E-text prepared by David Clarke, Martin Pettit, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries (http://www.archive.org/details/americana) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustration. See 31373-h.htm or 31373-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/31373/pg31373-images.html) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/31373/31373-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive/American Libraries. See http://www.archive.org/details/solarisfarm00edsorich SOLARIS FARM; A Story of the Twentieth Century. by MILAN C. EDSON. Published by the Author at 1728 New Jersey Ave., N. W., Washington, D. C. In the Year 1900. Press Work by Byron S. Adams. [Illustration: CAPTAIN MILAN C. EDSON.] Copyright, 1900 by Milan C. Edson. All Rights Reserved. DEDICATION. This book, is dedicated to the sons and daughters of the farms of the Republic as an expression of the author's realization, that Agricultural people constitute a large majority of its working units: That as such, its destiny is in the hands of their boys and girls, as its future guardians, fathers and mothers: That for the reasons stated, they should become its dominant thinkers and leaders: That Agriculture is the true basis of industrial and commercial success; hence, it should be made the most noble and pleasing of all occupations: That the alarming encroachments of land monopoly, and the inability of the small farm to meet the expense of using the latest and best machinery, threatens the total extinction of all land-owning farmers, and of their consequent reduction to the dependent caste of farm laborers: That the isolated life and the severe toil of the small farm, has a dangerously depressing effect on the minds of its people: That all of these things, seem to demand the changes suggested by the contents of this book. PREFACE. Strong in my convictions that all civilizations are false, which do not civilize the lowest units of any social order, I have written Solaris Farm as my contribution towards the improvement of agriculturists as a class, of the race as a whole; towards the establishment of a truer civilization, organized for the purpose of securing the same degree of progress for the lowest orders of humanity, which have been or can be attained by the highest. In any social or political fabric, wide differences of wealth, of education, of refinement in its sub-divisions are dangerous, they swiftly lead to the introduction of caste. Caste is the dry rot, which, when once established, will surely destroy all progress, all vitality, by slowly eating away the social, industrial and political life of the nation.