ADVOCATE AND GUIDE. 95 



cows. Can't get hired help, and his son has gone to the city, so he and 

 his wife are doing all the work and raise just enough to pay their taxes 

 and to buy the necessities and manage to get along. Money can be 

 made buying and selling farms, but not in working farms ; besides, if 

 you work a farm and keep it up, your taxes are two or three times as 

 much as they will be if you let it run down. Repairs and tools have gone 

 out of sight in price, plow points now cost $1.25 each and mould boards 

 $9.00, all a whole plow cost three or four years ago. It is risky to try 

 to put in crops with everything so high and expect to get your money 

 back, so he is doing less cropping and claims most farmers are doing the 

 same, mentioning his neighbors, amongst others, Albert Bird, who has 

 a fine farm of 160 acres and formerly did 'extensive farming, now farms 

 only 25 acres and leaves the balance idle ; and David Owen, who has 

 left his farm, well improved, 105 acres, untilled, and works in a Detroit 

 factory, coming home Saturday nights." 



Frank Clark, Banker, Belleville: 



"He said that farming viewed from a business standpoint at present 

 is not attractive. The farmer, however, is cautious and conservative, 

 and is reducing his operations, dispensing with hired labor and producing 

 less, and is in that way managing to get along, if he is satisfied with the 

 small returns. When he is not, he quits farming for something else ; 

 usually goes to work in the city factories. Regulating the price of wheat 

 has reduced the acreage of wheat and increased the acreage of rye, 

 which now pays better. He says quite a business is being done in the 

 sale of unworked or run-down farms by city real estate agents, but it is 

 principally the trading of equities, trading a mortgaged house in the 

 city for a mortgaged farm in the country, in both cases the owner being 

 a city working man who knows nothing about farming. A short expe- 

 rience on the farm causes him to list it with the same real estate man 

 from whom he bought, who sells it, or trades it to another man in the 

 city who thinks there is big money in farming on account of the high 

 price of food products. So often the same farm is sold two or three 

 times in a year. Very seldom does a purchaser remain long on these 

 farms, for the most experienced farmer would find it extremely difficult 

 to make a living on such farms." 



Walter Bros., Drovers: 



"Says : Ten years ago they shipped from one to four carloads of live 

 stock a week ; now they scarcely average one a week. They are the 

 only buyers in the neighborhood now, and to get one car a week must 

 drive three or four times as many miles, adding new territory. There 

 are no sheep left. Hogs have decreased more than half. Cattle at 



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