supplied the wool, which was taken to the "carding-machine" and made into "rolls," paying for the work with a certain number of pounds of wool. Before my time the women of the house used to do this work with hand-cards, and I have seen this done, but generally in my boyhood women had emancipated themselves from this work; but they spun the yarn and knit the stockings, and in most houses was a loom constructed by the men, whereon every year was woven by the women one or two pieces of stout woolen cloth to be made up, in the house, into garments for both sexes. The bad-smelling dye pots sat about the fire all winter. Every year or two an acre of flax was raised, which the men "broke" and "hetcheled," and the women spun and wove and made up into clothing. The hide of the beef killed for family consumption, with those of a calf or two killed during the year, were taken to the tannery, and after six months brought home and made up into boots and shoes, sometimes by the men of the house, but more often by the neighboring or traveling shoemaker. A half acre of potatoes and a good garden supplied the vegetables for the year. A few cows furnished a surplus of butter, which, with the eggs not consumed on the farm, was traded at the store for the calicoes, white shirting, an occasional ribbon, and the necessary crockery and small groceries. The orchard supplied the fruit, cider, and vinegar. The "sugar bush" furnished the maple sugar, which was sometimes used for sweetening, but more usually traded for "muscovado," or brown sugar. The elder males of the family had Sunday suits of store cloth made up by the village tailor; this was before the days of "ready made;" these suits, after some years' wear, were turned and made up by the women for the boys, and were worn out by them, one after another, as they grew into them. The elder women had each a sober, dark dress for Sundays, but the girls mostly went to church in fresh calico, and very trim indeed they looked as I remember them. Corsets and similar feminine gimcracks were unknown-at least to me; but it is likely the town girls had them, and if they did our knew all about them. Bonnets and hats were worn, with an occasional change of ribbon, until they

wore out. A cast-iron plow, with the necessary hoes, rakes, and scythes, constituted the "boughten" farm machinery. The grain was threshed with a hand-flail on the barn floor in the winter, while the women spun and wove in the house. Many continued this practise long after threshing-machines came in.

The boys got their spending money by picking up nuts in the woods and from the sale of the fur of an occasional mink or muskrat. Our social gatherings were husking bees and house-raisings for the men, quilting parties for the women, and apple-paring bees, and, above all things, the winter singing-school, for the young men and women. The centers of influence were the churches, of which two or three denominations not too sure of each other's full hold upon salvation ―were always represented, the ministers receiving from $200 to $300 per year, partly in money and partly in provisions, with the necessary wood and an annual donation party. The reading matter was the New York Weekly Tribune (I do not remember what standard paper the Democrats took; there were very few Democrats where I lived), Godey's Ladies' Book, the New York Ledger in families of doubtful piety, the Phrenological Journal by those of advanced thought, the religious paper of the denomination, and the county paper. Each family had a few books, which were exchanged until all had read them, and there was always the Bible, the Sunday-school library, and Dick's or Josephus' works, to fall back on. The education was in the district school.

The above outline comprises or suggests the essential features of the life of the thrifty 100-acre farmer on the Western Reserve in Ohio fifty years ago. Further east there was a little more ready money and luxuries; further west there was less, and more dependence on wild game for meat and for furs to get money with. The great prairies had hardly been touched. Transportation was slow and expensive, and the products of each district were mostly consumed therein, the small surplus which accumulated painfully finding its way to the seaboard in exchange for such necessaries as we could not ourselves produce. The farmer's interest

in markets outside his general vicinity was very small; his average trade with the outside world would not probably exceed $50 or $75 a year. He received very little money, and kept it almost no time at all; his currency was the notes of banks that he knew nothing about and smooth Mexican silver that would not circulate elsewhere. The young man got his start" by being permitted to raise a pair of steers or a colt or two on the family farm, and by working out at odd jobs. If by the time he was twenty-five he had saved a couple of hundred dollars, or his father could help him make up that sum, he would buy a piece of timber land, cut the logs for his house, which the neighbors would help him raise, marry, and start to follow his father's footsteps. He would have a sheep or two from the farm, his wife would bring a feather bed and bedding, a cow, and such crockery as could be gotten hold of, and a new family was founded. This was the lot of the thrifty. The unthrifty married earlier, got hold of some kind of a house, worked out for a living, multiplied rapidly, and died off. But for the most part they were thrifty after a fashion and prospered. The land was new and abundant, with plenty more "out West," and the people had all the knowledge required to put it to the best economic use possible at the time. They were, therefore, in the main well nourished, sturdy, free from worry, and therefore happy. The farmer of those days was a producer and manufacturer, with the knowledge requisite for conducting his business, and a standard of comfort which his business would maintain. He was the independent man.

CHAPTER II.

T

THE NEW FARMER.

HE new farmer is primarily a business man. He is assumed to know how to make crops grow, and usually

he does. The main question is whether he knows how to produce crops which will sell for more than they have cost. If he can not in the long run do this, his inevitable destiny is to become the servant of some one who knows how to direct his labor to profitable results. Below this lies the problem as to whether the majority of men possess the business ability requisite to successful farming under modern conditions, and upon the answer to this question depends the future of our rural civilization. If it be decided in the affirmative, the race of independent small farmers will continue; if in the negative, farm labor will come to be exploited by able men conducting huge agricultural operations, just as mechanical labor is now exploited by Captains of Industry.

In this age no such life as is described in Chapter I is possible to the farmer in America, nor, with our changed habits and desires, would it be agreeable. It would involve a distinct lowering of our present standard of comfort, which, with all our complaint, is far higher than formerly, and would not result in the same content and consequent survival which the same conditions formerly induced. The impossibility of the life will be seen by any farmer who will trace out what would happen should he attempt it. Doubtless the farmer could produce more for his own consumption than he does, but, in the main, under the changed conditions of modern life, he is compelled to sell, for money, most of his products, and buy, for money, most that he consumes. The mechanical facilities of modern times have enormously reduced the cost of production, and improved transportation has made every farmer of the civilized world the competitor of every other

farmer in the sale of products consumed at his own door, and he who can produce cheapest will survive. The farmer, therefore, must have the best machinery, and make it available over the largest possible area, and this, again, restricts the small farmer at least to the production of the specialty best adapted to his location. There is another reason for this; formerly, when his surplus product was consumed near by, he could know the capacity of his market, and the competition to be expected; now, when his surplus is often consumed many thousands of miles away, and sold at the price fixed by the competition of the world, it is very difficult for any farmer to inform himself of the probable profit of production of many articles. And yet this knowledge, while far more difficult than formerly for the farmer to obtain, is far more essential, because, while formerly the farmer was interested in the money value of but a small portion of his product, he is now interested in the money value of nearly all of it.

Still other elements now have to be considered by the farmer. The increased use of money involves borrowing and debt. With proper business knowledge, borrowing is legitimate and profitable to the borrower; nearly all business men are large borrowers; but borrowing in excess of the knowledge to use wisely involves risk, paid for by high interest, and often leads to disaster. The farmer, unaware of his ignorance, has become greatly indebted, and is now profoundly interested in a stable currency. From being a very small buyer he has become a very large one, and is vitally interested in the control of trusts and other combinations affecting the price of the necessities of life. As all that he sells and all that he buys are necessarily transported over the great routes of commerce, he has come to have a money interest in the conduct and control of transportation companies. Paying more taxes than he did, the farmer is more interested in the maintenance of a just system of taxation, and the economical conduct of all public affairs. All these and kindred subjects form part of the great science of economics, as to which it is highly necessary that the farmer be well informed, in order, in the conduct of his business, and by his vote when necessary, to intelligently protect his own