D. L. Hartman, Rural New Yorker, gave the following facts and figures:  “During last season the sales from one acre of early tomatoes amounted to $454, and from a trifle more than two and one half acres, including the acre of ‘earlies,’ the remainder mid-season and late plantings, the total sales amounted to over $900.  From a little less than one acre and a half $555 worth of strawberries were sold, while the returns from early cabbages during the last few years have been at the rate of about $300 per acre.  These statements are not made in the spirit of challenge.  The results are gratifying to me, because larger than anticipated; but much greater values can be and are produced.  In fact, the limit of value that may be grown on an acre of land no one can tell.  I have a small plot of ground containing less than one sixth of an acre, planted one year with radishes and lettuce, followed by eggplant and cauliflower, and the next year to radishes alone, followed by egg-plant, and each year the total sales amounted to over $200, at the rate of $1200 per acre.  Greatly exceeding even this was a smaller plot, measuring 20 X 65 feet, last year, planted first to pansies, plants sold when in bloom, followed by radishes, of which one half proved to be a worthless variety (it lay idle long enough to have produced another crop of radishes), then half was planted to late lettuce, the other half being sown for winter cabbage, plants yielding no cash return.  Yet the total sales for the season from this small plot, less than one thirty-second of an acre, was $86.78 at the rate of the surprising sum of $2780 per acre, and could easily have been raised to the rate of $4,000, and that without the use of any glass whatever, Truly the possibilities of the soil are unknown.”

The cooperative features used by Northeastern Long Island intensive farmers are worthy of imitation.  In the community of Riverhead a club buys at wholesale rates commodities which the farm and household require.  The club does a large business, and has a high rating in the commercial agencies.  In another instance at Riverhead an association markets the crop of cauliflower, sending cars of such produce to Cincinnati and Chicago.  These are the best forms of cooperation.

“In the market-gardening sections the banks show prosperity.  In the towns of Riverhead and Southold there are savings banks with deposits of $4,000,000 each, and five business banks which are doing a thriving business.  In this stretch of thirty miles on eastern Long Island the farms are mostly free from encumbrance of any kind.

" It should be noted, however, that their towns have the open Sound with its bays which furnish open ways for transportation and an unowned field for work.” (From circular of the Long Island Guild of New York City.)

CHAPTER VII

SOME METHODS