30 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



periods. If the farmer owes money permanently, he has only 

 the interest to care for, and the business ought to earn and 

 enable him to pay it easily. If it does not do this, it is not 

 worth pursuing. If it does, the payment will not embarrass 

 him, and thus, comparatively at his ease, he lays broad and 

 deep the foundations for a productive farm, which, in later 

 years, will enable him easily to pay his debts and own his capital. 

 In the case we have cited, it was not the payment of interest, 

 but of a portion of the principal, which compelled, by prema- 

 ture sales of hay, stock and timber, the virtual payment of from 

 twenty-five to fifty per cent, for the raising and use of money. 

 Still, you will say, it is hard and discouraging, if true, that suc- 

 cess in farming depends upon possession of capital. I grant 

 it, but must still adhere to my proposition — that the full 

 measure of success is not to be accorded to him who starts any 

 business without the absolute command, (either by owning or 

 permanently borrowing,) of sufficient capital. But is there no 

 remedy ? Most assuredly ; and here we are brought face to 

 face, with what seems a great mistake in the education and 

 training of our young men, and an idea developed thereby, 

 which has done and is doing great mischief in their minds. 



The error is in trying to make mature men of them too early, 

 and the false idea thus developed, is that they must do or try to 

 do everything that full-grown men attempt. In accordance with 

 this idea, they must commence business on their own account 

 at the earliest dawn of manhood, and be ready to retire and 

 enjoy themselves in entire freedom from care before they are 

 forty. Too often they recover from their delusion to find them- 

 selves bankrupt at thirty. It might afford an instructive lesson 

 to such, could we ascertain by careful inquiry what proportion 

 of men who find themselves rich at sixty were even " square 

 with the world " at thirty. I may be mistaken, but I have an 

 impression that very little of the property owned by men is 

 acquired during the decade succeeding their majority. A large 

 proportion of successful men either engage in business for them- 

 selves after they are thirty, or are forced to build up success 

 upon the ruins of a failure, and in either case profit by their 

 experience. 



And most assuredly is it the best policy to make haste slowly, 

 when delay may bring capital, in the form of accumulated earn- 



