To secure a competence, no more activities should be entered into than can be prosecuted with vigor and at a profit. On the other hand, too few activities tend to stagnation and degeneration. Mental power, like many other things, increases with legitimate use and diminishes with disuse. The farmer who simply raises and sells maize is often poor in pocket and deficient in understanding. The college graduate who attempts but a few easy things seldom becomes a ripe scholar.
To secure a competence, the petty outgoes should be met by weekly receipts from petty products. I have known so many farmers to succeed by specializing moderately along one or two lines, while holding on to diversified agriculture, in part at least, that I am tempted to give a single illustration as a sample of thousands which have come under my notice.
A Scotchman and his family of four little children landed in northern Indiana with three to four hundred dollars; to this was added as much more by day labor. A farm of about one hundred and fifty acres was purchased, one hundred acres of which were adapted to wheat, corn and clover. Thirty acres were marshy pasture land; the balance, timber. Wheat was selected as the great income crop, which was supplemented by the sale of one to three horses yearly. The butter from a dozen cows, the chickens, ducks, and their eggs, were taken to the city once each week. The result was that at the end of the year there were no debts of subsistence to be paid. This left all the money received for the wheat and horses to be applied towards liquidating the mortgage. In a few years a large, comfortable house was built. This was followed by the purchase of another farm, and still another, until each child was provided with a home and facilities for securing a modest income. This shrewd Scotchman succeeded because he neglected neither little nor great things.
With what pride the writer, in 1863, deposited $1,700 in bank, the product of a single wool crop!—and the little farm of one hundred and twenty acres was not all devoted to wool-raising. If a young man can secure a loving, helpful wife, four good cows and enough land to produce feed for them, with room left for an ample garden, a berry patch and a small orchard, he may consider himself rich, and if he be able and intelligent he will soon have a competence.
The farmer, of necessity, goes to the city or village once each week for supplies which cannot well be produced on the farm. He should return, if possible, with more money than he had when he left home. It is not the big mortgage which was given for part of the purchase price of the farm which should make him unhappy, but the steadily increasing little charges accumulating on the tradesmen’s ledgers until this “honest” farmer dreads to meet a score of his town acquaintances.
The farmer who, from his well-painted covered democrat wagon, sells the product of his skill and labor looks to me quite as dignified as does the merchant who sells nails and codfish, turpentine and bobbins, patent medicines and jews’-harps, none of which represents his own skill or labor.
Farming will never be carried on in America by trusts or syndicates. A combine can run fifty nail factories or breweries, but not fifty farms, at a profit, because farming is too difficult, requires too close supervision and frequent change of details and combinations, and new plans to meet the ever-changing conditions of climate and soil. The conditions which surround agriculture in America put a quietus forever on “bonanza farming,” and tend to the rearing of ideal homes and the accumulation of modest incomes. Mining-farming on virgin, fertile, unobstructed areas can be successfully prosecuted only for a time.
“The Red river valley native soils contain from .35 to .40 of nitrogen, while the soils which have been under cultivation (in wheat) for twelve to fifteen years contain from .2 to .3 of a per cent.”[1] Another important point: When humus is taken out of the native soil as above, only .02 of a per cent of the phosphoric acid is soluble by ordinary chemical methods, while in the native soil three or four times as much phosphoric acid is soluble and is associated with the humus. Allowing that an acre of soil one foot deep weighs 1,800 tons, the native soil would contain from 12,600 to 14,400 pounds of nitrogen per acre, while the cultivated soil would contain from 7,200 to 10,800 pounds per acre. If the average amount of nitrogen in native soils (13,500 pounds per acre), and the average in the soil after it had been cropped twelve to fifteen years (9,000 pounds per acre), are compared, it will be seen that the soil has lost 4,500 pounds of nitrogen per acre, or more than one-third (probably one-half) of the nitrogen which could well be made available, and this in less than a quarter of a century.
[1] Henry Snyder, Bulls. 30, 44, Minn. Exp. Sta. See “Fertility of the Land,” p. 256.
Fifteen crops of wheat of 25 bushels per acre require 433 pounds of nitrogen, or one-tenth of the amount which the soil lost during the years of cropping. This soil, under “bonanza farming,” has lost outright nitrogen sufficient for 155 crops, each requiring as much nitrogen as does a crop of 25 bushels of wheat per acre. When the amount wasted on a single acre is multiplied by the acres of the vast, fertile wheat plains of the west, where “bonanza farming” is carried on, the loss of nitrogen to our country is seen to be so great as to appal the thoughtful man who looks forward to the generations who will want this element in the not distant future. Happily, this “bonanza farming” has its own cure. When mining-farming reduces the yield so that profits vanish, then these great farms will be cut up into modest-sized ones, true homes will rise, intermittent labor and the tramp harvest-hand will disappear, and the last and only condition which tends to produce an uninstructed peasant class will cease to exist.