1864. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



245 



should be of boards. Chaff, when allowed to get 

 among the wool, is worse than hay seed, and great- 

 ly impairs the value. We hope to live to see the 

 day when the farmer will learn that it is his bene- 

 fit to bring his wool as clean to market as any oth- 

 er of his farm produce. T yko. 



Fur the New England Farmer. 



FARMING THE COUNTRY'S MAIN" STAY 

 — "ECONOMY EVERYTHING." 



Mr. Editor : — The old adage, "facts are stub- 

 born things," holds as good as ever. How many 

 times has the question been put, is farming profi- 

 table? Let facts decide without regard to the 

 cost of producing a bushel of corn, but take the 

 business as a whole. We can run the expense of 

 carrying on a farm to any amount above the in- 

 come, where economy is wanting, but that don't 

 prove that farming is a bad business. The facts 

 are, that prosperity at farming depends, like all 

 other business, wholly upon the manner in which 

 the business is conducted. If the farmer, like 

 many men in other occupations, must smoke ex- 

 pensive cigars, drink the "best of liquors," with 

 other corresponding requisites, he would soon be 

 admonished that he had mistaken his calling. 

 Now what makes the difference between the farm- 

 ing population and inhabitants of villages ? It is 

 coerced economy : the farmer and the villager 

 have naturally the same propensities, the farmer's 

 capital is land ; his income is tardy, his money 

 comes in small sums at uncertain times, he dreads 

 infringing upon his capital and that is what saves 

 him. On the other hand, the villager's capital is 

 his trade, which directly produces him cash, in- 

 stead of a crop for the market. 



It is frequently the case that those who earn 

 the most are the greatest delinquents, and most 

 apt to wrong their creditors. Those who receive 

 the highest wages, as well as those who receive 

 salaries, are as apt to fall short as those who re- 

 ceive but moderate pay ; they commence upon a 

 higher grade of living and, to carry it out, are 

 often under greater perplexity than those who 

 make less pretensions. 



A few years ago I was conversing with a very 

 respectable and worthy clergyman, whose salary 

 now would be considered very small. Among 

 other talk, I remarked that we had to pay some 

 regard to economy to steer through the world like 

 honest men, and not disgrace oui selves by paying 

 our honest debts by the laws of chancery. He re- 

 plied with emphasis, "economy is everything." That 

 clergyman's note at that time was good for $10,- 

 000. That is the true idea ; economy is what sus- 

 tains the farming interest. If farmers were to 

 drink expensive liquors and smoke Havanas dai- 

 ly, and follow other fashionable habits which are 

 indulged in by respectable merchants and receiv- 

 ers of salaries, how long would it take the farmer 

 to cancel a mortgage ? The industrious, econom- 

 ical farmer has the advantage of laboring men in 

 manufacturing villages in many respects. Every 

 farm has some kind of a tenement attached to it 

 which answers to shelter the occupant, which is 

 rented or sold with the land and draws no extra 

 pay as rent ; then the little trifling things that 

 grow about every farmer's buildings, of the vege- 

 table kind, including cultivated and fruits of spon- 

 taneous growth, which if purchased, take off the 

 small paper, and if not, must dispense with some 



of the greatest luxuries of the season — the berry 

 pies. 



We can make no rational estimate of the in- 

 come of the farm from the cost of any one or two 

 individual articles of produce, from a year or two 

 in experimenting, but we must be governed by 

 the product of the farm as a whole. At the year's 

 end, if the farmer finds himself as well, or better 

 off than when he began the year, he may consid- 

 er himself more fortunate than the average of the 

 working world. The proprietor of a small farm 

 of 80 or 100 acres of good land, is the best off, if 

 he would be contented. Large farming establish- 

 ments require a high degree of skill, good calcu- 

 lation, economy and unceasing care in the man- 

 ager, or errors may happen to defeat his expecta- 

 tions, and the business prove a failure. 



That blight and curse to all comfort, the un- 

 bounded desire to get rich, seizes the farmer oc- 

 casionally to the annihilation of all tranquility and 

 rest, in doors and out. Hurry and confusion per- 

 vade the whole premises, and reign supreme ; the 

 women are unmercifully burdened to perform 

 their share in the enterprise ; the sons, under con- 

 tinued pressure, get tired, and a growing hatred 

 to the business drives them from home, "perhaps 

 to their ruin ; and so it goes on till sickness from 

 exhaustion enters the premises and the deluded 

 farmer, when too late, feels the effects of his folly, 

 if he does not see it, by the loss of his wife and 

 desertion, of his sons — himself an old, suffering, 

 broken-down man before he is aware of it, and 

 compelled to die before he gets the last purchase 

 paid for. "What does it profit a man if he gain 

 the whole world and lose his own life" in the at- 

 tempt? I have been an eye-witness to a like trag- 

 edy. Not so with the rational, contented farmer. 

 His sons and daughters love home and leave it 

 with reluctance, and as many of them as can be 

 accommodated stay there. 



I have spent some of the happiest hours of my 

 life with such families. Ignorance is not a neces- 

 sary element in the constitution of a farmer. A 

 clown may enlist in the calling as well as into 

 other business. Well educated farmers are mul- 

 tiply' n fT> and our instructive agricultural newspa- 

 pers will prove a continued school of progress in 

 teaching the art of agricultural science as well as 

 improving minds in physical and moral subjects. 

 Money cannot be expended for paper in any shape 

 to better advantage than for our agricultural pa- 

 pers ; they are not party bigots, but inculcate 

 good, practical Christianity, which is useful to 

 everybody. Undoubtedly there are individuals 

 among merchants and speculators who are richer 

 than fanners, in estimated property ; but when 

 fluctuations take place in consequence of embar- 

 goes, blockades and wars, which, God forbid, as 

 in 1808 to 181,3, there comes a change; land now 

 in Boston worth from one to ten or more dollars 

 a foot, was an unsaleable drug, while in the coun- 

 try, farms sustained their prices and were more in 

 demand as the war held on. A landholder in the 

 city worth a million to-day, under similar causes, 

 if obliged to sell, may find himself a very poor 

 man to-morrow. Farms in the country are a mat- 

 ter-of-fact property, while land in the city has a 

 temporary, fictitious value, regulated and gov- 

 erned by business operations. In conclusion, the 

 incontrovertible .evidence that farming is the 

 "main stay of the country," is that every other 



