The Nevada County picayune., 1911-03-24
GOOD ADVICE BY
 A CROP EXPERT
TELLS FARMERS TO TEND MORE ACRES AND TEND THEM
 BETTER.
Says Large Acreage Means Large Income and Small Acrea ge Means
 Small Income.

Little Roek.-A. D. McNair. q gov ernmcnt crop expert, in recent in teryiew here, said:
 There has been much advice given farmers in recent years to the effec' that they should tend fewer acres and tend them better. and as fa9 as this tends to encourage careful prepara ton for crops and careful tending ot crops, am in hearty sympathy with il, for it's is serious mistake for any farmer 10 tend more acres of crop than he can tend well, yet the advice is not properly expressed, and l must positively dissent from it in the form in which il is stated. The advice is half right and half wrong, To tend the land and the crops better is right, but to tend fewer acres than are now tended, per man and per horse Cor muleD in the state of Arkansas, is serious mistake Yet the persons who So freely tender this advice evidently think that We must tend fewer acres if we tend them better, but this is no tue, and is merely an illustration of careless thinking
 The thing that all farmers ought tc aim at is to tend more acres and tend them better, but to make this matter clear let me say that do not wish to see 1,000-acre farms instead of 100-acre farms, and that Is not what am advising, for l believe that under present conditions farms oi eighty to one hundred and sixty acres are better for the good of the State than are farms of .000 to 2,099 acres. N hat l mean is that, whether tao farm is large or small we should tend a larger number of acres per man and per mule and especially per mule. Whether on a two-mule farm or on q twenty mule farm, this principle should be followed
 The correctness of this advice may he established in two ways-by reasoning from general principles to specific cases and by considering many specific cases and establishing q general rule from these cases. or as the logicians would say. We may establish 1t by deduction or by induc- ton. It stands to reason that if one farmer drives two horses or mules to lis blows and other farm implements and another farmer drives but one horse or mule at the same work, the first farmer will cover nearly or quite twice as many acres as the second farmer and that his income will be correspondinsly increased This is the deductive argument The induc- tive argument is as follows
 Tn the three States of Alabama, Arkansas and Texas. according to the census of 1900 the number of acres Of all crops per each person above the age of 10 years who works in the field or owns the land was thirteen acres in Alabama, fifteen acres in Arkansas and twenty-four acres in Texas. The income per each person engaged in agriculture for the same year was Slt4 in Alabama, s170 in Ar kansas and s305 in Texas In three Northern States the same truth is eX- hfbited. The number of acres of all crops per each person engaged in az rioulture was twenty-five acres in New York, forty-fye acres in Illinois and sixty acres in Iowa, and the incomes were S29G in New York, 435 in Hi nois and $6ll in Iowa These figures exhibit the rule that the incomes of farmers rise and fall with the num- Der of acres of crops that they tend Large acreage means large income and small acreage means small in come"