Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1874-03-20
Pretty Good Advice.

The following advice with reference to
keeping out of debt is taken from the
I'eDdS Farm and Home and is so good and
so applicable to all localities (modified,
of course, according to circumstances
that we commend its perusal to our
readers
Let each man who proposes to live by
farming pre-empt or buy little piece of
land before he promises to take care of
any mans daughter. When this home is
provided, it is always soon enough to pop
the question. Build shanty, open lit
tie field, plant fruit trees; they grow best
on fresh land. They grow as rapidly and
yield as heavily around small log cabin
as on the sunny side of ten thousand
dollar mansion.
If you are short of funds, make you a
becstead of boards and pine scantlings.
Do not promise your merchant ten dol
lars for one of those Yankee patent pop
larsided bedsteads. Just wait two years,
and be able to hand him the cash, and he
will just say $3.50 is enough. Make you
dining-table of pine lumber. Don't buy
$15 washing-machine, unless you pay
cash; if cash, $12.50 will buy 1t, sure.
Don't buy stove the first year. Tell
Mrs. Jerusha Ann you cannot go in debt,
and to wait one year, and $40 cash will
buy that splendid new America which
Squire johnson, your village merchant,
now offers you at $50, on twelve months
credit. SaUe that ten dollars, it will buy
barrel of elegant flour. Buy Just as
little as possible the first year, and live
on bread and milk, or even on bread and
water, rather than buy bacon on credit at
1S cents which, for cash, can be bought
at 121S cents.
After using the utmost economy in this
direction comes another road that points
to success. Make everything at home that
the soil and climate, or your skill, or
Jerusha AIMS skill, can possibly make.
Through the center of your five-acre
cotton field plant one row of broom corn.
Make your wife about halfa-dozen
brooms some rainy day. In this you
save 50, and are out say only so cents.
Plant one-quarter of an acre of Chinese
cane, or say one acre. Grind itnext sum-
mer, when other work is slack. Sell your
neighbor ten dollars worth, which really
has cost you about $5. Plant you one fourth
acre of tobacco; cultivate and manufac-
ture it of mornings while Jerusha gets
breakfast. Sell old Aunt Dinah few
pounds to pay for helping your wife
scour, wash, or weed the garden. Plant
at least half or all your land in corn. Sell
some to a new conner, and buy you bed
stead. Sell the old one to Uncle Ned for
helping you clear a new turnip patch.
Gather all your corn fodder while your
credit-system neighbors are tanning them
selves, or talking about paying Is cents
for calico which your own cash will
buy for 1211 cents per yard. Sell stack
of fodder to Smith for that SOW and pig
of his. Put her pigs up; give them tur.
nips, shops, potatoes-anything you do
not need; and you will find in January
next they will net you at least 100 pounds
each.
Do all this, and you will be more loved
and respected by good men and good
women than he whose Jerusha Ann
wears 81 balmorals and So bonnets,
which stand on the merchants books
thus: 1 pair balmorals, 81; lady's
hat, So. Besides this, by the time little
Minnie and little Johnny are of proper
age, you can buy them good saddle
horse each for cash.