The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1890-08-08
MRS. MEREDITH, FARMER.
She Says that Tillers of the Soil
Must Depend Upon Their Brains
As Well As ON Their Muscle.

AS well AS UH lutII MuSCles
One of the most successful farmers
and stock-breeders in Indiana is Mrs
Virginia G. Meredith, widow of the
late Hon. Henry Meredith, says the
Indianapolis Journal. Her fine farm
and beautiful residence, near Cam
bridge City, represent the best type
of Indiana rural homes. They also
show what can be accomplished by
one who understands farming; who
farms intelligently, and who conducts
the business on business principles.
Mrs. Meredith inherits a taste for
farming and a talent for business, and
she has cultivated them to good adj
vantage, as she has also her farm.
Every acre of her land is turned to ac-
count. Her fence corners are not occu-
pied by perennial crops of briars and
weeds. Her farm implements do not
accumulate rust and invite decay by
exposure to the weather. Her land is
not impoverished by continual crop
ping. She does not confine herself to
raising corn and wheat to be sold of
her farm at, perhaps, unremuneratiye
prices, and to be followed by a period
of repining and grumbling at hard
times. A flock of Southdown sheep,
bred up by several importations from
England, crops the heritage of her
rolling land, and one of the finest
herds of shorthorn cattle in the State
roams in her bluegrass pastures. She
markets most of her crops through the
agency Of these animals, IL blooded
horse going in occasionally by way of
variety. She is thoroughly versed in
improved methods of farming, is ia
miliar with the best literature or the
subject, studies the markets. and at
tends to business.
1t is hardly necessary to add that
she does not waste any time talking
politics in the county town, and does
not encourage visits from calamity
shriekers or walking delegates of tariff
reform. All this goes to show why
Mrs. Meredith is a prosperous and sue
cessful farmer. She takes no stock in
the idea now promulgated in some
quarters that farming is played
OUT or that Indiana farmers, as a
class, are becoming impoverished.
She says
II do not think the financial condi-
ton of the farmers in this State is SO
utterly unhappy as it is said to be.
Mortgages can be much safely
contracted by farmers than by persons
in other business. A man with 81, QUO
may purchase a farm worth two or
three times that amount by means of
a mortgage, and by good management
be reasonably sure of getting out of
debt in a few years. A mortgage is a
very useful thing, and not an evil if
care is used. In the township in
which / live | remember of but one
mortgage being foreclosed in the last
three years.
"Of course, farming does not pay
the man who depends solely upon his
muscle for his success while his brain
rusts. He must study his business
the SAM as the merchant or lawyer
does; keep posted on the markets,
read papers and books, attend meet
ings of farmers, and learn all he can
from direct observation of his own
soil and the conditions and locations
in which different plants or animals
thrive best. In brief, 1t is the intelli-
gent man who succeeds, be he doctor,
lawyer, merchant or farmer
In the light of such talk from this
enterprising and successful woman,
how contemplate appear the walls of
calamityites and how humanity the
complaints of halfway farmers, who,
by their own confession, are a fail
ure at their own business. There
are thousands and tens of thousands
of prosperous farmers in Indiana who
will endorse what Mrs. Meredith says,
and who are in no way responsible
for the current talk which undertakes
and belittles their calling. But there
are too many of another class, dis
qualified by heredity or by habits
from succeeding in any business, who
give willing a to calamity shriekers
and offer their own incapacity as q
proof that farming does not pay.
These men should go to school to
Mrs. Meredith.