The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1886-01-09
WHY FARMING DON'T PAY.

The following essay was read before the Kent
county Agricultural Society at its recent meeting,
and containing as it does many good suggestions,
We reprint it for the benefit of the farming class
in Baltimore county and elsewhere:
Mr.. President The club will not expect from
me an elaborate disquisition on purely technical
points in the science of agriculture L merely
give few plain facts which l believe explain
the want of success in many instances. On
every band the cry comes, EARNING does not
pay" If we have good crops the consequence
is we get small prices. We either have too many
peaches not enough. 1t appears to be human
nature to complain,
Now, it does seem that the occupation which
God himself selected for man would be of all
others the most profitable. If it be not so the
fault must be with the man. How few farmers
keep any account with their farms, or with any
particular crop stock. He plants his corn,
sCws his wheat-so many bushels to the acre as
his drill represents makes no distinction between
small and large grain, never measures his land,
puts SO many bushels of fertilizer to the acre
whether it be dry wet, and cannot tell from one
year to another how much he sowed on a certain
field; to all appearances che goes it blind"
Then the cry comes, Farming does not pay"
farmer will 60 to a public sale and buy an
animal that is of inferior breed in preference to
why Because he gets nine months credit and
one year at law, and when it comes time for them
to give their increase, lets them shift for them
selves. Another great drawback to the farmer
will be found to result from useless expenditures
at home. Expenses to answer the demands OF
fashion-and what people may have to say OF
them. At the end of the year his stock and farm
has not come up to his expectations, and then the
cry comes, EARNING is faiIure!"
| He keens no hooks has q account of his house,
hold or personal expenses, but leaves that to the
merchant with whom he deals takes no account
of the many conveniences he has around him he
has his horse and carriage to 60 when it suits
him, raises family of children, educates them,
enjoys a social evening with his neighbor, is not
troubled with going to market every morning to
get his vegetables for the use of the family yet
be gives the farm credit. think that if every
farmer Kept an account of all his expenditures
and all his assets they would find that farming
was the most independent life that a man could
live.
Another difficulty with the farmer is his labor
and want of personal attention to it. When he
goes to hire man to work on the farm he does
not ask to his qualification to perform any
particular branch of farming, but what wages he
wants, or what Mr.. or B. has offered him
Now, I think laborer ought to be required to
give a recommendation from his former employer
as TO his qualification to perform that which he
proposes to do. think that laborer ought to
be paid according to his qualifications. Farmers
will not employ one that has served, say seven
years, to learn his trade, because he wants one
dollar and fifty cents day, but will take man
that just picked up his Ratchet and saw because
he get him for less, when he will out of every
hundred feet of lumber used cut twenty-five feet
to waste, to say nothing about the time taken up
in oafng, and when the job is done it is a botch
Then comes the cry, Farming is poor business.
Another great difficulty with most farmers is
the want Of confidence in each other. They will
not work together. One will overbid or underbd
many other ways Merchants, mechanics and
professional men have their unions, but with the
exception of club like this, here and there
throughout the counties, the farmer is the most Of
all others isolated. Men find that in union there
is strength and when farmers have failed to make
that discovery they have been sure to make an
other, and that is farming does not pay AND
why? Because vast fortunes are not made in 6
few years, then the cry comes that it is poor
pitiful business and does not pay.
1t does not pay disconnected man it does
not pay an avaricious man it does not pay ont
whose idea Of payment is the immediate acquisi
ton of immense wealth. But it does pay in
health it pays in the certainty of solid subsis
lance aud, above all others, in the satisfaction O
seeing his work prosper in his hands and that hi
is filling nobly the sphere in which the Creator
has placed him and that no one in the world il
the worse off for his being in it.