This transaction was a bargain, from my point of view; and it was a good sale, from the standpoint of the other man, for he put $12,000 away at five per cent interest, and felt that he need never do a stroke of work again. A lazy man is easily satisfied.
In December I sold 283 hogs. It was a choice lot, as much alike as peas in a pod, and gave an average weight of 276 pounds; but the market was exceedingly low. I received the highest quotation for the month, $3.60 per hundred, and the lot netted $2702.
It seems hard luck to be obliged to sell fine swine at such a price, and a good many farmers would hold their stock in the hope of a rise; but I do not think this prudent. When a pig is 250 days old, if he has been pushed, he has reached his greatest profit-growth; and he should be sold, even though the market be low. If one could be certain that within a reasonable time, say thirty days, there would be a marked advance, it might do to hold; but no one can be sure of this, and it doesn't usually pay to wait. Market the product when at its best, is the rule at Four Oaks. The young hog is undoubtedly at his best from eight to nine months old. He has made a maximum growth on minimum feed, and from that time on he will eat more and give smaller proportionate returns. There is danger, too, that he will grow stale; for he has been subjected to a forcing system which contemplated a definite time limit and which cannot extend much beyond that limit without risks. Force your swine not longer than nine months and sell for what you can get, and you will make more money in the long run than by trying to catch a high market. I sold in December something more than four hundred cockerels, which brought $215. The apples from the old trees were good that year, but not so abundant as the year before, and they brought $337,—$2.25 per tree. The hens laid few eggs in October and November, though they resumed work in December; but the pullets did themselves proud. Sam said he gathered from fourteen to twenty eggs a day from each pen of forty, which is better than forty per cent. We sold nearly eighteen hundred dozen eggs during this quarter, for $553. The butter account showed nearly twenty-eight hundred pounds sold, which brought $894, and the sale of eleven calves brought $180. These sales closed the credit side of our ledger for the year.
| Apples | $337.00 |
| Calves | 130.00 |
| Cockerels | 215.00 |
| 1785 doz. eggs | 553.00 |
| 2790 lb. butter | 894.00 |
| 283 hogs | 2702.00 |
| -------- | |
| Total | $4831.00 |
In making up the expense account of that year and the previous one, I found that I should be able in future to say with a good deal of exactness what the gross amount would be, without much figuring. The interest account would steadily decrease, I hoped, while the wage account would increase as steadily until it approached $5500; that year it was $4662. Each man who had been on the farm more than six months received $18 more that year than he did the year before, and this increase would continue until the maximum wage of $40 a month was reached; but while some would stay long enough to earn the maximum, others would drop out, and new men would begin work at $20 a month. I felt safe, therefore, in fixing $5500 as the maximum wage limit of any year. Time has proven the correctness of this estimate, for $5372 is the most I have paid for wages during the seven years since this experiment was inaugurated.
The food purchased for cows, hogs, and hens may also be definitely estimated. It costs about $30 a year for each cow, $1 for each hog, and thirty cents for each hen. Everything else comes from the land, and is covered by such fixed charges as interest, wages, taxes, insurance, repairs, and replenishments. The food for the colony at Four Oaks, usually bought at wholesale, doesn't cost more than $5 a month per capita. This seems small to a man who is in the habit of paying cash for everything that enters his doors; but it amply provides for comforts and even for luxuries, not only for the household, but also for the stranger within the gates. In the city, where water and ice cost money and the daily purchase of food is taxed by three or four middlemen, one cannot realize the factory farmer's independence of tradesmen. I do not mean that this sum will furnish terrapin and champagne, but I do not understand that terrapin and champagne are necessary to comfort, health, or happiness.
Let us look for a moment at some of the things which the factory farmer does not buy, and perhaps we shall see that a comfortable existence need not demand much more. His cows give him milk, cream, butter, and veal; his swine give roast pig, fresh pork, salt pork, ham, bacon, sausages, and lard; his hens give eggs and poultry; his fields yield hulled corn, samp, and corn meal; his orchards give apples, pears, peaches, quinces, plums, and cherries; his bushes give currants, gooseberries, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries; his vines give grapes; his forests give hickory nuts, butternuts, and hazel nuts; and, best of all, his garden gives more than twenty varieties of toothsome and wholesome vegetables in profusion. The whole fruit and vegetable product of the temperate zone is at his door, and he has but to put forth his hand and take it. The skilled housewife makes wonderful provision against winter from the opulence of summer, and her storehouse is crowded with innumerable glass cells rich in the spoils of orchard and garden. There is scant use for the grocer and the butcher under such conditions. I am so well convinced that my estimate of $5 a month is liberal that I have taxed the account with all the salt used on the farm.