FARMING AS A BUSINESS. 29 



expenses to provide for, and liis payments, and these must all 

 come out of his products. He tugs and sweats and studies to 

 save, but his want of money is ever pressing. He is obliged to 

 sell a portion of his hay to raise money. Then he reduces his 

 cattle in number, to make up further possible deficiencies, and 

 because he has not hay for them, and perhaps finally makes up 

 in full the needed sum, by selling wood and timber which is 

 growing and increasing rapidly in value. 



In the spring he finds he has lived through the year and met 

 his payments, but he also finds that selling his hay, stock and 

 growing timber, was equivalent to paying a ruinous rate of' 

 interest for his money. He finds that could he have retained 

 his hay and cattle and converted the former into beef and milk, 

 he would have netted nearly twice as much for it, as he actually 

 received and he would have had besides, a plentiful stock of 

 manure, with which to keep up the productive capacity of his 

 farm. He also estimates tbat the rapidly growing timber, cut 

 to meet his payments, would have nearly doubled its value in 

 three years. Thus his second year is started, with the same 

 thing to be done again which so severely taxed his resources, 

 and under circumstances not as favorable as at first ; and so 

 on ; there is no need to follow him further. The story of his 

 toils, his struggles, his privations, are better known possibly to 

 many of you than to me. For there are very few New England 

 farmers whose lives have not been a realization of the same 

 story told over and over again, of hard work and severe 

 economy and labor but poorly requited. Insufficient capital is 

 very largely at the bottom of this. A pressing need of money, 

 too often chronic, and a consequent necessity for skinning the 

 farm to raise it, tells the sad story of impoverished lands and 

 diminished products. 



A word here, explanatory of a seeming inconsistency, may 

 not be amiss. I have advised borrowing capital in preference to 

 going without it ; and it may be said that owing for one's farm 

 is but borrowing capital. This is true ; but a debt for money 

 borrowed permanently — that is, with no immediate necessity for 

 paying the principal or any part of it, so long as the interest is 

 duly cared for, is a very different thing from the mere tempo- 

 rary indebtedness of one who buys a farm or mercluindise, 

 agreeing to pay at a fixed time, or contracts to pay at stated 



