106 HOW TO GET A FARM, 



and enter into possession. Let no want of capital 

 operate as a discouragement, but go resolutely to 

 work. Such beginners should avoid great farms. 

 Far better to begin with thirty or fifty acres, pay 

 for that, and then, if more land be indispensable to 

 comfort, enlarge the boundary. 



There are two other classes of owners on whose 

 hands farm property hangs either lightly or with 

 oppressive weight. In all the large cities there is 

 maintained an active trading business, in which 

 houses, lots, land, merchandise, and patent-rights, 

 are passed rapidly from hand to hand. Money is 

 sometimes mentioned, but rarely paid the whole 

 transaction is one of barter. One who will take the 

 pains to look over the registers kept by these city 

 dealers, in which are entered the properties they 

 have for sale or barter, will be astonished at the ex 

 tent and variety of the collection. There is almost 

 every thing that anybody can desire houses, lots, 

 farms, mills, factories, water powers, wild land, some 

 of which is within an hour s ride of a great cash 

 market, and others two thousand miles away. Many 

 of the farms have been taken in barter by city 

 owners, whose sole business it is to get rid of them 

 as quickly as they bought them. In some cases 

 money is wanted, in others it is not, the barter being 

 repeated by exchanging the farm for something con 

 sidered more salable. Thus the barter is kept mov 

 ing until some commodity turns up which can be 

 converted into money. 



I saw at one of these agencies, in Philadelphia, a 

 tolerably good farm sold in exchange for a half in- 



