Norwich bulletin., 1918-12-20

away would be held for fhernson thefr return. All over the country em- ployers are reafhrming .ms today, Your old job is waiting Ter you.'' is the message which meets the home coming troopships. r Ee
 She'll and shrapnel and rifs ban and poisoned gas have taken heavy toll of those who went away. The number who will return will be less than the number who sailed eastward It will be both strategicallY unwise and physically impossible to return them, all in a bunch. They will have to come back, as they wentss away. comparatively few at a tine.s
 What should lead anyonesto doubt that they will be reabsorbed into their old places, at least in a vast ma jority of cases? And, even then, there won't be enough to go round, any more than there were before the war.
 In the second place, even if an ex- tra lot of them are to- bel coaxed or cajoled or steereda into attempted farming, there is no need apt hunting for additional acres to make room for them.
 The radical fact at the bottom of. all American farming is not stl1at the l average farmer hasn't nd>senough and to spare but that he E3oesn't make the most of what he already has. l know one farm-my own-fafrly well. I know a dozen others-imme- | diate neighbors-in some degree. knoY in general way something about hundred or two others. <. There isn't single one of the lot, my own included which is gfarmed as I it could be or as it ought tosbe, if the owner had. capital enough and could get labor enough to develob it. ] My own small farm contans an un- due proportion of wooded mountain as compared with it's ara5la area. Yet, included in thee latterf is an acre or
 more of nlueky swamp which, if l had | the capital and the labor to drain it, would make ideal celery or onion land. 1 Also, several acres 5 of s5steep ledge l land, facing the south, which, if \ had | tke capital and labor to terrace and 1 irrigate, would be admirably5 adapted to grapes or the forcing of such semi | tropical crops as Lima beans and mel ons and peppers, etc. -.a.st- With forty or nifty acres of uiy hun l dred capable of being productively worked, am forced. by lack of capi- tai ana shortage of labor, to. restrict myself to working annually only six or eight acres. The rest s really i waste, though try to get something off it in the way of pasturage.
 Other farms that I know of are in much tie same shape.s& Land enou-h, right next door to markets or easy i transportation but lying idle and waste for lack of ability to till 1t properly. 5s ssy
 How much it would cost to drain tEe Dismal Swamp I donAt '1row. "A l hundred millions, certainly, perhaps more.
 Yet half that amount, with the la bor the other half would hire applied I to the reclamation of waste or aban
 doned farm land right in southern New England and New York. would result in a larger increase of tillable area, lnearer to better markets, and worth
 more, acre for acre, than any Dismal Swamp or Arizona desert, no matter Low much might be spent on them.
 1t is not more acres to farm but
 better farming of the acres we have
 which common sense would demand
 tor the farmers of America
 Poor farming wanders about in
 whimpering search for fresh lands to
 makes poor land good and good land
 better, year by year.
 What we need is not more acres to
 spoil but help to make the most from
 those we have E 1~&
 Bigger Farming IS the slogan of
 prodigality and wastefulness; Better
 Farming is the trumpet call of wis
 dom.
 Let's eat tne pie already on our , plates and see if we're stili hungry, , before clamoring for, more! THE FARMER.
 A tip on the races-doh't tbet or