wish to invite discredit upon my story of the making of the
factory farm.

The incidents I have given of the strike at Gordon's mine are
substantially correct, and I would love to follow them to their
sequel,--the cooeperative mine; but as that is a story by itself, I
cannot do it now. I promise myself, however, the pleasure of writing a
history of this innovation in coal-mining at an early date. It is worth
the world's knowing that a copartnership can exist between three hundred
equal partners without serious friction, and that community in business
interests on a large scale can be successfully managed without any
effort to control personal liberty, either domestic, social, or
religious. Indeed, I believe the success of this experiment is due
largely to the absence of any attempt to superintend the private
interests of its members,--the only bond being a common financial one,
and the one requisite to membership, ability to save a portion of the
wages earned.

But to go back to farm matters. In August the ground was stirred for the
second time around the young trees. To do this, the mulch was turned
back and the surface for a space of three feet all around the tree was
loosened by hoe or mattock, and the mulch was then returned. The trees
were vigorous, and their leaves had the polish of health, in spite of
the dry July and August. The mulching must receive the credit for much
of this thrift, for it protected the soil from the rays of the sun and
invited the deep moisture to rise toward the surface. Few people realize
the amount of water that enters into the daily consumption of a tree. It
is said that the four acres of leaf surface of a large elm will
transpire or yield to evaporation eight tons of water in a day, and that
it takes more than five hundred tons of water to produce one ton of hay,
wheat, oats, or other crop. This seems enormous; but an inch of rain on
an acre of ground means more than a hundred tons of water, and
precipitation in our part of the country is about thirty-six inches per
annum, so that we can count on over thirty-six hundred tons of water per
acre to supply this tremendous evaporation of plant life.

Water-pot and hose look foolish in the face of these figures; indeed,
they are poor makeshifts to keep life in plants during pinching times. A
much more effective method is to keep the soil loose under a heavy
mulch, for then the deep waters will rise. In our climate the tree's
growth for th