I suppose some of my readers will disagree with me in many things; possibly this may be because they will not understand me. A strong English author* has said, in substance, that the most difficult of intellectual feats is for one man to precisely understand another in anything. But when good men differ it is never upon questions of logic, but always upon questions of fact. One believes one thing and reasons upon it, while the other thinks some other thing to be true and reasons accordingly. When two men agree upon the facts in the major and minor premises, the conclusions which they reach will be identical. The way to settle differences, therefore, is to ascertain the facts and let the argument take care of itself. But if, after all, there should remain differences of opinion, I may say to my non-agreeing friends that for myself I learn very little from those who think exactly as I do, while I learn a great deal from those who think otherwise. Possibly they may have the same experience. At any rate, this book is not written to prove anything whatever, but to render such aid as it may to those who wish to find economic truth wherever it is.

*Ruskin "Sesame and Lilies."

BOOK FIRST.

The Larger Aspects of Farm Life.

T

HE old farmer was a jack of all trades. I remember

that in the then new country of Northeastern Ohio each farmer sought to raise two or three acres of wheat, of which he took what he needed to the neighboring mill, paying toll for the grinding at the rate, if I remember rightly, of two quarts to the bushel, and taking home his flour, middlings, and bran. His surplus wheat he sold usually in my time at $1.00 a bushel. He had from five to ten acres of corn, which he mostly fed out on the place to hogs, of which, after filling his pork barrels, he would have one or two to turn off. A steer or "farrow cow," also fattened on the corn, was usually killed in the fall, half sold among the neighbors and half corned or dried for family use, incidentally furnishing the tallow for the dipped candles. From three to a dozen sheep

* This chapter first appeared over my signature in the San Francisco Call, in September, 1895. It was an expansion of a portion of a lecture by Prof. E. A. Ross, of Stanford University, to which I had listened a few weeks previous. Due credit was given to Dr. Ross in this original publication. The article was somewhat widely copied in the press of the day, and subsequently I saw similar articles-some by well-known authors-which were also widely copied. The contrast between the old and the new conditions is very obvious, and the subject is evidently fascinating to those of us whose boyhood memories run back to those days. Portions of three chapters immediately following also appeared in the series of which this chapter formed a part.

E. F. A.

supplied the wool, which was taken to the "carding-machine" and made into "rolls," paying for the work with a certain number of pounds of wool. Before my time the women of the house used to do this work with hand-cards, and I have seen this done, but generally in my boyhood women had emancipated themselves from this work; but they spun the yarn and knit the stockings, and in most houses was a loom constructed by the men, whereon every year was woven by the women one or two pieces of stout woolen cloth to be made up, in the house, into garments for both sexes. The bad-smelling dye pote sat about the fire all winter. Every year or two an acre of flax was raised, which the men "broke" and "hetcheled," and the women spun and wove and made up into clothing. The hide of the beef killed for family consumption, with those of a calf or two killed during the year, were taken to the tannery, and after six months brought home and made up into boots and shoes, sometimes by the men of the house, but more often by the neighboring or traveling shoemaker. A half acre of potatoes and a good garden supplied the vegetables for the year. A few cows furnished a surplus of butter, which, with the eggs not consumed on the farm, was traded at the store for the calicoes, white shirting, an occasional ribbon, and the necessary crockery and small groceries. The orchard supplied the fruit, cider, and vinegar. The "sugar bush" furnished the maple sugar, which was sometimes used for sweetening, but more usually traded for "muscovado," or brown sugar. The elder males of the family had Sunday suits of store cloth made up by the village tailor; this was before the days of "ready made;" these suits, after some years' wear, were turned and made up by the women for the boys, and were worn out by them, one after another, as they grew into them. The elder women had each a sober, dark dress for Sundays, but the girls mostly went to church in fresh calico, and very trim indeed they looked as I remember them. Corsets and similar feminine gimcracks were unknown-at least to me; but it is likely the town girls had them, and if they did our girls knew all about them. Bonnets and hats were worn, with an occasional change of ribbon, until they

wore out. A cast-iron plow, with the necessary hoes, rakes, and scythes, constituted the "boughten" farm machinery. The grain was threshed with a hand-flail on the barn floor in the winter, while the women spun and wove in the house. Many continued this practise long after threshing-machines came in.

The boys got their spending money by picking up nuts in the woods and from the sale of the fur of an occasional mink or muskrat. Our social gatherings were husking bees and house-raisings for the men, quilting parties for the women, and apple-paring bees, and, above all things, the winter singing-school, for the young men and women. The centers of influence were the churches, of which two or three denominations—not too sure of each other's full hold upon salvation -were always represented, the ministers receiving from $200 to $300 per year, partly in money and partly in provisions, with the necessary wood and an annual donation party. The reading matter was the New York Weekly Tribune (I do not remember what standard paper the Democrats took; there were very few Democrats where I lived), Godey's Ladies' Book, the New York Ledger in families of doubtful piety, the Phrenological Journal by those of advanced thought, the religious paper of the denomination, and the county paper. Each family had a few books, which were exchanged until all had read them, and there was always the Bible, the Sunday-school library, and Dick's or Josephus' works, to fall back on. The education was in the district school.

The above outline comprises or suggests the essential features of the life of the thrifty 100-acre farmer on the Western Reserve in Ohio fifty years ago. Further east there was a little more ready money and luxuries; further west there was less, and more dependence on wild game for meat and for furs to get money with. The great prairies had hardly been touched. Transportation was slow and expensive, and the products of each district were mostly consumed therein, the small surplus which accumulated painfully finding its way to the seaboard in exchange for such necessaries as we could not ourselves produce. The farmer's interest