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Streeter, John Williams

"The Fat of the Land The Story of an American Farm"

These are some of the principles of factory
farming, and one doesn't have to be old, or rich, to put them into
practice.
I would exchange my age, money, and acres for youth and forty acres, and
think that I had the best of the bargain; and I would start the factory
by planting ten acres of orchard, buying two sows, two cows, and two
setting hens. Youth, strength, and hustle are a great sight better than
money, and the wise youth can have a finer farm than mine before he
passes the half-century mark, even though he have but a bare forty to
begin with.
I do not take it for granted that every man has even a bare forty; but
millions of men who have it not, can have it by a little persistent
self-denial; and when an able-bodied man has forty acres of ground under
his feet, it is up to him whether he will be a comfortable, independent,
self-respecting man or not.
A great deal of farm land is distant from markets and otherwise limited
in its range of production, but nearly every forty which lies east of
the hundredth meridian is competent to furnish a living for a family of
workers, if the workers be intelligent as well as industrious.


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