Now, it will be born in mind, that we have charged the first crop with horses and machinery, property that, by right, should come under the head of capital; we have charged it with what will work the farm for years, and help to produce successive crops, not of one hundred acres, but of two or three hundred acres; and yet, with all the charges, the crop shows a profit of $773.
What other business can make such a showing as this?
As a matter of fact, all the ready money the settler will require to provide himself with machinery, will be ten per cent. on the price; for the balance he will get two years time at 12 per cent. interest.
[GENERAL REMARKS.]
While our figures and illustrations in regard to the opening of a farm, and the expenses attending thereon, have been as explicit and full as our space would permit, still we regard them but as a basis for a variety of similar calculations to be made by intending immigrants.
For instance, two friends might buy a breaking team between them, and break, say twenty acres, on each one's farm. One could do the breaking, while the other might be doing some other work.
In fact, each man's case has its own peculiar features, which he must bring his own judgment to bear upon, and we don't pretend to have done more than to have given him a good guide to assist him in his calculations.
Twenty acres would be a pretty fair breaking for a poor man the first year, and quite sufficient to enable him to support a small family. We have farmers in the woods, now prosperous men, who for years had not more than from five to ten acres cleared, for it is hard work to clear heavy timbered land, and much easier to plant young trees than to cut old ones down. But heretofore poor men were frequently deterred from going on prairie land on account of the heavy expense attached to fencing their tillage land. This was about the highest item of expense. It is not so now, for in the counties in which our Catholic colonies are situated, and in the adjoining counties,