In 1959, I received a scholarship to the Univesity of Missouri. It was for $200 if I recall correctly. I never thought much about it because I had already made up my mind to to go a private religious school. Recently, I began wondering just how much that scholarship was worth. I knew what I paid to go to the college I had chosen instead. A chart, I found, showed that the average cost for the tuition of a University in the Plains states was 212 dollars in 1961. I had received a scholarship that was about what the Univesity charged for tuition for both semesters of a school year.
I know more about what I paid for a private school and how I came to have the money necessary. The charge for a full year’s tuition, for a room, and for my meals was $600.00 I doubt if anyone can match what I received during that year. I am sure there is instruction that is as good or even better. I am sure there are dorm rooms that are nicer (3 to a room with no tv). The difference was that three times a day, all the students showed up for a meal served to them on real plates with real silverware (Sunday evening was just a snack of some type). This meal was just as good, if not better, than what I had at home on the farm. The best.
How did I as a farm boy, afford the $600 dollars. I stayed out of school for a year and worked a forty hour factory job for $40.00 dollars a week (33 dollars after withholding). I didn’t save much in that year. My father, a farmer helped me. He rented a 10-acre plot of farmland and allowed me to grow a crop to finance my schooling. How this worked will give you an idea of how people lived at that time.
That 10 acres would produce 20 to 30 bushels of soybeans per acre. Figuring an average of 25 bushels and a selling price of $3.00 dollars a bushel, the income for that year would have been $750.00 dollars. Now, we have to deduct the expenses. Since it was soybeans, it is possible that my dad kept seed from last year’s crop, but more likely he bought new seed and probably paid about $6.00 dollars a bushel for it. the seed was planted at a bushel an acre, so that cost would have been $60.00. A tractor at that time would have used a gallon an hour and it would have taken 10 hours to plow the land. At 15 cents per gallon (I think it was more like 12 cents), that would have been $1.50 for fuel. There would have been several more trips for disking, roto tilling and cultivating, but these trips were at a faster pace and my estimate would be another $5.00 for fuel. There would have been harvesting costs and that would have been done by a contractor at a 10% of the crop for another $75.00. Total costs at this point would be around $150.00 leaving me $600.00 for my first year of school.
I have left out the cost of the tractor and equipment. At this time, my father had moved on from farming with horses, to an iron wheeled tractor, to the first tractor with Hydraulics, and then to one with a little more power. This tractor would have cost around $1500 and my father would have paid cash for it. In another article, I will post my parent's first expenses of their marriage in 1942. The depression was coming to an end and in 1946 or 07, my father was able to buy his first tractor (with iron wheels which he was able to convert to rubber as the war came to an end). At that time, he was able to buy his first farm of 160 acres. That was the last time he borrowed money and he paid cash for everything after that. By 1957, he had bought a new car, another 60 acres and remodeled our house giving us an indoor bathroom with running water and of course, our first TV. The small amount of time that was spent on the tractor farming the 10 acres I rentded would be hard to calculate. Tractors lasted years and years. My brother still has one that he puts in parades that was bought in the 70s.
I still think that modern farmers have lost their way. My father raised multiple crops, chickens, pigs and cattle and was diversified enough that he was able to survive the droughts of the 50s, still making money. In recent years, I spent three years involved with the Amish and saw them prosper even as they still used horses. A modern farmer working as the Amish, but substituting one of the small tractors like my father started out with, could match what they do. A small tractor would actually be more economic than the horses. My father always said a horse ate as much as several cows. Watch for more articles on the Amish, farmers and speculating, and on my parent's actual expenses, income, and how they progressed into the modern society.