198 THE FARMER AS A BUSINESS MAN. 



decide for himself as to his deahngs with tlie tax-gatherer in 

 this matter, so far as he can control them. 



I live on a farm, of which I cultivate about thirty acres. 

 I am four miles from a railroad station, and the road is a 

 mountain grade, rising, upon the average, something over 

 three hundred feet to the mile. As near as I can estimate, the 

 hauling in connection with my farm is equivalent to some- 

 thing like fifty tons per annum, hauled between the farm and 

 the station, of which something less than two-thirds will be 

 down-hill. That is equivalent to two hundred tons hauled one 

 mile. When I hire hauliug done, I pay $1.00 per ton from my 

 house to the station, and $2.50 per ton from the station to my 

 house. This is equivalent to twenty-five cents and sixty-three 

 cents per ton per mile, respectively, or an average of about 

 thirty-seven cents per ton per mile. Two hundred ton miles, 

 at thirty-seven cents, makes $74 per year which my hauling 

 would cost me, provided that I could always take full loads. 

 This, however, I can not do. Farming on a small scale, my 

 team must make many journeys half loaded, or less. It is also 

 seldom possible to load both ways, which would make a differ- 

 ence. But I go to the city every week, and, while I usually 

 walk down the mountain, I prefer to have horses take me 

 back, so that, with other necessary personal travel of the 

 family, I must send a team to the station at least seventy -five 

 times a year. When the roads are good, one horse can make 

 these trips. When bad, it requires two horses. The road is a 

 fairly good mountain grade, as grades run, but could be greatly 

 improved. If it were a level road, its capacity per horse-power 

 could be trebled by sufficient expenditure, but it is obvious that, 

 when two-thirds of the haul is down-hill, that can not be done 

 on a mountain road. The road serves about thirty families, 

 many of whom ship their produce in a less concentrated form 

 than mine, and so have a correspondingly larger tonnage. 

 Most of my neighbors have larger acreage in cultivation than 

 I. I suppose that three hundred ton-miles each for the thirty 

 families would be a fair average, which would give a total of 

 9,000 ton-miles, of which 6,000 would be down-hill. This, at 

 twenty-five cents and sixty-three cents per ton, would give 



