132 AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



held for speculative purposes. The owners sold 

 it many times but as it could not be stored in 

 Chicago the difference in price between the first 

 day of the month and the last, was paid when the 

 corn was resold. If a part of the corn was really 

 wanted in Chicago it could be shelled and deliv- 

 ered in less than a week. By the end of harvest in 

 1864 corn had advanced to twenty cents per 

 bushel; at the present time the papers are quoting 

 corn in Chicago at sixty-five cents which price 

 gives the most successful raiser of it possibly ten 

 to fifteen cents per bushel, on the average, clear 

 profit. I had left some cribs of corn in Indiana 

 which I ordered shelled and marketed in the fall 

 of 1863; the returns gave me eighteen cents per 

 bushel net, while it had cost me between thirty and 

 fifty cents to raise that corn! 



In the fall of that year I had about thirty acres 

 of corn ready to harvest from the rented forty 

 acres near Mount Pleasant, Iowa. If you ask 

 why I raised corn, my answer is: because every- 

 body else did and because of all farm crops in that 

 region it was the surest, the most easily raised and 

 harvested. A farmer without capital and without 

 harvesting implements was compelled to take the 

 direction of least resistance. I suppose I must 



