ADVOCATE AND GUIDE. 



Wm. H. Merrick, Hastings: 



"Retired farmer, owns well improved 160-acre farm, Hastings Town- 

 ship, within easy hauling distance of market. Says it has heretofore 

 been impossible to get a fair interest on capital invested in his farm ex- 

 cept at the expense of fertility and improvements, but for the past two 

 years it has been even worse. There is no hired help and it is difficult 



to get or to keep tenants. He has three sons, but as they grew to man- 

 hood, they became dissatisfied and left him. After the oldest had gone, 

 he turned the farm to the next oldest on shares, he (the father) moving 

 into town, where he has remained ever since. After a few years' expe- 



Irience this son left, as did his youngest son who succeeded him on the 

 place. Now all sons are away for good, and tenants come and go, the 

 higher wages and shorter hours tempting them to leave for the cities. 

 Nothing now, Mr. Merrick says, seems to work out well for the farmer, 

 either the man that furnishes the labor or the man that furnishes the 

 farm gets left ; very often both do. Says no farm help to be had. Young 

 men get more wages in town, and with $100 they can buy furniture 

 enough to get married. They go to work there at much better wages 

 than on a farm, have a steady job, and only a trifling investment of 

 money necessary. To own a farm or even run a farm under the same 

 circumstances is hopeless. They can't get one horse with $100, while 

 to the boy ambitious to have a farm of his own, it means that without 

 financial help he must do away with the idea of getting married, for the 

 land and equipment for farming cost too much. In addition to the cost 

 of land, he must expend a minimum of $2,000 for stock and machinery 

 to get a fair start. It is getting increasingly difficult, he says, for farm- 

 ers to keep their own boys on the farm, and that the old men are growing 

 scarce on farms ; that farm auctions in his neighborhood average three 

 a week, taking up much of the farmers' time, caused by farmers retiring, 

 selling out or renting, or going out of the milk business or general farm- 

 ing and going into hay. Other reasons : in debt or in need of ready 

 money, or short of feed in fall or seed in spring. He says that the auc- 

 tions are an economic loss to the community, increasing the overhead 

 cost of farming and compelling farmers in many instances to get along 

 with less machinery than they should have, or pay more to replace what 

 they want, which, together with the failing health of the farmer and 

 their sons leaving for the city and no help available, is a great injury to 

 general farm production." 



James Mathews, Doster: 



"Has lived in the neighborhood since childhood, when his parents 

 settled there on a farm. Age 64. He has owned and occupied his farm 

 of 80 acres since his marriage in his early manhood. Does general farm- 



