Norwich bulletin., 1913-12-27

CWritten Specially for The Bulletin.)
 It's just parrot work to say that most of us farmers don't make much money. The fact is truism, so trite that 1t seems almost bsnal to repeat It. One of the biggest farmers in my home town. a man with exceptional facilities for Knowing whereof he speaks, re- marked. the other day. that he didn't believe there was a farmer In the town who was making $500 year, af- ter paying himself day wages. And thaEe are several farms in this town osa which $500 wouldn't pay the taxes and six per cent on the investment. l haven't all the census figures at hand but according to my somewhat uncer- tain memory, the average income or farmers throughout the country ism t that much.
 Mighty few of us need worry over
 NoNr. there isn't one master reason Amw this, applicable to all farmers and Explanatory of all cases. There are a whole lot of reasons Some of them are outside the farm and some are sprputed right on the farm, Some are due to faults of other people, and some are due to failures under our own hats,
 It is easier to blame the other fel- low; but it is sometimes more profit able to stick a few pins into our selves The fact that such prick1ngS
 
 sarily invalidate their usefulness.
 We farmers aren't having a fair deal and an even shake in the market The cards are stacked against us, and the dice are loaded by our opponents. But, after all that is something for which we ourselves are at least partly to blame. It takes two to make a bar gain. The nlanipulatUrs of the market can't always blk and jockey us unless we permit the bunco, If we were only willing to organize as they do and work together as they do. we un- occasionally could compel them to come at least halfway to our terms. instead of their forcing us to uncondi- tional surrender to their terms. Much as we may denounce the middlemen, We can't really blame them for taking what they can get The spirit and practice of business is simply selfish ness-and not always Adam smith enlightened seldshness,' either. If the Iniddlemen show more shreW dness in disciplined array their various selfish nesses that we do in permitting ours to straggie, helplessly dis ordered, at their mercy,-why, ito the vietors belong the spells" That's a proper corOllary of modern business theory and natural result of modern business practice.
 But there seems to be about as much use in urging a raw meat diet on a. flock of anti -carnivorous sheep, as in arguing with farmers in behalf of com bination- Somethime it will come. But not in your day or mine. That is, not to any controlling extent. It is al- ready in practice, here and there. sporadically. But we are, the most of us, still ~agin it." both in theory and in practice A good many of us have the spirit of the New Hampshire party who had ruther lose ten dollars any a dollar"
 Taking things as they are and people as we find them. perhaps some inn mediate good can be derieVed from thinking a little more about the other class of reasons why we don't make money; the. reasons which inhere in ourselves.
 In the first place, there are a great many of us who aren't fitted to make money. We either weren't born with the money grabbing instinct, or we haven't trained ourselves into it. I often wonder how many of ug who don't and can't make money on the farm, either could or would make money in 8. dry goods store or meat market? In other words, how many are really born money making?
 
 According to the figures obtained by the government in its process of en- forcing the income tax law, there are 38,240,000 people in this country re- ceiving incomes as profits from busi ness, as salaries and wages, as receipts from investment. Of this vast num- Der just 425,000 are in receipt of an- nual incomes exceeding s60O and 37,S15,0 GOO receive only $500 or less a year
 Iincline to the belief that most of the farmers of the country are included in that 37,s15, 900. But that 37,815, 900 aren't all farmers. for there are only about a dozen million farmers in the whole United States. That leaves something like 25.000, ,0000, who are not farmers, and yet are getting only $500 a year or less.
 The simple truth is that making money is a faculty by itself. abnor- mally developed in some, partly devel- oped in some. and practically undevel- oped in a great many. The occupa- ton of farming, having to deal, as it does. with things of real value and in herent importance, rather than with mere conventional counters of trade.