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Manual of Political Economy.
and that these advantages are destined to become more decided as the use of agricultural machinery is extended. Under large farming, labour can be made to work with greater efficiency; capital can be applied with greater effect, the most complete machinery can be used, less land will be wasted in useless hedges, and thus large farming tends to make labour and capital more efficient.
Advantages of small farming.The advantages which have been here attributed to large farming mainly refer to the cultivation of corn and the breeding of sheep. In the growth of various other products, and especially in dairy farming, many most important advantages are associated with small farming. A traveller on the continent must have remarked that the vine, and other such products which require great care, it may be almost said tenderness, in their cultivation, are most frequently grown by small farmers; the reason of this is, that the cultivation of products requiring such watchfulness and skill could not be trusted to the careless apathy which so frequently characterizes the hired labourer. It is seldom that anyone but a mother will bestow the tender care an infant needs, and the vine will be seldom properly cultivated except by one who has that interest in it which can alone be derived from the feeling of ownership. Even in England there is a similar advantage associated with small farming; for all the operations of a small farm may be attended by the interested watchfulness of the farmer himself, and this advantage is more prominently shown in those farming operations which require great care. A dairy, for instance, needs a constant attention which the large farmers of the present day have not time or inclination to bestow; hence, if there is a dairy attached to a corn or sheep farm, the large farmer will generally underlet his dairy; the farmer supplies all the food for his cows, and the person to whom the dairy is let has every motive to give his whole and undivided attention to those minute details upon which the success of a dairy depends. Again, English farmers seldom are willing to give the time and attention which the profitable rearing of poultry for the market requires. In France, Russia, Denmark and other European countries, however, the farmer depends upon his poultry for no inconsiderable
