The independent-reporter. [volume] (Skowhegan, Me.) 1909-1955, 1911-07-06
FARMING WITH rs ACRES.

FARMING WITH IS ACRES.
This story, according to a writer in
the Boston Transcript, begins last
November In that month appeared in
one of the newspapers a letter from
a printer describing plight which
was not at all unusual. He earned
SIS a week, on which he found 1t hard
to support family of six and get
anything ahead. The places where
he could afford to live were not fit for
his children and in the places which
we're fit for his children he could not
afford to live, or his children were
not wanted. Through the columns of
the press (for the letter attracted
considerable attention) he received d
quantity of excellent, though useless,
advice. The trouble was that while
the advice might fit his particular
case, it would not suit the hundreds
of other cases of which his was ad-
mttedly only sample. We all knew
this at the time. We knew little help
for it beyond the ease system
But out in Westwood as a man who
could have answered this riddle and
today he is answering it for 40 other
of land, and 80 or more acres in part
nership. There is the land and they
are on it. Men who have worked for
somebody else all their lives are
learning for the first time how good
ii tastes to work for yourself and
know that nobody can discharge you.
They go to sleep and get up, free from
that old gnawing fear of losing their
jobs
This story is too important to tell
with frills. 1t deals with rs acres in
Westwood. bought by 40 people who
each put down $25 apiece and agreed
to pay $3.50 a month toward lifting
the mortgage. Where many of them
got the first $25 Heaven only knows,
and where they scraped together the
first few instalments of $3.50 many
of them, who are now in Easy street.
are still wondering. But they took
the chance and it is making free men
of them. When they began they
hoped to pay off the debt in eight
years. At the end of three they find
they can do 1t In six and have $1,000
over to build a house to lodge the I'M
married men. Besides this, they have
learned that one acre of land, when
1t is farmed scientifically, will sup
port a family, and that. with these
intensive methods of cultivation there
is no limit to what may be made to
raise. Three acres is the largest plot
that may be held by one man, but
none of them holds more than two.
BY the tiHe the land Is cleared of
debt each will have paid $500 for his
own acre and his share in the thirty
acres which the forty own together.
BOLD SCHEME 1T SEEMED.
The man whose courage and bust
ness sense made all this possible does
not look life an incendiary, though
the scheme seemed so bold to his
Heighbors that they spread wild tales
about him for a time. He looks,
rather, like any good, gray farmer
who can see more in the soil than
Dirt, and more in heritage than crops.
lie is really a reformed Unitarian
minister, who has taken to preaching
good will to men with a hoe. The
way men take to this kind of preach
ing is the answer to the old question,
How shall we interest men in the
church,"
by taking the church out-of-doors,
into the real world and setting it to
work For Mr.. Littlefield Che is no
longer fussy about the ReverendD
Tried three times to do this in the
church and failed. Then he took 1t
outside and made go of it. Some
may remember his name. which was
written rather large in the headlines
-FOUR years ago because his church In
Haverhill was resenting his exhorta-
uoh that they stop talking and do
something. His brother clergymen
reminded him that man must not live
oy bread alone. He replied that a
certain amount of bread is, however,
almost a necessity. They said that
they, as clergymen, should keep to
spiritual things. He replied that men
would take to spiritual things more
seeniy II spiritual things could find
an honest way to rid them of the fear
1I losing their Jobs. So. like Mr.
Dnerson (who expression his own ID