SELLING THE BY-PRODUCT 175 



has been, in wrought iron, a conventional tulip 

 with a curved stem. 



Other metals besides iron pewter, aluminum, 

 copper, brass, and silver are all amenable to cot- 

 tage industry. I have a neighbor who works in 

 all of them. Leather is another by-product of the 

 farm that, once a practical home method of tan- 

 ning is devised, can be put to infinite uses. And, 

 of course, before all these there is wood. It has 

 this great attraction: all the modern power tools 

 for woodworking have been cut down to house- 

 hold or home-farm size and price. With a mini- 

 mum capital outlay at the mail-order house one 

 can install a plant that will work up a raw log 

 into finished cabinet-quality material. 



Now that we are so far afield from home-use 

 farming let us take a step further and glance at 

 commercial farming. For while cottage industry is 

 nice for the long winter evenings, commercial 

 farming is the obvious next logical step after farm- 

 ing for home-use. Before telling why I shall prob- 

 ably never take it, let me first say it is a mystery 

 to me why the belief persists that commercial 

 farming cannot or will not pay. To be sure, it 

 would be hard to succeed in any business in which, 

 as on the farm, it is customary to buy at retail and 

 sell at wholesale. Yet it is not this anomaly that 

 causes most farm failures: it is lack of capital. 

 Farming takes a lot of it more than any other 



