Fort Worth gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1891-1898, 1891-08-27
GOOD FARMING PAYS.

So says the editor of the American Guilt
vator, and certainly no man is better quail
fed to know whereof he speaks than the
editor Of the Southern Cultivator. But it
must be farming with the hands and the
head, done on the farm, and not farming
with the mouth performed at some cross
roads store or political barbecue.
But, says the writer, there is kind of
infidelity, so to speak, among farmers,
which prevents not few who might be
good farmers from making farming first
class success. II is want Of faith as to
the practicability OF making their calling
profitable. 1t prevails to-day more extern
sively than ever before. and is undoubtedly
due to the sharper competition that the
farming business has been subjected to, and
to other causes that need not be named
here. The infection Of this infidelity has
extended TO nearly all the agricultural
press, more's the pity, and it is high time
that efforts be made to counterfeit it. If no
man other than the farmer himself talked
about the farmers hard lot, and about the
wrongs heaped upon him, and about impos-
sible remedies, farming as o whole would
be paying far better than it is doing at
present.
But good farming pays. "What do you
mean by good farming" asks one.
Have you not yet learned what good
farming isl Do you regard agriculture as
an unprogressive science or business that
remains the same while everything around
it changes2 If you see it IN that light then
your question is entirely in order. You do
not know what good farming is.
In agricultural implements and laoor-sav-
ing machinery connected with farming
there has been astounding progress. But
this itself IS not improved farming. It
only furnishes the means to make better
farming possible. In fact, by enlarging the
areas of land under cultivation, labor saving
farm implements are apt to make farming
poorer rather than better. And the great
difficulty with the farming business at
present is that American inventions in har-
vesting machinery have gone all over the
and on the plains of Russia almost as freely
as by the farmers of our own country.
While it has just been asserted that good
farming pays, something else might be put
in with mere good farming to make it pay
better. That something else is personal
thought and skill, such as has never before
been demanded in the farmers business.
The old idea Of farming, and for its time
the correct idea, was that it was mainly
hard work. The method of farming ran in
ruts and when man got into one of these
all he had to do was to pull ahead He need
direct his course. The man who got up
earliest, worked hardest and longest, made
the most money. lie was for these facts
the good farmer, and therefore successful.
Hard work never has been and never will
be entirely eliminated from tilling the soil.
Thorns and thistles and weeds it produces
as it always has done, and it is still in the
sweat of his brow that the soil tiller eats
his bread. But we have relieved the
farmer from more toll than would once
have been thought possible, only it operates
pretty impartially upon farmers of all
must be the individual work and thought
of the farmer himself. II he cannot plan,
calculate and Judge about the details of his
business, he is in no better shape for sue
cess than his unskilled competitors, who
perhaps work harder and for less wages
than he.
1t must be admitted that all farming does
not pay. 1t is scarcely probable that farm
ing reckoned as whole pays. This last is
a sad thing to ponder over-a calling that
does not pay as whole! A calling in
which some men make money, but taken as
whole the calling is q failure. Is there
no remedy for this state of afairs2 The
writer thinks there is. 1t can not be found
in the way that many now prOpose-many
who are not themselye farmers-5ut it must
be found in cheaper production secured by
the intelligent employment of improved