214 THE BUSINESS OF FARMING 



plants as alfalfa, sweet clover, sorghum, soy beans, 

 cow peas, kafir, and erect the silo for the better 

 utilization of corn and cornstalks, a by-product 

 heretofore wasted and destroyed. For when these 

 methods of farm procedure obtain upon our 

 farms, then the production of live stock becomes 

 a most profitable business, and farmers will en- 

 gage in it because there is money in the business 

 of stock raising under such conditions. When 

 farm prejudices are broken down and the farmer 

 can be made to see that by a certain line of pro- 

 cedure money can be made out of stock raising, 

 then he will engage in it to the extent of his capital, 

 and here we must realize that while it is an estab- 

 lished fact that the successful farming operations 

 have for their corner-stone a large number of ani- 

 mals used for human food, yet to do even this re- 

 quires capital to buy or raise the animals, to secure 

 and maintain proper equipment for their care, and 

 the securing of their feed in the most economical 

 manner. And to find so large a number of farms 

 without their proper quota of live stock, is be- 

 cause their owners lack sufficient capital and are 

 not in position to secure the same, and their farms 

 are not so farmed that feed for stock is produced 

 in sufficient amount to feed any quantity of stock, 

 for we must remember that it takes twelve pounds 

 of feed to produce a pound of beef, and four 

 pou-nds of feed to produce one pound of pork. 



Statistics show that in the mercantile world a 

 large, if not the largest number, of failures are the 

 result of insufficient capital, and the author be- 

 lieves that if statistics could be gathered as to the 

 causes of failures in farm operations, it would 



