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PRICE, FIVE'CENTS 
$ 2.00 PERYEAR 
NEW YORK, JANUARY i7, 1891 
VOL L NO. 2i38 
THE FARMER OF THE FUTURE. 
A Long Look Ahead by Those Who Have Years 
Enough to Look Behind. 
The world is growing better; we shall have better 
farmers, better farms, more brains, more busi¬ 
ness ; science is waiting for us; march ahead 
with courage. 
The Farmer will Regain Dominion. 
By the end of the next century, farming will be con¬ 
ducted by men who will have an extended knowledge of 
the laws of their well-being. Their rations will be pre¬ 
pared scientifically and with as much care as are those of 
pigs and sheep at the present day. The physical training 
of children will receive nearly as much attention as is now 
lavished on the fillies and colts which are so fortunate as 
to find homes in trotting stables. Mental education will 
accompany and follow the physical in order that mind 
may dominate matter. Having learned and put in opera- 
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be cut and thrashed secure from danger of the elements 
and the straw will be left in straight, well-bound bundles. 
Sheep will be as productive as they were in olden times 
in Holland, when they produced six to seven lambs per 
year at two yeanings. No effort will be made to raise 
wool one-fourth to one half inch long on the legs and faces 
of the mutton breeds. 
The orchardist and vine grower will go forth armed with 
knowledge and all the lower forms of life will obey the be¬ 
hest of man and depart as readily and as certainly as the 
sheep and cattle do now. The lower forms may again 
trespass on forbidden ground as will the larger ; but all 
will readily obey the intelligent commander. Such a thing 
as wormy and scabby fruit will be as rare as raising nat¬ 
ural fruit for swine and cider is now. 
The inherited desire for stimulants will have been so far 
bred out of the farmers that they will abandon the regular 
use of spirituous liquors, tea, coffee, and tobacco. These 
will be labeled “ drugs ” at the apothecary’s shop. The 
love for gain will be changed into love for the welfare of 
children , and 
___ _ every farmer’s 
■ X boy will be train- 
. cUL; ‘sWj ed in all the hand- 
ft- a icraft and science 
.vf °f agriculture be- 
4 fore he is asked 
J .*jO to direct and con- 
trol the countless 
_ forces and laws 
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barn lots, and these will be composed of^twisted, looped 
and curled wires with barbs one eighth of an inch long. 
Persons owning stock, or engaged in moving it from place 
to place, will bo compelled by stringent layrs to keep it 
off other people’s land. Dogs will come under this law, 
and sheepmen and all other people possessed of common 
sense will rejoice thereat. 
Farmers will individually cultivate a smaller acreage 
and do it thoroughly and scientifically. Instead of rob¬ 
bers, they will be wardens of the land. The needs of the 
soil will be ascertained by experts employed by the govern¬ 
ment, and farmers will supply these needs intelligently 
and economically. Then the “boss farmer” will be the 
one who obtains the largest yield per acre at the least ex¬ 
pense and keeps up his land, instead of the one who 
scratches over the most ground. 
A smaller number of expensive implements will be kept 
by individual farmers. Harvesters, corn-huskers, haying 
machines, potato planters and diggers, etc., will be owned 
by skilled machinists, who will make a living by con¬ 
tracting for and doing the work. These men will buy the 
best machines, manage them skillfully and do the work 
more quickly, cheaply and much better than any farmer 
could do it. 
There will be two distinct kinds of plows in use. One 
will cut a wide furrow, and by means of a removable 
mold-board, either turn the soil over as now, or allow It to 
glide back over the share through steel breakers and fall 
crumbled into the furrow. The other will cut a narrow 
furrow and run deep, and will be used for special purposes. 
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DOWN WITH USELESS FENCES 1891! 
tion the laws which govern the physical and mental, and 
having discovered that they are God’s laws and altogether 
good, reverence, love and obedience to moral law, and all 
law will be as natural to the farmer of the next century as 
light-giving is to the sun. A few generations of lawful 
living will so intensify desirable qualities that children 
will be as perfect of their kind as the lambs which now 
sport in green pastures. Children will not inherit the 
knowledge of their parents, but they will inherit aptitude 
for it, and what is now acquired at 20 will be easily 
mastered at 16. We must remember that the farming of 
the next century will not be better than the farmer who 
will then occupy the land, or even quite so good. 
Man, having been reared according to law, will respect 
law and will take the first opportunity to form a close 
partnership with Nature and Nature’s God. The land 
upon which this thoroughbred farmer will dwell will be, 
like himself, fruitful of resources and full of energy. 
When a legal demand is made upon it, in a lawful way, it 
will honor the draft. It will laugh with fatness, and re¬ 
joice in its own fruitfulness and mourn not on account of 
transgressions. The man of the next century will know 
the laws of finance and will not compete in the markets of 
the world with wheat at 12 bushels per acre, with the man 
who raises 40. He will harness steam to his plow and thus 
avoid keeping a horse boarding stable 12 months in the 
year in order to get service for three. Animals that con¬ 
sume and do not produce will be banished from the farm 
and less than half as many so-called working animals will 
be kept as now. The manure breed of cows whose prin¬ 
cipal office is to produce attenuated fertilizers, will long 
since have passed “ down and out ” through a Bologna 
sausage cutter. The steep hill-sides and sandy plains will 
have been reclothed with stately pines, rock-ribbed oaks, 
sweet-sapped maples, and pliant ash. The harvest will be 
gleaned with steam machines of aluminum, which will be 
scarcely heavier than the family carriage, and grain will 
with which he will be surrounded. 
Food will be of better quality and 
more varied in character, and 
there will be less spoiling of good 
materials by fire and the hash ma- 
chine. Each meal will be differ- 
ent in most respects from any S-„. 
other during the year, and a few > 
simple foods served in a simple 
manner will form the m&nu. To DOT 
eat is plg-like and often de 
basing, to dress is God like and may be made elevating. 
Then the coming man, the farmer, is to go forth with 
clear head and clean • shirt and proclaim that after 6,000 
years of struggle and toil he has regained his lost God- 
given inheritance—dominion. [PROF.] I. P. ROBERTS. 
Cornell University, N. Y. 
All Right in 19 15. 
The size of farms will be limited by statute. One person 
will not be allowed to gobble up everything adjoining him 
simply because he has the money to do it. Moat of the 
farms will be owned by the men who till them. There 
will still be a few tenant farmers, but the rent they will 
pay, after deducting taxes and two per cent on whatever 
amount is still unpaid, will be applied to the purchase of the 
land. The man who sells a farm will be permitted to 
secure the unpaid balance with a mortgage, but he will 
not be allowed to foreclose that mortgage within 10 years 
from the date of the last payment on the principal, pro¬ 
vided the buyer annually pays all taxes and two per cent 
on the amount due and unpaid. On foreclosure of the 
mortgage the seller will be obliged to refund to the buyer 
all money paid him, less an annual interest of two per 
cent on the amount due and unpaid, and reasonable in¬ 
demnity for deterioration of the land, buildings, etc., 
while under his control. 
There will be no fences except those around pastures and 
I ? i V 
‘DOMINION” OVER INSECTS 1925. 
Both will have light wheels and the plowman will ride. 
All crop cultivating will be surface work. D< ep root¬ 
cutting, gouging and hilling will be thiugs of the past. The 
new implements will thoroughly stir the entire surface, 
working close to the plants, and will have steel knives for 
cutting off large weeds and numerous narrow teeth for up 
rooting small ones, all of which will be completely under 
the control of the operator who can either ride or walk. 
The chief aim of the farmer will be to stir the surface of 
the ground often enough to entirely prevent weeds from 
starting, and to keep the soil to a depth of about three 
inches perfectly mellow, and all cultivating implements 
will be constructed with this end in view. This will bring 
light, active, fast-walking horses to the front for farm work. 
Corn husking will be done by machinery. The Implement 
will take a row of corn as fast as a team can walk, cut the 
stalks off close to the ground, strip off the ears, husk and 
drop them into a wagon driven alongside, cut the stalks 
into half-inch pieces and either shoot them into a light 
frame, drop them in heaps or rows, or scatter them evenly 
over the field to be plowed under. Ten to fifteen acres 
a day will be disposed of in good shape. More corn and 
stalks will be converted into silage. The crop will be cut 
and bound into small bundles by machinery, shocked up 
and partly cured, and then cut into the silo. More silage 
and less hay will be used on the farm. 
