Lamoille newsdealer. [volume] (Hyde Park, Vt.) 1860-1877, 1874-02-04
a griculiuII'a1-
JoInt.steek Company Farming.

JOtHt-otbCh tUfEpdHI raj iufuSs
A,recent numbered Fraser's yMagasine con
tains an article on the /" Future of Farming
in which it is predicted that the time will come
{ when farming will be commercial speculation,
carried on by large joint-stuck concerns, ssding
: shares of ten, fifteen, or twenty pounds sterling
each, and occupying from three to ten thousand
acres. The author thinks that "such compa-
mics would, perhaps, purchase the entire sewage
Of an adjacent town. Their buildings, their
streets Of eatte-stalls, would be placed on a slope
sheltered from the northeast, hut near the high
est spot on the estate, as to distribute manure
and water from their reservoirs by the power of
graritation. A stationary steam-engine would
crush their cake and pulp their roots, pump
thei" water, perhaps, even shear their sheep.
They would employ butchers and others, a
whole staff, to kill and cut up bulocks in pieces
suitable for the London market, transmitting
products their Straight to the salesman,
without the intervention of the dealer.) That
salesman himself would be in the employ of the
company, and sell no other meat but what they
supplied him with. This would AZ once give a
larger profit to the producer, and lower price
lin comparison) to the public. In summer,
meat might be cooled by the ice-house or the
refrigerator, which must necessarily be attached |
to the company's bacon-hctory. Except in
particular districts, it is hardly probable that
the dairy would be united with the stock farm,
but if so, the ice-house would again come into
requisition, and there would be condensed
milk factory on the premises
1t is further predicted of this company that
they will utilize land now waste. by roofing up
hedges and filling bitches; that an effort to
shorten the period between crops, and get more
than one crop from the same soil within year,
will be attempted. That irrigation will be re-
sorted to upon an extensive SC lle and that arti-
fetal heat or electric currents will be used to
ripen the crops, and that blasts OF hot air will
be employed to prepare the crops for harvesting
rs sOOu as cut.
This prediction will strike most American
'eaders as being wild dream Of an enthusiastic |,
'ptimist, aud yet the author has given express =
ion to not a single impesshity. Artificial n
leat has nlready been employed to a large ex- II
ent in cultivation, and artiicialy heated ar =
urrents have been used to dry crops with per- f
Get success. The employment of steam motors T
Or the principal operations of agriculture, is $
srgey increasing throughout the world I'm :,
er present social organization, these advances If
nabe men with capital to own and cultivate, d,
+ cause to be cultivated, large tracts of land,
hicb, uni Ter the best best methods of cultivation
1 use, twenty-five years ago, would have been IN
npossible for a single individual with any 81
mount of capital to manage and supervise pro- TO
tably. al
Where capital Gun, by the use Of machinery, IN II!
leapen production by the reduction of manual III
Dor, the temptation always exists for men of tn
nall capital to combine and form companies, mi
nd there arc even now wo halo,e co,nn,nie, gi
gagged in farming large estates in the vast il
regions Of the West. The IN st,
for capital to combine in this way re'
rs not long enough existed to produce its le- er
'Wdte eHcct' puCh Inducements nave their
ign in the vast improvements in agricultur-
implements aud machinery. which have char
terized the last fifteen Or twenty years.
We will not ut this time discuss the proablc
suits of joint-stock company farming; they
mot differ much from that of joint-stock
mpany manufacturing. The predictions of r.
c writer in Faeer'S Aiayasiac were intended
apply more paltulally to fiu ming in Eng
nd, but the same causes which tend to the
nbination Of capital there, exist here, and
hough there is this difference here, that land ~
much cheaper than in England, it appears to 4
that this fact is calculated rather to hasten A &
IN to retard the formation of jointstoe agli- ~,
Itursl companies. -Ameri lean Artisan. W.T.