To intensify farming is the only way to get the fat of the land.  The nations of the old world have nearly reached their limit in food production.  They are purchasers in the open market.  This country must be that market; and it behooves us to look to it that the market be well stocked.  There is land enough now and to spare, but will it be so fifty or a hundred years hence?  Our arid lands will be made fertile by irrigation, but they will add only a small percentage to the amount already in quasi-cultivation.  Our future food supplies must be drawn largely from the six million farms now under fences.  These farms must be made to yield fourfold their present product, or they will fall short, not only of the demands made upon them, but also of their possibilities.  That is why I preach the gospel of intensive farming, for grain, hay, market, and factory farm alike.

I will put the chickens out of the way for the present, referring to them from time to time and indicating their general management, the cost of their houses and food, and the amount of money received for eggs and fowls.  I do not think my plant would win the approval of fanciers, and it is not in all ways up to date; but it is clean, healthy, and commodious, and the birds attend as strictly to business as a reasonable owner could wish.  I shall be glad to show it to any one interested enough to search it out, and to go into the details of the business and show how I have been able to make it so remunerative.

Sam is with me no longer.  For three years he did good service and saved money, and the lurid nose grew dim.  There is, however, a limit to human endurance.  Like victims of other forms of circular insanity, the dipsomaniac completes his cycle in an uncertain period and falls upon bad times.  For a month before we parted company I saw signs of relapse in Sam.  He was loquacious at times, at other times morose.  He talked about going into business for himself, and his nose took on new color.  I labored with him, but to no purpose; the spirit of unrest was upon him, and it had to work its own.  I held him firm long enough to secure another man, and then we parted, he to do business for himself, I to get on as best I could.  Sam painted his nose and raised chickens and other things until his savings had flown; then he got a position with a woman who runs a broiler plant, and for two years he has given good service.  He will probably continue in ways of well-doing until the next cycle is complete, when the beacon light will blaze afresh and he will follow it on to the rocks.  Such a man is more to be pitied than condemned, for his anchor is sure to drag at times.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE HOLSTEIN MILK MACHINE