Southern standard. (McMinnville, Tenn.) 1879-current, 1891-06-13
Invest Your Surplus on the Farm.
American Cultivator.

replenishes his stock once a week
takes from the amount Of his sales a
sum sufficient to pay his expenses
and invests the remainder in more
goods. If he can buy more goods
than he has sold, he usually does so,
limiting himself only by the proba-
BILE demands of his trade, and the ca
pacity of his warehouse to store the
goods. If he did not or could not do
this he would find his trade falling
off, and his customers leaving him
until he might justly complain that
his business was not profitable, and
would not give him comfortable
support.
But how many farmers follow this
method? Do they, when their cash
in hand exceeds their expenses, in
vest it again in the business that
they best understand, and strive to
be limited only by the productive Ca
pacity of their land and stock, or do
they place it in some savings bank,
where there are high salaried officials
to guard it, and to invest it for them?
Do they buy bonds and stocks and
shares in various companies, of whose
management they have neither
knowledge nor share?
Do they buy more land while that
which they already own is only par
TALLY productive, because of insuffi-
cient expenditure of capital upon it ?
Do they expend it for snowy resi-
dences, while their barns are incon~
venient and unfit for the proper
stabling of their stock? Do they buy
fine buggies when they have not
good working carts upon the farm,
pianos when they have more need of
plows, and cover their house floors
with costly carpets, while their fields
are barren from a lack of a sufficient
covering of manure.
Probably very few farmers are
guilty of all these mistakes in the use
of their capital, and:there are but few
who are free from all of them or
similar ones. 1t is true that the
farmer and the farmers family
should have a right to all the con.
venlences and many of the luXuriese en-
joyed by the successful merchant, but
neither have clear title to them un-
less successful, and neither can attain
a high grade of success if he does not
have sufficient capital in his business
TO conduct it properly and each
should have reserve fund in the
bank for emergencies when he can.
But he should use it when it will pay
in the business an interest fourfold
that paid by the bank.
When thoroughbred or a high
grade COW will make hundred dol
lars worth of butter in a year, and 6
scrub cow only makes forty dollar:
worth, while it costs but little more
to feed one than the other, money in
vested in improved breeds of cows
or in pure male from which to raise
up a herd of grades, will pay better
returns to the dairymen than can bt
obtained from bank stock or railroad
shares or Western farm mortgages.
When a small extra investment il
better seeds and more liberal ma
nuring will increase the crop with
out increasing the labor of cultiva
ton, or when extra cultivation viii
make an increase in the money re
turn four times as great as the eX
penditure; when better tools will saw
their cost in one seasons labor, Will
with care they will do good work 70
five or ten years, then is the tim
when the farmer. can make money b,
spending money.
When the expenditure of S25 o
$35 per acre for tile drains will en-
able field that now Yields less thai
so worth of poor grass a season t
produce $35 worth of the best, and fl
it for the growth of any crop tina
will yield profitable returns, it i
economy to spend money, and so i
is when a similar sum or a smalle
one will so renovate an old pastur
which now only feeds about on
COW upon six acres, so that it will
give more feed land better for 81,
times that number.
In short, every farmer should Sc
for himself the manner in which h
could improve his land, his build
ings, animals, tools or methods G
working, so that a dollar investe,
will be placed at better rate of in
terest than any one else will pay hin