1876.] 
AMERICAN AGKRIC QLTURIST. 
299 
in this careful manner, for flax manufacture to be¬ 
come also an established business in the West- 
Cheap Production. 
Cheap production is now the chief necessity of 
our agriculture. American farmers have now to 
compete with the whole world, and many of our 
competitors live very poorly and cheaply, and have 
land as cheap as ours. To compete with these, we 
are under the disadvantage that we cannot live as 
poorly or as cheaply as they do, our higher civiliza¬ 
tion not admitting of it. We must, then, raise 
larger crops with the same labor than they do, or 
use our labor more effectively. Many persons 
would have us believe that wo must necessarily 
produce as high an average per acre as the English 
farmers do, or fail in our competion with them 
There is no necessity for this. There is a point in 
production beyond which we cannot go with profit. 
The Kansas or Nebraska farmer, who grows 25 
•bushels of wheat every other year for 20 years upon 
his rich, cheap soil without manure, and with a 
minimum of labor and cost, can easily compete 
with the English farmer, who pays an annual rent 
equal to the whole purchase money of his competi¬ 
tor’s farm, and has to spend ten or twelve dollars 
per acre in manure. But if the western farmer 
should, by fertilizing' his land, double its yield, the 
extra 25 bushels would not be grown at a profit. 
Here is a principle which affects our whole agricul¬ 
ture, and no rules can be safely laid down for us 
which violate this principle. We must discover 
the limit of the profitable production of our farms, 
each farmer for himself, and avoid any attempts to 
pass that limit. The whole secret of good and 
profitable farming is to extend the limit as far as 
possible ; it is bad and unprofitable farming to 
either fall below that limit or to go beyond it. 
There are instances in which an extremely large 
yield is grown at a positive loss, as was the case of 
that farmer who raised 100 bushels of com per acre 
with the expenditure of 8102 worth of manure and 
labor, while he raised 60 bushels without the ma¬ 
nure and with less than half the labor. This may 
be called “high farming,” but it is not profitable. 
| «H »' rn n, -— 
Farmers and Middlemen, 
We have received an interesting communication 
from a correspondent in Northwestern Texas, which 
opens up the question as to how far can farmers 
dispense with the services of those persons now 
known as “middlemen ” ; that is, those who come 
between the producers and consumers, receiving the 
farmers’ produce, storing it until sold, and then 
distributing it to the consumers as they may want 
it, and purchase it. This term, “ middlemen,” lias 
been used by some of those who take an active part 
in adjusting the relations of farmers with the rest 
of mankind as one of reproach, and the “ middle¬ 
man ” has therefore become in the eyes of many 
farmers as a sort of parasite which lives upon them, 
and takes a portion of their earnings without giv¬ 
ing any adequate return for it. Now it should be 
evident to any intelligent farmer that he cannot 
leave his farm, and go out into the wide world 
seeking customers amongst those who consume his 
produce, nor can those who need his beef, pork, 
flour, butter, eggs, and all the rest of the things that 
they need, con,e to him for their supplies, except 
in very few cases. Even in these few cases the 
greatly increased labor attending the disposal of 
his produce leads the farmer to charge a somewhat 
higher price for the trouble of retailing out his 
produce. But in the vast majority of cases the 
farmer could not reach a customer without leaving 
his work, losing his time, and going to a great ex¬ 
pense. Somebody must do this service for him, and 
this is precisely where the “ middleman,” or the 
dealer, commission agent, merchant, shipper, job¬ 
ber, and retailer, or whatever else he maybe called, 
comes in. It is clear, then, that there is a need for 
this “ middleman. ” The farmer does not stand by 
himself in this respect. We know of no class of 
producers that do not employ some person to dis¬ 
pose of their productions for them. In the early 
periods of society, a man who made a pair of shoes or 
a quantity of butter, would go out into the market 
and wait there until a customer appeared. In the 
same way the small farmer even now carries his pro¬ 
duce in a basket, and the shoemaker hangs his shoes 
up in his shop or stall, to expose them for sale. But 
as soon as he enlarges his business and becomes able 
to do so, he ships what he has to sell to a large dealer, 
and this one man does the work for hundreds. This 
is one of those arrangements which, operating 
universally, has built up the present condition of 
society, and in fact is its principal foundation. 
Let us upset this arrangement, and society as now 
constituted would fall to pieces; every man would 
have to do every thing for himself ; there would be 
nothing that depends upon the united and congre¬ 
gated effort of a people any longer remaining. 
There would be no houses, no roads, canals, ships, 
no government, and no society. We should return 
to barbarism. The question then arises, is there 
anything that is now done through this necessary 
agency of the middleman, that the farmer can do 
for himself ? We confess this is a difficult question 
when viewed in its largest sense. In its narrowest 
sense we should say that there are some business 
operations which could be performedyor the farm¬ 
ers by an appointed agent, who should represent a 
large number for whom now there are perhaps two 
or three or several agents. It seems very clear 
that there are too many persons to do the farmer’s 
business. This is a disadvantage, because it tends 
to increase the cost of doing this service. If a num¬ 
ber of farmers then can arrange to do their work 
through one agent, where formerly three were em¬ 
ployed, the cost should be reduced in proportion to 
the expense saved. If there are two elevators at 
one railroad depot, where one would be sufficient, 
then grain could be shipped at half the cost, if one 
only were employed. But the farmers must be in 
the position to prevent the one elevator from rais¬ 
ing the charges to the former rates, which the 
owner would do, if he had the power. The farmers 
must therefore control the elevators themselves, 
employing the hands to work it. This they can on¬ 
ly do by owning it. To own their elevator then, is 
not only legitimate, but actually necessary for them 
to do ; if they possess the capacity to manage it as well 
as such a business should be managed. They would 
then have their grain shipped as cheaply as might 
be possible. This is an illustration of what might 
be done, and this modification of present business 
arrangements could be carried just so far as the 
farmers possessed the necessary business capacity 
and experience to properly manage their enterprise, 
and secure the best efforts of their servants, but 
no farther. 
The field for these business enterprises at present 
would seem to be limited to those which do not re¬ 
quire a technical education for their conduct and 
operation. Eor instance, an elevator, a pork pack¬ 
ing establishment, a traveling steam thrasher, a 
grocery, dry goods, or shoe store, a storage ware¬ 
house, a dock and a ship for carrying their goods to 
foreign countries, or a canal-boat for conveying 
produce to a distant market, would all seem to be 
within the powers and capabilities of a number of 
intelligent farmers ; but a railroad, a woolen or 
cotton factory, a machine factory, and similar me¬ 
chanical operations, which require for their success¬ 
ful working much hardly acquired technical skill, 
or great business experience, which can only be 
profitably effective when the operator is the owner 
of the establishment, would seem to be outside of 
the farmer’s province, and necessarily doomed to 
failure in his hands. We see no reason why farmers 
should not look towards the cheapening of the ser¬ 
vices of those whom they employ as their agents for 
the disposal of their produce, and employ their spare 
capital in the direction pointed out, as soon as they 
have exhausted their efforts to make their farms 
productive, and have acquired the necessary busi¬ 
ness habits and experience for eventual success. 
Prospects for Wool. —An extensive sale of 
woolen goods recently held in the city of New 
York has brought the woolen business down to hard 
bottom. A million and a half dollars worth of 
goods were sold at auction in one day, and thus 
prices and values were settled. It is well to know 
the worst, and the worst seems to be that the price 
of wool has touched bottom. As a hint to those 
who will now cull out their flocks and improve the 
residue against the expected return of better times, 
we give the current prices of wool in New York in 
June, as follows : Super Saxony fleece, 33 to 35c. ; 
Full-blood Merino 30 to 33c. ; Half-blood Merino 
36 to 40c. ; Common fleeces 33 to 35c., and Comb¬ 
ing fleeces 50 to 55e. per lb. It will be seen that 
combing wool is the most valuable in the market, 
and that medium wools are worth more than the 
finest. Combing wool sheep are the best mutton 
sheep, and the value of one well-grown grade Cots- 
wold, with its fleece, is equal to that of three fine 
wool sheep. Although a Cotswold costs more to 
feed than a Merino, yet the cost is not in propor¬ 
tion to the increased value of its wool and mutton. 
—-—*» .<>. - 
A Sheep-shearing Machine. 
(See illustrations on next page.) 
Many efforts have been made to produce a ma¬ 
chine for shearing sheep that should enable the 
work to be done as well as by hand, and with 
greater rapidity. Some inventive mechanic in Eng¬ 
land, some time ago, made a machine for this pur¬ 
pose, which was tried in Australia, but we had re¬ 
cently to record its failure there. Now we have a 
machine made by an American mechanic, who has 
spent eight years in perfecting it, and which seems 
to be perfectly adapted to the work required. We 
have tested the machine, and feel satisfied that a 
sheep can be sheared in five minutes much better 
than could be done by hand. The fleece is cut off 
very evenly and closely with this machine; the 
sheep cannot possibly be cut by it; and there can 
be no cutting through and injuring the staple. The 
cutting machine is shown at figure 1. The cutters, 
made precisely upon the principle of the mowing- 
machine knives, are of chilled steel, and are self- 
sharpening. The motion is communicated by 
means of compressed air, and 3,000 revolutions per 
minute can be easily given to it, although 1,500 rev¬ 
olutions are sufficient for a working speed. The 
air-pump is shown at figure 2. This is worked by 
a crank, and one man can produce sufficient power 
to work 25 machines. The air is forced from the 
pump through a flexible rubber tube, which allows 
ample freedom of movement. The working pres¬ 
sure of the pump is 5 lbs. per square Inch, but it 
may be worked up to 45 lbs. by using an engine or 
a windmill. One pump is sufficient to work 25 of 
the shearing machines, and these may all be at¬ 
tached to a supply pipe, from which the compressed 
air may be let off or on to the machine as needed, 
by taps. Thus one pump will supply power for 25 
shearers, and these having merely to hold and di¬ 
rect the machine, which barely fills the hand, and 
requires no muscular force to work it, are not ex¬ 
hausted, or required to stoop over the sheep—if 
benches are used—and may therefore work more 
quickly and certainly than with the ordinary hand- 
shears. The cost of shearing will be much reduced, 
and as the cost of the apparatus is very moderate, 
almost every person owning a flock of sheep would 
find it advantageous to use it. The larger engrav¬ 
ing represents the method of using the machine, 
in which the position of the sheep is the same as 
in ordinary shearing ; we should, however, recom¬ 
mend the use of a shearing-bench or chair, by 
which the necessity for stooping and bending over 
the work would be obviated. 
The machine will also be found very useful for 
clipping horses, for which purpose the motive 
power used, and the method of attachment, are 
well adapted. It is also perfectly adapted for 
shearing pelts, instead of “pulling” the wool from 
them, by which the quality of the fleece is injured. 
The inventor and manufactm-er is Mr. P. Anderson, 
of 321 East 22d st., New York, whose perseverance 
and ingenuity in perfecting this useful invention, 
certainly deserve great praise, and we have no 
doubt that the machine will be used as extensively 
in all the ways here indicated, as its merits demand. 
