The Fat of the Land Part 30

I have not increased my plant during the past four years. My stock consume a little more than I can raise; but there are certain things which a farm will not produce, and there are other things which one had best buy, thus letting others work their own specialties.

If I had more land, would I increase my stock? No, unless I had enough land to warrant another plant. My feeding-grounds are filled to their capacity from a sanitary point of view, and it would be foolish to take risks for moderate returns. If I had as much more land, I would establish another factory; but this would double my business cares without adding one item to my happiness. As it is, the farm gives me enough to keep me keenly interested, and not enough to tire or annoy me.

So far as profits go, it is entirely satisfactory. It feeds and shelters my family and twenty others in the colony, and also the stranger within the gates, and it does this year after year without friction, like a well-oiled machine.

Not only this. Each year for the past four, it has given a substantial surplus to be subtracted from the original investment. If I live to be sixty-eight years of age, the farm will be my creditor for a considerable sum. I have bought no corn or oats since January, 1898. The seventeen thousand bushels which I then had in my granary have slowly grown less, though there has never been a day when we could not have measured up seven thousand or eight thousand bushels. I shall probably buy again when the market price pleases me, for I have a horror of running short; but I shall not sell a bushel, though prices jump to the sky.

I have seen the time when my corn and oats would have brought four times as much as I paid for them, but they were not for sale. They are the raw material, to be made up in my factory, and they are worth as much to me at twenty cents a bushel as at eighty cents. What would one think of the manager of a silk-thread factory who sold his raw silk, just because it had advanced in price? Silk thread would advance in proportion, and how does the manager know that he can replace his silk when needed, even at the advanced price?

When corn went to eighty cents a bushel, hogs sold for $8.25 a hundred, and my twenty-cent corn made pork just as fast as eighty-cent corn would have done, and a great deal cheaper.

Once I sold some timothy hay, but it was to "discount the season," just as I bought grain.

On July 18, 1901, a tremendous rain and wind storm beat down about forty acres of oats beyond recovery. The next day my mowing machines, working against the grain, commenced cutting it for hay. Before it was half cut, I sold to a livery-stable keeper in Exeter fifty tons of bright timothy for $600. The storm brought me no loss, for the horses did quite as well on the oat hay as they ever had done on timothy, and $600 more than paid for the loss of the grain.

During the first three years of my experiment hogs were very low,--lower, indeed, than at any other period for forty years. It was not until 1899 that prices began to improve. During that year my sales averaged $4.50 a hundred. In 1900 the average was $5.25, in 1901 it was $6.10, and in 1902 it was just $7. It will be readily appreciated that there is more profit in pork at seven cents a pound than at three and a half cents; but how much more is beyond me, for it cost no more to get my swine to market last year than it did in 1896. I charge each hog $1 for bran and shorts; this is all the ready money I pay out for him. If he weighs three hundred pounds (a few do), he is worth $10.50 at $3.50 a hundred, or $21 at $7 a hundred; and it is a great deal pleasanter to say $1 from $21, leaves $20, than to say $1 from $10.50 leaves $9.50.

Of course, $1 a head is but a small part of what the hog has cost when ready for market, but it is all I charge him with directly, for his other expenses are carried on the farm accounts. The marked increase in income during the past four years is wholly due to the advance in the price of pork and the increased product of the orchards. The expense account has not varied much.

The fruit crop is charged with extra labor, packages, and transportation, before it is entered, and the account shows only net returns. I have had to buy new machinery, but this has been rather evenly distributed, and doesn't show prominently in any year.

In 1900 I lost my forage barn. It was struck by lightning on June 13, and burned to the ground. Fortunately, there was no wind, and the rain came in such torrents as to keep the other buildings safe. I had to scour the country over for hay to last a month, and the expense of this, together with some addition to the insurance money, cost the farm $1000 before the new structure was completed. I give below the income and the outgo for the last four years:--

INCOME EXPENSES TO THE GOOD 1899 $17,780.00 $15,420.00 $2,360.00 1900 19,460.00 16,480.00 2,980.00 1901 21,424.00 15,520.00 5,904.00 1902 23,365.00 15,673.00 7,692.00 ----------- Making a total to the good of $18,936.00

These figures cover only the money received and expended. They take no account of the $4000 per annum which we agreed to pay the farm for keeping us, so long as we made it pay interest to us. Four times $4000 are $16,000 which, added to $18,936, makes almost $35,000 to charge off from the $106,000 of original investment.

Polly was wrong when she spoke of it as a _permanent_ investment. Four years more of seven-dollar pork and thrifty apple growth will make this balance of $71,000 look very small. The interest is growing rapidly less, and it will be but a short time before the whole amount will be taken off the expense account. When this is done, the yearly balance will be increased by the addition of $5000, and we may be able to make the farm pay for weddings, as Polly suggested.

CHAPTER LXVII

LOOKING FORWARD

I am not so opinionated as to think that mine is the only method of farming. On the contrary, I know that it is only one of several good methods; but that it is a good one, I insist. For a well-to-do, middle-aged man who was obliged to give up his profession, it offered change, recreation, employment, and profit. My ability to earn money by my profession ceased in 1895, and I must needs live at ease on my income, or adopt some congenial and remunerative employment, if such could be found. The vision of a factory farm had flitted through my brain so often that I was glad of the opportunity to test my theories by putting them into practice. Fortunately I had money, and to spare; for I had but a vague idea of what money would be needed to carry my experiment to the point of self-support. I set aside $60,000 as ample, but I spent nearly twice that amount without blinking. It is quite likely that I could have secured as good and as prompt returns with two-thirds of this expenditure. I plead guilty to thirty-three per cent lack of economy; the extenuating circ.u.mstances were, a wish to let the members of my family do much as they pleased and have good things and good people around them, and a somewhat luxurious temperament of my own.

Polly and I were too wise (not to say too old) to adopt farming as a means of grace through privations. We wanted the good there was in it, and nothing else; but as a secondary consideration I wished to prove that it can be made to pay well, even though one-third of the money expended goes for comforts and kickshaws.

It is not necessary to spend so much on a five-hundred-acre farm, and a factory farm need not contain so many acres. Any number of acres from forty to five hundred, and any number of dollars from $5000 to $100,000, will do, so long as one holds fast to the rules: good clean fences for security against trespa.s.s by beasts, or weeds; high tilth, and heavy cropping; no waste or fallow land; conscientious return to the land of refuse, and a cover crop turned under every second year; the best stock that money can buy; feed for product, not simply to keep the animals alive; force product in every way not detrimental to the product itself; maintain a strict quarantine around your animals, and then depend upon pure food, water, air, sunlight, and good shelter to keep them healthy; sell as soon as the product is finished, even though the market doesn't please you; sell only perfect product under your own brand; buy when the market pleases you and thus "discount the seasons"; remember that interdependent industries are the essence of factory farming; employ the best men you can find, and keep them interested in your affairs; have a definite object and make everything bend toward that object; plant apple trees galore and make them your chief care, as in time they will prove your chief dependence. These are some of the principles of factory farming, and one doesn't have to be old, or rich, to put them into practice.

I would exchange my age, money, and acres for youth and forty acres, and think that I had the best of the bargain; and I would start the factory by planting ten acres of orchard, buying two sows, two cows, and two setting hens. Youth, strength, and hustle are a great sight better than money, and the wise youth can have a finer farm than mine before he pa.s.ses the half-century mark, even though he have but a bare forty to begin with.

I do not take it for granted that every man has even a bare forty; but millions of men who have it not, can have it by a little persistent self-denial; and when an able-bodied man has forty acres of ground under his feet, it is up to him whether he will be a comfortable, independent, self-respecting man or not.

A great deal of farm land is distant from markets and otherwise limited in its range of production, but nearly every forty which lies east of the hundredth meridian is competent to furnish a living for a family of workers, if the workers be intelligent as well as industrious. Farm lands are each year being brought closer to markets by steam and electric roads; telephone and telegraphic wires give immediate service; and the daily distribution of mails brings the producer into close touch with the consumer. The day of isolation and seclusion has pa.s.sed, and the farmer is a personal factor in the market. He is learning the advantages of cooperation, both in producing and in disposing of his wares; he has paid off his mortgage and has money in the bank; he is a power in politics, and by far the most dependable element in the state.

Like the wrestler of old, who gained new strength whenever his foot touched the ground, our country gains fresh vigor from every man who takes to the soil.

In preaching a hejira to the country, I do not forget the interests of the children. Let no one dread country life for the young until they come to the full pith and stature of maturity; for their chances of doing things worth doing in the world are four to one against those of children who are city-bred. Four-fifths of the men and women who do great things are country-bred. This is out of all proportion to the birth-rate as between country and city, and one is at a loss to account for the disproportion, unless it is to be credited to environment. Is it due to pure air and suns.h.i.+ne, making redder blood and more vigorous development, to broader horizons and freedom from abnormal conventions?

Or does a close relation to primary things give a newness to mind and body which is granted only to those who apply in person?

Whatever the reason, it certainly pays to be country-bred. The cities draw to themselves the cream of these youngsters, which is only natural; but the cities do not breed them, except as exotics.

If the unborn would heed my advice, I would say, By all means be born in the country,--in Ohio if possible. But, if fortune does not prove as kind to you as I could wish, accept this other advice: Choose the, country for your foster-mother; go to her for consolation and rejuvenation, take her bounty gratefully, rest on her fair bosom, and be content with the fat of the land.