Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 March 1875 — Advantages of Small Fanns. [ARTICLE]

Advantages of Small Fanns.

A correspondent writes to the Department of Agriculture from Van Buren, lowa, that he is running a small farm of forty acres, with twenty under cultivation in fruit, vegetables and small grain. “ My income varies from $1,500 to $2,000 a year,” he appears proud to acknowledge The more industry.and intellect one puts into an acre of soil the more money he is likely to take out of it. His judgment should tell himwmat cropswill pay best in the markets within his reach, with a small farm elose in hand, small taxes and small outgo for labor, feed and working stock. There is both art and good sense in keeping down expenses on the farm and in other branches of business. Success in tillage and husbandry depends on the capacity of the human brain, rather than on the size of one’s plantation. One family, by skill, industry and economy, becomes rich by cultivating twenty acres only, while another family grows poor by the bad management of 2,000 under the plow. It is not the pursuit, but the man, that is a failure. The farmer often grasps more acres than he can handle to the best "advantage, and all are more or less slighted at certain times and seasons, to the injury of his cash income. Labor is misdirected, or neglected till out of season, when vitality in seeds and cultivated plants does no good. On a small farm every blow may be struck at the proper moment. Every person has but a limited quantify of force, physical and mental; and it is the most common of all mistakes to dilute and spread this force over too large asurface. It is not the difl.ision of muscular strength, but its concentration, that bores artesian wells and draws a fountain of living water from the strata of rocks hundreds of feet in thickness to the surface for the use of uneducated man. Diffused labor on a large farm is like the scattered rays of light in the interstellar spaces before the telescope collects them together and thereby extends human vision and knowledge to millions of suns and worlds before unknown. The cultivator of the earth needs time and opportunity for profitable study. How shall he command such an advantage? Not, surely, by holding more land than he uses with any benefit to his family or to mankind at large. The democratic doctrine of seeking “the greatest good of the greatest number" forbids all land monopoly. Seventy-five men are said to own one-half of the soil of Scotland. Such a state of society cannot last many centuries in the future, Live and let live is a principle good for all time.— Nashville Union and American.