54 CAUSES OF FAILURE. 



which he examined with several experienced farmers a few 

 weeks before harvest, and they agreed in estimating the prob- 

 able yield at eighteen to twenty bushels an acre. When it 

 was ripe he began to harvest it, but after cutting seventy acres 

 he discovered that there was nothing but shrivelled husk in the 

 ear, so entirely worthless that he not only desisted from cutting 

 the rest, but set fire to all that was already cut, as well as that 

 which remained. 



While the more faint-hearted were discouraged by the un- 

 toward season, there were many instances of an opposite kind. 

 A very frequent cause of failure I found to arise from the in- 

 capacity of the settler to avail himself fully of his position. 

 The credit system tempts him to buy a large extent of land, 

 every unused acre of which becomes at once a dead weight 

 upon him. If a man buys 600 acres and has not the means 

 of cultivating more than 60, the 540 acres are a dead loss to 

 him. He has to pay either the price, or the interest of the 

 price, of this large unproductive and, to him, useless extent of 

 land. The produce of the 60 acres is called upon to bear, not 

 only its own burden, but that of the nine-tenths which are idle. 

 The lean kine thus eat up the one fat one. In prosperous sea- 

 sons so great a pull even as this can be withstood. But the 

 first strain breaks it down. 



An example of an opposite kind will show a more correct 

 system. A person last spring bought 640 acres of land in this 

 neighbourhood. He enclosed the whole of it, had it all ploughed 

 by contract, and sowed it with wheat. Not an acre of his 

 purchase was left idle. It was all sown in good order and in 

 good time, and the chances were that the whole of it would 

 succeed. As every part of the work was done by contract, and 

 would be so completed, I am enabled to show the exact cost of 

 the whole operation, and the probable return. 



