The Russellville Democrat., 1882-07-13
The Mistakes Farmers Make.

parture of an old settler for Dakota, | where he will take up quarter sec tion of land and start in life again at the age of seventy. The case of the man Is so near that of thousands. of others, that few comments may not be out of place. The man had nice farm near splendid town, where he had lived and brought up family. He got tired of farming, sold his farm for six thousand dol lars, moved to town and went into the livery business, and in three years went through everything eX- cept team and a lumber wagon, and now he has packed up and gone to Dakota, with heart heavier than his pocket book, and he will die out there. The number of farmers that decide to go to town to live, eTeIy year, and go into business, is ap palling. Every town has them, and nine out of ten become poor. They get an idea that town business men are the happiest people on earth, and have an easy time, and they get to breeding over their hard life, and they think anybody can run store, 6 grocery, or a livery stable, and they sell out the farm and go into busi- ness in town. The most of them go into the grocery business because it seems so easy to weIgh out sugar and tea. They can always find a grocery man who will sell out the remains of a sick stock of groceries for ready cash, and when the farmer first sees his name over the door of grocery, he feels as though he was made, and puts his thumbs in the armholes of his vest He uses his money to stock up, pays cash, and his credit is good and he buys everything that is shown him. The commercial traveller who first strikes the farmer grocer has it all his own way, and pretty soon the grocery is full. It generally takes farmer two years to go through two hundred acre farm, in the grocery business. In stead of the business being an easy, run-itself sort of lay out, it requires the best management of any branch of trade. The profits are small and the waste is terrible. A grocer has got to be sharp as tacks. The far mers' girls and boys soon realize that they are merchants sons and daughters, instead of farmers and they have to keep up with the pro cession. There has to be lots of things bought as merchants that would never be thought of as far mers. The farm house furniture is not good enough, the democrat wagon gives place to carriage, the old mares give place to high step pers. and the girls dress better, and do not work. The family lives out of the grocery, the boys play base ball, and the girls go to big parties. The farmer is good fellow and trusts many other good fellows who can't pay, and in some cases he gets to drinking. Bills begin to come in, and he can't collect enough to pay rent. Friends that would help him out with money when he had q farm, will now tell hlm money is mighty scarce, and he will have to give a chattel mortgage on the stock. The stock runs down until there's noth- ing but a red tin can of mustard, with bulls head on it, some canned peaches and cove oysters on the shelves, q few boxes of wooden clothes-pins six wagon loads of bar rels with little sugar in the bottom, a couple of dozen washboards, box of codlish of the vintage of 1860, which smells like a glue factory, a show case full of three cent wooden pocket combs and blueing, hair pins and shaving soap, some empty ci- gar boxes that the boys have smoked the cigars out of, and q few such things that do not bring enough at an auction to pay for printing the auction bills. Then the farmer breaks up and goes west, leaving a lot ot bills in the hands of a lawyer for collection, who manages to col feet enough to pay his commission, and the family that was so happy on the farm, and so independent, be- comes demoralized, the girls marry chambermaids in livery stables rath- CT than go west, the boys go to driv- ing hack or working on a threshing machine, or tending bar, and refuse to go west, and the old folks go to Dakota alone, and wish they were dead, and will be quick enough, This is the history of thousands of farmers who get tired of the old farm. If they would but realize that theylare better fixed than nine-tenths of the merchants in town, and that they cannot become successful mer. chants any more than merchants can become successful farmers, they would be learning something that would be valuable to them.-Peck's Snn