24 CAMPBELJL'S SOIL CULTURE MANUAL 



CHAPTER IV. 



BASIS OF PROSPERITY. 



Prosperity is a sort of endless chain. The dollar goes 

 round on a debt-paying tour and everybody is happy. If 

 the dollar stops somewhere along the line then everybody 

 is gloomy. 



If you set out to explain this and devise a chain for 

 the dollar to follow in its rounds, you will invariably in- 

 clude the farmer somewhere in the circle. If you begin 

 with the grocer then you will go on to the miller or the 

 baker or the packer, and soon back to the farmer. You 

 may begin with the lawyer and his fee in court, or the 

 minister and the contribution box, or start down in the 

 "pit" of the stock exchange where gambling goes on daily 

 -but you will always follow back to the farmer if you 

 go long enough. 



The farmer himself is a consumer as well as a producer. 

 The farmer is always buying something. He seldom 

 hoards up the money he gets from his sales of grain or 

 steers. The farmer is a consumer of manufactured goods, 

 and when he has money in abundance he buys freely of 

 the things which are made in factories. Finally the 

 circle is completed, and the money comes back to him 

 in purchase of more of the farm products. 



If the farmer is prosperous then he is a buyer. But 

 the farmer more than any other person on earth can get 

 along fairly well for a time without any general buying 

 if he is compelled to do so. He can and does economize 



