, I consider 320, or half a section, as none too large for 

 a man of force and brains, who proposes to thrive and win com- 

 petence at farming. If I were to spend $3,200 in western land, for 

 farming purposes, I should go where I could get 320 at ten dollars, 

 rather than stop where I must give twenty dollars and get only 160. 

 The difference in prices in roads and in society may all be overcome ; 

 but after a country is settled, ony remarkable thrift will enable a man 

 to double or treble his area. On the other hand, for the average 

 farmer, 320 acres is enough ; and he can do full justice to this area 

 more easily than he can to a farm that numbers its fields by sections 

 and half-sections. 



In these remarks I have supposed that a person has considerable 

 capital — as from $5,000 to $10,000 — to use in establishing a rural 

 home. Let us for a moment consider the attractions farming now 

 presents to a poor man : In the west, he gets eighty acres for office 

 expenses — i. e., for about fourteen dollars. If a soldier, he gets 

 160 acres in railroad belts, and 160 beyond those belts. He can buy 

 lands well situated, near growing stations and somewhat improved, 



