The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1894-03-03
FARMER AND PLANTER.
MAKING A LIVING.


hdence and Industry Prevailed.
We have all heard and read and been
made tired about the purchasing power
of gold dollar.
Well, to test this thing whether a
piece OF metal, just because it was
gold, would buy anything more than
anything else in which the community
or seller had confidence, took gold
dollar, silver dollar and paper one,
and went to three different stores
and bought thirty pounds of flour for
each; and why? Because each one had
the. promise of the United States to
make it good, and the seller had con-
fidence in the ability of the United
States government to do so.
To test the thing further, went to
another store and bought another
thirty pounds for dollar on credit.
will admit there was some risk there,
but then the merchant knew had a
fine lot of razor-backs feeding on my
pinders, and whenever they were fat
enough to market they would bring
the gold, silver or paper. Now, where
in did one have any more purchasing
power than another? 1t was all con-
fdence.
will now relate an incident which,
If there were more, there would be less
cry about hard times.
don't raise all the pork feed. but
depend upon buying great deal
Well. you know, doubtless, that money
has been very scarce and hard to get,
and there has been such a want of con-
fidence between man and man that it
has also been difficult to buy anything
on credit
learned of a man who had nice lot
OF hogs to sell, and went to see them,
and agreed with him on price, and
would take them on certain day, pro-
vided l could get the money. Not
being able to turn anything wished
to dispose of into cash or to collect it,
l went to institutions and persons
whom knew to have plenty of hoard
ed cash. The very best security that
could be offered failed to get a dollar.
l very regretfully went to my neigh
Dor and told him :would have to de-
cline taking his hogs as l could not
get the money to pay him.
Nov look here, major" says he,
''you have got more pinders than you
have hogs to eat them. have more
hogs than have pinders to feed. If
turn these hogs out they will stray off
and will lose some if not all, and they
will do me no good, and if you get no
hogs you will lose your pinders. Now
you just give me your note payable at
Christmas and take these hogs along
and turn them on your pinders, and
you will get your money out of them
in time to pay me-
There was a stroke of financiering.
and one that is creating wealth, for 1
can take that lot of hogs which / have
been feeding for the last six weeks and
turn them into cash any day for
enough to pay for them and have fine
profit left.
A refusal to let me have the hogs
would not only have been a loss to
both of MS, but to the community at
large, for when these hogs are sold the
money will be kept at home instead of
going off to Chicago to pay for that
which we can make at home.
Now, Mr.. Editor, in times like the
present, who is the financier, the in
dividual or the bank officers who hoard
the money, or this piney woods farmer
who had forethought enough to use
that which he had SO as to create
money. restore confidence and revive
trade?
And it has been just this kind of
financiering that has made a man of
easy circumstances out of one who,
when he came here from South Caro-
lima few years ago, had SO little of
this worlds goods that he was COM
peeled to buy what many would call
about as poor pine land as there is in
Florida, and that on credit. But then
he says ''the land is not poor" for as
he says ''as big pine trees as grow
about here don't grow on poor land"
and reckon he is right, for he has
never bought one dollars worth of
commercial fertilizer yet.
But he has improved his land, built
him comfortable one-and-a-half story
house, has lots of children. fruit trees,
bees, poultry, razorbacks and cattle
and is out of debt
His sweet potato beds are sight.
never before saw rows bursting with
great big tubers peeping out all along.
He says the secret of his success is
in thoroughly preparing his land and
working his crops and not laying any
thing by with spear of grass in it,
that deep ploughing even in pine land
and thorough cultivation and elbow
grease tell the tale.
And still there is great cry about
mot making living in Florida" farm
ing.-Cor. Florida Farm and Fruit
Grower.