Matter, -tilue 20, 187:1. at Hit 
. under the Act of March J, 
Uublisthed Weekly by Tlie IturaL 1’ubtishiiiK Co., 
■USX W. 20th St.. New York. Price.One Hollar a Year. 
. * , . . . •i- i j.- 
A City Man’s View of “Prosp erous Farming,” 
A FEW weeks ago we received the following letter 
from a reader in Erie County, N. Y. It is so 
characteristic of the view some of the city people 
take of farmers and their business that we think it 
forms a good text for this article: 
I am enclosing an article published in the Buffalo 
E.rpreis, showing the income of a farmer in Western 
New York. The gentleman makes out a pretty good 
showing for the first year, and seems to have knocked 
more than their share of public burdens, and pro¬ 
vide the most important and stable element in 
American society. But here is the clipping which 
Mr. Moore refers to: 
A Farmer’s Income 
Editor Buffalo Express: In Saturday’s paper you 
commented on what it took to keep a family. I will 
inclose a statement of my total income, and can furnish 
sent an income of, at lehst, $2,500 a year to the city 
workman, who' has - to pay for his housing and food 
directly out of his wages In fare, there are probably 
very few city families on a $2,500 iucome who have as 
much as $800 left after essential expenses are paid. 
This farmer’s showing, so far from making farm life 
look uuattractive might well encourage the back-to- 
the-farm movement.—Ed Express. 
That is just about the way most of these city 
papers argue. They seem to assume that a farmer 
j\r id summer Days on the Farm. Fiy. 30) 
the theories of your paper that the farmers were all 
headed for the poorhouse. Your ideas on their financial 
condition, it would seem, would stand revision, the 
same as your ideas on a farmer’s justification for using 
a gun on a bo.v for booking apples, while 99 per eeul 
of your readers mentally say lie should not be allowed 
to run at large. ueohqe w. mooke. 
Mr. Moore does not seem to he a very good- 
natured citizen, hut he has the idea which so many 
city people try to express. Of course we have never 
attempted to show that (lie farmers are all headed 
for the poorhouse. We have stated that farmers 
receive a do-ccut dollar, and out of that they pay 
the figures to substantiate it. You will say I have a 
farm to live on. I had my bare hands to start, like 
you city folks, when 1 was 21 years of age. I have 
buried my wife and eight children, and have six left, 
five of whom l have to dress and care for. I have two 
of them in there at No. 11113 Main Street and am pay¬ 
ing $25 a mouth for their sehooliug. I hope you will 
study these figures and give us farmers a little more 
credit for working for nothing to feed you city folks. 
You keep giving us a dig every few days. K. a. 
See table next page. 
With no desire to disparage the farmer and his im¬ 
portance in the economic life of ihe country, fairness 
makes if necessary to point out that a net income of 
$800 above the cost of housing and food would xepre 
never should charge anything for his labor, make 
no interest charge on investment and pay no atteu- 
tiou to any "overhead." All other interests do that, 
and make sure of a liberal allowance for ul before 
they figure "cost and 10 per cent profit,” hut for 
some reason, known only to the daily papers, a 
farmer never should operate that way. Having paid 
farm bills for many years, and studied the cost sys¬ 
tem on many other farms, we knew there was 
something more hack of all this. So we wrote 
direct to the farmer iu question and got his figures. 
