The natural question occurs, why does not the farmer change his business as hundreds of thousands of mechanics and other men are doing every year? The answer is that it is impossible for him to do so. He cannot leave his farm without ruin to his family, for to neglect to plant and cultivate is to lose the credit upon which in ninety-nine cases in a hundred he must subsist. He cannot sell his farm at auction under the hammer as if it were a city house or a village residence, for purchasers of farms are the rarest of all purchasers of real-estate in the United States. This is not in accordance with European precedent or supposition, but it has been demonstrated in every State, and almost every county of the Union.
Does all this mean that farming will not pay? No. Farming will pay if backed by capital as well as practical knowledge. But it is almost impossible that the American farmer of the present generation shall have any capital from any source whatever. Farming, when conducted intelligently, can be made profitable in any portion of the United States by a man with sufficient money in his pocket. Hiram Sibley, one of the most remarkable men whom the United States ever produced, was, at the time of his death, in 1888, managing four hundred different farms in nine different States of the Union, conducting all through correspondence, and he made it his boast, in which undoubtedly he was honest, that from each of these farms he secured a profit. But Sibley was a millionaire twenty times over, probably forty times. Whatever his farms needed they could have at once, and at the lowest market price, for he always had cash to pay for whatever he wanted. Nevertheless, this successful farmer, this millionaire, this thorough-going man of business, said, to the day of his death, that there was no more pitiable character in the United States than the farmer.
Nobody knows more about any one special business than the man who does not have to attend to its details, so there is a widespread opinion and assertion that the trouble with the farmer is that he is improvident. Men call attention to the expenses, apparently unnecessary, which he is continually making, particularly in the direction of comforts and even luxuries for his family. But what can the farmer do? Everywhere east of the Mississippi river he is near a village. His children go to school with those of the village. They learn of comforts and luxuries to which they are not accustomed at home. They talk about them. They think about them. They long for them. The farmer himself is a human being. Any one who mistakes him for a boor makes a terrible blunder. Whenever it is in his power to make his home more comfortable he does so with a degree of earnestness that is almost terrible. He is anxious to save himself from the possible imputation, by his own children, of being a less careful provider than any one with whom his family are on intimate terms.