But you need not be so stupid as that. Even some of our cities are now learning the value of sewage, notably San Antonio, Texas. This city, with its 85,000 inhabitants, has solved the problem of what to do with its sewage, although the city fathers leased the rights to a private corporation, instead of providing for the city’s own disposal of it. This company carries the sewage six miles out of town, and has built five miles of canal, through which the surplus sewage not used in irrigating, flows upon a filter-bed where all solids are removed, and the water runs into a big basin which covers about 1000 acres. This basin being very shallow, the sun’s rays reach the bottom of it, and purify the water, so that, though it enters one end of this basin as sewage, it flows out of the other as pure water. Chemical analyses and tests have proved this many times over, and we might take a hint from this at home to “raise our darkened windows and open wide our doors, to let the blessed sunshine in.” It is the best destroyer of disease and impurity yet discovered. The company’s acres along the line of the canal profited so much from this irrigation, that farmers soon began to purchase the irrigating sewage water for use on their forage crop fields, and for root crops particularly. The solids are spread on the surface of the lands upon which the clear, purified water is to be used, and the results have been most satisfactory. San Antonio really makes a profit out of that which is costing other cities millions every year, and in doing this has shown us another way to work, in bringing into use all lands that are available in any way for intensive cultivation. Plenty of manure and thorough cultivation are almost a complete protection against drought. If you have plowed deep, manured thoroughly, added humus and maintained tillage, you can laugh at the drought that would once have spelled ruin for the farmer in any part of the country. You have been told this before in this very book, but that is no reason why it should not be repeated. It is of such great importance, that the average farmer would make no mistake if he had it made into a motto printed in large and striking type, and hung it where he could see it a dozen times a day. It is part of the “How to Work,” and a mighty big part, as you will learn, whether you practice it or neglect it. Use your brains; that’s what they are for. After you get your farm started, you can get cheap and unintelligent labor, to keep it going, if you wish; but you can only reap a profit from intelligent labor, and you must furnish the intelligence yourself. Plan your work, and make the most of your soil, your climate and your market. Things that everybody grows bring low prices, but things that you alone grow, or that you grow better than your neighbors, bring good returns all the year round.