What is true of labor is also true of machinery. The farmer must purchase machinery which he can use only a few days in the year, while the manufacturer, for the most part, employs his machinery continuously, sometimes day and night. While natural causes prevent the farmer from using the same business methods, or from being able to calculate his profits with the same precision as is possible by those following manufacturing and mercantile pursuits, it is nevertheless important that farming should be planned to avoid, as far as possible, the influence of natural causes. Certain kinds of farming are less dependent upon natural causes than others. Wisdom and foresight can do much to avoid, in all farming, untoward influences. The clever farmer seldom complains about the weather. Farm machinery has made unnecessary, and hence unprofitable, some of the labor at which children were formerly employed. In the not distant past many, perhaps most farmers, owed their prosperity in large measure to the labor of their children. A large family, especially of boys, was a valuable asset. Even a generation ago conditions were not far different, and two generations ago were quite the same as those described by Homer: "Another field rose high with waving grain: With bended sickles stand the reaper train: Here, stretch'd in ranks, the level'd swaths are found; Sheaves heaped on sheaves here thicken up the ground. With sweeping stroke the mowers strow the lands; The gath'rers follow, and collect in bands: And last the children, in whose arms are borne (Too short to gripe them) the brown sheaves of corn. The rustic monarch of the field descries, With silent glee, the heaps around him rise. A ready banquet on the turf is laid Beneath an ample oak's expanded shade. The victim ox the sturdy youth prepare: The reapers due repast, the women's care." There is also another reason why the age of the employed has been raised. It is due to the growth of higher education. Where formerly the farmer's children between the ages of twelve and twenty-one did most of the farm work, now many of them at the same age are attending schools and colleges. The sons of a man, who a generation ago found no opportunity to get beyond the district school, graduate from high school and college, and thus spend most of their time in study until they are past twenty-one years of age. Labor unions have doubtless caused a scarcity of farm labor by increasing the proportion of the created wealth which goes to the man who labors without capital. When a man can obtain fifty cents an hour for laying brick, he does not wish to work in the hay field at twenty cents an hour, even though the difference in the cost of living may in great measure offset the difference in wages.