"Interest on investment$5,132.00New hog-house4,220.0010,000 bu. of grain2,450.00Food for colony5,322.00Food for stock1,640.00Seeds and fertilizers2,155.00Insurance and taxes730.00Shoeing and repairs349.00Replenishments450.00------------"Total$22,760.00
"The credit account reads: first quarter, $2030; second quarter, $2221; third quarter, $5387; fourth quarter, $5957; total, $15,595.
"If we take out the $6670 for the extra piggery and the grain, the expense account and the income will almost balance, even leaving out the $4000 which we agreed to pay for food and shelter. I think that's a fair showing for the three years, don't you?"
"Possibly it is; but what a lot of money you pay for wages. It's the largest item."
"Yes, and it always will be. I don't claim that a factory farm can be run like a grazing or a grain farm. One of its objects is to furnish well-paid employment to a lot of people. We've had nine men and two lads all the year, and three extra men for seven months, three women on the farm and five in the house,—twenty-two people to whom we've paid wages this year. Doesn't that count for anything? How many did we keep in the city?"
"Four,—three women and a man."
"Then we give employment to eighteen more people at equally good wages and in quite as wholesome surroundings. Do you realize, Polly, that the maids in the house get $1300 out of the $5300,—one quarter of the whole? Possibly there is a suspicion of extravagance on the home forty."
"Not a bit of it! You know that you proved to me that it cost us $5200 a year for board and shelter in the city, and you only credit the farm with $4000. That other $1200 would more than pay the extra wages. I really don't think it costs as much to live here as it did on B——Street, and any one can see the difference."
"You are right. If we call our plant an even $100,000, which at five per cent would mean $5000 a year,—where can you get house, lawns, woods, gardens, horses, dogs, servants, liberty, birds, and sun-dials on a wide and liberal scale for $5000 a year, except on a farm like this? You can't buy furs, diamonds, and yachts with such money anyhow or anywhere, so personal expenditures must be left out of all our calculations. No, the wage account will always be the large one, and I am glad it is so, for it is one finger of the helping hand."
"You haven't finished with the figures yet. You don't know what to add to ourpermanentinvestment."
"That's quickly done.Nineteen thousand five hundred and ninety-five dollarsfrom twenty-two thousand seven hundred and sixty dollars leaves three thousand one hundred and sixty-five dollars to charge to our investment. I resent the word 'permanent,' which you underscored just now, for each year we're going to have a surplus to subtract from this interest-bearing debt."
"Precious little surplus you'll have for the next few years, with Jack and Jane getting married, and—"
"But, Polly, you can't charge weddings to the farm, any more than we can yachts and diamonds."
"I don't see why. A wedding is a very important part of one's life, and I think the farm ought to bemadeto pay for it."
"I quite agree with you; but we must add $3165 to the old farm debt, and take up our increased burden with such courage as we may. In round figures it is $106,000. Does that frighten you, Polly?"
"A little, perhaps; but I guess we can manage it.Youwould have been frightened three years ago if some one had told you that you would put $106,000 into a farm of less than five hundred acres."
"You're right. Spending money on a farm is like other forms of vice,—hated, then tolerated, then embraced. But seriously, a man would get a bargain if he secured this property to-day for what it has cost us. I wouldn't take a bonus of $50,000 and give it up."
"You'll hardly find a purchaser at that price, and I'm glad you can't, for I want to live here and nowhere else."
With the close of the third year ends the detailed history of the factory farm. All I wish to do further is to give a brief synopsis of the debit and credit accounts for each of the succeeding four years.
First I will say a word about the people who helped me to start the factory. Thompson and his wife are still with me, and they are well on toward the wage limit. Johnson has the gardens and Lars the stables, and Otto is chief swineherd. French and his wife act as though they were fixtures on the place, as indeed I hope they are. They have saved a lot of money, and they are the sort who are inclined to let well enough alone. Judson is still at Four Oaks, doing as good service as ever; but I fancy that he is minded to strike out for himself before long. He has been fortunate in money matters since he gave up the horse and buggy; he informed me six months ago that he was worth more than $5000.
"I shouldn't have had five thousand cents if I'd stuck to that darned old buggy," said he, "and I guess I'll have to thank you for throwing me down that day."
Zeb has married Lena, and a little cottage is to be built for them this winter, just east of the farm-house; and Lena's place is to be filled by her cousin, who has come from the old country.
Anderson and Sam both left in 1898,—poor, faithful Anderson because his heart gave out, and Sam because his beacon called him.
Lars's boys, now sixteen and eighteen, have full charge of the poultry plant, and are quite up to Sam in his best days. Of course I have had all kinds of troubles with all sorts of men; but we have such a strong force of "reliables" that the atmosphere is not suited to the idler or the hobo, and we are, therefore, never seriously annoyed. Of one thing I am certain: no man stays long at our farm-house without apprehending the uses of napkin and bath-tub, and these are strong missionary forces.
Through careful tilth and the systematic return of all waste to the land, the acres at Four Oaks have grown more fertile each year. The soil was good seven years ago, and we have added fifty per cent to its crop capacity. The amount of waste to return to the land on a farm like this is enormous, and if it be handled with care, there will be no occasion to spend much money for commercial fertilizers. I now buy fertilizers only for the mid-summer dressing on my timothy and alfalfa fields. The apple trees are very heavily mulched, even beyond the spread of their branches, with waste fresh from the vats, and once a year a light dressing of muriate of potash is applied. The trees have grown as fast as could be desired, and all of them are now in bearing. The apples from these young trees sold for enough last year to net ninety cents for each tree, which is more than the trees have ever cost me.
In 1898 these orchards yielded $38; in 1899, $165; in 1900, $530; in 1901, $1117. Seven years from the date of planting these trees, which were then three years old, I had received in money $4720, or $1200 more than I paid for the fifty acres of land on which they grew. If one would ask for better returns, all he has to do is to wait; for there is a sort of geometrical progression inherent in the income from all well-cared-for orchards, which continues in force for about fifteen years. There is, however, no rule of progress unless the orchards are well cared for, and I would not lead any one to the mistake of planting an orchard and then doing nothing but wait. Cultivate, feed, prune, spray, dig bores, fight mice, rabbits, aphides, and the thousand other enemies to trees and fruit, and do these things all the time and then keep on doing them, and you will win out. Omit all or any of them, and the chances are that you will fail of big returns.
But orcharding is not unique in this. Every form of business demands prompt, timely, and intelligent attention to make it yield its best. The orchards have been my chief care for seven years; the spraying, mulching, and cultivation have been done by the men, but I think I have spent one whole year, during the past seven, among my trees. Do I charge my orchards for this time? No; for I have gotten as much good from the trees as they have from me, and honors are easy. A meditative man in his sixth lustrum can be very happy with pruning-hook and shears among his young trees. If he cannot, I am sincerely sorry for him.
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:—
INCOMEEXPENSESTO THE GOOD1899$17,780.00$15,420.00$2,360.00190019,460.0016,480.002,980.00190121,424.0015,520.005,904.00190223,365.0015,673.007,692.00------------Making a totalto 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 apermanentinvestment. 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.
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 circumstances 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 trespass 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 passes 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 passed, and the farmer is a personal factor in the market. He is learning the advantages of coöperation, 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 sunshine, 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.
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The following volumes are now ready:
THE SOIL. By F.H. KING, of the University of Wisconsin. 303 pp. 45 illustrations. 75 cents.
THE FERTILITY OF THE LAND. By I.P. ROBERTS, of Cornell University. Second edition. 421 pp. 45 illustrations. $1.25.
THE SPRAYING OF PLANTS. By E.G. LODEMAN, late of Cornell University. 399 pp. 92 illustrations. $1.00.
MILK AND ITS PRODUCTS. By H.H. WING, of Cornell University. Third edition. 311 pp. 43 illustrations. $1.00.
THE PRINCIPLES OF FRUIT-GROWING. By L.H. BAILEY. Third edition. 516 pp. 120 illustrations. $1.25.
BUSH-FRUITS. By F.W. CARD, of Rhode Island College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts. Second edition. 537 pp. 113 illustrations. $1.50.
FERTILIZERS. By E.B. VOORHEES, of New Jersey Experiment Station. Second edition. 332 pp. $1.00.
THE PRINCIPLES OF AGRICULTURE. By L.H. BAILEY. Third edition. 300 pp. 92 illustrations. $1.25.
IRRIGATION AND DRAINAGE. By F.H. KING, University of Wisconsin. 502 pp. 163 illustrations. $1.50.
THE FARMSTEAD. By I.P. ROBERTS. 350 pp. 138 illustrations. $1.25.
RURAL WEALTH AND WELFARE. By GEORGE T. FAIRCHILD, ex-President of the Agricultural College of Kansas. 381 pp. 14 charts. $1.25.
THE PRINCIPLES OF VEGETABLE-GARDENING. By L.H. BAILEY. 468 pp. 144 illustrations. $1.25.
THE FEEDING OF ANIMALS. By W.H. JORDAN, of New York State Experiment Station. $1.25net.
FARM POULTRY. By GEORGE C. WATSON, of Pennsylvania State College. $1.25net.
CARE OF ANIMALS. By N.S. MAYO, of Connecticut Agricultural College. $1.25net.
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PHYSIOLOGY OF PLANTS. By J.C. ARTHUR, Purdue University.
BREEDING OF ANIMALS. By W.H. BREWER, of Yale University.
PLANT PATHOLOGY. By B.T. GALLOWAY and associates of U.S. Department of Agriculture.
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THE NURSERY-BOOK. By L.H. Bailey. Fourth edition. 365 pp. 152 illustrations. $1.00.
PLANT-BREEDING. By L H. Bailey. 293 pp. 20 illustrations. $1.00.
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GARDEN MAKING. By L.H. Bailey. Third edition. 417 pp. 256 illustrations. $1.00.
THE PRUNING-BOOK. By L.H. Bailey. Second edition. 545 pp. 331 illustrations. $1.50.
THE PRACTICAL GARDEN-BOOK. By C.E. Hunn and L.H. Bailey. 250 pp. Many marginal cuts. $1.00.
The Garden of a Commuter's Wife
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