There are some people who always ask this question. You may suggest
anything, a book to read, a science to be studied, or some new work to be
done, and, though they may not be so rude as to say so, they will wonder
how it will pay. “Better not go into farming, my boy. It doesn’t pay.”
“Better not do this or do that. It won’t pay you.” After a little more
of this sort of thing you wonder if it pays to be born, or to live, or
to do anything whatever. Now, what do they mean by this question? By far
the larger part of those who ask it mean that the work, whatever it may
be, does not pay a handsome return in money. A few mean something quite
different. They know all about it, they have seen the world, and it is
all a hollow show, and their favorite dolls are full of sawdust. These
people are dead, but they have forgotten it.
Let us see about this. If there is any one business in the world about
which the people in it are sure it does not pay, it is farming. “It does
not pay.” So many people have said this that people who are not farmers
have really come to think it must be so. Is it true? Here is an ear of
field corn with twelve rows of grains, and twenty grains to a row. Fair
average corn, with 240 grains to the ear. We can take off one grain
and plant it in the ground, and within six months have two ears of the
same corn, or 480 grains from one grain. How big a profit is that? One
grain increases to 480 grains. Is there any manufacturing business, art
or profession that pays such an enormous return? In spite of this they
say it does not pay. Then there must be something the matter with the
business. Nature has provided that the increase of plants shall be very
great. One seed may increase a hundred fold, or five hundred fold, or a
thousand fold. Clearly the work of raising plants with such advantages
in its favor ought to pay, and if it does not, it is equally clear that
something is wrong, some one to blame.
The city housekeeper finds at her store on the avenue a head of lettuce.
Rather wilted and damaged by rough handling. Six cents. You can plant
43,560 heads of lettuce on one acre of ground. At six cents a head that
is $2,613.60 taken out of one acre of land inside of eight weeks. And
yet this person gravely tells us lettuce raising does not pay. What can
the matter be, and where has all this money gone? A city like New York
will calmly eat 40,000 heads of lettuce in a day or two, and pay out over
$2,000 for it, and be ready to eat and pay as much more the next week.
The money is certainly paid to somebody, and if the farmer still insists
it does not pay to raise the lettuce, there must be a reason for it.
Ask the groceryman. He replies that he must live and must have a good
slice out of the money to pay him for buying the lettuce down town and
bringing it up to his store. It isn’t so evident that he must live as he
fancies, because there was a time when there were no storekeepers and
the world got along beautifully without them. However, he is convenient,
and we will allow him his slice out of the profits. The teamster, the
wholesale dealer, the freight handler, the railroad people all say that
they too must live, and to please them we will admit that is so, though
there is not much to prove it. They must share in the $2,000 paid for
the acre of lettuce. Lastly, the farmer gets what the others decide he
may have after they have had what they decide is their share. If we ask
each one of this row of men, it is quite possible each one will say it
does not pay, but, somehow, none except the farmer says anything about
it. The last man, the actual producer of the lettuce, is the only one to
complain. His business is the only one concerned that people say does not
pay.
There was once a young man who started out bravely in life, resolved
to reform the world. After trying for some time he gave it up and was
ever after entirely contented if he paid his board regularly every week.
It is useless to think we can reform this matter all in a day. The day
will come when these things will be changed and equity and justice will
take the place of the utter selfishness that now marks competition in
business. Our best plan is to see what we can do to become producers
ourselves. We want the lettuce ourselves. We must pay the retail price
for it, and if at this price there is a big profit in raising it, we
would like the entire profit placed in our hands. The people in these
United States are divided into two great classes—the producers and the
consumers—those who raise things to eat, and those who are in other
trades and eat without producing. The producers are the farmers and
fishermen. The consumers make all the rest of the people. The producers
also eat, but their food costs them very much less than the food used
by the non-producers. Of course we can see there must be non-producers
or the trades and arts would perish, and the nation would become a mere
agricultural community, content with sleeping and eating. At the same
time, we must observe that a very large proportion of those who produce
nothing live in small towns and villages and own land. We see everywhere
in our smaller cities and towns hundreds of homes having gardens about
the house. A little discouraged grass, a dyspeptic tree or two, a forlorn
grape vine straggling over the fence, plenty of dusty gravel, and a
mortgage on the house and lot. Within the house bitter complaints against
the high price of food, much fretfulness and weariness at the scant,
monotonous bill of fare. Boys and girls growing up with white hands and
narrow chests (to say nothing of stomachs that they should be ashamed to
own) and the storekeeper saving money on the next corner.
This is the reason it does not pay. We want to have white hands and be
genteel and all that. We want to be consumers, and we unwittingly combine
to get all we can out of the selling and handling of food and leave the
producer as little as we think he can be forced to take. We must get rid
of this imported nonsense about work. (It all came from Europe, and is
wholly un-American.) We must make the land give us more food. Our boys
and girls must go out of doors, must learn to be producers. They should
be shown that it is disgraceful to live in a mortgaged house, that it is
disgraceful to stand on any part of God’s ground and complain that food
is scarce or high when that food might come out of the very ground under
our ungrateful feet. The Chinese, the Japanese, the Dutch, the French,
the Swiss cultivate every rod of ground they own. No barren yards about
their houses, taxed and yet paying no return. Why, in England even the
strips of waste land along the railway tracks are cultivated, and the
trains move between rows of cabbages half a hundred miles long.
This is the way for thousands of families to make it pay. Produce your
own food and sell it to yourselves. A head of lettuce grown on your own
ground and eaten on your own table saves the retail price of a head of
lettuce, and if there is a profit on it for all the people who touch it,
clearly you have the entire profit for yourself. On reading this about
five hundred people will calmly remark that this is not so. They have
tried it and it cost more to raise their own vegetables than it did to
buy them at the stores. The wages of the gardener come to more than all
the things were worth. So much the worse for the gardener. You should
be your own gardener. Where are your boys and girls? At the base ball
grounds, or the rink, or at the foolish piano—doing nothing—earning
nothing and trying to be genteel? Garden work is hard on the back and
hurts the hands. Yes, because your hands are weak and your back is not
strong, and of these things you should be ashamed.
The price of land in this country is steadily rising. All the best farm
land is being taken up. The cost of food is advancing. It will never
again be as cheap as it has been in the past. The time has come when we
must economize. We can not longer afford to carry those neglected garden
plots and waste spaces about our houses. They must produce food for the
people who own them. We must be our own producers. We must study plants
and animals. These represent food and wealth, and it is simply an untruth
to say it will not pay to raise them. If your garden costs more than the
retail price of food in your neighborhood the fault is your own. There
is something the matter with your soil or your seeds, or your method
of culture. Think of the profit of raising lettuce at $2,000 an acre,
and yet that is the return that an acre will produce if paid for at the
retail price. Moreover, the lettuce would be removed from the ground in
ample time for another crop, likewise bringing a profit. Of course, if
your land is worth five dollars a foot, the interest on one foot would
be more than the value of the single lettuce plant you could raise upon
it. In such a case you had better sell out and buy cheaper land. For
the majority of homes where there is a garden the land is cheap enough
to produce more or less of the food needed in the house, and there is no
reason whatever why it may not be raised at a handsome profit.
The Chautauqua University recognizes the importance of this matter. Its
aim is to help, to guide, and to instruct, and it is now, through the
liberality of its friends, able to help, guide and instruct all who wish
to learn something of the art of producing food and saving money. It sees
hundreds of boys and girls totally ignorant of these common things. It
sees young people wondering what they shall do, perplexed and worried
over this question of earning a living, and discouraged at the high cost
of living, when a part of their living is going to waste beneath their
feet. The Chautauqua Town and Country Club was formed to help those
who wish to help themselves. It aims to show by simple lessons how to
raise plants of all kinds, how to care for animals, how to take care of
your garden so that it will be a source of pleasure and profit. Half
a thousand people have already joined the club and are now at work in
good earnest. Should you wish to know more about it, write to Miss K. F.
Kimball, Plainfield, N. J.
All this is meant for you.
What are you going to do about it?