COMMON SENSE FARMING
The three things essential to all wealth production are land,
labor, and capital.
labor, and capital.
"The dry land" was created before there appeared the man, the
laborer, to work it. With his bare hands the worker could have
done nothing with the land either as a grazer, a farmer or a
miner. From the very first he needed capital, that is, the tools
to work the land.
The first tool may have been a pole, one end hardened in the fire,
or a combined hoe and axe, made by fastening with wythes, a
suitable stone to the end of a stick; but no matter the kind of
tool, or the means of producing it, it represented capital, and
the man who owned this tool was a capitalist as compared with the
man without any such appliance.
From the land, with the aid of labor and capital, comes wealth,
which in a broad way may be defined as something having an
exchangeable value.
Before the appearance of money all wealth changed hands through
barter. The wealth in the world to-day is immeasurably greater
than all the money in it. The business of the world, particularly
between nations, is still carried on through exchange, the
balances being settled by money.
Money is a medium of exchange, and should not be confounded with
wealth or capital; the latter is that form of wealth which is used
with labor in all production.
Broadly speaking, wealth is of two kinds, dormant and active. The
former awaits the development of labor and capital, the latter is
the product of both.
Labor is human effort, in any form, used for the production of
wealth. It is of two kinds--skilled and unskilled. The former may
be wholly mental, the latter may be wholly manual.
The successful farmer must be a skilled laborer, no matter the
amount of his manual work. The unskilled farmer can never succeed
largely, no matter how hard he works.
Trained hands with trained brains are irresistible.
Too many farmers live in the ruts cut by their great-great-
grandfathers. They still balance the corn in the sack with a
stone.
Farming is the world's greatest industry. All the ships might be
docked, all the factory wheels stopped, and all the railroads
turned to streaks of rust, and still the race would survive, but
let the plow lie idle for a year and man would perish as when the
deluge swept the mountain tops.
The next census will show considerably over 6,000,000 farms in the
United States. Farming is the greatest of all industries, as it is
the most essential. Our Government has wisely made the head of the
Department of Agriculture a cabinet officer, and the effect on our
farming interest is shown in improved methods and a larger output
of better quality.
The hap-hazard, unskilled methods of the past are disappearing.
Science is lending her aid to the tiller of the soil, and the wise
ones are reaching out their hands in welcome.