Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 October 1875 — Capital in Agriculture. [ARTICLE]

Capital in Agriculture.

No kind of business demands closer attention to details than that of farming. Hence many farmers are over economical, saving where wise economy requires investment. This subject is well handled in the following article by Judge French in the Vermont Record and Farmer: In the middle counties of England where ordinary farming is done, and where the principal products are wheat, barley, wool, turnips and grass, it is usually estimated that a floating capital of fifty dollars an acre is necessary to cultivating it to good advantage. In New Enland if a farmer has SI,OOO he either puts it in the savings bank or buys land, and rarely considers how he can use it as capital to make .his farm more productive. I have heard of a man who, when advised to sow winter rye, objected that he wanted to get his return the same year he planted; that he did not exactly like to trust Providence through a whole winter: Many farmers act on this principle, if they do not openly avow it. They know perfectly well that market gardeners, near the city, put SIOO and often S2OO worth of manure on the acre with large profit, and that in their own experience the more they put on their land the greater their profit, and yet they do not exactly like to take SSOO or SI,OOO out of the savings bank and invest it in drainage or manure, though they will readily admit that they would get a larger interest by so doing. No farmer can reasonably expect to realize more than 5 or 6 per cent, from investment of money in bonds or stocks. If, by the favpr of some speculating friend, he is allowed the privilege of taking a few shares in a proposed railroad or copper mine or coal company sure to pay 10 per cent, at least, he will be lucky if lie does not lose his money and have to pay an assessment.

If, by spending SI,OOO in drainage and other productive improvements, he permanently increases the income of his field only sixty dollars a year, it is a good investment, and he need not look anxiously every morning in the daily paper to ascertain whether it is lost or not! In annual crops, like market truck, if the use of SIOO worth of extra manure will raise $lO6 worth of extra produce, it is a fair business transaction, as good as the savings bank, but a market gardener expects and often realizes six times 6 per cent, on such an investment. An acre of asparagus or strawberries, established and maintained at an annual cost, including rent for the land, of S2OO an acre and yielding an income of S4OO, gives 6,200 per cent, per annum, and beats out of Sigh# the promises even of railroads and coal Companies; yet if you are not yourself doing this, some of your neighbors are, and more too. Put your money where it will do the ■most good—into your best land close at home—in such a way that it will yield an income. If you invest SSO in a weathercock on your barn it may gratify yourself and the passers-by, but will not add much to your income. A hbrse that earns nothing costs $l5O a yea'r at least, and this is the interest on $2,500 capital. Expensive .dwellings and furniture are not good investments of capital. While every farmer should expend according to bis ability for the comfort and

pleasure of his family, he should not count as capital in agriculture either the cupola onliis house or the piano in his parloh Time is money, and labor is money on the farm, and an investment that brings water to youtohouse and barn, that provides for storing fuel close to your fire, that makes the washing and drying -of clothes easy, and makes everything convenient is always profitable. A friend of mine visited his father who was a farmer in New Hampshire. For thirty years he had brought water from a spring in buckets for household use. The son proposed to put in an aqueduct, but the father thought it hardly worth while. He asked tlie old gentleman how many times a day, on an average, he had brought his buckets from the spring to the hoyse, and then measured the distance and found that be had traveled one mile a day,’computed tlie whole amount of travel, and showed him that he had already performed tlie labor of carrying his two buckets 10,950 miles, and that an aqueduct would cost about SSO. This pilgrimage, nearly half the distance round the world, was not economical. Capital is well invested in good farming implements, such as are of constant use. Isaac Walton says: “Whoso has wherewithal to buy a spade, yet prefers rather to borrow his neighbor’s and wear out that, is covetous.” "in fact, no man can afford to live by borrowing common small tools. The time spent in getting and returning them is wortli more than their cost. Indeed, the whole system of borrowing, as a rule, is a bad one, With expensive implements, like mowers, owners of small farms may often provide themselves by hiring the machines, or having their grass cut by those having teams and implements. While I would not usually be a borrower, I would always cultivate such relations with my neighbors that we should at all times borrow and lend freely in any emergency; but borrowing may become an imposition. One of my neighbors has a field-roller, which I have no doubt is worn out twice as much by being hauled over the highway from farm to farm as it is by use in the field. One such implement, expensive to repair and troublesome to house, is enough for a neighborhood, but its use should be paid for"by all borrowers. “ The destruction of the poor is his poverty,” and this applies to a farmer who is poor as fully as to other men. Buying and selling well and at the right time form an important element of success in all farming, and this requires capital. We need ready money to buy when cattle and corn are cheap, and to be able to hold our hay and such other articles as are not perishable for a fair price. Some of our farmers bought S3OO and S4OO worth of corn in the fall of 1873 at sixty-four cents a bushel,., while we poorer men were obliged to pay ninety cents a bushel for it, and the same is true of all the grain and feed for our cows. No man can make money off poor land. As you travel you have usually observed, other things being equal, that good land makes thriving farmers, while, families brought up on hard, poor land are generally poor. Many men have spent their lives in plowing around stones and died poor, who on good land might, with the same labor, have’been independent. With its, no land which does not produce a large crop is w r orth cultivating. Small or even middling crops will not pay. for the labor and manure.’ The point which I urge is to apply your capital so as to raise large crops, whatever they are, because only large crops are profitable, and if your field is not in proper condition to produce large crops make it so, or buy a better farm. Do not spend your life in the unprofitable business of raising small crops. What we can reasonably afford to expend for books, /or works of art, for traveling, for rational amusements for ourselves and families, though not capital that yields a cash return, is yet a good investment. And this is especially true of what we devote to making our homes pleasant to our families and friends. It has been said that no man is so poor that he need have his pig-trough at the front door; and I may add that no farmer among us is so poor that he cannot have, not only a pleasant house but pleasant surroundings, with a neatly-kept dooryard or lawn, with shade trees and fruit trees and flowers—and finally such attractions as well as conveniencies about home that farmers’ daughters need not resolve, as has been so often stated In our club that many do, that they will never Bq farmers’ wives.