AMERICAN Agriculture. 
427 
ject is under discussion, you will not read far before allusion is 
made to the question of “tenant rights.” A farmers’ club cannot 
discuss the science and practice of feeding stock without getting 
excited over the malt-tax. “ If "vve could feed malt,” they say, “ we 
could then raise cheaper beef and mutton. If we could get com¬ 
pensation for our unexhausted improvements we could employ our 
skill and capital to advantage.” We are not without our troubles 
here. We have some burdens that are hard to bear. But, at any 
rate, we are our own land owners. Any improvements, we make 
are made on our own land. Our land is not entailed. AVe can 
transfer it as easily as any other property. 
We sometimes grumble because our best farm laborers so soon 
leave us. They want farms of their own. I have a man who has 
worked for me twelve years, and who has now, out of his savings, 
bought a nice farm of his own. I lose a good man, but he will work 
quite as hard for himself as he did for me, and put more thought, 
care and skill into his labor. It may be a loss to me, but it is a gain 
to the country. He will be able to earn more money, and will have 
more to spend. 
American farmers, as a class, work harder than any other farmers 
in the world. AVe occasionally find a drone in the hive, but on the 
whole, we are a nation of workers, and it makes a great difference 
whether a man is working for himself or for others. AYe all know 
what a difference it makes in the amount of work done whether a 
man is working by the day or by the piece. Last autumn I had 
men digging potatoes by the day; I paid them $1.25 per day. Dig- 
ging, picking up and pitting, cost me over six cents a bushel. I 
then told two of the men I would give them five cents a bushel to 
do the work. They took the job, and these two men dug and pit¬ 
ted 100 bushels every day, and then went* home; they sometimes 
got through by four o’clock in the afternoon. I got the work done 
cheaper, and the men earned double the money. Now just think 
what this means; these men were earning $1.25 per day. If we as¬ 
sume that it cost them $1.00 per day for famil}" expenses, they 
made 25 cents a day. Now with a little more energy, care and 
skill, they earned $2.50 per day, and instead of making 25 cents 
over and above expenses, they made $1.50, or six times as much. 
In other words, they really made as much money in one day as they 
were previously making in a week. 
