PROFIT AND LOSS A biographer whose opinions about Washington are usually sound concludes that the General was a failure as a farmer.

With this opinion I am unable to agree and I am inclined to think that in forming it he had in mind temporary financial stringencies and perhaps a comparison between Washington and the scientific farmers of to-day instead of the juster comparison with the farmers of that day.

For if Washington was a failure, then nine-tenths of the Southern planters of his day were also failures, for their methods and results were much worse than his.
It must be admitted, however, that comparatively little of his fortune, which amounted at his death to perhaps three-quarters of a million dollars, was made by the sale of products from his farm.

Few farmers have grown rich in that way.

Washington's wealth was due in part to inheritance and a fortunate marriage, but most of all to the increment on land.