CHAPTER XVII 



MONEY WASTED 



Why don't farmers get rich faster? Foodstuffs 

 are enormously dearer than they were ten or 

 fifteen years ago, and agriculture should be 

 booming. But is it so ? True, there are enter- 

 prising farmers making their fortunes, taking 

 more land and buying land, starting like the 

 proverbial Yankee, without a copper, and ending 

 in a halo of cash. I could name a score in my own 

 district who are doing this, and a hundred who 

 are doing well, but alas, a great many more who 

 plod along all their lives without advancing an 

 inch. They get started in a farm, and if luck goes 

 with them there they remain, or if not they 

 dwindle away, like Pharoah's lean kine. It says 

 much for farming that they do not go bankrupt 

 more often, but they generally hang on until 

 they die, when there is nothing left for their 

 family, and little for creditors. But it should not 

 be so, and what is more, it might not. Why is it? 

 There are plenty to advise. Books are written by 

 the shelf, breezy London journalists dash off 



*39 



