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to October, for $4.50 cash on an average, at a net profit of 12 per cent.; and that a farmer who bought his yearly supplies on a credit had paid for flour a grade below this at $6.00 per barrel. Had he bought for cash his flour would have cost him $4.29. He would have saved 44 per cent. This is the difference between cash and credit prices. On 10,000 barrels of flour of this grade the farmers would save on a cash basis $17,025.

It is probable that the same difference between cash and credit prices rules the market in regard to dry goods, domestics, sheeting, prints, shoes, hats, hardware, agricultural implements, ready-made clothing, and all the commodities usually bought by farmers at a general supply store. A friend informed the writer that he bought floor matting at a strictly cash store for 16 cents per yard; for the same grade of matting, the price was, in a town where credit prices prevail, in one store, 25 cents, and in another, 30 cents per yard. These were cash prices in a place where the bulk of business is transacted on a credit basis. This means that the cash price of this article in the credit town was 56 per cent. in one store, and 87 per cent in the other store, in advance of the cash price of this article in the cash town. A lady informed the writer that she bought flannel for 12 cents per yard, and a friend of hers bought the same flannel for 35 cents per yard on credit. On this article the credit price is 180 per cent. in advance of the cash price. If each of one hundred persons buys eight yards of flannel at 12 cents per yard, cash, the cost to the one hundred persons will

be $100. If the same number of persons purchase the same number of yards of this article on a credit, the cost will be $280.

The remedy for this state of things is severe economy, earnest self-denial, and a fixed determination to buy for cash. Two years of self-denial and economy will enable the majority of the Southern white people to buy on a cash basis.

Mr. of Mississippi, a merchant, commenced business with $500. He sold all goods at an advance of ten per cent. on the cost price, freight added. When we formed his acquaintance, and were his guest for two days, he was the owner of five stores. In 1878 he sold in one of these stores, during the months of January, February, March, and April, $20,000 for cash. This town had no factory, no special industry on a large scale, that distributed money among the people. Mr. was eminently

successful as a merchant. He was a thoroughly conscientious Christian gentleman. His pastor-a gentleman widely known in the South as a Christian minister and as an author-said to us: “Mr. never advertises in the usual style in the town newspaper, but every few weeks he publishes a price list, cash, of various commodities-as much as will fill a column in the paper. His representations are true, and no clerk is permitted to deviate from these prices for that week." He prospered, and benefited the people.

I asked a prominent lawyer how many first-class lawyers-men standing at the head of their profession in the State-had been able to lay aside, during

twenty-five years of toil, ten thousand dollars? "They can be easily counted," was the reply. The great majority make a moderate living. The same is true of physicians, and of professors in institutions of learning. The governor of the State, the justices of the supreme court, judges of circuit and chancery courts, and other officers of trust and responsibility, make a bare living. Ministers of the gospel, no matter what their talents or their service may be, are proverbially poorly paid. Yet all these exalted vocations in life not only demand talents of a high order and superior aptitude, but require years of expensive literary and technical education.

The skilled mechanic, after serving an apprenticeship of four years, and in some instances longer, makes a living. Be the industry what it may, be the vocation in life, however exalted, however responsible, however great the preparation essential to fill it worthily, outside of the charmed circle of trade the compensation rarely exceeds a modest living. Often it means a miserably pinched living. Of the farming class this is the sum: a few are out of debt, and struggle to keep their heads above water, and live fairly well, but on an economical basis; the majority are in debt, and the prospect is, that a large number are hopelessly involved.

Five thousand dollars invested in trade, even if half is borrowed money, has a far better chance to make in a few years twenty-five thousand, fifty thousand, and a hundred thousand dollars, than has five thousand dollars in preparing for any of the learned professions, or invested in a farm, to make a

meagre living. Survey the field of human industry in the Southern States, and the fact is everywhere patent, emphasized in every vocation and calling of life, that there is no general prosperity. In large cities there are no doubt some prosperous physicians and lawyers, and prosperous men in other callings of life. It is not so in the country at large.

There should be no hostility between the merchant class, the farming class, and all other classes. But this business method is not only bringing bankruptcy to the farmers, but practically and really it is damaging the just and reasonable interest of all other classes, since, in a great agricultural community, the professions and mechanics are largely the servants of the farming class.

An alarming state of affairs has impressed its die in recent months upon the attention of the country. When people are prosperous, they have neither the time nor the disposition to engage in lawlessness. Men who can not see afar off, moving in a narrow circle, toiling hard, discouraged, despondent, in debt, the farm under mortgage, ruin and poverty staring them in the face, are easily led into desperate measures, and that to their own undoing. But little sunshine streams into their lives. The situation of the country, view it as we may, is serious.

CHAPTER III.

THE LIEN LAW MACHINE.

"Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow;
The rest is all but leather or prunello."-POPE.

THE
HE progress of Southern farmers to secure

an ordinary competency is very slow. We refer to that class who own their land, from 100 to 2,000 or 3,000 acres. These landowners, provided with necessary live stock, are struggling to make a living. Capital amounting to $500 and $5,000, with personal labor added, is not remunerative on the farm. It pays no interest in a majority of instances. The investment itself is in danger. The product on thousands of farms has not been sufficient to pay the annual expense account. What then? A part of the property, real or personal, or both, must make up the difference between the income of the farm and its expenses. A good crop may cancel this balance, but this is a rare Occurrence. The general rule is, the balance is increased until a part of the land, or all of it, adjusts the claim. It is history to-day, that farms of every dimension, all over the South, and the live stock, with the products raised on these farms, have barely enabled the occupants to live. In other words, in many instances the farms, horses, mules, and cattle,

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