Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/371

Rh beyond a certain limit, which will vary with different conditions, involves an increase in the cost of the product, and with low prices an increase in yield, under an intensive system of management, may be made to cost more than its market value. With prevailing low prices for staple products, mixed farming, when conducted on a comprehensive plan, that gives to each interest its legitimate influence on the aggregate of results, has many advantages which recommend it as the best general system of practice.

Of the available suggestions which the rapid progress and development of other industries may present for the farmer's consideration, strict economy in the management of labor, and the thorough utilization of waste products, are undoubtedly the most significant. These two topics are so closely connected in practice from their intimate relations to every department of production, that they can not be separately considered in planning a system of farm management.

The direct influence on the margin of profits, of the distribution and efficiency of the labor performed on the farm throughout the year, is, however, so obvious that it will answer our present purpose to refer to it as an element that can not be neglected in discussing other methods of improvement. The waste products of the farm, which are so generally neglected, require more than a passing notice; but the limits of this article will not permit a full discussion of the subject, and we can only call attention to their great economic value.

From a careful estimate, based on the best obtainable data for the year 1884, in which the most important elements of fertility are valued at their market price in the form of commercial fertilizers, the barn-yard manure (or what should be utilized as such under a good system of management), in the State of Michigan, is worth at least $35,000,000; and in the United States this residue, under the same method of valuation, gives the astonishing aggregate of $1,092,950,000, which is more than twice the market value of all agricultural exports for the same year.

Persons familiar with the details of farm practice in different parts of the country will consider it safe to assume that at least one half of this valuable residue is lost, through neglect and errors in management, from lack of knowledge of the best methods of conserving the elements of fertility. The annual loss to farmers of the United States of a sum equal to, or exceeding, the market value of all agricultural exports, which they may readily prevent by a thorough and consistent system of management, is a matter of the first importance in considering the available means of agricultural improvement.

It does not aid the farmer in the ordinary routine of his work,