ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED | AUGUST 18, 1910 | THE FARMER'S ADVOCATE
Having read for some time letters appearing in your esteemed paper with the above heading, I feel tempted to also add a few lines to an old subject.
Some of the writers, ladies, evidently, from the city, who do not seem to have much to do but attend afternoon teas and balls, and study the fashions and the society columns seem to think that the exodus is due to the slovenly surroundings in the rural districts - evidently a lack of dress-coats and low-necked dresses, so to speak. Well, I suppose the polish and whirl and society of the city are alluring, but I don’t think it is quite the cause of the boys leaving the farm. The boys and girls leave the farm because they have to.
Take, for instance, the ordinary farmer, with the one-hundred-acre farm and a family of five or six boys and girls. The ordinary farm is worth about six thousand dollars, and, comparing with other lines of business, which, if they pay five or six per cent., the investor is satisfied. The farm, on this basis, yields a net return of $300 or $400 per year, and at this rate at simple interest, it would take fifteen to twenty years to make the owner worth $12,000, provided he starts with farm clear, which very few do.
However, he has to provide for his family - those five or six boys and girls, and at the same time keep enough for himself to live on for the rest of his days; and this takes money.
He may give them a thousand dollars each for a start, and if they purchase a farm and pay down $1,000, they have a $5,000 mortgage, at 5 or 6 per cent., to meet every year, not to speak of the cost of stock and implements, which will amount to $1,000 more, making a $6,000 debt, on which the farmer’s son has to pay $300 to $400 interest each year. So you can see that, while he makes a living, he does not get rich very fast, and will not have much money to buy dress suits and attend the opera, and follow high-class society.
Of course, if the farmers were able to form combines like the manufacturers, and able to dictate what his prices would be to the consumer for his produce, and to the manufacturer the price of his implements, I don’t think there is any doubt but what farming would be more alluring.
I think most sensible persons will agree with me when I say most farmers are kept too busy keeping even the world to waste time cleaning their finger-nails and shaving, and having their dress-suits pressed, and attending balls and the opera, etc. And if they did, I am afraid the lady who complains about the uncouth ways of the rural population would have to be a farmer, too, the same as the rest of us. If she would take a little time off from the rules of etiquette and study political economy, she might find that even she is a farmer, and only one of the very ordinary bricks in the building of our modern society. She would find that the toil of our uncouth farmers is the foundation supporting all trades, professions, art, etc., because everyone has to eat to live, and nearly all food is a product of the farm.
Now, instead of the farmer giving his son a farm, he educates him with the $1,000 for a school teacher, lawyer, doctor or minister. We find that the boy an earn his own living, and be paid for his labor in these professions. He may not accumulate riches very fast, still, there is this difference in comparison with farming on borrowed money: he generally does not have to work for someone else, and pay him $300 to $400 a year for the privilege of making a bare living, as he would have to do were he to go farming on borrowed money.
Of course, some farmers have commenced this way, and prospered, but, unfortunately, they are only a few. I will leave to the reader which course is the most alluring one to the farmer’s son.
Ruralist