It was my privilege last autumn to spend a considerable portion of October west of the Mississippi. I carefully examined the farming operations of the West, and from the most approved western farmers I took accurate accounts of costs and profits. I found as a result that there were classes of men that might gain an advantage by going West; there were other classes who would suffer. If a man was very poor and had a large family to feed from his own daily earnings, and was not particular about their privileges, he could certainly get more bread for a day's work at the West than in New Hampshire. If he had a few hundred dollars in early life, and was willing to sacrifice the advantages of civilization, he could go beyond it and take up land at government prices, and den on it and associate with the animals, and by and by civilization would overtake him, and he would get advances on his original purchase. When you talk of western farming for immediate profit, you are altogether on the wrong track, and so I will give you a few of the results as given me by the experimenters themselves.

There is plenty of land already broken to rent for one-third of the crop. Two men enter and rent one-eighth of a section or eighty acres. This, they claim, two good smart men will manage through the year to corn which is the most remunerative crop. The average yield of the best farming sections for ten years is thirty bushels per acre, or two thousand and four hundred bushels, one-third of which is deducted for rent, leaving sixteen hundred bushels of corn for the year's services of two men, the average price of which for ten years together is twenty-five cents per bushel, or four hundred dollars for the two men a year, they finding their own teams and machinery and working one-third more hours than New Hampshire men labor, and almost entirely dispensing with the privileges of civilization.

I visited what was called the best or model farm of Roane county, Iowa. I found a single field of corn containing two hundred acres and averaging sixty bushels to the acre. This is a very rare occurrence, even in Iowa. The occupants were two brothers by the name of Ovat, from New England. They also raised three hundred bushels of wheat and one thousand bushels of oats. Besides themselves and sons, they employed four extra men six months in the year, which cost them about $140 in the aggregate per month, or about $840 per year. They worked constantly three teams. They were buying rather than selling corn,

and paying fifteen cents per bushel, which was all corn was worth in Iowa. They had one hundred and thirty-three cattle they were feeding, the average live weight of which was one thousand two hundred pounds. They expected an advance on their beef that would make their corn net them much more than fifteen cents per bushel, but that was an uncertainty. Their farm comprised a section, or six hundred and forty acres. They claimed it was now worth $18,000. I asked them how they made their money. Their answer was they left New England when young, were mechanics, took some property with them, went to Ohio, worked at their trade, increased their means, went to Iowa seventeen years ago, bought their land mostly for $5 per acre, and had lived there seventeen years without privileges, working hard and economizing closely. When Roane county was settled, the railroad happened to come near them. Their locality was well selected, their land had become worth $30 per acre. But they were careful to say if a man is comfortably situated in New Hampshire, and is enjoying privileges, he had better let well enough alone and stay there. And while they were speaking of New England and its privileges, and recounting their toils and sacrifices, their countenances would seem to express the language of the poet to the backslider:

I honestly believe I can get more ready money to lease one of the cast-off farms of New Hampshire, and cultivate it with potatoes, than I could to lease any farm west of the Mississippi.

Farmers of New Hampshire, let me say to you, if you will live in huts instead of houses, work like slaves the year in and out, never allow yourselves to look up to the sun or into a book, work your children like mules as soon as they can lift an implement, instead of sending them to school, let your whole wardrobe cost less than thirty dollars, and everything else in proportion, you can make more money than does any western farmer. But rest assured your posterity will not be the class that shall by and by go West to take the lead of civilization. Had you not better be content to keep and improve the old homestead, so near to the school-house, where you can hear the church bell, and where you can enjoy the association of good neighbors? I have decided on this course for myself, and let those do better who can.

FARMING - PRESENT AND PROSPECTIVE.

BY JOHN F. FRENCH OF NORTHHAMPTON.

For a few years past, the farming interest of New England has been greatly depressed. Many of our farmers have become discouraged with their prospects in farming alone, and are turning their attention more or less to other pursuits, so that in instances not a few, farms are being neglected, farm buildings are becoming dilapidated, and much of our landed property deteriorated in value.

This state of things resulted partially, no doubt, from causes beyond our control, and partly within it. Among those beyond our control, perhaps we should instance, as first and foremost, the high rate of taxation. Farmers have been taxed internally, externally, and eternally, until they groan under its accumulated burdens. For several years past, certainly since the close of the war, no class of property or branch of industry has paid so high a percentage, for the amount of income received, as farming. In almost every farming town, individuals may be found with little or no visible property, living at their ease and leisure, and frequently growing to affluence even, on a few thousand dollars invested in non-taxpaying stocks, while good farmers near them, with no property aside from their farms, and perhaps in debt for part of that, with families to feed, clothe, and educate, if they can, work hard for a mere subsistence. Local taxes and government taxes weigh them down like a millstone. With little prospect of immediate relief, is it to be wondered that farmers thus situated grow uneasy?

Another cause of discouragement beyond our control, is the general scarcity, and consequently high price, of farm labor, thereby enhancing the cost of production to such a degree, as to leave little or no margin for the owner of the soil. It seems to

be acknowledged as a "fixed fact" that few farms at the present time are so favorably located, or so productive, as to be made to yield fair profit, operated wholly by hand labor. To the scarcity of farm help must be added also the very general inefficiency of laborers, so that much of the labor employed is either ill-directed, or so slovenly performed, that little or no actual profit results from it to him who hires.

A further source of discouragement without remedy of our own has been unfavorable seasons. Two seasons of extreme drought, followed by two severe winters with little snow, so injured the grass roots as to greatly lessen our hay crop, and cut off the feed from our pastures, thereby undermining for the time being the whole foundation of New-England farming. This general scarcity of feed necessitated a corresponding red iction in stock, which, in many cases was sold at prices ruinously low, so that many farmers came out of it reduced in almost every essential to good farming success, forage, stock, money, manure, and capability of soil to produce further crops. Among those obstacles or causes of discouragement within, or partially within our control, may be mentioned the growing tendency among farmers, as others, to extravagance, or living beyond their income, or means. One of our wisest and shrewdest farmers of a past generation remarked to a neighbor, "when you earn nothing, be careful that you spend nothing." That rule is now quite frequently reversed; while earning but little the inclination often is to spend the more. Farmers and farmers' families are imitating more and more the habits and fashions and extravagances of city life. They look abroad for much that their own farms and households should provide. Many farmers, it is true, are already independent, and can do as they will. Some have acquired independence by their own earnings, some have inherited the accumulations of past generations, which, added to their own, furnish capital on which they can draw at pleasure; then, again, there are others, who, if not rich in money, hold large tracts of wood or timber, which are always available in case of need. But not a few who are favored with neither of these sources of income and depend entirely upon what they can draw from the soil, are actually drifting backward, and partly because their wants, real or imaginary, outrun their earnings.

Then again farmers are shamefully, lamentably, sometimes almost ruinously humbugged. All classes it is true are hum