New lives for old

The pioneer idea—that was the heart of my scheme; the same old idea that had already lifted me from the slough of a salary and the suburbs and put me on my feet. Under its inspiration I had worked out my salvation in the city and now, although I had come here for peace and quiet, I felt as though I were being challenged by a cuff on the cheek. No live man could sit down and look on calmly at such conditions as faced me here. When these people within sight of a hungry market said that farming didn’t pay it proved that the fundamental trouble was not lack of opportunity but lack of appreciation of the opportunity. Just sit down and figure out what the forebears of these same people accomplished on these very acres. Out of this soil they wrenched the capital that went far towards establishing the richest nation on the face of the earth. But it may be argued that the Pilgrims had the advantage of virgin land. So they did, but virgin land in New England meant also virgin rocks—a million or more to the acre as testified to by the stone walls of to-day; it meant virgin trees with a wild tangle of roots and no dynamite to blow them out with; it meant virgin cold and the crudest kind of stoves to fight it off with; it meant crude virgin farm implements and virgin Indians to make the use of them interesting by zipping arrows from ambush at the sturdy plowman. And yet in spite of these handicaps and a hundred others, those same pioneers fought it out with such fine spirit that there are to-day men who sigh because they were not living then instead of now. They won a comfortable living and so did their sons and grandsons after them, even though they were forced to sacrifice half their time and money and life in battle to establish this nation which now we enjoy already established. And they did this because of the pioneer spirit back of them—a spirit which a nation allows to die at its peril.

With all I saw before me I didn’t believe that spirit was yet dead. As Ruth said, there wasn’t a youngster in this very village, who though he wasn’t worth his salt here, wouldn’t buck up if placed on a Western homestead a hundred miles or more from civilization. The spirit of his ancestors would then rouse him. They were proving it by taking up farms in Canada. In a less marked degree it was this same spirit which without their knowledge prompted them to do better in the cities at the beginning than at home. The thing then, to my mind, which was needed was to make these same young men realize that it was really just as much of a brave adventure to make a few acres pay in the East as in the West. That was what I had got hold of when standing helpless without the capital to go West. I assumed that I had already traveled a thousand miles to get where I already was and from that point didn’t go ten miles from home.

Now it was this spirit of a young nation which the foreign-born caught. In the older country where it was dead I haven’t much doubt but what Dardoni and his fellows were a shiftless lot. If they had remained they would probably have plugged along in a beggarly rut. It wasn’t until they came over here that they roused themselves to work, not ploddingly like uninspired natives, but with a romantic fervor that made these old acres yield as they had never yielded before. They brought with them no modern agricultural methods. They took the land as they found it, and it was their simple pioneer standards, their pioneer earnestness, their pioneer courage, that brought them success. They worked for independence with the same pioneer enthusiasm and industry which inspired the early settlers. How long would that little band of adventurers who landed on the rocky shore of Massachusetts have lasted if they had shown no more backbone than those who to-day fold their hands and shake their heads at the deserted farms surrounding them?

The more I talked over these things with Ruth the more excited I became. It was as clear as daylight that idle land could not forever exist in the face of a needy market. I had learned at school the phrase that “Nature abhors a vacuum.” Rural New England to-day was practically a vacuum and nature was already finding a way to fill it. She was forcing in adventurers of other nations with the challenge to the native born to either get to work or get out. If anyone wants to see proof of this for himself let him travel through the Connecticut valley, or along the Massachusetts cape, or through the small towns in the neighborhood of Boston. Let him go into the hill towns of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, and he will find there Italians, Portuguese, Russians, Poles, already established and accepted where twenty years ago a foreigner was a curiosity. They are the vanguard of the army Nature is marshaling for her certain purpose. Let the traveler look below the superficial squalor and learn how many people these pioneers are supporting, how much they are saving and how much they are buying, and he will catch an inkling of what’s afoot. I had seen this going on in the city, but there the contrast between what was and what is was not so marked. New England cities have long ceased to be merely New England, and I had come out into the country for that very reason. I had wanted a taste of undiluted New England, and this was what I found.

In the meanwhile Dick had been taking hold of the contracting business with such good results that I found myself able to throw more and more upon him. He had with him a college mate, and the two under the spur of youth went hustling after new business at a pace that made my services unnecessary except as a sort of advisory committee. With my new interests to occupy me, with the business prospering under the younger management and with a fair amount in the bank as a surety against accidents, I was glad to have it so. I believe it’s an older man’s duty to turn over his business to the younger generation whenever it is possible. During the winter I watched the progress of the two boys closely and was surprised at the shrewdness and level-headedness that Dick displayed. I give credit for that to his experience in selling newspapers on the streets. It taught him not only self-reliance but in his association with men both self-confidence and poise. He knew how to approach men, how to put forward his case in the shortest possible time, and then how and when to leave. He was popular too with the gang and I found the latter turning more and more to him.

It was in February that after a long talk with Ruth I called the boy into my den one evening.

“Dick,” I said, “I haven’t been very much more than a figurehead in the business during the last few months and now I think I’ll pull out altogether.”

“For Heaven’s sake, Dad,” he answered, “what’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Only you don’t need me and I want to take up farming.”

“You’d better let me call in the doc,” he answered.

“Do I look as though I needed him?” said I. “It’s sure that if I felt that way I wouldn’t be undertaking a new business.”

“It’s all right for you to putter around here for fun,” he said, “but you know as well as I that you can’t make farming pay. Just look around you—”

“That’s what makes me believe farming will pay,” I said. “I look around me and I see men doing just what you advise me to do—puttering around. You wouldn’t expect to make contracting pay if you went at it that way, would you?”

“I know, but—”

“Look here,” I broke in, glad of a chance to express some of the things I had been thinking over for the last few months. “Look here, boy, do you realize what as a business proposition this village is? It’s a big unused plant in which thousands of dollars have been invested, and it’s lying idle next door to a market crying for its products. If you saw a big factory building all equipped and standing idle, with labor loafing around the doors, with its books filled with orders, you’d jump in, wouldn’t you? Well, that’s exactly what this village is. Small as it is, you’ve only to look at the assessor’s books to find that over a million dollars is invested here in lands and another half million in buildings. There are over eight hundred voters in town and not a hundred of them are making more than a bare living out of this investment. It’s safe to say that not a quarter of one per cent. is being made on this big capital. And yet within a team drive of us there’s a market so large that it’s bringing its produce at a profit some three thousand miles. It’s not only bringing it there, but it’s bringing it into this very town.”

“But look here, Dad,” Dick interrupted, “you don’t own the town, you know.”

“But I own part of it,” I said, “and I intend to help operate the rest.”

“I don’t know how,” he said. “Besides it’s been tried and the business hasn’t paid.”

“What about Dardoni?” I asked.

“That’s so.”

“I’m not going to undertake anything that isn’t being done to-day right under our noses. It’s as true as gospel preaching that these old-world pioneers are going to own this village and utilize to the fullest these opportunities unless we do ourselves. What is true here is true of all New England. That isn’t a cry of wolf when there is no wolf, either; it’s the sober truth. These fellows are going at their work right. It isn’t luck with them. You can’t say that New York is owned by Jews because Hebrews are a lucky race. They are the unluckiest race on the face of the earth. They own New York because they are a pioneer race. And because of this they are going to own more than New York if we Americans don’t wake up.”

“By George, you’re right, Dad,” exclaimed Dick. “What is more, they deserve all they get. They’ve worked and sacrificed for every cent of it.”

“Exactly as our ancestors did when they were adventurers in a new land,” I said. “It gets back again to the pioneer idea. This country with its institutions no longer belongs to the people who made it. It’s being made all over again and it belongs to those who are helping in the new making.”

“Right! Right! But what you want to do is to get out and preach this. You’ve worked hard, Dad, and it’s time you had a rest.”

“There’s been preaching enough, Dick,” I said, “and as for rest—a man doesn’t rest at my age by doing nothing.”

“Then what’s your scheme?”

“To make my own farm pay and then to help my neighbors make their farms pay.”

“I’ll stake my last dollar that you make your own pay if you start in to do it, but as for the others—have you thought out any plan?”

“In a rough way,” I said. “In the first place I’m convinced that talk doesn’t do any good. These people have been preached at through the papers, magazines and pulpit until their brains are calloused. They aren’t interested in the problem in the abstract. They aren’t interested in anything much—not even themselves. They’re convinced that farming doesn’t pay and they have before them the visible proof that it doesn’t so far as they are concerned anyhow. On the other hand, there’s Dardoni, but they dispose of him by calling him a Dago.”

“Then what’s left?” demanded Dick.

“To get them interested in themselves first of all. The only way I know of to do that is to make it worth their while in good hard cash.”

“Bribe ’em?”

“It amounts to that. I want to get them together in some sort of an organization.”

“There’s the Grange,” said Dick.

“It has played its part and in some places is still playing it. But around here people are sick of it. It has become nothing but a social club.”

“Well?”

“You know what they are doing in the West and South; they are offering cash prizes to boys for the best crop of corn raised on a given area. They’ve roused the whole country to the competition and have advertised it so well that the winner becomes for the moment a national figure. That’s what we ought to do here, only my plan is to give the competition a wider scope. We ought to have prizes for the older men and for the women. We ought to stimulate better care of our apple orchards, better hay fields, better potatoes, better household economy, better kitchen gardens.”

“Hold on,” interrupted Dick, “who’s going to pay for these prizes?”

“In the end the club will raise the money. To start with it ought to be raised by public subscription.”

“If I know this crowd, you’ve got a job.”

“Ten prizes of a hundred dollars each will amount to only a thousand dollars. The business men of the town ought to give half that the first year; I’ll give the rest.”

“Hear! Hear!” shouted Dick.

“As an investment,” I said. “If we can bring this old town to life it will pay every mother’s son in it. If we can make it the livest, the most beautiful village in the state, as it ought to be made, we’ll attract a desirable class of residents and double real estate values. The prosperity of every citizen is the prosperity of the community. In the meanwhile we’ll decrease the cost of living here and give men cash to pay their bills. Good Lord, there’s no limit as to what can be done if we can rouse these people. I tell you it’s a great big business proposition if nothing more.”

“By George, I don’t know but what you’re right, Dad,” exclaimed Dick. “It will be a game worth playing, anyhow.”