Port Tobacco times, and Charles County advertiser. (Port Tobacco, Md.) 1845-1898, 1874-04-10
6he farm.
Why Farming is Improbable. :.

= SsA AAAAAA3 AZ SAHA OAt0UA0s
The question, evil Farming Pay?''
has been pretty thoroughly discussed.
Gen. Butler, in an address before the
New Hampshire State Fair, discussed
''Why Farming is Improbable" as
follows
at is complained that farming is un-
profitable. Men,are leaving the farm
and seeking employment in manufac-
lures and the trade of the city. New
Hampshire, the agricultural part of
Massachusetts,, Of Maine and Vermont,
have gone back in population and in
productive agricultural wealth in the
last ten years. Without seeking to
touch all reasons for it, may we not
find it largely in this, that we ask too
much of the farm? Having a capital
or $4,000 or $4,000 or $1,000 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 besides. And yet, do we
treat it as other men do their business
by which they succeed? If We fail in
getting all this from it, we say at once
that farming is improbable! We are
unmindful of the fact that in mercan-
tile business, only one in hundred is
fairly successful, and only one in a
thousand eminently so. Does not farm
ing do as we'll as that, and better?-
Does one in a hundred farmers succeed
to a competence, and only one in a
thousand succeed to affluence? And
yet do we not deal with our farms in
the same way that we have seen that
the nation does with its producers?-
Do we not take everything off and pu.
comparatively 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 yoar, from
gains of the preceding year, if he is a
prudent man, until it becomes as large
as he can proftably manage. But if
the farmer makes any surplus ON his
farm, as a rule, does he return it to his
land, either in increased facilities for
farming, in enriching the soil, adding
to his stock, or draining his land? On
the contrary is he not much more like
ly to invest in railroad shares or bonds,
or some manufacturing enterprise, or
loan it to some neighbor? Having|
taken away from the farm what the
farm has brought him, and ought to
be returned to it again, to make it
more productive, he leaves it impover-
ished, and then complains that the
gains do not increase. Is not the diff
ficulty that he is continually taking a.
way the increase of his capital and
leaving it only what it was at the be-
ginning? The merchant as we have
seen, increases his capital year by year;
but the farmer too frequently takes his
and invests it in other enterprises, and
then complains that the farm does not
succeed. No farmer l ever heard oil
ever mortgaged his farm to buy ma
nure to put on it; yet men frequently
do mortgage their farms for the pur-
pose of building fine house and many |
take all the earnings of the farm for ten
years for that purpose. The mortgage, |
or the Indictment, once on farm, as
a general rule in the past, except in |
the change Of fortune made by the |
change of prices arising from the war,
remains years, if not to say forever"