Will Farming Pay?

I commence my essays with this question, because, when I urge the

superior advantages of a rural life, I am often met by the objection

that Farming doesn't pay. That, if true, is a serious matter. Let us

consider:



I do not understand it to be urged that the farmer who owns a large,

fertile estate, well-fenced, well-stocked, with good store of effective

implements, cannot live and thrive by farming. What i meant is, that he

who has little but two brown hands to depend upon cannot make money, or

can make very little, by farming.



I think those who urge this point have a very inadequate conception of

the difficulty encountered by every poor young man in securing a good

start in life, no matter in what pursuit. I came to New-York when not

quite of age, with a good constitution, a fair common-school education,

good health, good habits, and a pretty fair trade--(that of printer.) I

think my outfit for a campaign against adverse fortune was decidedly

better than the average; yet ten long years elapsed before it was

settled that I could remain here and make any decided headway. Meantime,

I drank no liquors, used no tobacco, attended no balls or other

expensive entertainments, worked hard and long whenever I could find

work to do, lost less than a month altogether by sickness, and did very

little in the way of helping others. I judge that quite as many did

worse than I as did better; and that, of the young lawyers and doctors

who try to establish themselves here in their professions, quite as many

earn less as earn more than their bare board during the first ten years

of their struggle.



John Jacob Astor, near the close of a long, diligent, prosperous career,

wherein he amassed a large fortune, is said to have remarked that, if he

were to begin life again, and had to choose between making his first

thousand dollars with nothing to start on, or with that thousand making

all that he had actually accumulated, he would deem the latter the

easier task. Depend upon it, young men, it is and must be hard work to

earn honestly your first thousand dollars. The burglar, the forger, the

blackleg (whether he play with cards, with dice, or with stocks), may

seem to have a quick and easy way of making a thousand dollars; but

whoever makes that sum honestly, with nothing but his own capacities and

energies as capital, does a very good five-years' work, and may deem

himself fortunate if he finishes it so soon.



I have known men do better, even at farming. I recollect one who, with

no capital but a good wife and four or five hundred dollars, bought

(near Boston) a farm of two hundred mainly rough acres, for $2,500, and

paid for it out of its products within the next five years, during which

he had nearly doubled its value. I lost sight of him then; but I have

not a doubt that, if he lived fifteen years longer and had no very bad

luck, he was worth, as the net result of twenty years' effort, at least

$100,000. But this man would rise at four o'clock of a winter morning,

harness his span of horses and hitch them to his large market-wagon

(loaded over night), drive ten miles into Boston, unload and load back

again, be home at fair breakfast-time, and, hastily swallowing his meal,

be fresh as a daisy for his day's work, in which he would lead his hired

men, keeping them clear of the least danger of falling asleep. Such men

are rare, but they still exist, proving scarcely anything impossible to

an indomitable will. I would not advise any to work so unmercifully; I

seek only to enforce the truth that great achievements are within the

reach of whoever will pay their price.



An energetic farmer bought, some twenty-five years ago, a large grazing

farm in Northern Vermont, consisting of some 150 acres, and costing him

about $3,000. He had a small stock of cattle, which was all his land

would carry; but he resolved to increase that stock by at least ten per

cent. per annum, and to so improve his land by cultivation, fertilizing,

clover, &c., that it would amply carry that increase. Fifteen years

later, he sold out farm and stock for $45,000, and migrated to the West.

I did not understand that he was a specially hard worker, but only a

good manager, who kept his eyes wide open, let nothing go to waste, and

steadily devoted his energies and means to the improvement of his stock

and his farm.



Walking one day over the farm of the late Prof. Mapes, he showed me a

field of rather less than ten acres, and said, "I bought that field for

$2,400, a year ago last September. There was then a light crop of corn

on it, which the seller reserved and took away. I underdrained the field

that Fall, plowed and sub-soiled it, fertilized it liberally, and

planted it with cabbage; and, when these matured, I sold them for enough

to pay for land, labor, and fertilizers, altogether." The field was now

worth far more than when he bought it, and he had cleared it within

fifteen months from the date of its purchase. I consider that a good

operation. Another year, the crop might have been poor, or might have

sold much lower, so as hardly to pay for the labor; but there are risks

in other pursuits as well as in farming.



A fruit-farmer, on the Hudson above Newburg, showed me, three years

since, a field of eight or ten acres which he had nicely set with

Grapes, in rows ten feet apart, with beds of Strawberries between the

rows, from which he assured me that his sales per acre exceeded $700 per

annum. I presume his outlay for labor, including picking, was less than

$300 per annum; but it had cost something, to make this field what it

then was. Say that he had spent $1,000 per acre in underdraining,

enriching and tilling this field, to bring it to this condition,

including the cost of his plants, and still there must have been a clear

profit here of at least $300 per acre.



I might multiply illustrations; but let the foregoing suffice. I readily

admit that shiftless farming doesn't pay--that poor crops don't pay--that

it is hard work to make money by farming without some capital--that

frost, or hail, or drouth, or floods, or insects, may blast the farmer's

hopes, after he has done his best to deserve and achieve success; but I

insist that, as a general proposition, GOOD Farming DOES pay--that

few pursuits afford as good a prospect, as full an assurance, of reward

for intelligent, energetic, persistent effort, as this does.



I am not arguing that every man should be a farmer. Other vocations are

useful and necessary, and many pursue them with advantage to themselves

and to others. But those pursuits are apt to be modified by time, and

some of them may yet be entirely dispensed with, which Farming never can

be. It is the first and most essential of human pursuits; it is every

one's interest that this calling should be honored and prosperous. If

not adequately recompensed, I judge that is because it is not wisely and

energetically followed. My aim is to show how it may be pursued with

satisfaction and profit.