Connecticut western news., 1882-07-26
FARMER AND GROCERYMAN.
Peck tells Us of the Mistakes the
 Farmer Sometimes Makes.
From the Milwaukee Sun. l


 From the Milwaukee Sum-
 An exchange published in the interior of the State speaks of the departure of an old settler for Dakota, where he will take up quarter section 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 con- ments 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 the farm for six thousand dollars, moved to town and went into the livery business, and in three years went through everything except team and lumber wagon, and now he has packed up and gone to Dakota, with heart heavier than his pocket t-book, and he will die out there. The number of farmers that decide to go to town to live, every year, and go into business, is appalling. 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 thelr hard life, andthey think any body can run store, 8 grocery, or a livery stable. and they sell out the farm and go into business in town.
 The most of them go into the gro cery business because it seems so easy to weigh out sugar and tea. They can always find a groceryman who will sell out the remains of sick stock of gro- ceries for ready cash, and when the far mer first sees his name over the door of grocery, he feels as though he was made, and puts his thumbs in the arm holes 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 far mer two years to go through @ two hun dred acre farm, in the grocery business. Instead 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 farmers girls and boys soon realize that they are mer. chants sons and daughters, instead ot farmers, and they have to keep up with the procession.
 There has been lots of things bought as merchants that would never be thought of as farmers. The farm house furniture is not good enough, the dem- ocrat 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 8 farm, will now tell him money is mighty scarce, and he will have to give chat tie mortgage on the stock. The stock runs down until there's nothing but 8 red tin can of mustard, with a bulls head on 1t, some canned peaches and cove oysters on the shelves, few boxes of wooden clothes-pins six wagon loads of barrels with little sugar in the bot tom, couple of dozen washboards, 8 box of codfish of the vintnge of 1860, which smells like a git!o factory. a show case full of three ~~o2den pocket combs and blueing, hair pins ..nd shay ing soap, some empty cigar boxes that the boys have smoked the cigars out of, and few such things that do rot bring enough at an auction to pay for printing the auction bills.
 Then the farmer breaks up and goes west, leaving lot of bills in the hands of lawyer for collection, who manages to collect enough to pay his commits 
 sion, and the family that was so happy on the farm, and so independent, be- comes demoralized, the girls marry chambermaids in livery stables rather than go west, the boys go to driving hack or working on threshiDg machine or tending bar, and refuse to go west, and the olo 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 they are better fixed than nlne- tenths of the merchants in towns, and that they cannot become successful merchants any more than merchants can become successful farmers, they would be learning something that would be ! valuable to them.