. Parts of the land may need to be drained, and taxes must be
paid whether the land is productive or not. A person acquiring a farm of
50 or more acres will find that the major portion of his time, thought and
capital will be called upon to make it a success. If he has definitely
cut off his city connections and the idea of having a job there, and has
had experience in farming, then he may be in a position to take over a
large acreage so that his full time and possibly that of other members of
his family can be spent on various projects on the land he acquires.

We are here primarily concerned, not with those who desire to enter upon
farming on a large scale, but with the family which would like to live in
the country, secure a partial living from the land surrounding the home
and still have the opportunity of gaining a livelihood from some
industrial or commercial activity located in a near-by city or town. It is
quite likely that we shall have a shorter working week and probably
periods of unemployment for hundreds of thousands of ambitious people.
Therefore, a place in the country that is well located with respect to
hard-surfaced highways and accessible to urban centers offers
opportunities for combining the advantages and economic assets of country
life with urban employment.

_Getting Started Right._--Too much emphasis cannot be laid upon getting
the right start, particularly with respect to location. This is not only
essential for the satisfaction of the present occupant of the premises,
but also gives definite sales value in case circumstances make a change
of location desirable or necessary.

It will often appear that the best location is on the outskirts of a city
or town and from some angles this is good reasoning. There are some
factors, however, that make such a location undesirable. For one thing,
the tax rate is likely to be higher in such areas than in the open
country, thus adding to overhead without compensating advantages. In the
second place, urban centers develop without regard to soil type and this
is an essential factor to the family that expects to engage in some
agricultural pursuit. Again, the type of inhabitants that live on the
fringe of towns and cities may not make good neighbors or associates for
children, especially. None of these disadvantages may be present in
locations close to centers of population, but the prospective settler
should give all these factors full consideration. The sal