How to Get a Farm, and Where to Find One (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1871. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV. More Opinions and Experiences--Some Objections--Additional Light--Encouraging the Young--A personal History--Getting an Illinois Farm--One Example--Good Suggestions--Buying and going in Debt--Value of the Discussion. The discussion thus opened drew out, as may be supposed, the views of other practical men to elucidate the important question as to the best way of getting a farm. The following is the commentary of another intelligent observer, Mr. J. W. Colburn, of Springfield, Vermont. Referring to the suggestions made by "F.," as quoted in the preceding chapter, he says: "His advice cannot but be regarded, by those to whom it was intended to benefit, as very sensible, and in the main correct. He points out three ways to be pursued to accomplish the object sought for, viz.: Working out for wages, taking farms upon shares, and beginning with a few acres at first, enlarging as means are saved to invest, seeming rather to give the preference to this last method over the two first. Circumstances, with regard to land and labor, may be such in his locality as to make his views correct; but with all due deference to his opinion, to suit the locality in which I reside, I should ask him to reverse his opinion, and put the working out for wages to get a start in life at the head of his three ways to get a farm, as decidedly preferable to either of the other two. "If the first thing that a young man thinks of and must do, after arriving to the years of his majority, and destitute of means, is to get married, as is often the case, then he must do the next best way that he can--take a farm on shares, or purchase a few acres; but it will be but a few acres, in four cases out of five, that he will ever be likely to pay for and own. I know it is a divine comma...