New lives for old

In conversation with a dozen or more of the better farmers of our town in an endeavor to get at the most important features of what in the way of instructions we needed, I was surprised to find that suspicion of agricultural school methods was general. The farmer looked as much askance at these teachers as he did at college men. They thought them steeped in book learning and without practical experience. If they admitted that at the experiment stations these men produced fine results, it was only to add, “But thet ain’t runnin’ a farm by a long shot.” In some cases farmers had actually sent soil to be analyzed and had followed instructions about seeds and fertilizers, whether accurately or not I don’t know, but certainly without gaining confidence in the new methods. This seemed to me a pity for the farmer if he was wrong and a pity for the taxpayer, who was furnishing funds to support these schools, if the farmer was right. So while I didn’t receive much encouragement for this new feature of our enterprise I went to town to meet the president of the agricultural school, primed with a few opinions which I thought might wake him up at any rate.

I will call him Dennison. I found him a gentle, scholarly-looking man of sixty, with earnest eyes and with an air that impressed me at once with his sincerity. There was, however, about his mouth an expression of weary resignation as of a man who has fought a long fight without particularly encouraging results. He was very cordial and wanted to hear at once just what our scheme was. I told him briefly how our ultimate hope was to arouse the pioneer spirit in the village and of the very practical incentive we had given to rouse, first of all, the ambition of the men to till the soil.

“This prize system,” I explained to him, “is only a quick method of getting the community started. It gives the men something to work for that seems to them tangible. A possible five hundred dollar profit is vague and conditional, while a hundred dollars deposited in the bank is definite and concrete. They’ll work for that.”

“I don’t know but what you’re right,” he said, as though impressed by the new idea. “At any rate the experiment is worth fostering. I’ll send you down all the speakers you’ll listen to.”

“Thanks,” I said, “but right here is where we must use some judgment. These people are queer, and—well, I’ll tell you frankly they haven’t much faith in you fellows.”

He didn’t take offense. He just smiled—a weary, patient kind of smile.

“That’s the pity of it,” he said.

“And what’s the reason of it?” I asked directly.

“I take it you haven’t lived long among them yourself,” he answered.

“No, I haven’t,” I said, “but I expect to live among them from now on. I’ve seen a lot of them as it is, because I’ve taken pains to.”

He nodded.

“And I’ll give you my own theory first,” I said. “What we want down our way are practical men. At this stage we don’t want theoretical farmers. We don’t want to learn just yet the chemistry of farming, but how to make the most out of our land with the materials at hand. We aren’t looking for the best results, but the most practical results. I wish you could teach us how to raise potatoes, hay, corn and garden stuff with the aid of plain old-fashioned manure, a plain old-fashioned plow, and plain old-fashioned sweat and elbow grease. The other can come later.”

Again he smiled.

“Are you a college man, Mr. Carleton?” he asked.

“No,” I answered, wondering what that had to do with it.

Then he took from his bag a catalogue of the school and went over with me the details of the courses given. While there was a background of considerable theory, I must admit the work also covered about every practical branch of farming I had ever heard of.

“Don’t you think a man who mastered these courses would know something about farming?” he asked.

“He should,” I said. “It certainly makes me feel as though I’d like to go through the school myself.”

“You ought to,” he said.

“Well,” I said, “you turn out about forty graduates a year. What do most of the boys do?”

“Teach,” he answered.

“Most of them come from farms?”

“Yes.”

“Few of them go back to the farms?”

“Not many,” he answered uneasily. “But some secure positions as farm managers.”

“Managers of other people’s farms?”

“Yes, of course. Most of the young men have limited means and are without the capital to buy farms of their own.”

“But why don’t they return to the farms they left before they came to school?”

“I suppose they feel the opportunities there aren’t large enough for them.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Now, Mr. Dennison, I’m not a farmer; I’m a business man. I’m taking hold of the possibilities of this village where I live as a business enterprise. And I’m not a teacher. I’m not in a position to criticise your work here except as a business man who wants to use some of it to help along his business enterprise. But right here I’d like to say frankly that it doesn’t seem to me it would pay to hire instruction which ends by making the employee discontented with his work.”

“With equal frankness allow me to say I consider that a very narrow way of looking at it,” he answered.

“Don’t think I’m considering my own pocket,” I said. “I’m only general manager for the group represented by the club. What I mean is that what we ourselves particularly want is instruction which will help every man to thrive and gain content on his own land and won’t leave him ambitious to neglect it for a larger enterprise somewhere else. That tendency is just what we’re fighting. There’s been too much of ‘Go west, young man.’ Our battle cry is ‘Stay at home, young man.’ Honestly now—isn’t that what New England needs?”

“Perhaps,” he nodded.

“Inspiration to stay at home and compete with the old-world pioneers who are pushing him hard, that’s what the native New Englander needs,” I repeated.

“Ah, those foreigners,” he sighed. “If I had stuff like that to handle.”

“You might spoil it,” I said, laughing in my turn.

“Perhaps you’re right,” he joined in. “After all, there’s no substitute for sheer industry.”

Well, the upshot of our pleasant argument was that he offered to do all he could to help us in our project.

“After all,” he said, “there are only five essentials in good farming. The first is to determine what the land lacks by analysis (don’t get frightened—we’ll do that much for you); the second is to supply that lack by proper fertilization; the third is proper selection of seed; the fourth is proper rotation of crops so that one crop will put back what the previous crop has taken out; and the fifth is just hard work in keeping the land cultivated. I don’t see why in a general way that ground couldn’t be covered between now and spring. At any rate I’m willing to try it if you’ll furnish the enthusiasm.”

“I’ll do that if I have to hire a brass band,” I said. But I didn’t need a brass band. With that prize money in prospect there wasn’t a man who dared stay away for fear the other fellow might secure an advantage over him. We had two lectures a week open only to members of the club. We tried to make them as informal as possible and at the conclusion of each talk threw the meeting open for questions. Holt took down each lecture in shorthand and I had a half dozen copies made at my own expense. We kept one of these for the club as a matter of record but the others were at Holt’s office where any member was allowed to take one for not over three days so that he might copy for himself anything he wished. It was surprising how soon those copies became thumb-marked and dog-eared.

The speakers kept true to my requirements and followed substantially the outline laid out by Dennison at our first interview. The first speaker took up the matter of soil and had a difficult task on his hands to convince these men that not all dirt was soil and that not all soils were the same.

“There’s as much difference in land as there is in stock,” he said. “And if you want the best returns you have to handle it just as tenderly and feed it just as properly. The next time you plant a cornfield don’t think of it as a field but as a well bred cow or horse. Groom it as you would groom your horse or cow and feed it with the same care. Remember, too, that just as you don’t expect your horse to give work or your cow to give milk without supplying the necessary material out of which to make work and make milk; you can’t expect your field to give you back corn unless you supply it with the material for making corn. That sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? The poor farmer is the only workingman in the world except the Wall Street sucker who expects to get something for nothing. Nature supplies most of the elements free of charge, but whatever you take out you have to put back.”

Then he went on to explain how different soils need different foods just as much as different kinds of stock need different foods.

“It all depends upon what you want to get back. If you want back eggs you use the food that will make eggs; if you want back fat you use the food that will make fat; if you want back milk, you use the food that will make milk, and so on. Now, some of your land is already adapted by nature to supply certain things—corn, wheat, hay, potatoes, what not. When that is so, use what is given you. If, however, the land hasn’t those elements you must supply them, either by fertilizers or by planting a preparatory crop that will use what is already present and leave behind what you want for the final crop.”

This likening of land to live stock was a fine idea. It impressed every man in the club. I know that in my own case I had always thought of land as about as fixed and abstract as a problem in geometry. This treating it as something living—as of course it really is—gave a man a new attitude towards it. It made plausible all the theories of care which followed. A man knows he has to feed and care for his live stock. If so, then why not his land, which is also a living thing?

The second man took up the matter of fertilization—the restoring to the land such elements as have been used up by the previous crops and given back to the farmer in the form of produce. It’s an amazingly simple proposition when you stop to think about it. It’s merely paying back money you’ve borrowed. If, after doing that a profit isn’t left, you can’t blame the money.

The third man covered the proper selection of seeds. Like the previous speakers he pleaded for the substitution of horse sense and care in place of the present haphazard methods. No more than all dirt is land are all kernels seeds. You must be sure that the seeds you plant are live seeds. The usual method is to plant them and if you get a crop, the seeds were surely alive; if you don’t get a crop, the seeds were surely dead. But there is no need of risking your season’s work on such an experiment. Take a sample fifty from your seeds a month or so before planting time, place these in a box and cover with earth, keep moist and warm and count the number of seeds which sprout. There you have as accurate a method of determining their germinating value as any chemist could give. If the seeds don’t come up in a decent percentage, get some more. If they do, you have insured your crop so far as the seeds are concerned. The whole scheme of modern farming is to eliminate from the beginning all elements of chance so far as possible, which is no more than every other business man does.

The fourth speaker took up the rotation of crops, which is a somewhat more abstract proposition than the others. It seems that nearly every crop both takes from the land what it needs and gives back to a certain extent something else in its place. Nature is no hog and generally pays her way. The whole secret is to so alternate your crops as to take full advantage of this fact. The matter has been determined to a science.

The fifth speaker dwelt upon the necessity of proper cultivation—of plowing deep and harrowing often. Here again was something that was within the understanding of the average man. Your soil and seeds need air and light as much as your live stock. You wouldn’t expect a cow to thrive shut up in a dark stall with little air. When you harrow you do no more than throw open the barn windows and let in the sunshine.

I have run over in this general way the ground covered by the speakers merely to show how simply and reasonably this subject of business-like farming can be presented when done right. It is neither an abstract nor a complex study and the essentials can be brought home to the every-day farmer in a very few months.

Each speaker, moreover, at my suggestion, besides treating his special subject took occasion to talk on farming as a profession—and especially farming in New England. They emphasized the fact that farming is a big business proposition, an honorable calling, and not merely an effort to raise food supplies for the home. They all dwelt on the fact that New England always had been and still is a farming region. Modern conditions instead of destroying its value as an agricultural country have really increased that value by giving a larger market. But—they emphasized again and again—hard work is required, concentrated intelligent effort, in order to bring results. This is true of every business. The days of fifty years ago when almost any slip-shod method was bound to bring a profit, have passed. Farming has been the last business to accept modern business conditions, but the time has now come when it must. Waste can no longer be tolerated here any more than in other forms of business. A man to succeed must harbor every resource and use every by-product. As one man said, “So keen is competition to-day, so slight a margin of profit is there between competing houses, that very often the man who shows a profit is the man ingenious enough to make it from the by-products which twenty-five years ago were spurned.”

One speaker spoke of the Chinese and the tender care they bestow upon a few hundred square feet of land and the results secured from this.

“Our ancestors were both hard workers and thrifty,” said he, “and we must get back to their standards. We in the East have been spoiled as well as despoiled by the West. We have listened to stories of thousand-acre farms, steam plows, and million-bushel crops, until our own opportunities seem petty by comparison. We have heard of Oregon fruit farms until our own fruit doesn’t seem worth cultivating. But that’s all wrong. You ought to realize it when in spite of the million dollar crops you find yourselves paying more and more every year for your flour. You ought to realize it whenever you go to the grain mill and pay out your good money for corn that you might as well raise yourselves. As for Oregon apples—don’t let them frighten you. If nature gives them size and color, she makes them pay for it in juice and flavor. They look well in boxes, those apples, but the world is learning to buy New England apples to eat. There isn’t a better apple country on the globe than New England.”

Good straight talk that, and it had its effect. You could see the audience straighten up and hold themselves the better for it. Every meeting was well attended and there was never the slightest sign of restlessness in the audiences, though sometimes the talks lasted nearly two hours.

In the meanwhile Ruth in her quiet way was doing as much as the rest of us to keep up interest in the undertaking. She made it a point to get acquainted with all the farmer wives in the neighborhood. She had them up to the house in groups and dropped many a word of encouragement and gave many a bit of advice which came from a full experience.

“Billy,” she said to me one night, “it’s the deadly uninspired routine of their lives that’s killing the women. They cook and sew and scrub without a single dream to help them along. And that’s because the men don’t dream. If you succeed in rousing the husbands and sons you’ll bring the wives and mothers to life, too.”

“That’s what we want to do,” I said.

“It shows that it isn’t lack of money that makes poverty, Billy,” she said. “All these women have good homes and plenty to eat and wear and yet—and yet I honestly believe they are poorer than our old friends of the tenements.”

“We were never so poor in our lives as when we lived with plenty to eat and wear in the suburbs,” I reminded her.

“That’s just it,” she nodded. “This is the same kind of poverty. It comes from the fact that for these women life ends with the end of each day. They die every time they crawl into bed at night. There is never anything for them to look forward to on the morrow.”

“If we could only make them realize that this condition is largely their own fault—”

“That wouldn’t make any difference at all,” she broke in; “we must change the conditions. Most of our misfortunes are our own fault, but that doesn’t make them any less misfortunes. It’s another misfortune that our misfortunes are our own fault. I don’t know but what that’s the worst misfortune of all.”

She was right. It doesn’t do much good to blame people for their faults. We ourselves, after making public our experiences in the suburbs, received many hard letters from people who couldn’t see anything in our plight but the well deserved consequences of our own folly. If we hadn’t done this or that, if we had done this or that, we were assured that we would have come out all right. To be sure. That applies to every human being who ever tried to live this life. If we were all as wise as Solomon to start with and lived up to all Solomon’s precepts, then would come the millennium. But we aren’t. We all have to learn and in the learning we make many mistakes. Then we make them again.

And the man who blames us and lets it go at that isn’t our friend, and some day is going to make a mistake himself.