The Wellington enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 1867-188?, 1882-06-07
A Net Uncommon Mistake.

1t is no use whatever for a young man
to expect to make money very fast at
farming, with only his own hands to help
him. If his hands and his intelligence
are his only capital, he had much better
work for some enc else q few years, than
to run in debt for a farm, for he will
have less care, will run less risk, and
will not only live easier, but will have
more money at the end of his years of
service. 1t is useless to expect to make
money on capital till the capital is first
acquired. A shoemaker who should
hire shop and set up business, and ad-
vertise to manufacture shoes, before he
had supplied himself with tools or leath-
er, would surely fail.
4 farmer who runs in debt for farm
without providing means for working it,
or one who buys a farm and pays all his
money toward the land, and has moth
ing left with which to purchase stock,
tools and manure, is very much like the
shoemaker without leather, pegs or
hammer. 1t would not do to say that
shoe-making is not a good business be-
cause such q shoemaker fails to sue
ceed, yet great many persons 60 upon
farms under circumstances very simi-
lar, without capital, and then wonder
they do not get ahead as rapidly as they
had expected.
We claim there is no business which
holds out better inducements to a young
man with small means than the cultiya-
ton of the soil. II he undertakes any
kind Of manufacturing he will find him
self in direct competition with large cap
italists, who have already the control of
the markets and who can manufacture
goods cheaper than he can; but on the
land he is sure of one market, his own
table, that will never fail him. BE can
raise his own food, and, if he knows
how, can raise it cheaper than he can
buy it, and If he attempts to do no more
he will have good deal of time for
working for others either on farms or at
mechanical work. Every housekeeper
who can get a small piece of land, if he
has taste for its cultivation, can have
a good garden and can make its cultiva-
ton profitable, especially if he takes
good care of it and gives to it only his
morning and evening hours, before and
after his regular days work in shop or
store. Under such circumstances he can
raise his vegetables and fruits very much
cheaper than he can purchase them, for
his labor will cost him nothing, provid-
cd he would otherwise have been idle,
and his market will be the highest retail
market. But if our regular mechanic
or ten-hours-a-day laborer gives up his
regular business, runs in debt for q
large tract of land aud sets up as pro-
ducer of food for other persons, he will
find himself Immediately brought into
competition with the outside world, and
also at the mercy of the party who lends
him money to buy the land, and he will
find himself sadly at a disadvantage in
lae contest. The case is little better
where q young farmer begins life by hir-
ing all his capital, or who puts all his
own money into land, leaving nothing
as working capital. This it seems to us
is the mistake which the thousands Of
farmers" have made who are asking
how they can make poor run out land
rich and productive without money to
luy cattle, food or fertiIizers.-Nelo
EnOldud Farmer