Of course the wages of the hen man and his food and the interest on the plant must be counted, but I do not propose to count them twice. Four Oaks is a factory where several things are made, each in a measure dependent on, and useful to, the others, and we cannot itemize costs of single products because of this mutual dependence. I feel certain that I could not drop one of the factory's industries without loss to each of the others. For this reason I kept a very simple set of books. I charged the farm with all money spent for it, and credited it with all moneys received. Even now I have no very definite knowledge of what it costs to keep a hen, a hog, or a cow; nor do I care. Such data are greatly influenced by location, method of getting supplies, and market fluctuations. I furnish most of my food, and my own market. My crops have never entirely failed, and I take little heed whether they be large or small. They are not for sale as crops, but as finished products. I am not willing to sell them at any price, for I want them consumed on the place for the sake of the land. Corn has sold for eighty cents a bushel since I began this experiment, yet at that time I fed as much as ever and was not tempted to sell a bushel, though I could easily have spared five thousand. When it went down to twenty-eight cents, I did not care, for corn and oats to me are simply in transition state,--not commodities to be bought or sold. They cost me, one year with another, about the same. An abundant harvest fills my granaries to overflowing; a bad harvest doesn't deplete them, for I do not sell my surplus for fear that I, too, may have to buy out of a high market. I have bought corn and oats a few times, but only when the price was decidedly below my idea of the feeding value of these grains. I can find more than twenty-eight cents in a bushel of corn, and more than eighteen cents in thirty-two pounds of oats. But I am away off my subject. I began to talk about the hen plant, and have wandered to my favorite fad,--the factory farm. CHAPTER XVIII WHITE WYANDOTTES