San Marcos free press. [volume] (San Marcos, Tex.) 1877-1892, 1884-11-27
Good Talk for Farmers and their Sons.

Register, TO whom we referred in the
Prairie Farmer of September 18th
has gone on q trip Eastward, perhaps
to visit his native State, Maine, we
believe. He tarried awhile in Brook
vile, Franklin county, in the southern
part OF Indiana, where he was sue
cessville farmer for many years, and
from whence he removed to an Iowa
farm thirty years ago. From Brook
vile he sent, on Sept. 30, the follow
ing interesting communication to his
journal. It contains much of interest
to farmers everywhere, and to their
sons. 1t corresponds to our own
long observation, and we call partic.
ular attention to the older boys and
the uneasy ones on the farms, to
what Mr.. G. says of the comparative
success of farming and other pur-
suits. Some years ago we wrote to
the following effect: OF men who
engage in trade nine out of ten, if not
more fail, or ut least fail to become
their own employers; while of those
who take hold of farming and per-
sist in it scarcely one in ten fails to
have comfortable subsistence, and q
majority ultimately have homes OF
their own.-Ed. Prairie Farmer.
FARMING A SURE su ccEss.
Fifty years ago, the writer was
well acquainted with the farmers of
Franklin county, Indiana. A large
portion of the county is not the best
for farming, yet where it has been
wisely and economically managed it
has invariably brought success to the
occupants. All over this county, in
every neighborhood, the farmers who
have attended to their business and
stayed at home, and devoted their at
tention to such productions as they
were best suited to, are now in COM
Portable circumstances their farms
more productive than half o century
ago, stocked with high grade ami
mails, substantial brick farm houses,
and the owners with from $4,000 to
100000 each of loaned money. The
boys who were of ago who went to
farming on rented land, who faith
fully attended to their business, are
now the most comfortable people on
earth. They have not attained to
these positions, by penuriousness or
starving their families or denying
them the comforts and reasonable
luxuries of life. But it has been by
a strict attention TO business.
And yet these comfortable farmers
do not constitute majority of those
who have worked and struggled hard
and long. Nor can scarcely one be
found among them who started out
with q considerable amount of means.
Such almost invariably in fifty years
have been failures. The honest, hard
working and wise calculators have
won in this county, and they will win
on the farm everywhere. But the
farmers who frequently 60 to town,
especially Saturdays, to drink beer
or stay around saloons, or who make
constant excuses to be away from
home, neglecting their farms and the
hands employed on them, are invari-
ably failures. They at first borrow
money and mortgage their farms to
their more prudent and progressive
neighbors. Interest and negligence
eat up their farms, and they become
shiftless tenants or push west to be
equal failures in their new homes.
To-day, three of us, who have been
familiar with the people of Franklin
for fifty years, sat down and for hours
recounted the history of the farmers
for that period of time. And in each
case we could almost invariably tell
the cause of the failure or the success
of each one. Devotion to business
won, while neglect led to failure.
And it is q universal law.
MERCANTILE BUSINESS A FAILURE.
Take those who have been engaged
in any branch of trade in the county
seat of Franklin county [Brookville]
and all with solitary exception, who
have been in business there for twenty
five years have failed and have died
poor. And this includes some of the
shrewdest most careful men we ever
knew, those who appeared to be
patterns of mercantile gentlemen.
But the same inevitable law of defeat
and bankruptcy has followed them
like an avenging Nemesis. Men who
in earlier years we envied for wealth,
prosperity, and aptitude for business,
who were our envy, and whom We
some time hoped TO initiate. are now
sleeping in the cemetery with no mar
BILE monuments, and if their graves
are marked. it has been done by kind
and charitable friends.
II is good TO look over the history
or that portion Of the human race
within ones own knowledge. for the
past fifty or sixty years The boys
whom We knew as honest. faithful
hired hands On farms, a. stage
riding the horse at the end
Of the rope on the towpath Of the
canal, sweeping Offices and cleaning
spittOOns in lawyers and doctors
Offices. OF any other honest industry,
who we're faithful 10 whatever place
they were called 70 81. are nov the