Percy spent some time on a five hundred acre farm belonging to an old gentleman who still gave his name as F. Allerton Jones, a man whose father had been prominent in the community. According to the county soil map which had been presented to Percy by the Bureau of Soils, the soil of this farm was all Leonardtown loam, except about forty acres which occupied the sides of a narrow valley a bend of which cut the farm on the south side. "My father had this whole farm under cultivation," said Mr. Jones, "except the hillsides. But what's the use? We get along with a good deal less work, and I've found it better to cultivate less ground during the forty odd years I've had to meet the bills. But I've kept up more of my land than most of my neighbors. I reckon I've got about eighty acres of good cleared land yet on this farm, and the leaves and pine needles we rake up where the trees grow on the old fields make a good fertilizer for the land we aim to cultivate, and I get a good many loads of manure from friends who live in the village and keep a cow or a horse. "The last crop I raised on that east field, where you see those scrub pines, was in 1881. I finished cultivating corn there the day I heard about President Garfield being shot; and it was a mighty hot July day too. My neighbor, Seth Whitmore, who died about ten years ago, came along from the village and waited for me to come to the end of the row down by the road and he told me that Garfield was shot. We both allowed the corn would be a pretty fair crop and when I gathered the fodder that fall there was a right smart of a corn crop. Yes, Sir, it's pretty good land, but we don't need much corn, no how, and we can make more money out of tobacco. Of course it takes lots of manure and fertilizer to grow a good patch of tobacco, but good tobacco always brings good money." "About how much money do you get for an acre of tobacco?" asked Percy. "That varies a lot with the quality and price--sometimes $100--sometimes $300, when the trust don't hold the price down on us. We can raise good tobacco and good tobacco brings us good money. We can always manure an acre or two for tobacco and get our groceries and some clothes now and then, and that's about all anybody gets in this world, I reckon. But taxes are mighty high, I tell you. About $75 to $80 I have to pay. Are taxes high out West?" "We pay about forty to fifty cents an acre in the corn belt," Percy replied; "but, in a course I took in economics, I learned that the taxes do not vary in proportion to land values. Poor lands, if inhabited, must always pay heavy taxes; whereas, large areas of good land carry lighter taxes compared with their earning capacity. You must provide your regular expenses for county officers, county courthouse, jail, and poorhouse, about the same as we do. Your roads and bridges cost as much as ours; and the schools in the South must cost more than ours, for a complete double system of schools is usually provided.