HAPPY HOLLOW FARM 159 



If at the beginning of our work the farm 

 had been in condition for the production of 

 maximum crops of the field staples, we 

 wouldn't have grown such crops for direct sale. 

 Although we had no practical experience to 

 guide us, years of study of the farming history 

 of the northern prairie country had taught us 

 one point in farm policy, a point we might not 

 have learned in centuries of personal experi- 

 ence on any particular farm. 



We had lived in Nebraska through the time 

 when her farmers and the farmers of all the 

 states around were grain-growers, producing 

 grains for market. We had been right on the 

 ground while those farmers as individuals and 

 in communities, by counties and whole com- 

 monwealths, had grown poorer and poorer 

 year by year at that business. We had seen 

 wide districts, each an empire in itself, loaded 

 with accumulating debt, mortgaged to the 

 limit, and then abandoned. There was just 

 one good reason. The farmers gave many, but 

 they all came to the same thing in the end: 

 Grain-growing couldn't be made to pay. And 

 by the same token, growing grain for market, 

 on the average showing made by all the farms 

 of the United States, doesn't pay to-day. It 



