he buys all the peanuts he can, at figures very near the
ruling market price. Of course, this works very much to the planter's
benefit. He sees his crop weighed, he escapes the middleman, with all
the attendant expenses, such as commissions, freight, etc., he sells for
cash, and he does not have to wait several weeks for returns.

Under this state of affairs, the home market, or home buyer, becomes the
best for the farmer. And with the constantly increasing demand, and
close competition between buyers, the cleaning factories are also coming
nearer the farmer, and already exist, or will soon exist, in each of the
counties and sections where the Peanut is much grown. Thus the planters
generally, will soon be enabled to sell directly to the cleaners, and
the latter to the wholesale buyers. So the planter will get market
prices, without the trouble of going to market. Perhaps the competition
will eventually grow sharper still, until, not only will the peanuts be
cleaned and bought at home, but will also be manufactured into oil,
flour, and the other commercial forms, in the sections where they are
grown. In everything, the tendency now is, to carry the factories to
the raw material, and not the latter to the factories. It is not to be
presumed that this crop will prove an exception.

Thus it is, that the farmer's work is being narrowed down, by the
inevitable and beneficial law of the division of labor. The planter may
now turn his attention wholly to the cultivation of the crop. How to
order it, so as to realize the largest possible yield from the smallest
possible areas, is now the problem before him. He finds given to his
hands, a great and growing staple with great, and still unknown,
possibilities, and he sees the demand becoming larger and more earnest,
until now, the buyer comes to his very door, and puts down the ready
cash for all of this crop that he has to sell.

Of course the planter must, and will bestir himself, to meet the
ever-increasing demand. To do this with profit to himself, he must study
this crop from beginning to end, he must learn the nature of the Peanut
plant fully and correctly, and discovering how to increase the yield per
acre to its maximum, unravel the secret of how to grow it at the least
cost per bushel.

=Picking Machines.=--It may be well here to allude to a question, which,
doubtless, the thoughtful reader has already asked himself, namely: Why
does not some one invent a machine for p