PRACTICAL PAPERS —SUCCESS IN FARMING. 379 
■sons, live stock of one or more kinds is a practical necessity on 
farms in the northwest. 
The exact plan to be selected will be greatly influenced by the 
amount of capital at command. Sufficient capital is a most 
important element of success in any business. Look around you 
and you will find that the men who have succeeded best as farmers, 
are those who have had capital enough to enable them to drive 
circumstances rather than be driven by them. One farm and one 
system may require $50,000; while another may not need more 
than $5,000. But sometimes we find the man with the $5,000 in 
the place where the $50,000 are needed. 
With the plan well considered and decided on, let it be steadily 
followed. K curse to our farming is the lack of plan of many 
farmers. Almost as great a curse is the constant change of plan 
by so many others. I have said before what I expect to say 
many times, for it needs repeating: That farmer is most success¬ 
ful who steadily follows a well chosen plan through a long series 
of years, comparatively unmoved by fluctuations in prices. Large 
flocks of sheep, and then none; a herd of dairy cows, and then 
only one for the family; a high priced stock of well bred hogs, 
and then, because of pork at $3.50 a hundred, none for breed¬ 
ing ; a costly hop house, poles and roots, and then the house 
used for a chicken roost, poles grimly standing in the deserted 
fields; these things we have all seen and know they do not pay. 
Frequent changes of plan are no more disastrous than frequent 
changes of - location. Let us learn once for all that this world has 
no longer a Paradise, and that in the sweat of our faces we must 
eat bread. There is no perfect farming region. Great advantages 
are always attended with some disadvantages. Fertile soil, in a 
healthy climate, can be bought for $1.25 an acre, only when mar¬ 
kets are distant and neighbors like angels’ visits. The almost un¬ 
precedented cold of this winter may have made you think you 
would vastly prefer to live in southern Illinois, but a summer 
there w r ould doubtless shake that idea out of you, to use a stale 
but applicable pun. There is no state in the union, where a farmer 
cannot work out a fair success. I have no right to decide for you, 
but your case is an exception if you will not do as well to stay where 
you are. If you will go west or east, your case is an exception 
