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Show FARMING NOW AND OF YORE. Agriculturist Live Belter Now and Find It Hiiril to Make i;mls Meet. The average farmer does not differ from other mortals in believing that every other man's avocation is more pleasant and profitable than his oven, and the idea has not yet passed out of date with many that the tiller of the soil is the most independent and kindly of men. But that the life of the average Michigan farmer is not all passed in cutting cut-ting clover was the subject of a brief interview in-terview which a Detroit Tribune man had with D. Henning, a prominent farmer of Wheatfield, Calhoun county, the other day. "Things have changed a great deal since the old pioneer days of Michigan farming," said he, ' and it is about all that nine out of ten of our farmers can do now to keep up existence and the interest in-terest on their mortgages. What is it? Well, that is easier to ask than answer, j To begin with, farmers with growing families live more extravagantly now than they used. I remember when I was a lad we could all bunch together, get a large picnic wagon, take our best girls and hold our country dances and one dollar apiece for the whole would have seared us to death. Now that amount would scarcely buy the new necktie which the farmer's boy or girl would have to have for such an occasion. occa-sion. I have a farm of nine hundred acres, well stocked and provided with every kind of labor-saving machinery. If any man wants to buy it he will be surprised how pleasantly I will talk to him. I never get heat on anything, but that farm came pretty near doing it. Mo business man should ever think of farming. In every case he'll find it expensive luxury. One of our difficulties diffi-culties this year is to secure competent farm hands. On our farm we are paying pay-ing one dollar and fifty cents a day, all found, and the chief worry of my foreman fore-man is to get sufficient help. Plenty of idle men in the cities, eh? Well, they wouldn't be worth shucks to us. The work is too hard for them, and anyway adaptability in farming is as necessary as in anything else. The solution of the problem? It may be in operating on a more extensive scale, thus cheapening cheap-ening thecost in. every branch of the work, but I doubt if even that will make farming attractive enough for men with capital and ability which can be employed more pleasantly and profitably prof-itably in any other business. The future of the small farmers of Michigan, particularly par-ticularly those who are mortgage-rid-" den, is indeed a sorry one to contemplate." |