the manure.
The modern cow is a ruminating machine for producing milk and cares
little for exercise and needs little. To exploit the cattle as
employers exploit the factory hands, he gives the cows a cool, shady
place and food, and they stand there all day long to their profit
and his.
(United States Agricultural Bulletin No. 22 says: "The New Jersey
Experiment Station has been conducting a practical trial in soiling
dairy cows for a number of years past, and finds that complete
soiling is entirely practicable, i.e. that green foliage crops may
serve as the sole food of the dewy herd, aside from the grain
ration, without injury to the animals and with a considerable saving
in the cost of milk.
"Under the soiling system a large number of animals can be kept upon
a given acreage and by allowing open-air exercises in a large yard
or pasture the practice has been demonstrated as entirely feasible
for dairy animals.
"One acre of soiling crops produced sufficient fodder for an
equivalent of 3 cows for six months. Rye, corn, crimson clover,
alfalfa, oats and peas, and millets have been found to furnish food
more economically than any other green crops in that locality. A
grain rotation was always fed in addition to the soiling crops.")
Although we can feed a cow on less than an acre by raising forage
crops, she needs to be milked every day at regular hours, and the
milk, as well as the cans and the cow, need to be cared for--and she
cannot wait.
The stock-raiser has a different proposition; he needs fields and
grass; but if time and available labor is limited, we had better
specialize on the garden--unlike the farmers.
The farmers are not to blame that they do not usually cultivate the
land intelligently. They are mostly cut off from the educational
advantages of the cities by distance and by bad roads.
Usually, that is because, desirable land being held at speculative
prices, they are forced to places where the farm itself is worth
less than the good improvements on it cost. Sometimes it is because,
also, the land is poor or worn out; more often because it is
thoughtlessly managed, nearly always because the land-hungry farmer
has taken ten times as much land as he needs for farming. In the
hope of a rise that often does not come, nearly all have bought more
land than they can take good care of with limited capital and
scarcity of help.
In addition, the farms have held out such poor prospects of fortune
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