THE FAT OF THE LAND 



ters my family and twenty others in the colony, 

 and also the stranger within the gates, and it 

 does this year after year without friction, like a 

 well-oiled machine. 



Not only this. Each year for the past four, it 

 has given a substantial surplus to be subtracted 

 from the original investment. If I live to be 

 sixty-eight years of age, the farm will be my 

 creditor for a considerable sum. I have bought 

 no corn or oats since January, 1898. The seven- 

 teen thousand bushels which I then had in my 

 granary have slowly grown less, though there 

 has never been a day when we could not have 

 measured up seven thousand or eight thousand 

 bushels. I shall probably buy again when the 

 market price pleases me, for I have a horror of 

 running short; but I shall not sell a bushel, though 

 prices jump to the sky. 



I have seen the time when my corn and oats 

 would have brought four times as much as I paid 

 for them, but they were not for sale. They are 

 the raw material, to be made up in my factory, 

 and they are worth as much to me at twenty cents 

 a bushel as at eighty cents. What would one 

 think of the manager of a silk-thread factory who 

 sold his raw silk, just because it had advanced 

 in price ? Silk thread would advance in propor- 

 tion, and how does the manager know that he 

 can replace his silk when needed, even at the 

 advanced price ? 



When corn went to eighty cents a bushel, hogs 



