350 Our Farming. 



dealers are making a sort of a run on sugar, and retail it nearly at 

 cost ; but I buy by the barrel, all the same; it is so much less trouble, 

 and I make something, too. I avoid buying during the fruit season, 

 when prices are usually higher. My berries will be sweetened this 

 year with four and one-quarter cent granulated sugar. I am in the 

 habit of buying five barrels of flour each fall, after the weather 

 gets cool twenty sacks and they are put up in a dry, cool store 

 room, and keep perfectly the year around. There is no question 

 about this, as we have done it for many years. I get this flour at 

 wholesale at a saving of about 20 per cent., usually; five barrels 

 last us a year, and once going to the depot or mill does the job 

 up for a year. I get a couple of sacks of Graham flour at the 

 same time, and at a larger discount, usually. It will keep perfectly, 

 too. We have kept it two years. I buy a barrel of oil at once, 

 and have a galvanized iron tank in the cellar holding sixty gallons. 

 This has a pump in it to pump oil into can for use. When we 

 buy a barrel, we roll it up to cellar window, put pump into bung- 

 hole, and in ten minutes have the oil pumped out into tank in the 

 cellar. Have a two-inch tin pipe to lead from pump down to 

 tank. The whole outfit cost less than $7. With this tank there 

 is no evaporation or waste from leakage, and how much do you 

 think we make on the money paid for oil by buying in this way? 

 After sending barrel back it is about 80 per cent. Isn't that a 

 round profit? There is no question about these things. Any one 

 can buy the oil just as cheap as I, unless the freight may be more, 

 and save just as much. Let me .give the exact figures. I can 

 buy to-day, and so can you, in Cleveland, a barrel of Eocene 

 oil, a fine oil, far superior to water- white, for seven and one-half 

 cents a gallon. The freight will be twenty-five cents. The barrel 

 returned will take off one and one-half cents from the cost of oil. 

 The net cost to me is about six and one-half cents a gallon. 

 Water-white, a common oil, retails always, I think, at twelve 

 cents, and it is as cheap as they can afford to handle it. So 

 I am ahead five and one-half cents a gallon, and get a better oil, 

 and all at once, with less trouble. This is about the way it is all 

 through. There is a good deal in getting a better class of goods. 

 Now the oil costs me net about $3.25 a barrel of fifty gallons. 

 I save $2.75 over price of common oil. This is over 80 per cent, 

 on the $3.25 invested. See? In years back our merchants have 

 asked eight to ten cents a pound for rice, while I have bought 

 fifty pounds of as good rice as they ever get at five and one-half 

 cents ; about 64 per cent, on the amount paid is the profit. With 

 saleratus selling at eight cents, I have bought a dozen papers at 

 five and one-half cents. I used to pay fifteen cents for a quarter 

 pound of Coleman's best English mustard. Then bought a four- 

 pound can (a nice can to keep it in, free) for thirty cents a pound, 

 loo per cent, interest on my money. Lamp chimneys used to sell 

 here at eight to ten cents each, usually ten cents for one, or three 



