222 TRUE MODE OF ESTIMATION. 



merely as so much territory, while various causes have concurred 

 to depress the price of all good soils much below their real worth. 

 Whatever a farm will sell for, fixes its market value ; but by no 

 means is it a fair measure of its value as permanent farming 

 capital. 



The true value of land, and also of any permanent improve- 

 ments to land, I would estimate in the following manner : Ascer- 

 tain as nearly as possible the average clear and permanent annual 

 income, and the land is worth as much money as would securely 

 yield that amount of income, in the form of interest which may 

 be considered as worth six per cent. For example, if a field brings 

 ten dollars average value of crops to the acre, in the course of a 

 four-shift rotation, and the average expense of every kind neces- 

 sary to carry on the cultivation is also ten dollars, then the land 

 yields no clear profit, and is worth nothing. If the average clear 

 profit was but two dollars and forty cents in the term, or only sixty 

 cents a year, it would raise the value of the land to ten dollars ; 

 and if six dollars could be made annually, clear of all expense, it 

 is equally certain that one hundred dollars would be the fair value 

 of the acre. Yet if lands of precisely these rates of profit were 

 offered for sale at this time, the poorest would probably sell for 

 four dollars, and the richest for less than twenty dollars. In like 

 manner, if any field, that paid the expense of cultivation before, 

 has its average annual net product increased six dollars for each 

 acre, by some permanent improvement, the value thereby added to 

 the field is one hundred dollars the acre, without regard to its for- 

 mer worth. Let the cost and value of marling be compared by 

 this rule, and it will be found that the capital laid out in that mode 

 of improvement will seldom return an annual interest of less than 

 twenty per cent. that it will more often reach to forty and in 

 very many cases will exceed one hundred per cent, of annual and 

 permanent interest on the investment, or total cost of the marling. 

 The application of this rule for^ the valuation of such improve- 

 ments will raise them to so large an amount, that the magnitude 

 of the sum may be deemed a sufficient contradiction of my esti- 

 mates. But before this mode of estimating values is rejected, 

 merely for the supposed absurdity of an acid soil being considered 

 as raised from one dollar, or nothing, to thirty dollars, or more, 

 per acre, by a single marling, let it at least be examined, and if 

 erroneous, its fallacy exposed. 



If the reader will accompany me through some detailed estimates 

 of values, and arithmetical calculations, in regard to the grounds 

 of which we cannot differ, the truth of the results which I claim 

 will be made manifest, however startling and monstrous they may 

 appear to some persons at first glance. 



Assuming as sound and unquestionable the grounds for estimat- 



