Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1873-11-13
gSr.a aRa 5junsshala,
OER EYCHANGES.

THE UNPROFITALENESS OF PARNIN6-
Politicians do not always hit the nail
on the head when talking to farmers.
AS a rule, the politician at the falr Is
the politician still, speaking for poilt-
cal effect. Now and then, however,
he gets astray from politics, and per-
haps says something of practical i'm
port to his hearers. Such was the case
with Gen. Butler, at the State Fair III
New Hampshire, when he touched
upon the unprofitableness of farmiug
in these words:
1t is complained that farming is un
profitable. Men are leaving the farm
and seeking employments in manu-
factures and the trade of the city.
New Hampshire, the agricultural part
of MASSACHUSETTS, of Maine, and Yer
mont, have gone back in population
and in productive agricultural wealth
in the last ten years. Without seeking
to touch all the reasons for il, may we
not find it largely in this, that we ask
too much of the farm? Having a cap
ital of - 900 or $1,000, or 5000 invest
ed in it, We ask that the farm shall
support our families, educate our chill
dren, and give US comparative wealth
for old age beside.
And yet, do we treat it as other men
do their business by which they sue
ceed? If we fail in getting all this
from it, we say at once that farming Is
unprofitablel We are unmindful OF
the fact that i'm mercantile business
only one in hundred is fairly success
fuI, and only one in thousand emf
neDtly so. Does not farming do as well
as that, and better? Does only one in
a hundred farmers succeed to COM
petencc, and only one in a thousand
succeed to affiuence? And yet do we
not dead with our farms in the same
way that we have seen that the nation
DOES with its produces? Do we not
take everything off and put compare
lively nothing on the land?
In every other business of life all the
gains man gets he Immediately puts
back into his business. The merchant
Increases his capital year by year,
from gains of the preceding year, if he
is prudent man, until until it becomes
as large as he can profitably manage.
But if the farmer makes any surplus
on his farm, as rule, does he ruturn to
his land, either in increased facilities
for forming, in enriching the soil, ad-
ding to his stock, or draining his land?
On the contrary, is he not much more
likely TO invest in railroad shares, or
bonds, or some manufacturing enter
prise, or loan it to some nelghbor?
Having taken away fIom the farm
what the farm has brought to him, and
ouget to be returned to it again, to
make it productive, he leaves it i'm
poverished, and then complains that
gains do not increase.
Is it not the difficulty that he is con-
tinually taking away TIE increase of
his capital and leaving it only what it
was at the beginning? The merchant,
as we have seen, increases his capital
year by year; but the farmer too fire.
quently takes his and invests it in
other enterprises, and then complains
that the farm does not succeed. No
farmer that ever heard of ever mort
gage0 his farm to buy manure to put
on it; yet men frequently do mortgage
their farmers for the purpose of building
a fine house; and may take all the
earnings of the farm for ten years for
that purpose. The mortgage, or the
Indictment, once on farm, as a rule
in the past, except in the change of
fortune ma,ie by the change of prices
arising from the war, remains for years,
if not forever Rural Home