He paused for a moment and then went on: "In the last hundred and fifty years there have been great changes in the world in the ways of producing things--'improved methods of production' the books call it. Some say it ain't really 'improved,' only faster and cheaper, but I'm not arguing that point. The power of people to produce the necessaries of life is a big sight greater than it was a hundred and fifty years ago--that's my point. It's what the books call 'increased power of production.' And among civilized people there's been this increase of producing power in about all the forms of production. In some forms it's been very great, and in others not so great; but I guess there ain't many kinds of business that haven't been changed by it. "Now, I think that the farming business has lagged behind the rest. Not that there ain't been improvement, for there's been great improvement. There's the steam-ploughs, and the reapers, and harvesters, and mowers, and the threshing-machines; and then there's the science of agricultural chemistry. But I'm judging of what I know of the farming business as it's carried on. "Now, here's my farm: it's part of a tract that my great-grandfather settled on and cleared. I've heard my grandfather tell many a time of the Indians that were all about here when he was a boy, and even my father often went hunting deer down on the lake this side of the woods. "Well, I know this country pretty well, and I find that a farmer now don't work any bigger farm than my grandfather did, nor the work isn't much lighter, nor he doesn't get much more for it. There's been a good many changes, but as the farming business goes, there ain't any increased production that's kept up with other kinds of business when you calculate how many farmers there are and how much they do. "I read in a book the other day that twenty-five men, with modern machinery, can produce as much cotton cloth as the whole population of Lancashire could produce in the old way; but there ain't any twenty-five men who could work the farms of this township with all the modern farming machinery. "Take it day in and day out the whole year round on the farms, and a man's work or a team's work is pretty much what it was a hundred years ago.