Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 May 1911 — Farm and Garden [ARTICLE]

Farm and Garden

GOT HOME AND HEALTH. Wornout City Man Found Life For Family In Wornout Farm. This is an article not only for farmers, but for the tired out city man who sees nothing in the future but failure and destitution. It also shows that any one with a little capital, good common sense and practical energy can solve the problem of making the farm pay. It is condensed from a department of agriculture bulletin prepared by Scientific Assistant John H. Arnold. ' The father of a family was in 1892 sixty years old and so worn out by the business struggle that he had to abandon all work. He had a wife and ten children, seven of them boys, all less than twenty-one years old. He had |IO,OOO and with it bought a 300 acre rundown farm In Pennsylvania and started the first year $8,679 in debt. Then the whole family went vigorously and intelligently to work. After seventeen years, during which time all the children had been educated at college and a beautiful home built, the farm books at the end of 1900 showed the place to t>e worth $39,109 and the net income for the year $5,197.61. The father is happy and healthy and at seventy-seven supervises every detail of farm; the wife, who has never kept a servant, is hale and hearty; two sons are lawyers, one is a minister, one a professor, one a civil engineer and one a farmer, but the first five are putting their savings into nearby farms which they will later farm themselves.

Imitation of a neighbor's good methods is not only sincere flattery, but is in the direct lino of personal progress.