1808 .] 
AMERICAN AGRICU. LTURIST, 
325 
clearing up this land have certainly been suc¬ 
cessful. We did not plow it till August. Ten 
acres of the drier portions of the field we sowed 
to wheat on the tough old sod just turned over. 
This is the best wheat I have, and the Deacon 
says: “Don’t you be telling about that wheat 
crop, or you will lead thousands astray; we all 
thought you would not get any wheat, and if 
the season had not been so favorable for this 
kind of low land it would have all winter-killed 
or rusted.” Now the truth is, the good crop is 
not so much owing to the favorable season as 
to a deep open ditch that I cut through it. On 
the lower portions we sowed timothy alone. 
The weather was so dry last fall that much of 
the seed did not germinate, and it did not start 
till after the rains in May. And yet I think a 
good deal of it will cut at least two tons of pure 
timothy to the acre, and the Deacon says if I 
harrow it this fall, sow a little more seed, and 
get out all the pieces of roots that are brought 
to the surface, so that next year we can cut it 
with the mowing machine, it will pay better 
than the best wheat land on the farm. This 
year’s crop will much more than pay for all the 
labor I spent on it. 
As long as labor is so uncertain I think I shall 
plant but little corn. I never thought that there 
was much profit in the crop itself in this sec¬ 
tion. The main object in raising it is to clear 
the land; but I am not sure if it is not better to 
summer fallow. Farmers complain of the 
scarcity of help and of the unskillfulness and 
idleness of that which they do obtain, together 
with the high wages demanded. On the other 
hand, farm men who have families complain of 
the high prices of everything which they have 
to buy, and assert (and, I believe, truly,) that 
they have to be far more economical than be¬ 
fore the war. This labor question demands the 
earnest and thoughtful consideration of every 
intelligent farmer. That there is something 
wrong in our present system is obvious. Men 
receive higher wages for the work done than 
in any other country in the world, and yet there 
are, in the older settled sections, industrious, 
able-bodied, and skillful men who live either in 
houses of their own or rent them, who are as 
poor and enjoy no more of the comforts of life 
than the English laborer who works for half a 
dollar a day and boards himself. Why is this ? 
It is not the currency; it is not the climate, 
though this may have something to do with it; 
it is not owing to any difference in the men. Is 
it not owing to the want of regular employment ? 
During the first part of the season I paid my 
extra hands ten shillings a day, and they board¬ 
ed themselves. As the season advanced I paid 
twelve shillings, and promised to do so till the 
1st of December. Haying came on before farm¬ 
ers were through hoeing, and harvest long be¬ 
fore they were through haying. My men as 
they came to work in the morning were met by 
farmers who do not employ any extra hands for 
more than two or three weeks in the year, with 
the question: “ How much a day does Harris 
pay you now ?” “Twelve shillings.” “If you 
will come and help me to-day I will give you 
twenty shillings and board.” Some of them 
have strength enough and sense enough and 
honor enough to resist the temptation, but it 
makes them uneasy, and those who come say: 
“ John has gone to help Snooks to-day, and gets 
twenty shillings, and I think you ought to pay 
me more than twelve shillings.” How, of 
course no man can afford to pay such wages for 
any length of time. A farmer who gets into a 
tight place can afford to pay for a week ten or 
fifteen dollars extra rather than have his hay 
spoil or his wheat shell out, and he can hardly 
be expected, perhaps, to take into consideration 
the effect that such extravagant wages have on 
men who are engaged for the season at reason¬ 
able rates. That it has a bad effect we all 
know. During the very busiest part of the year, 
when every hour counts, and when, if ever, men 
should try to do two days work in one, they are 
the most independent, most dissatisfied, and 
most inclined to shirk. It is not that there is a 
scarcity of men. Every month brings thou¬ 
sands of stalwart Germans to our shores, and 
the cities are crowded with people out of em¬ 
ployment. There are men enough to do all the 
work, provided their labor could be economized 
and properly distributed through the season. 
These men who get such high wages for a few 
days do not like to settle down to steady work 
at reasonable rates. The consequence is, they 
are idle half the time, while many things that 
could be done profitably with labor at ten shil¬ 
lings a day are left undone because the men re¬ 
fuse to work for less than twelve shillings or 
two dollars. Occasionally they get jobs at 
such rates of payment, and are thus able to 
eke out a scanty and uncertain livelihood. 
Education for Farming. 
Summer work has occupied the minds and 
hands of the young men and boys of the coun¬ 
try, and by this time they begin to see their way 
through, and many are thinking what to do for 
the winter. The crops are to be harvested, and 
when this is done, the work will be such that 
fewer hands will do it, and the boys can be 
spared to go to a trade or to school. There is 
a great demand for the labor of good mechanics 
of almost every trade, many of whom are 
now getting very high wages. The country is 
growing rapidly, and though, as a rule, Ameri¬ 
can journeymen are by no means thoroughly 
accomplished, like the mechanics of Europe, 
yet there is work enough for them, and they 
rise rapidly if industrious, sober, and intelligent. 
This makes the trades very attractive to young 
farmers, and the mechanic arts will always 
draw their recruits largely from the farms. The 
farm, however, offers greater inducements to 
really intelligent labor than either the trades 
or the mercantile professions, and young farm¬ 
ers should plan how to best spend the win¬ 
ter for their improvement in their profession. 
The farmer without an education for his call¬ 
ing remains a sort of drudge wherever he is, 
and he stands no higher in society than a mere 
hand-worker ought to. Properly educated for 
his business he elevates his profession and him¬ 
self exactly in proportion to liis intelligence 
and general culture. Facilities for agricultural 
education are greatly increasing over the wdiole 
country, and it w r ould be w r ell for farmer-boys 
to see if they cannot in some v T ay take ad¬ 
vantage of them, even if they can do no more 
than attend a single course of lectures. The ad¬ 
vantages to be gained would be some informa¬ 
tion which could hardly be acquired in any 
other way, a knowledge of where to’ obtain in¬ 
formation from books and from other sources, 
and finally, how to make knovdedge available. 
The Agricultural Colleges of Michigan and Mas¬ 
sachusetts, the Scientific Schools of New Haven, 
Rutgers and Dartmouth Colleges, offer such fa¬ 
cilities. The Cornell University, wdth its un¬ 
rivaled advantages, the University of Kentucky, 
and several other institutions, open their doors 
to those vdio would base their agricultural 
practice upon a broader foundation than that 
of their own and their fathers’ experience. 
Our successful commercial men, merchants, 
manufacturers, bankers, brokers, shippers, etc., 
as soon as they acquire' wealth which they do 
not need in business, immediately buy country 
seats, or farms, which they have worked under 
their direction, or upon shares, either for the 
sake of drawing articles of daily consumption 
fresh from the fountain of natural supply, or to 
be used as summer retreats from din and dust, 
or for the profit they hope to gain by the rise in 
value of the land. Thus there is and will be 
an increasing demand for intelligent young farm 
managers to superintend wdth profit to the owner 
these estates. Good salaries will be paid for 
educated brains, and this demand, as soon as 
it is felt upon the farm, wdll keep our agricul¬ 
tural colleges and lecture rooms full of atten¬ 
tive pupils, who choose farming as their trade. 
Should Cows Have Food during the Night ? 
A young farmer asks: “Do you think that 
cow r s should be turned into a small enclosure 
when milked in the evening, and kept there 
without food or water until after milking in the 
morning?” We think not. At all events they 
should have access to water, and if they could 
have a good feed of green food, say corn fodder, 
they would give enough more butter to pay for 
all the cost twice over. In experiments made 
on the Rojud Agricultural College farm, at 
Cirencester, the average composition of milk w T as 
ascertained during each month. The results 
for September and October were as follows: 
Water. 
Casein 
and 
Albumen. 
^ I, 
3 
Sept. 
| Morning___ 
89.91 
1.99 
2.94 
4.48 
0.04 
f Evening. 
90,70 
1.79 
2.81 
4.04 
0.60 
Oct. 
/ Morning.._ 
87.00 
3.90 
2.87 
4.84 
0.70 
f Evening. 
90.30 
2.99 
2.37 
3.70 
0.58 
Dr. Yoelcker, in commenting on these remark¬ 
able results, states that the cows in September 
w r ere out in “a pasture, poor and overstocked, so 
that the daily growth of grass furnished hardly 
food enough to meet the daily wnaste to which the 
animal frame is subject, and was not calculated 
to meet an extra demand of materials for- the 
formation of curd and butter.” In October, 
“ on account of the deficiency of the herbage, 
the cows were in the evening driven into the 
stall and there supplied wdth hay, roots, and 
meal. The milk became better at once; for 
the morning’s milk then contained 12’| 2 per cent 
of solid matter, and in this nearly 4 per cent of 
butter. [The Dr. does not mean exactly what he 
says. It w T as not the solid matter that contains 
4 per cent of butter, but the milk itself. The 
solid matter contains over 31 per cent of butter.] 
The concentrated food which the cow’s w r ere 
fed at evening was clearly made into good, rich 
milk during the night.” 
In regard to whether it is best to allow r the 
cow r s to run in the pasture during the night, or 
to shut them in the barn-yard, there is a differ¬ 
ence of opinion. But we apprehend the pres¬ 
ent custom arose from the greater convenience 
of having the cows in the yard ready to milk in 
the morning, instead of having to go through 
the w T et grass, or sometimes into the wmods, in 
search of them. We think there can be little 
doubt that they would do better in a good pas¬ 
ture during the night than in a pen. A better 
plan, how’ever, is to feed them in the yard. 
This is a standing argument for feeding low'—• 
say all the straw and hay they will eat, with a 
few nubbins of corn, five or six W'eelcs before 
