For further details see Hunt, How to Choose a Farm, Chaps. X and XI.
CHAPTER XII
GRAIN AND HAY FARMING
An important and primary factor in the production of all wealth is labor. Aside from the professional and domestic classes, the people of the world devote themselves to three forms of work: (1) Changes in substance, or natural products; (2) changes in form, or mechanical products; (3) changes in place, or exchange of products. The second of these forms of work gives rise to manufacturing; the third, to trade and commerce. Under the first sub-division two classes of natural products may be recognized; first, what, for want of a better name, may be called chemical products, such as ores, coal and salt, from which are derived mining and the metallurgical arts; and second, vital products, or, in other words, vegetation and animals. It is work applied to the production of vegetation and animals that gives rise to agriculture. Agriculture is labor applied to the production of living things.
KINDS OF AGRICULTURE
The industries which deal with the production of living things may be divided, theoretically, largely on the basis of the character of the results, but to some extent upon the nature of the activities involved.
The manner in which this theoretical classification has worked out in actual practice will be indicated in some measure by the inquiries of the United States Census Bureau. The twelfth census has classified farms on the basis of their principal income. If 40% or more of the gross income of the farm was from dairy products, it was called a dairy farm; if from live stock, a live stock farm; if from cotton, a cotton farm. If no product constituted 40% of the gross receipts, the farm was classified as a miscellaneous or general farm.