620 Transactions of the American Institute. 



CiiAiKMAN OF Farmers' Club : This is tlie place for young men in 

 want of work to come to. All the resources of a city are here, and 

 railroads diverge in all directions, where farmers can choose good 

 farms at prices varying Irom one dollar to twenty-five dollars an 

 acre. If he is a laborer he can get work at digging away the banks 

 of sand on which the city is being built, or in breaking stone to pave 

 the streets, or on house building, of which there is said to be over 

 1,000 under contract to build, and I believe it. Mechanics of all 

 kinds are needed, and these include trades-people to supply them with 

 goods. But, for the Farmers' Club, let me give you a few questions 

 and answers which passed between a fine looking young American 

 farmer and me, at Lawrence, yesterday. He was shoveling his corn 

 from his wagon into a basket for a merchant who had bought it. Q. 

 IIow much a bushel do you get for your corn on the cob ? A. Fifty 

 cents ; seventy pounds to the bushel, allowing eighteen pounds for 

 the cob, fifty-two pounds of corn for fifty cents. Q. How many 

 bushels did you raise? A. 1,200, $600. Q. What else do you 

 raise ? A. Four hundred bushels of potatoes, which I sell for fifty 

 cents a bushel, peachblooms, $200 ; 456 bushels of oats, at fifty cents 

 a bushel, $226; twenty-five bushels of white beans, at five dollars 

 per bushel, $125, Q. How many horses have you ? A. Three. Q. 

 How many head of cattle ? A. Eight. Q. Do you reckon their 

 feed out of wliat you have stated ? A. No. Q. So that you have 

 earned this year, cash, corn, $600 ; potatoes, $200; oats, $226 ; beans, 

 8125 — $1,151 ? A. Yes ; and garden sauce and little things which I 

 don't count, as my wife takes it out in groceries. Q. How much ? 

 A. O, say $100 — $1,251. Q. How much did you spend for wages? 

 A. Forty dollars in all, clear, $1,211. Q. Did you buy or raise your 

 cattle ? A. I bought three, and raised five ; the three that I raised 

 are worth $150. Q. What did you pay for your farm ? A. One 

 hundred acres, eighty cleared, twenty wood, $1,800. I began to 

 reckon the interest. He interrupted me with the remark : " You 

 needn't reckon tlie interest. My farm has increased in value in the 

 three years which I have owned it, by other farmers settling around 

 me and tlie way I have worked it, seventy-five per cent. I would not 

 sell to-day for $3,500." I continued reckoning: Seven per cent on 

 $l,800]for three years is $378 ; it has increased in value eighty per 

 cent, or $1,410, leaving net gain on rise of property in three years, 

 $1,062; so that this farmer's increase for the year had been $1,715. 

 When I looked at his fine team, a handsome wagon, and his own 



