10 PRACTICAL CORN CULTURE 
to do the work of two or three. Our own experience has 
taught us that too much work ean hardly be put on good corn 
ground when the crop is worth from fifty to sixty-five cents 
per bushel. In every case additional work with us has meant 
an increase in the margin of profit. 
Spurred on by this we have gradually increased our farm 
equipment until today we are employing considerably more 
men by the year than we did ten years ago. Although we 
grow fewer acres of corn and small grain, we have many 
more horses in the field. This increase in equipment for the 
purpose of better farming, (including the building of houses 
for farm help), has cost us several thousand dollars, but 
what are the results? 
In the first place we are building up our Baits by having 
more time to haul manure from town. With three spreaders 
we haul annually eight hundred tons of manure from the 
town of Mason City. (See Chapter VII.) We are growing on 
an average fifteen bushels of corn more per acre than we did 
as late as ten years ago. With better land to start with we 
are able to cut the stalks and double disc before plowing, 
where corn follows corn. The corn is cultivated four to six 
times, the last time being with a high arch gopher cultivator. 
If the corn is too thick, it is thinned and suckered after the 
last plowing. This sums up briefly what we are accomplishing 
with our additional investment in equipment. 
We are sure that what we have invested along the line of 
more intensive farming has paid us well in dollars and cents, 
and still better in satisfaction. What we have done is being 
done by others and ean be done by every land owner and 
farmer in the corn belt. 
What about the tenant farmer? Many tenant farmers 
are among our best farmers and the tenant really has the 
same opportunity as the landlord farmer, provided he has 
been given a long term lease. A tenant would be more 
