Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-07-27

neighbor to butcher a young beef for
the harvest. Those dinners, where every
kind of vegetable and two or three
kinds of pie were washed down with
gallons of ice tea, have gone the way OF
the threshing machine.
The machinery is worked night and
day during the harvest. AS soon as
the wheat becomes too damp at night
for the combine to handle the tractor
is uncoupled from 1t and attached to q
section Of plows.
Monsters Work All Night.
On through the night the tireless
monsters follow beams of light cast
from their own snouts. The ground
that is shorn of its golden crop by day
is turned at night to make ready for
another crop. The drivers work in r.
hour shifts. Their wages are so cents
an hour.
The most efficient unit Of land is
1 900 acres. One set of machinery and
shelter houses viii care for that sized
farm However, many farmers OPP
crate combines on smaller acreages.
The most progressive farmers with
large acreages are reSorting to crop ro-
tation and Summer following to assure
larger yields. Every fourth year the
ground Is kept cultivated but implanted.
The sunlight and air store valuable
minerals into the idle soil. The fol-
lowing year the wheat plant again
gathers the stored sunlight energy and
it is sent forth 70 humanity n the
form of bread.
During the last two years a new fac
tor has entered the 1eld-corDoration
farming. Two corporations nave mace
a business of forming and are operating
az. 600 acres of land. A third corpora
ton is entering the field.
Gov. Clyde M. Reed OF Kansas has
been making a vigorous Tight against
chain stores. Now he finds new
problem. A threat of chain farms COB
bling UP the wheat lands of Kansas has
been born. Depopulation of the farm
country easily might follow, some farm
leaders forecast.
"They can't make money like we
can" one corporation head said rather
arrogantly of the farmers. why don't
they go somewhere, work for wages, in
vest their money in our corporation,
and let us do the farming?"
Farm Manager Works From City.
The farm manager" of this sort of
farming props his stocky figure in a
swivel chair at a walnut desk in a
richly furnished office high up in a
Kansas City Office building. He banks
orders over a telephone. Out in West
ern Kansas agents with fast motor cars
-airplanes will be used next, he con-
fides-hasten to do his orders.
One man pops in this moment to
assure him that three carloads of wheat
from farm No. have been sold at 81
cents a bushel. As he pops out another
man, a little sleeker, with more the
look of bond salesman. pops in to tell
him that 100 shares of stock in the
corporation has been sold.
Eastern capital is investing most
heavily in the corporations, it is said.
Literature akin to that issue, in behalf
of oil stocks is flooded ON the prospects.
1t is pretty literature. A flood of gold
flows from a wheat shsaf in the 'front.'
ispice illustrations.
Such farming requires tenants only
few weeks of the year If it grows,
the old country school and the old
country farm home may follow the har-
vest army, the thresher and the harvest
dinner. And the farm population must
lessen as the former laborers congregate
in the cities.
(Copyright, 1880. by North American News
paper Alltance.)