Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 November 1879 — Is It Extravagance? [ARTICLE]

Is It Extravagance?

An Eastern contemporary says: “Not long ago we traveled in the West for a day in company with an agent of an extensive manufacturer of parlor organs. He was returning suddenly and unexpectedly, having already taken more orders lor initruments than his firm could make for a year to come. His customers were Western farmers. Every family required an organ, and the principal reason was because the next neighbor had one. All were sold on a year’s credit. The young ladies who learn to use these instruments doubtless no longer milk the cows or manage the dairy; spin the wool from their father’s flock; knit the family hose, or rarely make their own dresses. One luxurious habit, especially if it causes work to be thought inconvenient or degrading, leads further and becomes disastrous in the end. The young men, too, require a fast horse and a costly wagon and a more expensive attire; and then the help of a hired man in the field is as needful as that of the help in the kitchen. And under the pressure of all these self-inflicted taxes, farming does not pay, and it is to be feared that it never will until these taxes are repealed.” The evident intention of the writer of the above extract, in to protest against undue extravagance, against an expenditure for luxuries beyond the ability to pay, and this we agree with him. But we do not like the implied thought that farmers, in order to make their business pay, must be deprived of all the luxuries of life, must confine tuemselves to the mere necessities of existence.* The world is progressing, and even Western farmers are getting out of the pioneer stage, where the imperious demand for the necessities of life banishes every thought except of constant. toil and the closest economy. They can afford many things their fathers could not, and are learning that life is not drudgery only, nor toil our whole destiny, that our homes shelter not only bone and muscle, but mind and heart also, and that these demand food ana raiment as well as the body. We believe in pianos and organs in the farmer’s home wherever they can be afforded, and where there are sous and daughter growing up, we would strain a point in the ability question to obtain one of these instruments. The farmer has as good a right to tnese things as the man of any other calling, of equal ability to purchase.—Ohio Farmer.