Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1880-12-23
More Help on the Farm.

More Help on the Farm.
The fact that thousands of farmers
are troubled at the end of the season to
lind money to pay hired help is not con-
elusive proof that they have hired too
much. One fact in farming is never
conclusive of anything. It needs to be
compared with many others before we
can begin to decide what it means. In
the case OF farmers who can not provide
money to pay hired help, the fact may,
and in many cases does, mean that they
have hired too little. 1t used to be the
rule that the successful farmer must do
most OF the work on his farm, either
directly himself or by the unpaid help
of his sons. Benjamin Franklin put
this idea very tersely in the well-known
couplet of poor Richard,
He who by the pillow would thrive,
Himself must either hold or drive"
The saying is still true, with this addi-
ton: No farmer ever achieves great
success by his own labor alone. The
ability to make profitable use of the
labor of others is quite as important for
farmer as for the manager of any
other kind of business.
The farm is really workshop. Its
gains are less than those of other man.
ufacturing industries, because it is ex-
posed to fewer risks of loss. The farm
requires more careful management; but
the principles necessary for success are
the same as in other vocations. By
those principles production must be
pushed just so long as it can be done at
a profit. The farmers who usually
make the most money are market gar
deners, and one reason is that they en-
ploy most labor. There is little profit
in the kind of farming that needs little
labor. Usually the man who goes at
farming with the intention of doing
nothing except what his own hands can
accomplish will not make more than a
bare living, and the larger the farm the
worse position he will be in. Profit
does not come from the number of acres;
but from capital and labor applied to
them. In most cases the labor of the
owner of land is vastly more important
in directing the labor of others than for
what he himself can do. If farmer
finds this not to be the case, it is pretty
good evidence that he has mistaken his
calling.
There are on every farm many odd
jobs left undone from year to year for
lack of money or lack of help, the doing
of which would give more profit than
all the ordinary farm work done in
year. Sometimes it will be a piece of
undertaking, sometimes the improve
ment of waste ground covered by bushes
or weeds. The ordinary rule among good
farmers is that undertaking will pay
for itself in three crops-often two. Yet
men who call themselves farmers neg
lect or decline investments that will pay
thirty to fifty per cent, because
they are afraid to hire the necessary Ia
Dor. Or if they do the work, they do it
gradually, extending it over series of
years, and suffering from poor crops
when they should be rejoicing in good
ones. No good business man would de-
cline safe investment paying thirty
three per cent. yearly profit; and a
farmer who does this is clearly not q
good business man.
It requires good deal of executive
ability to manage large farm, and di-
rect large force of laborers; and it is
the lack of this which causes so much |
disappointment in farming. The great |
secret of success is to be always even |
with or ahead of work, and never to
leave work undone that will pay a profit |
for doing. This requires capital as well
as labor, and lack of capital is the most
common cause of failure. Most farmers
are more or less in debt, and this pre-
vents them from hiring needed help, and
from doing many things that it would
pay them well to do. The farmers who |
have money succeed in making more.
Those who are in debt lose more than
the interest they have to pay, because
unable to command ready capital or to
do the things which most conduce to
profitable farming.-Wma. j. FoWler, in
Examiner and Chronicle.