INDEPENDENCE WITHIN TEN YEARS 337 



CHAPTER X. 



How TO BECOME A HOUSEHOLDER WITH TWENTY TENANTS IN 



YOUR EMPLOY, STARTING WITH A CAPITAL OF 



Two THOUSAND DOLLARS. 



NEW YORK CITY is to-day surrounded by a community of 

 rich and independent farmers, close questioning of whom 

 will develop the fact that the onion patch and the corn and potato 

 field did not produce all their riches, unless exceptionally located as 

 to the best markets and under most favorable labor conditions. 



Improved railroad facilities and trolleys bring the business 

 man and the city clerk to the farmer, and are sometimes his main 

 source of wealth. In other words, take heed to the object lesson 

 taught by the farmer, let a man keep his clerkship in town and at 

 the same time buy a farm, never a village lot that, aside from the 

 faint prospect of business inroads, will be worth no more in ten 

 years than it is the day of the purchase, and generally less. Let 

 him see to it that his acres front some roadway that within five 

 years will be traversed by trolleys. In from five to ten years at least 

 twenty tenants will be living on his land and their mortgages will 

 be in his safety box, while he will be motoring or cruising, with just 

 enough work in the laying out of his property to avoid ennui and 

 the constant leisure so detrimental to the average man. 



My experience is that of many another who has taken the 

 trouble to investigate. The scope of operations, thanks to automobile 

 and trolley, is being so extended that there are many opportunities 

 for large profit to-day for those of very moderate means. For 

 example, I know of a section within an hour of New York, where in 

 a dozen years property has advanced not in one, but hundreds of 

 instances over one thousand per cent., without expenditure on the 

 part of the purchaser except an interest charge of five per cent, per 

 annum and taxes. Even such unusual conditions as I herein describe 

 have a bearing on my general statement. 



Two extreme instances yet absolutely correct as to increase in 

 value may be given from a score that I could name: 



Less than twenty-five years ago a property within thirty-five 

 miles of New York City was offered me for thirty-four thousand 

 dollars that is to-day worth and would easily bring half a million 

 dollars, and that without a dollar of improvement. Another property 

 purchased at that time for less than a thousand dollars is now con- 

 servatively estimated at twenty thousand, property on which a sav- 

 ings banks would readily loan ten thousand dollars at five per cent. 



