ESTABLISHED -I ae 

 %HE OLDEST BEL-PAPER -AMER 



I*at>lish&d H'^eelclyv at ^l.OO per annum. 



Samjyl& Copj' sent on ^XjypUc'ation, 



36th Year. 



CHICAGO, ILL., FEB. 13, 1896. 



No. 7. 



.Selling Honey on Commission — Farming. 



BY EMERSON T. ABBOTT. 



Let me give the bee-keepers who read the American Bee 

 Journal a hint on the subject of selling honey on commission. 



The entire commission business is founded on a false 

 basis, and is contrary to sound business principles. Do not 

 ship honey, or anythinq else, to (nil/ one to be sold on commis- 

 sion, is my advice. Think of employing a man to act as your 

 agent, whom you have never seen, about whose business push 

 and energy you know very little, and of whose facilities for 

 placing goods you knowcomparatively nothing ! This is surely 

 not very sound business. You would not hire a hand to work 

 on your farm or in your apiary under your direct supervision 

 in this loose way. If merchants have facilities for selling 

 honey, they know it. Then let them buy honey and pay a 

 fixed sum for it, and it will be their own business when they 

 sell it, how much they get for it, etc. 



Did you ever think of the fact that you are loaning the 

 man to whom you ship your honey that much capital to do 

 business on ? He does the business on your capital, takes out 

 his pay, and gives you what is left. How many of you would 

 loan an entire stranger that amount of money without any 

 security ? Not one. Why, then, furnish these men capital on 

 which to transact business ? 



The commission business, like the miscellaneous credit 

 business, is sure to prove very unsatisfactory in the end, and I 

 am not sure but it should prove so to those who are so unbusi- 

 nesslike as to encourage this method of disposing of goods. 

 Most commission men are honest and honorable, in my opin- 

 ion, but they are all doing business on a false basis. No man 

 could buy (?) — get anything of me in that way. Sell for cash 

 and get cash, and you will have no trouble about returns. 



IS FARMING DRUDGERY ? 



On page 2, Mr. Thompson talks of the "constant round 

 of work which is drudgery just because it is not specialty," 

 and says it stultifies the minds of forty families out of fifty so 

 that they cannot "regard the care of bees in any other light 

 than that which one regards milking, cleaning stables or 

 baking bread." Well, why should they? It is no more de- 

 grading to milk a cow or clean out a stable than it is to care 

 for a colony of bees, or write a poem, for that matter. Any 

 work can be made drudgery, and the most disagreeable work 

 may become a certain source of enjoyment, if one will look 

 at it in the right light. It is no more necessary to rise at un- 

 reasonable hours to succeed as a farmer or bee-keeper than it 

 is to succeed as a lawyer or doctor. If farm life is so stulti- 

 fying to man's intellectual life, why is it that some of our best 

 and ablest men come from the farm ? There is an intelligent 

 way to milk a cow, clean a stable, hen-house or horse, as well 

 as to make a loaf of bread. There is an education, too, in all 



of this, if one only knows how to get it out. 1 know just what 

 I am talking about, for I grew up on a farm, and have not 

 gotten beyond cleaning my own hen-house, stable and horse 

 yet, and the only reason I do not milk is, I do not have room 

 for the cows. I find recreation in all of these things, and ed- 

 ucation, too; and, if it were not for them, I should soon have 

 to cease all intellectual work. No, sir ; no necessary work is 

 drudgery unless we make it so. I commend to all who think 

 the contrary the following, said to have been written by Mrs. 

 Garfield to her husband : 



"I am glad to tell you that, out of all the toil and disap- 

 pointments of the summer just ended, I have risen up to a 



Mr. Edimn Bevins, Leon, Iowa. — See page 101. 



victory. I read something like this the other day : ' There is 

 no healthy thought without labor, and thought makes the 

 labor happy.' Perhaps this is the way I have been able to 

 climb up higher. It came to me one uiorning when I was 

 making bread. I said to myself : ' Here I am, compelled by an 

 inevitable necessity to make our bread this summer. Why not 

 consider it a pleasant occupation, and make it so by trying to 

 see what perfect bread I can make ?' It seemed like an in- 

 spiration, and the whole of life grew brighter. The very sun- 

 shine seemed flowing down through my spirit into the white 

 loaves ; and now I believe my table is furnished with better 

 bread than ever before. And this truth, old as creation, seems 

 just now to have become fully mine — that I need not be the 

 shirking slave of toil, but its regal master, making whatever I 

 do yield its best fruits." 



