42 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
Wagons will be broad-tired and low-down. The box 
will be steel-bound and so constructed that one or both 
sides or ends can be removed almost instantly. The bot¬ 
tom will be in two or more sections, easily taken apart or 
put together. Axles, bolsters, pole, etc., will be lighter, 
neater and constructed in a more scientific and workman¬ 
like manner. More metal will enter into the construction 
of buggies, and they will be lighter and more convenient 
even than now. There will be neither whiflfietrees on the 
shafts of single buggies nor long tugs on the harness. 
Small, electric engines of one to four horse power will 
be found on many farms. They will be sold at a price 
which will enable almost any farmer to own one, and will 
be used for grinding feed, pumping water, etc., etc. 
The art of making malleable glass will be discovered, 
and many acres in the Northern States will be covered 
with it and devoted to growing vegetables and semi-trop¬ 
ical fruits for the local markets. Many farmers will cover 
their barnyards, piggeries, etc., with a roof composed of 
this material and sheet aluminum-steel. 
Sugar beets will be grown on thousands of acres in our 
Western States, which are now devoted to corn, oats and 
wheat, and we shall be making 75 per cent of all the sugar 
we consume. 
Farmers will not be chasing after a foreign market for 
their produce. The United States will be looming up as a 
great manufacturing nation, and its people will consume 
about all the farm products they grow. American enter¬ 
prise, aided by sensible legislation, will be pushing our 
manufactures into the uttermost parts of the earth to com¬ 
pete with those of other nations, and we shall “ take the 
cake ” in every instance. 
The mines and manufactories of the country will be 
managed in the interests of workers and consumers, and 
not, as now,[for the enrichment of a few millionaire barons. 
Coal will be sold at a price that will enable k the tiller of 
Yet There Is Hope 1 —In spite of this terrible arraign¬ 
ment of our national life, there is promise for our future. 
The message from the shadow of the Rocky Mountains is 
one of faith and hope The key to these cardinal virtues 
may be found in the character of our common people, and 
especially in that of our farmers, men and women. The 
world has never before seen such a farming class as we 
have in the United States—people at once the owners of 
intelligence and education as well as of the soil. From 
their character they are all destined to have full social and 
political recognition. Individuals and legislatures may be 
bought, but there can be no long-continued hoodwinking 
or buying of a whole people—at any rate, not of such a 
people as ours. Horace Greeley has said that the nations 
of antiquity wronged themselves by ranking the farmer 
lower than either the priest or soldier. That mistake will 
not be repeated in this country. Men and women who are 
connected with agriculture have the power in their hands 
to redress many of the evils above complained of, and they 
will develop the skill to use that power. The wielders of 
power always become respectable. If those to whom the 
people have made valuable concessions, among them the 
right of eminent domain, continue to use the highways 
of the continent for personal profit and not as a trust 
for the people, then the people must and will resume 
the concessions they have made. The same is true 
of those who make unwarrantable profit out of Nature’s 
stores. 
We are rapidly approaching that era when production 
and consumption will be equal in our country. By 1894, it 
is believed that our population will have increased to the 
point where we shall be obliged to commence the importa¬ 
tion of breadstuffs, and a wonderful era of prosperity and 
activity will begin, and the farming class will have reason 
to rejoice. Are there not vast numbers of people, even in 
this favored land, who are destroyed by their poverty? 
TAN. 17 
lands of the Far West, has a wonderful future before it, 
at least in the drier portions of the West. Irrigation is 
likely to be resorted to in very many localities where it 
has not heretofore been even thought of. The saving of 
single crops in certain sections of the Atlantic and other 
States will pay for the expense of making ditches. More 
attention will be paid to saving crops by irrigation, as 
farms become less in area. 
Economists predict a decrease in our crops in years to 
come through the exhaustion of the natural fertility of 
the soil, and the scarcity of manures. These fears are 
mostly ungrounded. The lands of the United States can 
and will be made to support a much greater population 
than at present. The methods that have increased the 
fertility of the soil of Old England since the days of Julius 
Caesar will be employed here. Deep plowing, irrigation, 
drainage, conservation of manures, close and careful culti¬ 
vation-all these economies will increase the yield of crops 
and preserve the lands from any immediate depression of 
fertility and productiveness. Most American farmers have 
no idea of the amount that may be raised on a single acre. 
From the Chinese;we are to get many valuable hints in horti¬ 
culture and agriculture. The products of our soil are to be 
increased many fold. As the demand for food increases, we 
may expect to see electricity employed in our fields. It 
will be largely applied to farm machinery, especially to 
tools and machines used on highly productive and valu¬ 
able lands adjacent to great markets. May we not soon 
see implements called electric hoes and electric weeders 
and electric harrows, which will stir and pulverize the 
soil, especially for shallow tillage, as no other implement 
known to man has ever yet done ? It may be found advis¬ 
able to have electric power houses in certain districts, which 
will transmit force through wires to the farms and gar¬ 
dens all about them. In the near future we may see in¬ 
telligent boys and girls working in the fields “ leading the 
OUTFIT OF A NEBRASKA HAYMAKER. Farm Buildings for 300 Acres. Fig. 20. 
the soil to run two stoves In his house without fearing 
bankruptcy. 
Farmers will be as prominent in the councils of the 
nation as lawyers now are, and their interests will receive 
as much attention as those of other classes. They will dis¬ 
play more practical common sense and good judgment in 
the management of their own business. 
Christian County, Ill. FRED grundy. 
A Rocky Mountain Echo 
What of the Present ?—By the past we judge of the 
future. What is the outlook at New Year’s 1891 ? 
1. The farmer of the Great West produces more than he 
can profitably dispose of. 
2. For some reason, thousands, especially in our cities, 
are not consuming enough of what the farmer raises to be 
comfortable. 
3. The great iron highways of the nation are managed in 
such a way that certain men are able to pile up hundreds 
of millions of dollars for themselves, and 40,000 individuals, 
we are told, own three-fourths of the property of the 
nation. 
4. National, State and city governments are made to 
feel in various harmful ways the vast power that money 
confers upon the multi-millionaires. 
5. The farmer, both in America and Europe, is having a 
hard time. His hours of labor are too many; he is greatly 
in debt; the mortgage spoils refreshing sleep ; giant 
monopolies crush the life out of the individual; the free¬ 
dom to work hard for a respectable living is denied to 
many, and individual prosperity and liberty are greatly 
menaced. 
6. The liquor and saloon interests of our country are 
enormous. A life-time would be too short to enumerate 
all the evils, near and remote, that attach to the manufac¬ 
ture, sale and use of strong drinks. The success of the 
accursed,business is founded on blighted lives and ruined 
homes. 
Are there not vast crowds that, receiving no comforts 
from the so-called rich man’s religion, stoop to embrace 
vices they loathe, and that they would not embrace if they 
were prosperous and not poor and miserable? The com¬ 
forts, decencies and elegancies of life are helpful and 
healthful to most men. The time is fast coming when 
men will find it easier than it is now to be self-re¬ 
specting. 
A New Period Coming.— We are rapidly coming to a 
period in our history, that will be full of hope and generous 
activity to the farmer. In the next 25 years the value of 
domestic animals will be immeasurably increased. Our 
agriculturists know much about breeding, and are learn¬ 
ing every day. It is hardly over a century since England 
began to have any special breeds of cattle. Before that all 
were merely “ natives.” We are bound in a few years to 
rival Europe in the merits of all our domestic animals. 
With a large foundation of the best imported blood of the 
“ Old World,” we will, ’ere long, have improved upon our 
importations, transformed our mongrel stock into finer 
shape, and created breeds specially adapted to each section 
of the country and each branch of industry. 
From this date forward we shall come nearer to being 
a nation of tree planters than a nation of tree extermina¬ 
tors. The numbers who are now engaged in raising, 
marketing and preparing fruits for human food are as 
nothing compared with the numbers who will soon be so 
employed. The demand for fruits is increasing, and the 
greater the supply the greater the demand will be outside 
that due to the increase of population. The great rail¬ 
roads that are sure to penetrate Mexico, Central America, 
and even South America will be the means of bringing 
to our notice new fruits and other new products, some of 
which may be of great advantage to mankind. Alfalfa, 
which once fed the army horses of old Rome, and was 
later cairied to South America by the Spaniards, and which 
is found such a boon to the farmer upon the irrigated 
lightnings of heaven captive.” An easily movable cable 
may be strung across the field. A small, safe, flexible 
cable will connect the electric cable overhead with the 
“ Universal Lightning Pulverizer.” This Implement will 
consist of a revolving steel-toothed cylinder set between 
wheels. It will absolutely make the earth fly 
and will not only pulverize the soil, but may be 
modified to work as a field hoe, ditcher, mower, 
weed exterminator, and even as a subsoiler. It may 
be that electric machines will be invented that will super¬ 
sede our present plows. There are other departments of 
industry in which inventions have been more radical and 
sweeping than in agriculture. Take the boot and shoe 
business, for instance. Machines are now employed for 
almost every former hand process, from cutting out to 
pegging and sewing. In the next quarter of a century, as 
human food commands a higher money value, inventors 
will turn their attention to machines for the farmer, who 
“ feeds us all.” We will have to stir and pulverize our soils 
to greater depths than heretofore, to cover weed-seeds and 
insect eggs deeply, to protect crops against droughts, and 
to put the soil in condition more readily to yield its plant 
food to the plant roots. A strong demand for such 
machines will result in their invention, but whether 
steam or electricity will be the motive power remains to 
be seen. 
What the farmer and the rest of the whole human family 
need is not so much new and powerful machinery, or 
better markets and prices for food and other products, 
as mental, moral and physical improvement in the human 
race. It is to the common American people that we must 
look, in large part, for our salvation—that is, to the great¬ 
heartedness and right-mindedness of our voting people, 
and our mothers and sisters will yet vote ; for “there is 
only one cure for public distress, and that is public educa¬ 
tion directed to make men thoughtful, merciful and just.” 
Weld County, Col. Oliver Howard. 
