162 HAPPY HOLLOW FARM 



farmers at work through all those years grow- 

 ing all that corn; and that's the happy-go- 

 lucky way they have of keeping no accounts 

 with their business, so that they never know 

 how they stand in a profit and loss reckoning 

 with any crop. When the experts publish 

 their estimates, along in the fall, it's so very 

 easy to say: "My, but we're prosperous this 

 year! The farmers have raised $10,000,000,000 

 worth of stuff!" But what of it? That's only 

 about $800 apiece for the farmers; and out of 

 that they must pay the whole year's cost of 

 running their business. A bumper wheat crop 

 is needed every year for paying interest on the 

 farmers' debts not the profit on that crop, 

 mind you, but the gross price. The cost of 

 producing that wheat the farmers have to pay 

 in some other way. A bumper corn crop, sold 

 at average farm price, gives the farmers of the 

 nation only $100 a head in gross returns. The 

 magnificence of totals that run up into billions 

 may be mighty misleading. 



I'm not setting out to be cheerless in telling 

 the farmer's story in this way; I'm just trying 

 to tell you how our minds worked in figuring 

 out our theory for the management of our own 

 farm. As I've said before, we had it settled 



