“Other men, purchasing or renting land, especially for market gardening, taking only improved land of suitable aspect, soil, and situation, and counting in cost of building, appliances, and labor, would require a capital of $80 to $100 per acre.  For example, a beginner in market gardening in South Jersey, on a five-acre patch, would need $500 to set up the business, and run it until his shipments began to return him money.  With the purpose of securing information on this interesting point, the writer asked for estimates from market gardeners in different localities, and the result has been that from Florida the reports of the necessary capital per acre, in land or its rental (not of labor), fertilizers, tools, implements, seed and all the appliances, average $95, from Texas $45, from Illinois $70, from the Norfolk district of Virginia the reports vary from $75 to $125, according to location, and from Long Island, New York, the average of estimates at the east end is $75, and at the west end $150.”

I have before me now one of the roseate advertisements, which we so often see in the newspapers, telling how fortunes can be made by investing a few dollars in a tropical plantation in Mexico.

It gives what are supposed to be startling yields per acre, and yet the returns, which must necessarily be taken with considerable allowance, are only from $580 to $1087 per acre on various plantations.

There are market gardeners and nurserymen near New York City who are making their acres produce better returns than this.  It is not necessary to go off into the tropical wilderness seeking a fortune which is usually a gold brick that some fellow is trying to sell you, when as good results can be secured right at home.

Market gardeners in and near Philadelphia pay $25 to $50 an acre and upwards rent for land, and work from five to forty acres.  This is as much as similar land in many parts of the country could be bought for.  But it is not a high rent when they are right at the market—­one man makes the round trip in two and one half hours—­manure costs them nothing—­for years they have been using the excavations from the old style privy wells, which has been hauled to their farm and deposited where they wished it, free.  They have modern facilities, such as trolley and telephone, and are as much city men as any clerk in an office.  They clear far higher profits from an acre than the average farmer, raising never less than two, and often three crops in a season.  They employ several men to the acre, and at certain times many more, working the men in gangs.  Only the difficulty of getting good help at their prices prevents them from using twice the number.

However, the possibilities of putting capital into land at a profit are still infinite.