The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know. Thomas Forsyth Hunt
$1,200 a year for a farm manager, he should have about $17,000 invested. Moreover, this investment must be in a form calculated to return an income. If part of it consists of investments for pleasure or fancy, such investment will not only not add to the income, but will detract from it by increasing the cost of maintenance.
This is scarcely less important to the employee than it is to the employer, since if the owner pays a higher salary than the manager can earn, he quite surely will sooner or later discharge his manager. This may result disastrously for the discharged young man, not merely on account of the loss of employment, but because his failure may militate against his securing satisfactory employment elsewhere. When an employer is seeking a man, he looks for one who has succeeded. There is an old saying, Nothing succeeds like success, and it is only too true that nothing fails like failure.
Profit is sometimes defined as that part of the product which the producer can consume without reducing his means of production.
CHAPTER III
FARM ORGANIZATION
In the last chapter were discussed the most common methods by which a young man acquires an opportunity to engage in farming. This chapter will discuss some less common arrangements by which may be bridged that period between the time the son is ready to go into the business and the time he may assume the complete control of the ancestral or other farm. It will also suggest a method for the continuous business management of a farm enterprise.
As stated, the most common reason for a farm changing from one family to another is the fact that no heir is willing to assume the obligation which is involved in paying for the interest of the other heirs. Connected with this problem is the further fact that the father is not usually ready to give up the management of the farm at the time one of his sons reaches the age to go into active business.
The reason for this state of affairs is made clear by the results of insurance statistics. The period that a man may be expected to live can be obtained by taking the difference between his present age and 90 and dividing the remainder by two. Thus, a young man who is 20 may reasonably expect to live 35 years, or until he is 55 years old. A man at 50, however, still has an expectation of life of 20 years, and the man of 70 of 10 years.
A farmer of 50 will usually have one or more sons ready to go to farming if they ever expect to engage in farming. But, as has been shown, a man of 50 has a reasonable expectation of 20 more years of life and cannot turn over the farm to his son, completely, without destroying his own opportunity for earning a livelihood. As things are usually arranged, therefore, there is no place on the average farm for the son, except as a hired hand, which is not desired permanently by either father or son.
Frequently the father fails to appreciate the earning power of his son, and, what is more important, that the boy has grown into a man. One day a teacher called a student of agriculture to his office, when the following conversation occurred:
John Armstrong, Austinburg, Ashtabula county, Ohio, was a dairy tenant farmer for twenty years with nothing to show for his labor but a debt of $500. He then bought the farm of 144 acres on which he lives, without cash payment, assuming a debt of $7,000. At the end of ten years he owned his farm and equipment valued at $20,000. He has two sons who have been important factors in his success. A year ago one of them married and went to a farm of his own, the father paying him $3,000 for his former labor.
John M. Hunt, Ackley, Iowa, two years a student at Iowa State College. He returned to the home farm of 120 acres, which, without any capital, he rented from his father. At the age of 25 his gross receipts from this farm were a little over $4,000. After paying rent, living, keeping a family of four, a few trips to fairs and corn shows, he had net $1,500 for his years work. Picture shows home with father, mother and sister in the foreground.
The Bureau of Soils at Washington, said the teacher, has asked me to recommend several of our students to them for positions as field assistants. If you desire to have me do so, I would be glad to recommend you for one of these positions. The compensation is $1,000 a year and field expenses.
I do not believe that I can accept, said Mr. Manning, my father is in poor health and needs my help on the farm.
Does your father want you to take charge of the farm and manage it so that you can make your training count?
No; my father expects to continue to manage the farm. He wishes me to work for him.
How much does your father expect to pay you?
Thirty dollars a month.
The teacher found it extremely difficult not to interfere, but he merely said, This is a case of filial duty which you must settle for yourself. I must have nothing further to say.
The young man returned to the ancestral home and is probably still there. It is, of course, impossible to determine the merits of an individual case, but this incident represents a type of cases where the son makes two important sacrifices from the sense of duty.
First, he sacrifices present, and, perhaps, future opportunity to earn the wages of which he is capable and to which he is justly entitled. And, second, and more important, he sacrifices the opportunity to develop his own powers and make concrete his own abstract self.
There are two things that every young man should do. One is to earn a living. A man that cannot or does not earn a living is of no value to himself or to anyone else. The other is to develop within himself his latent possibilities. He must apply himself to some problem, or problems, and through them develop his own personality. There is no place where more intricate and satisfying problems may be found than in the development of a successful farming enterprise. In the instance cited, the father may have been unable to pay his son the wage he might have obtained elsewhere, but he did not need to dwarf his sons development by treating him merely as a hired hand. His willingness to do so was probably due to his failure to appreciate that his son had become a man.
Sometimes a father is astute enough to reorganize his business so as to retain a place for himself while giving to his sons that opportunity which every man must have who develops himself normally.
An Ohio farmer once came to the Deans office. He had a son in college who was just completing the first year of a two years course in agriculture.
I should like to have you find a place for my son in a cheese factory during the coming summer, said Mr. McKinley.
I own a farm of 130 acres on which I have a herd of Jersey cattle, continued the father. I have two sons and one daughter. I would like to have my sons about me, but there is no place for them on my farm because I am there and cannot get away. In fact, I do not desire to give up the management of the farm and the development of the herd of cattle.
Not every father sees the situation as clearly as you do, interjected the Dean.
This is my plan. After my son has spent a summer in a cheese factory, I want him to come back to your school for another year. I want him to learn, especially, all you teach about dairying. I will then build a cheese factory on my own farm and my son will make into cheese the milk of my own herd, and also from the herds of our neighbors. By the time he has completed his work with you, my younger son will have finished the high school. He has some liking for trading, and he will sell the cheese at wholesale and deliver it to the surrounding towns where markets are unexcelled. As for the daughter,