The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1893-10-07

extended, and at moderate rates of interest.
IF his farm is not large enough to war
rant his getting th esher and cleaner of
his own, he can join club and share with
his neighbors the use of machine easily
dispatching two bushels minute.
While field machinery has been increas-
ing the quantity of farmers wheat crop,
it has been improving its quality. In all
ATTITUDES, efficient machines practically
double the duration of good weather; in
northerly regions, liable to frost late in the
spring and early in the fall, sowing and har
vesting can be pressed in the nick of time.
Rust, that pest for which there is no
known cure, can in considerable measure
be prevented by sowing on the earliest day
possible.
Here we touch another cause of dimin-
ished cost in wheat Rising, namely advance
in agricultural science, brought home to
the farming community with more diligence
than ever before. In disregard the State
experiment stations have rendered valuable
service. Kansas has saved millions of dol
lars through Prof. Snow of Lawrence, who
has shown the farmers of that State how
to make war on insect mauraders, and has
provided weapons for the fight. And
from one end Of the country TO the other,
officers of like intelligence are bringing
through their bulletins before the tanners
the results of organized observation of new
varieties, of seeding, of crop rotation. At
the Minnesota stations, for example, it has
been proved that the cariul cleaning of
seed and the keeping to single variety in
the planting, have had the effect of increas-
ing the yield Is to % bushels to the acre,
while the crop has matured all at once, an
important point where quick harvesting
machinery is used. In diffusing this kind
of information the press has powerfully
seconded the enginery of science. In 1887
DIR. J. l.. Jensen of Denmark discovered
preventative for the fetid SMUT which
had severely plagued the American wheat
farmer; the seed wheat is Immersed for
ten minutes in water at 1920 Fahrenheit,
temperature fatal to the smut spores, but
only beneficial to the wheat. Within
few months after DIR. Jensens experiments,
every newspaper in the wheat districts
told their story with an effect impossible
to any Government bulletin.
The country press, following in the
wake of a city press quite as largely read
by the farmers, is beginning in earnest an
agitation which will bestow upon the farmer
a gain equal to decided reduction of his
railroad rates. 1t isn't SO much the price
Of wheat in New York that concerns him
as the price on his farm; and that, as far
as road improvement affects it, is in his own
hands.
Wheat culture, despite its vicissitudes,
tends more and more to become manu-
facture the cost of which can be computed
almost as closely as the operations of the
factory. Last year the wheat crop is esti-
mated to have been some 550,O00,OO
bushels Let it be assumed that the farm
ers who raised it did nothing else, and
that there were 500, 900 Of them Let us
further assume that by reason of inter-
national competition it is undesirable to in-
crease the crop, and that progress, mechan-
icol, chemical, and botanical, enables 49,
900 farmers II raise it, What are the
so 900 not needed men to do Why, they
can 20 to u city like Grand Rapids and
make good furniture to be sold at half the
prices of ten years ago; or at looms in New
York, Yonkers, or Philadelphia, they can
turn out carpets of beauty at cost so low
as to bring them within reach of every
family but the very poorest in city or
country: or in some other centre of indus
try, engage in cheapening the luxuries of
the last generation until they become the
necessities of this. Because machinery is
steadily making the food raisers smaller
proportion of mankind, the frequent talk
about the desirability of keeping the boys
on the farm is cant. There is no room on
the farm for all of the boys. They know
what they want; good living, which be-
comes better as intelligence, directed more
and more upon muscles of steel and nerves
of electricity, enables them to shorten the
working day at the same time that the
comforts and refnemeuts oflife are multi
plied.