POTATO CULTURE. 145 



ticed for many years, and found to be the easiest way for me 

 to make a good living, with the least worry, from my farm, 

 and I find it the pleasantest way too. There is a pleasure 

 about doing one's very best, as the specialist has a chance to 

 do, and the profits from such work are larger. Could any 

 man living support a medium-sized family, and live com- 

 fortably, pay his hired help liberally, and all other running 

 expenses, and get ahead over a thousand dollars a year, 

 actual cash saved, from 35 acres of plow land and 19 acres of 

 poor pasture, by following 'ordinary mixed farming? I 

 couldn't. I could hardly live, let alone getting ahead any. 

 Thus I was forced to go into farming of a different character, 

 or be poor all my life. 



But I would not have you think that the specialty of itself 

 will ever help you any. It will not. It only gives you the 

 opportunity to excel to do your level best in one particu- 

 lar direction. Nor would I have you think that potato- 

 growing is any better specialty than many others. It is not. 

 An average crop of potatoes pays no better than an average 

 crop of wheat or corn, for a term of years. If it did, every 

 one would rush into the business and bring the price down. 

 It is the big crop of potatoes or corn or wheat, or the big 

 yield of milk, that pays. It does not make so much differ- 

 ence what the crop is, only so it suits your taste, soil, mar- 

 kets, and other local circumstances. 



With 10 acres of land rightly situated, I think I could get 

 quite independent by growing strawberries, like my friend 

 M. Crawford. Again, I might keep a dairy on 50 or 100 

 acres, and make choice butter, and get $100 from a cow, as 

 does C. P. Goodrich, of Wisconsin. 



I think I speak within bounds when I say that the potato- 

 specialist, who has soil and markets favorable, can, after he 

 has had a reasonable amount of experience, make twice as 

 much money out of the crop as the average farmer does who 

 follows mixed farming and raises two or three acres each 

 year. Then why shouldn't he do it, and buy other things he 



