Proceedings of the Farmers' Club. 391 



of the year in as good condition as it was when he received it, and 

 to hand me $1,000 net profit ? I answer, no. Judged by this sharp 

 standard of Wall street, I say to a man who requires of ine the 

 surest way in which he may receive $1,000 a year, from a $15,000 

 investment, keep clear uf farming ; you will never succeed if. you 

 approach the business in this way ; keep your funds in five-twenties, 

 go to a cheap boarding-house, and be as happy as you can on your 

 thousand. 



It is a pet fancy with many, that square old-fashioned farming won't 

 pay, but that there are by-ways of tillage, novelties, improvements, 

 untrodden paths to sudden fortune. For instance, a salesman at Stew- 

 art's has never met me for seven years past without asking what I think 

 of sheep raising in western Texas or in Colorado. " He doesn't 

 believe in farming as a general thing.; it's hard, dirty work ; you wear 

 rough boots and have coarse hands ; you go without gloves and pave- 

 ments and daily papers ; a cow-stable has an ill perfume, and a worn 

 plow-horse is a dull roadster ; but he believes that if he should take 

 $1,000 and go to the far west or south-west and embark in the sheep 

 business, he would soon make a fortune." Another nurses the same 

 romance about orange growing in Florida, or the wine business in 

 California, or spring wheat in Minnesota. The truth is that the fewest 

 number of persons succeed on a single specialty, and these few came 

 up to that specialty by degrees from the common level of general 

 farming. The best farm for an unskilled farmer to buy is a tract that 

 will support two cows, two horses, two pigs, and a gang of poultry 

 the first year. If it is too small or too poor for that, there is little 

 thrift in owning such a tract. From this as a basis, let him expand 

 his system in any direction in which he is drawn by the advantages 

 of his situation. He may become essentially a truckman, or a small 

 fruit-culturist, or a grain farmer, or he may greatly increase his stock, 

 and take most of his money from sales of flesh or wool, or butter or 

 milk. Within a hundred miles of this city the farming situation is in 

 brief as follows : The increase in the production of southern fruits 

 and vegetables has seriously damaged trucking ; the great crops of corn 

 in the prairie States have made pork too cheap to leave any margin of 

 profit east of the mountains ; but on the other hand, strong and per- 

 manent meadows yielding two tons per acre are a profitable possession. 

 They give more profit, with less risk and less outlay for labor, than 

 any other branch of farming. Improvements in tools have done most 

 for the hay crop ; and a green and clumsy farmer can hardly fail 

 with ordinary industry to master the difficulties of a hay -field. Our 



