107 



the business end of it. On the other hand, if you wanted 

 to go on that farm and live yourself and you wanted to have 

 a better home than you needed, say you put up a house that 

 cost $2,000 to build, a livable house, for a manager to live in, 

 a good, comfortable place, that might fairly be charged 

 against business. But suppose you got out and built a 

 $10,000 house on that farm, where you might have only fifty 

 acres, it ivsn't fair to charge all of that in that way. Part 

 of it is home value, because you have other sources of income 

 and the other part is the business value. I thinL that in gen- 

 eral where you have no other source of income than your 

 farm the home on it ought not to be too expensive, because 

 the farm has got to carry you. You have got to keep the 

 thing more or less of a business proposition, and that is what 

 most of our farms are, or should be, on a business basis. If 

 we should start any year on my farm and couldn't make 

 what I thought was a reasonable business investment, therv^ 

 would be something happen very quickly. This crop or 

 that crop must pay; if it don't, what is the trouble? If you 

 can fix it, all right; if you can't, throw it out. I told you, I 

 threw out two crops because I didn't see any money in them. 

 So that everything we put into that farm, we add to the in- 

 vesment. It is an invesment that has got to pay interest 

 and I think we ought to put that charge on our farm first 

 and stick to it, because that is the basis of all other prosper- 

 ity. We can't have good roads and good schools and good 

 churches and bathrooms in the house and all sorts of conven- 

 iences unless we can make our business return the money 

 to pay, or unless we happen to be fortunate enough to have 

 a large income outside ; and even then it isn 't good business, 

 because the farm must pay. The basis of rural prosperity is 

 the return on the investment or the business. 



MR. RICHARDS OF MARSHFIELD. From Western 



New York, where the gentleman comes from, I believe, we 



get magazines, "The Fruit Grower," and so forth, that tell 



us they make from $400 to $500 an acre on raising apples. 



Now, I have an orchard of about six or seven acres, a mod- 



