farming.
It is evident that the methods of culture must vary according to different conditions. In the vast prairies of North America, where land could be bought from 8s. to 40s. the acre, and where spaces of from 100 to 160 square miles in one block could be given to wheat culture, special methods of culture were applied and the results were excellent. Land was bought — not rented. In the autumn, whole studs of horses were brought, and the tilling and sowing were done with the aid of formidable ploughs and sowing machines. Then the horses were sent to graze in the mountains; the men were dismissed, and one man, occasionally two or three, remained to winter on the farm. In the spring the owners’ agents began to beat the inns for hundreds of miles round, and engaged labourers and tramps, both freely supplied by Europe, for the crop. Battalions of men were marched to the wheat fields, and were camped there; the horses were brought from the mountains, and in a week or two the crop was cut, thrashed, winnowed, put in sacks, by specially invented machines, and sent to the next elevator, or directly to the ships which carried it to Europe. Whereupon the men were disbanded again, the horses were sent back to the grazing grounds, or sold, and again only a couple of men remained on the farm.
The crop from each acre was small, but the machinery was so perfected that in this way 300 days of one man’s labour produced from 200 to 300 quarters of wheat; in other words — the area of land being of no account — every man produced in one day his yearly bread food (eight and a half bushels of wheat); and taking into account all subsequent labour, it was calculated that the work of 300 men in one single day delivered to the consumer at Chicago the flour that is required for the yearly food of 250 persons. Twelve hours and a half of work are thus required in Chicago to supply one man with his yearly provision of wheat-flour.
Under the special