"My father had this whole farm under cultivation," said Mr. Jones, "except the hillsides. But what's the use? We get along with a good deal less work, and I've found it better to cultivate less ground during the forty odd years I've had to meet the bills. But I've kept up more of my land than most of my neighbors. I reckon I've got about eighty acres of good cleared land yet on this farm, and the leaves and pine needles we rake up where the trees grow on the old fields make a good fertilizer for the land we aim to cultivate, and I get a good many loads of manure from friends who live in the village and keep a cow or a horse.
"The last crop I raised on that east field, where you see those scrub pines, was in 1881. I finished cultivating corn there the day I heard about President Garfield being shot; and it was a mighty hot July day too. My neighbor, Seth Whitmore, who died about ten years ago, came along from the village and waited for me to come to the end of the row down by the road and he told me that Garfield was shot. We both allowed the corn would be a pretty fair crop and when I gathered the fodder that fall there was a right smart of a corn crop. Yes, Sir, it's pretty good land, but we don't need much corn, no how, and we can make more money out of tobacco. Of course it takes lots of manure and fertilizer to grow a good patch of tobacco, but good tobacco always brings good money."
"About how much money do you get for an acre of tobacco?" asked
Percy.
"That varies a lot with the quality and price—sometimes $100—sometimes $300, when the trust don't hold the price down on us. We can raise good tobacco and good tobacco brings us good money. We can always manure an acre or two for tobacco and get our groceries and some clothes now and then, and that's about all anybody gets in this world, I reckon. But taxes are mighty high, I tell you. About $75 to $80 I have to pay. Are taxes high out West?"
"We pay about forty to fifty cents an acre in the corn belt," Percy replied; "but, in a course I took in economics, I learned that the taxes do not vary in proportion to land values. Poor lands, if inhabited, must always pay heavy taxes; whereas, large areas of good land carry lighter taxes compared with their earning capacity. You must provide your regular expenses for county officers, county courthouse, jail, and poorhouse, about the same as we do. Your roads and bridges cost as much as ours; and the schools in the South must cost more than ours, for a complete double system of schools is usually provided.
"But did you say that you paid fifty cents an acre in taxes?" asked
Mr. Jones.
"Yes, about that, in the corn belt," replied Percy, "but not so much in Southern Illinois where the land is poor. I think the farmers in that section pay taxes as low as yours. Perhaps twenty cents an acre."
"Do you mean to say that you have poor land in Illinois?"
"Yes, the common prairie land of Southern Illinois must be called poor as compared with the corn belt land. There is a good deal of land in Southern Illinois that was put under cultivation before 1820, and eighty crops must have made a heavy draft upon the store of plant food originally contained in those soils."
"Only since 1820? Why, we began to till the soil right here, Young Man, in St. Mary County, in 1634 and don't you know, Sir, that we had a rebellion here as early as 1645? Yes, Sir, that was one hundred and seventy-five years before 1820. So you've raised only eighty crops and the land is already getting poor, and we've raised two hundred and fifty crops—well, maybe, not quite so many, for we've been giving our land a good deal of rest for the last fifty or sixty years; but my grandfather used to raise twenty-five bushels of wheat to the acre with the help of a hundred pounds of land-plaster, and I've no doubt I could do it again today if I cared to raise wheat, but one acre of tobacco is worth ten of wheat, so why should I bother with wheat?"