398 THE FAT OF THE LAND 
ters my family and twenty others in the colony, 
and also the stranger within the gates, and it 
does this year after year without friction, like a 
well-oiled machine. 
Not only this. Each year for the past four, it 
has given a substantial surplus to be subtracted 
from the original investment. If I live to be 
sixty-eight years of age, the farm will be my 
creditor for a considerable sum. I have bought 
no corn or oats since January, 1898. The seven- 
teen thousand bushels which I then had in my 
granary have slowly grown less, though there 
has never been a day when we could not have 
measured up seven thousand or eight thousand 
bushels. I shall probably buy again when the 
market price pleases me, for I have a horror of 
running short; but I shall not sell a bushel, though 
prices jump to the sky. 
I have seen the time when my corn and oats 
would have brought four times as much as I paid 
for them, but they were not for sale. They are 
the raw material, to be made up in my factory, 
and they are worth as much to me at twenty cents 
a bushel as at eighty cents. What would one 
think of the manager of a silk-thread factory who 
sold his raw silk, just because it had advanced 
in price? Silk thread would advance in propor- 
tion, and how does the manager know that he 
can replace his silk when needed, even at the 
advanced price ? 
When corn went to eighty cents a bushel, hogs 
