We will leave large farms and farming to recommend themselves, while we consider more directly the opportunities and reasonable expectations of the small farmer.
The impression widely current that money cannot be made on a small farm—that, in farming, the great fish eat up the little ones—is deduced from very imperfect data. I have admitted that Grain and Beef can usually be produced at less cost on great than on small farms, though the rule is not without exceptions. I only insist that there are room and hope for the small farmer also, and that large farming can never absorb nor enable us to dispense with small farms.
I. And first with regard to Fruit. Some Tree-Fruits, as well as Grapes, are grown on a large scale in California—it is said, with profit. But nearly all our Pears, Apples, Cherries, Plums, etc., are grown by small farmers or gardeners, and are not likely to be grown otherwise. All of them need at particular seasons a personal attention and a vigilance which can seldom or never be accorded by the owners or renters of large farms. Should small farms be generally absorbed into larger, our Fruit-culture would thenceforth steadily decline.
II. The same is even more true of the production of Eggs and the rearing of Fowls. I have had knowledge of several attempts at producing Eggs and Fowls on a large scale in this country, but I have no trustworthy account of a single decided success in such an enterprise. On the contrary, many attempts to multiply Fowls by thousands have broken down, just when their success seemed secure. Some contagious disease, some unforeseen disaster, blasted the sanguine expectations of the experimenter, and transmuted his gold into dross.
Yet, I judge that there is no industry more capable of indefinite extension, with fair returns, than Fowl-breeding on a moderate scale. Eggs and Chickens are in universal demand. They are luxuries appreciated alike by rich and poor; and they might be doubled in quantity without materially depressing, the market. Our thronged and fashionable watering-places are never adequately supplied with them; our cities habitually take all they can get and look around for more. I believe that twice the largest number of Chickens ever yet produced in one year might be reared in 1871, with profit to the breeders. Even if others should fail, the home market found in each family would prove signally elastic.
This industry should especially commend itself to poor widows, struggling to retain and rear their children in frugal independence. A widow who, in the neighborhood of a city or of a manufacturing village, can rent a cottage with half an acre of southward-sloping, sunny land, which she may fence so tightly as to confine her Hens therein, whenever their roaming abroad would injure or annoy her neighbors, and who can incur the expense of constructing thereon a warm, commodious Hen-house, may almost certainly make the production of Eggs and Fowls a source of continuous profit. If she can obtain cheaply the refuse of a slaughter-house for feed, giving with it meal or grain in moderate quantities, and according that constant, personal, intelligent supervision, without which Fowl-breeding rarely prospers, she may reasonably expect it to pay, while affording her an occupation not subject to the caprices of an employer, and not requiring her to spend her days away from home.
III. Though the ordinary Market Vegetables may be grown on large farms, the fact that they seldom are is significant. Cabbages, Peas, Poled Beans, Tomatoes, and even Potatoes, are mainly grown on small farms, as they always have been. There are sections wherein no cash market for Vegetables exists or can be relied on; and here they will continue to be grown to the extent only of the growers' respective needs; but wherever the prevalence of manufactures or the neighborhood of a great city gives reasonable assurance of a market, they are grown at a profit per acre which is rarely realized from a Grain-crop. No less than $100 per acre is often, if not generally, achieved by the growers of Cabbage around this city; and this not from rich, deep garden-mold, but from fair farming land, underdrained, subsoiled, and liberally manured.
The careless, slipshod farmer may do better—that is, he will not fail so signally—in Grain cultivation; but there are few more decided or brilliant successes than have been achieved within the last few years within sight of this City, and wholly in the tillage of small farms.
I trust I have here said enough to show that there is a legitimate and promising field for agricultural enterprise and effort, other than that which contemplates the acquisition and rule of a township, and that, while farming on a large area is to many attractive and inspiring, there are scope and incitement also for tillage on a humbler scale—for tillage that permits no weed to ripen seed, and no nest of caterpillars to flourish a month undisturbed—for tillage that achieves large crops and profits from small areas, and rejoices in that neatness and perfection of culture attainable only in the management of small farms.