pend upon
pure food, water, air, sunlight, and good shelter to keep them healthy;
sell as soon as the product is finished, even though the market doesn't
please you; sell only perfect product under your own brand; buy when the
market pleases you and thus "discount the seasons"; remember that
interdependent industries are the essence of factory farming; employ the
best men you can find, and keep them interested in your affairs; have a
definite object and make everything bend toward that object; plant apple
trees galore and make them your chief care, as in time they will prove
your chief dependence. 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. Farm
lands are each year being brought closer to markets by steam and
electric roads; telephone and telegraphic wires give immediate service;
and the daily distribution of mails brings the producer into close touch
with the consumer. The day of isolation and seclusion has passed, and
the farmer is a personal factor in the market. He is learning the
advantages of cooeperation, both in producing and in disposing of his
wares; he has paid off his mortgage and has money in the bank; he is a
power in politics, and by far the most dependable element in the state.
Like the wrestler of old, who gained new strength whenever his foot
touched the ground, our country gains fresh vigor from every man who
tak