The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1877-10-04
How to Make a Living.

While the trades and other vacations /
pursued in cities frequently fail to furnish /
q living to some who follow them, the |
soil never fails; it will always yield a |
support to the man with his family who |
works it industriously and iudici0usly. |
1t is an instructive fact that there are |
few farmers in this country who become !
beggars or tramps; even the poorest of
them manage TO make a living without
appealing for charity. And it is not
necessary that a man should own what
in the west is generally meant by farm,
that is fifty or one hundred acres of land,
to make living. In point of fact, wes-
tern farmers own too much land; they
pay taxes on more than they can cult
vate and generally what they do cultivate
is So insufheiently titled that it yields
only enc half the amount it is capable of
yielding. In many parts of Europe a
family will make living on three acres,
two acres or even one acre of ground and
pay rent on it beside. And this is
done, not on the western. system of
farming, with a wagon, horse, plows and
other expensive appliances, but with
| few simple implements such as a spade
and hoe. The market gardeners near
| large cities in this country frequently
! support themselves and lay up some
money by raising successive crops of
vegetables tia same year on the same
| acre. The trackmen on our railroads
| frequently make ona-third their living
| for their families from the patches of
! ground along the track which they cUl-
| tivate at night and morning. 1t is true
| this way of making livelihood requires
hard work and close economy but what
| calling is there in the present severe
straggle for existence that does not ex-
act hard work? The question with the
| thousands of idle persons who swarm in
the cities IS, not how to make a fortune,
nor how to get along as we'll as others
who are better off, but how to make a
living without asking for charity. There
is many rich farmer in Missouri who
began by cutting wood or splitting rails
at fifty cents a day, and there are rich
men in st. Louis who got their first start
by working at night when others were
asleep, denying themselves all comforts
and saving the money which others
would spend. What these men did
others can do. Land is cheap in the
west-cheap even in Illinois and Mis-
souri,. The Illinois bottom, opposite st.
Louis, will yield support at the rate of
two acres to family. and there is good
land in the counties adjoining st. Louis
that can be bought for twenty te thirty
dollars an acre. It is not difficult for an
industrious man to buy several acres of
land at these low prices, and pay for
} them in few years, and support his
: family in the meantime. Thousands OF
l farmers are doing this constantly. One
1 half the farms in Missouri were probably
2 bought on credit and paid for out Of
| their own products.
l The authorities of our cities are puz
cling themselves with the question o
finding work for the thousands of unem
ployed persons who throng in the soup
houses in winter, and are degenerating
; into chronic paupers. But there is Ne
work in the cities to be found TIT
: proper thing tobe done is to get the unem
u ployed out of the city. There is al
T unfailing livelihood to be made by tillinl
| the soil, and as long as land is as cheal
{ in this country as it is now, there is nt
J good excuse for the wilfuI idleuess anC
: impudens pauperism that prevail.---S
: Louis Republican.