Jasper County Democrat, Volume 5, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 June 1902 — UNPROFITABLE INVESTMENTS. [ARTICLE]

UNPROFITABLE INVESTMENTS.

Threshing Machine Outfits Are Seldom Paying Properties—riany flen Broke Up By Them. This is the season of the year when many young farmers think they can fill a long-felt want and make bushels of money by buying a $2,500 threshing outfit, paying SSOO or SOOO down and giving a mortgage on the machine and inducing some friend to go on the notes with them to secure the balance. About one year’s experience shows them how easy it is for a man to be mistaken, and bye and bye we see the outfit advertised for sale, having been taken iu by the machine company on its chattel mortgage. Many a young man who had saved up a few hundred dollars has gone through the above experience and never recovered from financial troubles in which it envolved him, but go through life with judgments hanging over him, and is never able to see his way clear of debt. The tmeshing business is not a profitable one. Look about you and see how many threshermen you can [joint to who have ever made any money at the business. Almost every outfit is practically worn out before it is paid for, and the poor devil who does manage by hard work and economy to save enough to ever j pay for a threshing outfit, bought j on credit, finds himself at the end ] of the race with a lot of practicniy worthless scrap-iron on his hands, no money and little glory. To be sure, the threshing must be done, and if there are not enough machines in the country to do the work, let ten or a dozen farmers combine and buy an outfit for cash, thereby saving from s<>oo to S7OO over the credit price, and do their own work. This plan has been adopted in many neighI borhoods of Benton and other I counties and has proven very satisfactory. The ‘‘company” thresh their own crops first, then if there are others who desire to ! have them do their threshing, they |do it at the prevailing prices, and i pick up quite a little money in I this way. These company maI chines are taken care of, carefully | housed in winter and usually last j two or three times as long as the general run of threshing outfits | which are knocked about, not 1 properly protected from the elei inents in winter and Boon go to idecay. The Democrat would urge its readers to look about them, see what the experience of others has been, and then think twice before buying an expensive threshing outfit on credit.