136 



THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



HOW TO MAKE MONEY BY FARMING. 



There is nothing better than a good title. It backs 

 a man in society, puts up the biddings for a property, 

 sells a booli, attracts the sight- seer, and is half the 

 battle with the popular print the artist so prides him- 

 self on. Within only the last year or two a sagacious 

 American felt the full force of this, and wrote a work 

 right up to the most telling title he could think of. 

 He did not call it " a Love Story," or " a Mission to 

 the Mormons," or "Aunt Sally's Cottage," or 

 plagiarise in any way upon precedent. On the con- 

 trary, he struck out a line of his own, and advertised 

 five hundred different plans for making a fortune. la 

 what £dition the volume may be at this moment, it is 

 not within our province to say ; but it should surely 

 be better known in Paternoster-row than even Adam 

 Bade, Dr. Livingstone's Travel, or Dr. Cumming's Tri- 

 bulation. Still there may bo some who have actually 

 not yet hoard of these acceptable recipes, and we are 

 not quite certain that making a fortune by farming was 

 one of the five hundred points included in the category. 

 If not, it should have been. There is nothing more 

 .simple, and day by day we have hints and offers of 

 how it is to be done. You have only to catch your 

 hare — or, in other words, to get a farm — and there 

 are plenty of people ready to show you how to 

 cook it. 



At the close of another year, v/itli moist weather for 

 thrashing and low markets for selling, there could 

 scarcely be a inoi-o welcome topic. The jjrudent farmer 

 is balancing his accounts, and scratching his head, and 

 trying to see how he stands. The prospect is not, per- 

 haps, altogether as clear as it might be. But he has 

 heard so much of tliis kind of thing before, that he 

 would most probably pat down our Yankee authority 

 as a bit of a humbug, and not read the book if we gnve 

 it him. Still the notion is too good a one to be thrown 

 away ; and so, when the Halesworth Fartner.s' Club 

 ask Mr. Bond to oblige them with a paper, tliat gen- 

 tleman boldly selects these very colours to sail under. 

 Mv. Bond is now deservedly a man of some re])ute; 

 and everybody knows when he is announced, as he so 

 frequently is, for another lecture, there will be some- 

 thing in it. As a consequence the Halesworth Club 

 was more than usually strong in the selection it made. 

 The title was doubly a good one. It embraced the 

 name of a good man, coupled with a most enticing 

 thesis, " Agricultural Money Making." If all Suffolk 

 was not there to sec, they cau have little to complain 

 of hereafter. 



It is u jt our purpose to follow Mr. Bond through 

 an address which we give in full. But at such a 

 season it may be by no means out of place to devote 

 some considerati'u to Agricultural Money Making. 

 Until a man has fairly tried it, there is not one in a 

 thousand but knows this is to be done. If an ama- 

 teur, or only half-educated tn the business, the greater 

 proportionately will be his confidence j and one uood 

 year will serve as the example for twenty bad ones. 

 Be, however, this as it may, whether money is still 

 made by agriculture or not, we certainly now essay the 

 attempt in quite an altered fashion to that of our fore- 

 fathers. The well-to-do farmer of lialf a century since 

 was a very different person to the dashing experi- 

 mentalist of the present era. His golden rule was to 

 stay at home and mind hii* business, and he more often 

 than not yet further extended the precept by holding 

 his tongue. He had something more than a disin- 



clination to change of any sort, and the improvements 

 he did effect, in tlie character of the cultivation or the 

 bi-eeding of his beasts, were all made on the principle 

 of slow and sure. He lived hard, and perhaps, afttr all, 

 his secret of making; money v/as saving it shilling by 

 shilling, and not being "put up" very often by his 

 landlord or the agent. In fact, it was another of his 

 wise saws not to have much of a show about the place, 

 and whether his guineas went into the stocking, or 

 were entrusted with some more profitable investment, 

 it was hard to say if his wealth should bo counted in 

 hundreds or thousands, or what " fortun " he could 

 really leave his favourite daughter. 



The modern man who tries his hand at aiiricuUural 

 money making is quite of another school. He makes it 

 his business to see something of the world. He prides 

 himself on the appearance of his homestead, and is 

 always having somebody coming to see it ; whilo if he 

 gets into a good strain of stock, he publishes the fact all 

 the world over. His landlord is specially invited to 

 see the sheep, let at fifty pounds a-piece, or Siiort- 

 horns knocked down at their hundreds a lot. He has 

 plenty to say for hiiiiself, lives like a gentleman, and 

 lays out his money freely in anything that promises 

 well. Ho is ever ready for real improvement, and is a 

 certain customer for high-jiriced manures, and first-class 

 machinery. In a word, his education, his princip'es, 

 and his practice are diametrically opposed to those of 

 his grandfather; while the woild at large is quite 

 willing to allow he is ths superior man of the two. 

 Undoubtedly he has attained to the ostensible object of 

 increasing the productive powers of the soil, and 

 hence, at the first superficial glance, he should 

 surely be making a better thing of it. But this is 

 clearly a debatable point. But in agricultural 

 money-making the farmer, despite his science and 

 his machinery, and his improved system, has 

 now many dit'l ulties to contend against, that his 

 ancestors had li lie experience of. With war prices, 

 low rents, and the rest of the nation with j.lenty to do 

 without troubling themseives much about the 3)ur- 



suits of agriculture, money-making- 



might have been 



comparatively an easy trade. They let the farmer 

 alone in those days; while now, on the contrary, 

 everybody is at him. They urge him to progress ; and 

 when he has obeyed this command, and done his best, 

 round comes the .sharp agent or busy landlord to com- 

 pliment him v.'ith a rise in proportion to the improved 

 value of the farm. If he demurs to this, Mr. Smelt, the 

 rich fishmonger from Oxford-street, is positively ram- 

 pant for the offer, on any terms ; or the county banker 

 wants the place almost as much for his second son; 

 and one man comes down by the early train, and half- 

 a-dozen by the next, " having heard you were about to 

 give it up." The first great essential of modern farm- 

 ing is capital ; and as indispensable an item in making 

 money at it mu!<t be security for that capital. Mr. 

 Bond rightly i-espects a good landlord, whose very 

 character may be hereditary ; but he points in a more 

 business-like manner to the uses of a lease, or we may 

 go on to add, some well-drawn compensation covenants. 

 Everything no longer depends on the wheat crop. Even 

 with a full one the market may make it hardly worth 

 selling ; and if the producer does jmt it to home con- 

 sumption, he should have the chance of another turn in 

 sqme other way. Capital will aid liim here; but with- 

 out a well-assured position, it will bo more luck than 



