33^ EigJit Dollars aji Acre. 



EIGHT DOLLARS AN ACRE. 



The contrast between successful horticulture and what is accepted as 

 successful farming seems to involve the most extraordinary contradictions. 

 Success may be regarded as an arbitrary term ; a sort of indefinite quantity, 

 a certain measure of which is in one case accepted as positive abundance, 

 and in another as an equally positive discouragement. It really means 

 that annual gain which may be sufficient to satisfy the ambition of both 

 farmer and fruit-grower, no matter how many dollars it may in either case 

 amount to. The former is educated to be content with moderate profit 

 from a hundred acres : the latter is dissatisfied unless he realizes thrice as 

 much from a tenth of the same area. It is, moreover, a relative term. 

 With the farmer, it is probably the disposition to be satisfied with mod- 

 erate gains that really constitutes what he would call success. Hence there 

 are striking contrasts between the two pursuits. Looking over a recent 

 agricultural paper, I came upon the following paragraph from the pen of a 

 Vermont farmer : — 



" My farm consists of a hundred and twenty-five acres, and had been 

 let for many years, and was generally considered run out. Sales of prod- 

 uce and stock amounted to $1,699.88. The increase of stock was enough 

 to balance the sales. Expenses of all kinds, together with $300 which I 

 charge for my own work, $967.00 ; leaving a balance for profit of $732.68. 

 This, I think, is better than money at six per cent, and answers the ques- 

 tion as to whether farming is profitable." 



Now, I doubt not there may be farmers in New Jersey who scratch over 

 the same number of acres with no better success than this ; though, so far, 

 they have escaped my observation, having never gone in search of such. 

 But here a gain of less than eight dollars an acre is quoted as settling the 

 question that farming is profitable, and better than money at six per cent. 

 A statement like this will astonish all within the fruit-producing sections 

 of this State. The poverty of the return is as discouraging to us as the 

 cheerful complacency of the writer is delightful. He is not only contented, 

 but jubilant, — jubilant over eight dollars an acre. But that modicum is to 

 him a success ; and seeing that his wants are so circumscribed, and his 

 ambition so fully accomplished, I would leave him " alone in his glory." 



