Through South Africa: His Visit to Rhodesia, the Transvaal, Cape Colony, NatalStanley, Henry M. (Henry Morton)
History
Through South Africa: His Visit to Rhodesia, the Transvaal, Cape Colony, Natal
Stanley, Henry M. (Henry Morton)
South Africa -- Description and travel
"And at that time," interpolated the interviewer, "they had to contend
with natives, who are now subdued?"
"Yes," said Mr Stanley, "that is a disadvantage that settlers nowadays
would be exempted from."
"Is there not an obstacle to your scheme, in the circumstance that
people nowadays are not content to go abroad for a mere living? They
demand something more than they can get at home--not perhaps a fortune,
but at least the chances of amassing sufficient money to raise them to a
position of comparative independence?"
HOW FARMERS MAKE PROFITS.
"But there are different ways of making a fortune or of saving money,"
replied Mr Stanley. "It can be done by agriculture as well as by
mining. The farmer, however, must be content to look upon the farm as
his home, and the capital and labour devoted to it as constantly
increasing in value. The farm which he buys at 10 shillings an acre may
become worth in a few years from 5 to 10 pounds an acre. There is his
profit. He buys an estate say of 200 acres for 100 pounds, and in five
or ten years' time it may be worth 500 or 1,000 pounds. It depends upon
the progress made in the general development of a country by the working
of its mineral resources and by its commerce and trade. The greater the
development of the country the greater will be the value of the farmer's
land, because more people are constantly coming who don't care to be
pioneers, but will buy a farm already developed. The pioneer then goes
from farm to farm, and in this he makes his profit. People who went
from New England to Ohio or Kentucky, for instance, developed farms
which they sold at an enhanced price, afterwards removing to Kansas;
after getting, perhaps, twenty-five times as much for their farms in
Kansas as they had paid for them, they went next to Colorado, where
their farms ultimately fetched twenty-five or fifty times as much as
their original cost. Then they went on to Salt Lake, Mexico, Arizona,
or other parts of America, and repeated the same process. That is the
way a farmer makes his money in such countries."
Mr Stanley has already dealt at great length with the question of
irrigation, which is so important in countries where the water supply is
inconstant. In the course of his remarks with our representative he
further elaborated this point, showing how the backwardness of
agriculture in certain parts of South Africa, as well as in other
comparatively new countries, is the fault of the people rather than of
the countries.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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