Renee eae 
LOOKING BACKWARD 399 
sold for $8.25 a hundred, and my twenty-cent 
corn made pork just as fast as eighty-cent corn 
would have done, and a great deal cheaper. 
Once I sold some timothy hay, but it was to 
‘discount the season,” just as I bought grain. 
On July 18, 1901, a tremendous rain and wind 
storm beat down about forty acres of oats be- 
yond recovery. The next day my mowing ma- 
chines, working against the grain, commenced 
cutting it for hay. Before it was half cut, I sold 
to a livery-stable keeper in Exeter fifty tons of 
bright timothy for $600. The storm brought. me 
no loss, for the horses did quite as well on the 
oat hay as they ever had done on timothy, and 
$600 more than paid for the loss of the grain. 
During the first three years of my experiment 
hogs were very low, — lower, indeed, than at any 
other period for forty years. It was not until 
1899 that prices began to improve. During that 
year my sales averaged $4.50 a hundred. In 
1900 the average was $5.25, in 1901 it was $6.10, 
and in 1902 it was just $7. It will be readily 
appreciated that there is more profit in pork at 
seven cents a pound than at three and a half cents; 
but how much more is beyond me, for it cost no 
more to get my swine to market last year than 
it did in 1896. I charge each hog $1 for bran 
and shorts; this is all the ready money I pay 
out for him. If he weighs three hundred pounds 
(a few do), he is worth $10.50 at $3.50 a hundred, 
or $21 at $7 a hundred; and it is a great deal 
