The foot-path indicated for the village green will be demanded by the more ambitious village improvers; but were I making an ideal village for moderate and tasteful people, the road surrounding the green should enclose only a level, close-cropped lawn, neatly trimmed at its edges, surrounded by fine and simple trees, and traced here and there with the foot-paths that honest use had marked out and made, and by the suggestive diamond-shaped track and bases of the village base-ball club. It should be perfect in grade, in outline, in regularity of planting, and in mowing; but it should be a perfect lawn plus the wear of constant use and frequent pleasure.

The second example is taken from existing conditions in my own neighborhood. The United States Coast Survey has furnished all the necessary details save the farm boundaries. The field boundaries and roads are exact.

The tract is of the same size with the one just considered,—two miles square. Its centre is in one direction about two miles from a small village, and in the other about seven miles from a large town which furnishes the chief market for its agricultural products, and is the source of all (or nearly all) of its supplies.

Figure 14 shows the present settlement of this area, the houses, about sixty in number, being scattered over the whole tract, with no near approach to a "neighborhood" at any point. These are practically all farmers' houses, some trade being carried on here and there in connection with the farm-work. A few of the houses belong to farms which lie mainly outside of my lines. Deducting a fair proportion for this, and others for the wheelwright, blacksmith, &c., we shall have about the same number of farmers as in the former instance, say forty-four; and, taking the same area for the village, we shall have the same amount of farm and village property for their support.

Figure 15 shows a suitable division of property and the location of the village, on a short cross street running from one to the other of the main public roads, and extending a short distance up and down these roads.

It would be a necessary condition precedent, that the whole property taken for the village should be set apart for the purpose. This requirement and the cost of moving buildings from the farms to the village would doubtless be an serious obstacle to the immediate carrying out of the plan. And thus the theory must long remain a theory only. No sudden change of the sort could be made in practice.

It would not be impossible, however, to bring about the end in time, if a few of the larger proprietors could secure possession of the village tract by exchange, and would dedicate it to the purpose, agreeing at any future time to sell small lots for building at a fixed low rate. In the instance under consideration, the village tract is thinly settled, and so situated as to be available at moderate cost. If a church, a schoolhouse, and a store could be established as a nucleus of the village, the young couples of the neighborhood might incline to settle there; and in time the settlement could be made so attractive—as compared with the outlying farmhouses—as to lead to the concentration of the whole population.

This part of the subject is, however, foreign to the present purpose. If the desirability of village life for farmers can be established, the ways and means may safely be left to those interested in securing it. The influences now at work to make the farmers' children seek a better social condition, together with the necessity which confines them to some form of agricultural work, must be depended on to secure the relief suggested, unless some better relief can be found.

In this case, as in every other of village construction, the original plan should include some quality or feature, which, while appropriate to the modest end in view, will give character to the place.

Every village has in its situation, its uses, or its origin, some characteristic which may be developed into a leading and an attractive feature. Especially when the work is to be begun from the foundation, and when there are no buildings to be torn down or removed, a consistent and dignified result may be planned for at the outset.

The characteristic feature of the village we are now considering is that it is to consist of a single long, straight street cut off at each end by other roads. After removing one unimportant house, there remains no obstacle to the laying-out of one straight street two hundred feet wide, with either two or four rows of spreading elms. This street, two thousand feet long, mainly in well-kept grass, with only the necessary width of road and the requisite paths,—having perhaps a well-kept and home-like private place opposite each of its ends,—would stamp the village at once with an attraction which would have a constant civilizing effect on those living under its influence.

Such a village street, entirely without costly ornamentation, and requiring only the simplest care, would soon take on a look of appropriate neatness and freshness; and, as the trees grew, it would acquire a dignity and beauty which could in no other way be so well secured.

The church and the schoolhouse, being placed in broad recesses opposite the central point of the street, would gain importance from their position; and, these main features being attended to, the character of the village would be fixed, and it would be difficult to make any arrangement of its private places which would spoil its beauty. Neatness and a reasonable care in the matter of house-gardening, the planting of flower-beds, vines, etc., are all that would be needed.

With so wide a street, it would be as well to bring all house-fronts to the street line, completing this line with simple fences, and paying some attention to the ornamentation of the enclosed yards.

In this village, as in the other, all meretricious ornamentation should be avoided, whether public or private. All money available for such improvement should be spent in securing perfect neatness. In fact, the two radical requirements of good taste in all such cases are an absence of obvious money-spending, and the evidence of constant care and attention. "Showiness" is common in every trumpery village in the land. What we should seek in our farm-villages is the most modest simplicity, shining with the polish of an affectionate care. Every spot should breathe of homely influences and moral peacefulness.

Figure 16 shows the general plan of the village. If other public buildings are needed, they might very well be placed opposite the ends of the main street.

It is not possible, in remodelling an old farming district, where boundaries and roads are irregular, to apportion the division of land among the population with especial reference to its distance from the village; so, for example, that the small farmers, who have little team-force, shall not have so far to go as the larger ones who are better equipped; but, even in this case, the most distant farm will be rarely a mile from the village, where all the farmers, their families, and their work-people, and their flocks and herds, would be gathered together, under the best circumstances for getting out of their lives as much good as the need for earning a living by arduous work will allow them to get anywhere,—more than they could hope to get in the isolation of the distant farmhouse.

Having now considered the methods by which farmers may congregate their homes and their farm-buildings, and live in villages, let us take up the more important question of policy.

Which would be better for a young man, just starting in life with a young wife,—to go to a distant farmhouse to found his home, or to settle in a well-ordered farm-village under substantially the conditions described above?

There is much more to be said, on both sides of this question, than there is room to say here; but certain points are worthy of consideration.

There is no doubt that in a strictly money-making aspect there is an advantage in having the animals on the land from which they are fed, and the men on the farm which they are to work. It is certain, also, that the men and the women must be near the stables, that the early and late work of feeding and milking may be promptly and regularly performed. If the family is to live in the village, the cattle must live in the village too. This involves the hauling home of all the hay and grain, and the hauling out again of all manure,—no slight task. If the work is all concentrated on the farm, under the immediate supervision of the farmer, there will be a certain convenience and economy of time.

The same principle holds true in all other relations. The merchant would find a certain advantage in living at his warehouse, the engine-builder at his factory, the cotton-spinner at his mill, the carpenter at his shop, and the grocer at his store. All of these have found that, so far as may be, they get certain other and greater advantages in living away from their business. One and all carry to their homes, at least occasionally, books, papers, and plans for work that needs attention out of the regular business hours.

The farmer alone—and in this country especially—disregards the benefits of living away from his shop, and passes his whole life—day and night—in close contact with his field of operations. He might, if he chose, make his home nearer to other homes, taking with him so much of his work as is not necessarily confined to the farm.

For his own sake, it does not make so much difference; but for the sake of his wife and children it makes all the difference between life and stagnation. The business needs which call him to town, and the habit he has of passing his evenings at "the store," give him a certain amount—and a certain kind—of social intercourse which keeps him from absolute rust. The amount of society available for his family is not usually great, and the dulness and confinement of farmhouse life need no description.

The main reason for preferring village life is principally because it is better for the women and children; but there are reasons, in the same direction, why better social conditions would give the farmer himself decided benefits. The life, too, would be more attractive for both boys and girls, and would be divested of that naked and dismal gloom and dryness which now drive so much of the best farmer blood of the whole country to work-benches and counters,—to any position, in fact, which promises relief from the stifling isolation of the country.

While conceding that, just as a cabinet-maker would make more money if he lived in his back shop, and had little thought from early dawn until late evening except for his work, so the farmer may make more money if he lives on his farm than if he lives at a distance, still it must be said that the difference in profit is by no means so great as would be supposed.

It may be fairly assumed, that, at least in the more thickly settled farming regions at the East, the average distance at which farmers live from the nearest centre of population that supplies their "shopping," and from church, is not less than three miles. The visiting acquaintance of the family is nearly or quite as remote; and there is, altogether, so much driving to be done, as to make it necessary to keep a decent carriage and horses, and to supply a certain amount of extra horse service. Indeed, among those who are tolerably well off it would be moderate to set down the total services of one good horse as needed to supply the family's demand for transportation.

Then, too, the need of the farmer himself to go to town to sell and to buy, to get repairs and information, and (a much more generally gratified taste than he would always care to confess to his wife) to satisfy his craving after intercourse with his kind,—who shall estimate the aggregate of all this travel, or even of that part of it which, under the pretext of business, is really only an habitual going for gossip? All of this driving is confined to no season; it is perennial,—in good weather and in bad,—and it costs an amount of time and money that few farmers would like to put down in black and white, and charge to their expense accounts. It would form one of the most serious items of their budget.

Did the farmer live in a pleasant and attractive village, among neighbors and friends, nearly all of this driving would be saved. The appliances for the family's pleasure-driving might be entirely done away with, for the wife and daughters would gladly exchange the means for occasional visiting and for distant shopping, for an agreeable circle of friends near at hand and a good village store and post-office within five minutes' walk. In such a settlement as is contemplated, most of the business needs of the farmer would be amply supplied, and he would find the companionship at hand even more satisfactory, because more familiar, than that which he now finds in the town.

It is not worth while to calculate the cash saving that would come of this reduction of road-*work. It is enough to consider it as an important offset to the cost of carrying men and manure to the field and of bringing crops to the village.

Under the present system the women have the worst of it. They have the confinement and seclusion and dulness. Under the village system the men would have the discomfort, and this is why it will be less easy to secure its adoption; for the men control, and prefer not to have the heavy end of life's log to carry.

Under either of the plans given herewith, the greatest—not the average—distance from the house to the farm would be about one mile, and it would have to be travelled only during the working weather of the warmer months, and during the good wheeling of winter. In summer, all hands would have to set off early, and come home late, often carrying their dinner with them as mechanics do; but when field-work did not call them out, as during rains, or when the ground is too wet to be disturbed, their barn-work and shop-work would be at home; and, all the winter through, the only road-work to be done would be to send the teams to haul out the manure, and to bring home the hay, which would be best stored under "Dutch hay-barracks" in the fields when it was made. This work would be systematic and simple; and it may fairly be questioned whether it would not, in many cases, amount to less than the cost of the "driving" that is now done, and which in the village might be foregone. Especially would this be the case when all the heavy farm-work is done by oxen, which when idle, instead of eating their heads off like horses, are accumulating valuable flesh. With sufficient ox-power to do the work easily, the whole transportation of tools and men, and all the hay-tedding and hay-raking, would be easily done by one horse, with leeway enough to allow for a fair amount of business or pleasure travel.

So far as the presence of the farmer himself is concerned, it is to be considered that if his farm and cattle are near his house in the village, he will be within easy reach of them very often at times when his visits to the distant town would take him away from them if they were on the farm. In the village, during the whole winter, and in bad weather at other seasons, he would have little necessity or temptation to absent himself from home. Indeed, those who have had an opportunity to watch the life of the exceptional farmers whose houses and barns and stables are in a village cannot have failed to notice how much more home-like and engaging is the whole farm establishment than it usually is in the country. It is hardly too much to say that the few instances that we have, as in the farm-villages of New England, show that these village-living farmers are apparently more attentive to their home duties than are their isolated brethren, at least in the matter of tidiness.

To complete the comparison with the merchant or manufacturer, who takes his papers or plans home with him for work out of regular hours, one might say that the farmer who lives at a distance from his land, with his flocks and herds gathered about his homestead, has such of his work as needs early and late attention close at hand, while his regular workshop, the farm, calls him away for certain regular hours and regular duties.

It is not worth while here to enter into the details of the question. They are of serious moment, and involve among other things the driving of animals to and from pasture, versus the raising of soiling crops to be fed in the stall or yard. All of these questions have been satisfactorily solved in the experience of many exceptional cases in this country, and of the almost universal conditions obtaining in Europe. They present no practical difficulty, and need constitute no serious objection to the general plan.

The items of economical working and money-making being fully weighed, the more serious considerations of the mode of life, and the good to be got from it, demand even greater attention. It may seem a strange doctrine to be advanced by a somewhat enthusiastic farmer, but it is a doctrine that has been slowly accepted after many years' observation, a conviction that has taken possession of an unwilling mind, that the young man who takes his young wife to an isolated farmhouse dooms her and himself and their children to an unwholesome, unsatisfactory, and vacant existence,—an existence marked by the absence of those more satisfying and more cultivating influences which the best development of character and intelligence demand. It is a common experience of farmers' wives to pass week after week without exchanging a word or a look with a single person outside of their own family circles.

The young couple start bravely, and with a determination to struggle against the habit of isolation which marks their class. But this habit has grown from the necessity of the situation; and the necessities of their own situation bring them sooner or later within its bonds. During the first few years they adhere to their resolution, and go regularly to church, to the lecture, and to the social gatherings of their friends; but home duties increase with time, and the eagerness for society grows dull with neglect. Those who have started out with the firmest determination to avoid the rock on which their fathers have split, give up the struggle at last, and settle down to a humdrum, uninteresting, and uninterested performance of daily tasks.

In saying all this,—and I speak from experience, for I have led the dismal life myself,—it is hardly necessary to disclaim the least want of appreciation of the sterling qualities which have been developed in the American farm household. But it may be safely insisted that these qualities have been developed, not because of the American mode of farm life, but in spite of it; and, as I think over the long list of admirable men and women whose acquaintance I have formed on distant and solitary farms, I am more and more impressed with certain shortcomings which would have been avoided under better social conditions. If any of these is disposed to question the justice of this conclusion, I am satisfied to leave the final decision with his own judgment, formed after a fair consideration of what is herein suggested.

If American agriculture has an unsatisfied need, it is surely the need for more intelligence and more enterprising interest on the part of its working men and women. From one end of the land to the other, its crying defect—recognized by all—is, that its best blood, or, in other words, its best brains and its best energy, is leaving it to seek other fields of labor. The influence which leads these best of the farmers' sons to other occupations is not so much the desire to make more money, or to find a less laborious occupation, as it is the desire to lead a more satisfactory life,—a life where that part of us which has been developed by the better education and better civilization for which in this century we have worked so hard and so well, may find responsive companionship and encouraging intercourse with others.

It so happens that the few farm villages to which we can refer—such as Farmington, Hadley, and Deerfield—have become so attractive by means of their full-grown beauty, or have been so encroached upon by the wealth that has come over the district to which they belong, that they are no longer to be taken as types of pure country villages; nor do I recall a single village in the land which is precisely what I have now in mind.

Assuming that a farming neighborhood—two miles, or at the utmost three miles, square—had been so arranged as to have all of its buildings (with the exception of hay-barracks in the fields, and cattle-shelters in the pastures) in a village, let us consider what would be the advantages in the manner of living which it would have to offer.

The social benefits, and the facilities for frequent neighborly and informal intercourse, are obvious. To say nothing of the companionships and intimacies among the young people, their fathers and mothers would be kept from growing old and glum by constant friction with their kind; and, in so far as a more satisfactory social relation with one's fellow-men gives cheerfulness and the richness of a wider human interest, in that proportion would the village life have a wholesome, mellowing effect that is not to be found in the remote farmhouse, nor even in the sort of neighborhood we sometimes find in the country where several farmhouses are within a quarter of a mile of each other. The habit of "running in" for a moment's chat with a neighbor is a good one, and it gets but scant development among American farmers. This view of the case will suggest itself quite naturally on the first consideration of the subject.

If the first need of the rising generation—the men and women of the future—is education, then the village beats the farm by long odds. The country school-district, sparsely settled and chary of its taxes, is apt to obey the law in the scantiest way possible. Three months school in winter and three months more in summer, under the supervision—it can hardly be called the instruction—of a young miss who is by no means well educated herself, and who is entirely often without training as a teacher, gathers together all of the school-going children of a wide neighborhood. Big and little, boys and girls, are huddled together in a sort of mental jumble, where the best that the most skilful manager can hope for is to regulate the instruction and the discipline to suit the average of the scholars. The best result attainable is to secure a good amount of schooling: the word "education" would be quite misapplied here.

In the village, the number of scholars would be sufficiently large to warrant the establishment and to bear the maintenance of one good school, with one, if not more, teachers, regularly employed, and worthy to be called teachers rather than "school-marms." Pupils would be graded according to their ages and acquirements, and a due use could be made of the stimulus of competition. A real school, a real instrument of education, would take the place of the noisy congregation of uncontrolled boys and girls, who, in the country district-school, are apt to acquire less of valuable learning than of the minor viciousness that prevails among country children.

In this connection, I was forcibly struck with the announcement of a German farmer once in my employ, whose reason for leaving me, after his children had reached the ages of seven and eleven, to return to his little village in Germany, was that it was impossible in this country—and this, be it remembered, was in New England—to secure satisfactory instruction for them. He thought that in their experience at school here they had gained little beyond a familiarity with English, and with a large admixture of "bad words" at that. At home they would have, within the elementary range of a primary-school education, a thorough training and a severe drilling which he could not hope for here, and without which he was unwilling that they should grow up. I have seen his village school in Germany, and the cloud of tow-headed children who fill it; and I am prepared to believe that his preference was not without foundation. Of course we have all the material for as good or better schools in this country. What we need is longer terms, better trained and educated teachers, graded classes, and better books and appliances. These cannot be afforded in the small country school-district. They can be had in their perfection in even a small village; and this consideration alone, even if this were all, should be a controlling argument in favor of village life.

But this is by no means all. Another great benefit is to be found in the post-office near at hand, with its daily mail as an encouragement to correspondence and to interest in the affairs of the outside world. A village, such as is here pictured, could afford its weekly or semi-monthly public lecture, furnishing a means for instruction and entertainment, and for frequent gatherings. The church, too, would probably be conducted in a more satisfactory way than is usual in the country; and the conditions would be the best suited for fostering that interest in the collateral branches of the church, the Bible-class, the Sunday school, and the Dorcas society, by which the women of the community get, aside from the other good that they receive and do, advantages of a character somewhat corresponding to those which men get from their clubs.

I should hope further, as an outgrowth from the community of living, for a modest village library and reading-room. Indeed, if I could have my own way, I should not confine the attraction and entertainment of the village to strictly "moral" appliances. It would probably be wiser to recognize the fact that young men find an attraction in amusements which our sterner ancestors regarded as dangerous; and I would not eschew billiards, nor even, "by rigorous enactment," the milder vice of social tobacco. Better have a little harmless wickedness near home and under the eye of parents than to encounter the risk that boys, after a certain age, would seek a pretext for more uncontrolled indulgences in the neighboring town.

One might go on through the long range of incidental arguments—such as lighted streets, well-kept sidewalks, winter snow-ploughs, and good drainage, and a wholesome pride in a tidy, cosey village, until even the most close-fisted of all our class would confess that the extra cost would bring full value in return, and until he would recognize the fact that the attractions of such a home as the village would make possible would be likely to insure his being succeeded in his wholesome trade by the brightest and best of his sons,—a result that would surely be worth more than all it would cost.

But my purpose has been only to suggest a scheme which seems to me entirely, even though remotely, practicable, and in which I hope for the sympathy and help of the country-bound farmers' wives and daughters,—a scheme which promises what seems the easiest, if not the only, relief for the dulness and desolation of living which make American farming loathsome to so many who ought to glory in its pursuit, but who now are only bound to it by commanding necessity.

LIFE AND WORK OF THE EASTERN FARMER.

The average farmer is precisely what any other average man would be who had grown up under the same conditions. There is no mysterious charm belonging to his occupation which removes him beyond the reach of the influences by which all mankind are controlled. Coming from the same original stock and inheriting the same peculiarities of race, he is essentially the same as men in other vocations. The character of his work, the necessities of his financial condition, and the social surroundings amid which he has been reared, have had the same influence in moulding his character that similar conditions have had in moulding the characters of others.

Farming is in a certain sense the basis of all individual and national prosperity; but the case would be more fairly stated were we to say that farming happens to be the first step in an industrial process, many steps of which are alike essential to civilization. The farmer produces raw material, and without raw material the world must come to a stop; but the butcher, the baker, the spinner, the weaver, and every artisan, render as essential service in the development of this raw material into the forms demanded by modern life, as does the farmer in growing it.

As a member of the farmer class, I hasten to disclaim for it any especial consideration given it because of its contribution to the welfare of mankind. We are as useful as any other hard-working people, no more and no less. We claim no higher appreciation for muscular effort exerted in swinging the flail than for that applied to the wielding of the hammer.

The controlling motive of a farmer in performing his work and carrying on his business is the hope of material gain. He works for the money that he expects to earn, and not with any conscious reference to the service he is rendering to the world. In this capacity as a farmer he is neither a philanthropist nor a patriot, only a man of business. If we wish properly to estimate his character and his value as a factor of modern civilization, we must not be misled by sentimental considerations as to his relation with nature and his "noble" occupation.

The conditions of Eastern farming and of Eastern farm life are the true index, as they are the true cause, of the character of the Eastern farmer. These conditions are constantly varying, and their effect is always modified by individual qualities.

It may be possible to strike such an average as shall afford a tolerably good suggestion of the real character and condition of the farmer, and a hint as to his future; that is to say, certain prevalent influences tend to mark the type, and certain modifications of these influences may lead to its improvement. Any attempt to portray the class as a whole would be met by such a list of exceptions as would seriously affect the result; but the following may be considered true in a large number of cases, and applicable, with minor changes, to many more.

Let us take the case of an outlying farm in New England, of one hundred acres,—a farm that has been in cultivation from the earlier settlement of the country, and which is of the average degree of improvement, with the usual division into arable, mowing, pasture, and wood land. It lies two or three miles away from a considerable town or village, and its chief industry is the selling of milk in the town. With an allowance of two acres per cow for summer pasture, and of one and a half acres of mowing-land for winter feeding, the cows it keeps number about a dozen. For team-work on the farm and for road-work and pleasure-driving, there are kept two horses and two oxen. In addition to these there will be a greater or less amount of young stock and the usual swine and poultry, and perhaps a few sheep. The farmer himself is the chief workman on the place, and he has the regular help of a hired man or a grown son. An extra hand during the working season is usual; but in winter the farmer and his one assistant will do all of the work of feeding, milking, delivering the milk, hauling out manure, etc.

A few years ago the housework was done almost entirely by the mother of the family and her daughters, or by a girl taken to "bring up;" but latterly the more troublesome element of an Irish girl in the kitchen has become general, for the daughter of the farmer has aspirations and tastes which disqualify her for efficient household drudgery. In spite of all modern appliances, much of the work of the farmer's household must be so characterized. The life of American farm women is, however, not now under discussion: the subject is a fruitful one, and has important bearings upon the development of the race; but what we are to consider here is simply the work and condition of the farmer himself. The milk-selling farmer—and this industry is one of the most wide-spread in Eastern farming—is more regularly employed than any other. Winter and summer his cows must be milked twice a day. Evening's milk must be cooled and safely kept until morning; and morning's milk must be ready for early delivery. It is usual for the farmer to rise at three every morning, winter and summer, to milk his cows,—with one assistant,—and to start as early as five o'clock to deliver his milk. Returning about the middle of the forenoon, he is able to attend to the details of barn-work in winter and field-work in summer, until half-past two or three o'clock in the afternoon, less the brief interval needed for the consumption of food. Early in the afternoon the cows must be again milked, and the cans of milk must in summertime be set in spring water for cooling. Then comes the feeding of the stock and the greasing of axles, the mending of harness, the repairing of tools, and the thousand and one odds and ends of the farmer's irregular work. In the winter, save for the early rising and the work of cold mornings, life is by no means hurried; and after a very early supper there is often a stroll to the corner store or to a neighbor's house, for a little wholesome idleness and gossip,—the latter not invariably wholesome. At about the hour when the average reader of "The Atlantic" has finished his after-dinner cigar, all lights are extinguished, and the farm household is wrapped in heavy slumber; for such early rising as the milk-farmer is condemned to must needs trench upon the valuable evening hours for requisite rest and sleep.

In summer the conditions of life are immeasurably hardened. The farmer himself is necessarily absent several hours every morning with his milk-wagon; but, although he cannot lend a hand at the early field work, this work must go on with promptness, and he must arrange in advance for its proper performance. From the moment when he has finished his late breakfast until the last glimmer of twilight, he is doomed to harrowing and often anxious toil. There is no wide margin of profit that will admit of a slackening of the pace. Land must be prepared for planting; planting must be done when the condition of the ground and the state of the weather permit. Weeds grow without regard to our convenience, and they must be kept down from the first; and well on into the intervals of the hay-harvest the corn-field needs all of the cultivation that there is time for. Regularly as clock-work, in the late hours of the night and the early hours of the afternoon, the milking must be attended to; and the daily trip to town knows no exception because of heat, rain, or snow. At rigidly fixed hours this part of the work must be done; and all other hours of the growing and of the harvest seasons are almost more than filled with work of imperative need. These alone seem to make a sufficient demand on the patience and endurance of the most industrious farmer; but, aside from these, he is loaded with the endless details of an intricate business, and with the responsibility of the successful management of a capital of from fifteen to twenty thousand dollars, upon the safety and the economical management of which his success entirely depends; he must avoid leakage and waste, and make every dollar paid for labor, or seed, or manure, or live stock, bring its adequate return.

Probably no occupation in the world can compare with farming in the opportunity that it offers for the losing of money. Nothing is so enticing as slate-and-pencil farming. Ten acres of land can be ploughed, manured, and planted with corn, and the crop can be well cultivated and harvested for so many dollars. Such land with such manuring and cultivation may be trusted to yield so many bushels of corn to the acre; and, after making due allowance for chance, the balance of the calculation shows a snug profit. In like manner we may figure out a corresponding return from the hay-fields, from the root-crops, from two or three acres of potatoes, and from a patch of garden-truck for which the neighboring village will furnish a good market. Then the poultry will return a profitable income in eggs and in "broilers;" and altogether it is easy for an enthusiastic person to show how interest on invested capital and good compensation for labor are to be secured in agriculture.

But when the test of practice is applied to our well-studied and proven scheme; when we see how far our allowance for "chances" has fallen below what is needed to cover the contingencies of late springs, dry summers, early frosts, grasshoppers, wire-worms, Colorado beetles, midge, weevil, pip, murrain, garget, milk-fever, potato-rot, oats-rust, winter-killing, and all the rest; when we learn the degree of vigilance needed to keep every minute of hired labor and team-work effectively employed; and when we come finally to the items of low markets and bad debts,—we shall see how far these and similar drawbacks have undone our arithmetic, and how often our well-contrived balance must be taken into the footings of the other column of figures.

The regular work of the farmer, as indicated in the foregoing sketch of his occupations, and as perceptible to the summer boarder who watches his work from the piazza, although arduous and exacting, may be quite compatible with a happy life; and, when we estimate the promise of the occupation as offering a pleasant livelihood, no able-bodied man need be deterred by it. But when we add this long list of contingencies, and consider the ceaseless anxiety that they bring, we may well hesitate before adopting such a life for ourselves or desiring it for our children. No true estimate of the developed character of the farmer can be formed without giving due value to this uncertain factor in the calculation.

Instances are hardly exceptional where a clear natural intelligence, an indomitable courage, and great industry, have turned themselves into a real source of mental and moral strength. Success achieved in spite of such drawbacks is all the sweeter and all the more inspiriting because of them. But if we take the case of the average farmer with average human weaknesses, we cannot fail to see, that, however well he may have borne up against the more obvious requirements of his work, he has been warped and cramped, and often made in many ways unlovely, by the hard and anxious toil through which his halting success has been attained.

In nearly every other occupation than farming, the hardest worker finds a daily relief from his toil, and from the suggestion of toil, in a home that is entirely apart from his industry. However arduous and anxious and long-continued the work, there comes a time when it is laid aside, and when the workman goes into a new sphere, where the atmosphere is entirely changed. His home is a place of rest and pleasure, or at least a place of change. The pen and the hammer are left in the counting-room and in the shop; and, however far the home may fall below his desires and ambition, it is at least free from the cares of the day's occupation.

The American farmer has no such relief. His house is a part of his farm; his fireside is shared by an uncongenial hired man, his family circle includes too often a vulgar and uninteresting servant; and from one year to another, his living-room being the kitchen and work-room of the busy farmhouse, he rarely knows what it is to divest himself of the surroundings of his labor and business, and to give himself over to the needed domestic enjoyment and recreation. It is this feature of his life, more than any other, which seems objectionable. If it is objectionable for him, it is infinitely more so for his wife and daughters, who, lacking the frequent visit to the town or occasional chat with strangers, and the invigorating effect of open-air work, yield all the more completely to depressing cares. They become more and more deficient in the lightness and cheerfulness and mental gayety to which in any other occupation the chief toiler of the family would look for recreation at his own fireside.

So far as interest in his business is concerned, the farmer's condition is in every way elevated when he devotes himself to some improved form of agriculture, or to some special industry which gives him better compensation for his work. This benefit by no means generally results from an attempt at "scientific" agriculture, nor is the adoption of a special industry by any means generally successful. Failure in either of these directions is disheartening and discouraging to those who are watching his example. There are many well-tried improvements upon the old methods of our fathers which are universally adopted, especially in the direction of the use of better implements and more judicious care in the application of manure. But the average agricultural newspaper, while doing great good, has naturally led enthusiastic men to see a chance for ameliorating their condition by the adoption of processes which are not suited to their circumstances, or which they themselves are not qualified to carry out. It is this that has led to the outcry—much more prevalent a generation ago than now—against "book-farming." On the whole, whatever may have been the influences of agricultural writers upon the fortunes of their early converts, they have vastly modified and improved all modern farm-work, and have greatly benefited the more recent farmer.

The conditions of the industry are hard, chiefly because the business of farming is a laborious one, and one in which an enormous population is working, with dogged industry, for a moderate reward. However enterprising and intelligent a farmer may be, when he goes to market to sell his crops he finds himself in active competition with men who are working for their bare subsistence.

Much is said about the competition of the farmers of the rich West as a serious obstacle to success at the East. This is the case only in so far as the Eastern farmer attempts to compete with the Western in the production of crops which will bear storage and long transportation. As a business proposition, it seems clear that this drawback is to be overcome only by the cultivation at the East of such products as it is not within the power of Western competition to supply, or only such as our situation and the good quality of our land will enable us to produce at low cost. Milk, fresh butter, and hay are the three most promising staples, for which so large a demand exists as to furnish employment for the whole farming population. Hay from its bulk does not bear a very long transportation. Milk will always bring a higher price when produced near to the point where it is to be consumed. Butter-making is not an especially profitable industry if we depend upon the average grocery-store demand; but it is possible for any farmer at the East, who will take the trouble to make and to retain a good reputation for his dairy, to secure a price enough higher than that of the regular market to constitute a good margin of profit.

So far as relief in Eastern farming is to be achieved with no material change in the character of life and work, it must apparently be sought in these directions. In his relation to Eastern civilization, past, present, and prospective, it may fairly be questioned whether the influence of the Eastern farmer is increased since the general introduction of railroads; and we are justified in looking with some anxiety to the relative position which he is to hold hereafter.

There are well-known influences at work which are not promising. The desire of the sons and daughters of the farmer to obtain some other means of livelihood, and the too frequent yielding to this temptation on the part of the more intelligent of these young persons, is the most obvious danger to the future of the industry.

Much has been said of the dignity and independence which come of the ownership of land; but it is possible that this influence has been over-estimated, and that our ideas of it have been derived more or less from our European traditions. Perhaps, after all, we ought to and do attach the most importance to that which is the most rare. In England, where the ownership of land carries with it a certain social dignity, and where the mere possession of money has a less marked influence in this direction, there is no doubt that the title-deeds to broad acres constitute a certain sort of patent of nobility. In this country, where land is plenty and cheap and where large fortunes are rare, a farmer gets consideration less for the amount of land that he himself owns, than for the sum-total of the mortgages which he holds upon his neighbors' land. That is to say, it is better to be rich in money than in land; and instances are comparatively rare, even among those who are cultivating their ancestral acres, where the farm would not be gladly sold for a sum of which the income would secure a better and easier mode of life. The farm is not regarded with especial affection: it is mainly regarded—along with its stock and tools—as an instrument for making money.

The American farmer is distinguished from the English farmer chiefly by having his capital invested in the land which he cultivates, rather than in the tools and live stock and working capital needed to carry on his business. As a general rule the farmer's whole fortune is invested in his land. Often his farm is mortgaged, and he has little loose money with which to improve his system of work. The necessity for making a living and paying interest, without sufficient capital for the best management, makes the life of the farmer too often a grinding one. If he is skilful and industrious and prudent, he may hope with certainty to free himself from debt, and to accumulate a respectable support for his old age.

When we consider any class of working people, as a class, this is perhaps all that we can hope for under any circumstances. The unhopeful thing about it all is that while farmers work less hard than their fathers did, and while they get a better return for their work, the surroundings of their life have not improved as have those of men engaged in other industries, so that although actually much better off than their ancestors were, they are relatively less well off in the more attractive conditions of other classes of workmen; and this deficiency is driving away the children on whom they ought to depend for assistance and for succession.

In the abstract, farming is a dignified occupation, and in proportion as it borrows aid from science it becomes more dignified. So far as the casual observer can see, it combines more of what is desirable than does any other pursuit. While it promises no brilliant reward, it insures a steady, reliable, and sufficient return for the capital and labor invested in it. It promises a sure provision for old age, and it secures the wholesome pride that comes of the ownership of visible property. Indeed, look at it and argue about it as we may, it is not easy to see why it is not the best occupation for a wholesome and intelligent man.

Those who know the condition of the art intimately, and who have studied the influences of its work and its life upon those who are engaged in it, recognize serious drawbacks which must in some way be removed unless it is to fall away still more from its original character, and is to be given over to German and Irish immigrants, who, during one or two generations, will be contented with what it has to offer. It is difficult even to theorize as to the means of relief, if farming must be considered, first of all, as a means for obtaining a livelihood and for making money; and no effort to improve the situation of the farmer will be successful which does not keep this prime necessity always in view. It is easy to see how the condition of any farmer's family might be improved by a large additional income; but there is no obvious source from which this increase is to be drawn, nor will he adopt any scheme that will endanger the income that he now receives.

If we could convert the farmer into a chemist and physiologist, and give him the satisfaction that comes of controlling the combinations of physical and chemical materials according to laws which he understands, and of securing his results with scientific accuracy, we should accomplish our purpose; for no man with such scientific knowledge, realizing its relation to his daily work, could fail of an enthusiastic fondness for his profession. But the worst of it is that all efforts in this direction have generally ended in producing a "smatterer," whose theories are baffled by constant disappointment, and whose worldly prosperity is lessened by his mistaken experiments.

Successful farming implies, first of all, steady and dogged hard work, coupled with prudent and watchful skill. When the hopes of enthusiastic agricultural reformers are considered with the practical eye of cold common sense, they must inevitably be condemned to disappointment. In so far as they constitute an incentive towards improvement, they work great good; but the success of the future is to be attained too often through the distressing failure of the present. The art is an experimental one, and the temptations to extend experiments are enticing. Unfortunately, novel processes depend for their success upon contingencies which are likely to be disregarded at the outset; and, however much any improvement may be destined to prosper after its application shall have been practically tested and modified, it is altogether likely that its first introduction will result in failure. The mere money losses coming of these failures are not so serious; but the discouragement and disappointment that they entail exert the gravest influence where what is chiefly needed is the encouragement of success.

It is something to know the direction that improving effort should take; and it seems to be generally conceded that what American agriculture needs, at the East and at the West, but especially at the East, is an improvement in the character of its personnel. There is everywhere ample opportunity for the profitable and successful introduction of modified processes and of new industries. There is, too, hardly an instance where the processes and industries now pursued are not susceptible of great improvement of detail. There are few farms so well managed and so successful, that if given into the hands of better, more intelligent, and more enterprising farmers, they would not produce better results. The father is working according to his light, and is directing his work by such intelligence as his natural capacity and his training have given him. His brighter son, with more natural intelligence, with a better education, and less trammelled by traditions and prejudices, might so modify the same industry as to make it more certain, more profitable, and in every way more satisfactory.

The change that is now taking place, especially in New England, is toward the greater economy of living, and the harder work and closer management of business, that comes with immigrant proprietorship; and this element is by no means to be depended upon for the improvement of our farming. It may result in a more money-making agriculture, but it will supplant our best political element by the introduction of what has thus far seemed to be one of the worst.

Look at this question as we will, it is difficult to see how else than by improving the race of American farmers we are to accomplish any result whose good effect will be radical and lasting. This brings us around to that threadbare subject of the vague discussion of agricultural writers: "How to keep the boys on the farm."

The devices recommended for accomplishing this result have thus far failed of their object. The average farmer boy is not a sentimentalist, and he is not likely to be moved by the sort of talk so often lavished upon him. To use a vulgarism, he has an extremely "level head." He fails to realize the attraction and the dignity which are implied by what he is told of the nobleness of his father's calling, of the purifying and elevating influences of a daily intercourse with nature. He is not to be caught with this sort of chaff. His cultivation has not been of that æsthetic character that he has an especial drawing toward nobleness, or purity, or elevation. Nature, as he knows it, shows at times an unattractive side; and he fails to recognize precisely what is meant by Mother Earth as a source of dignity. To him Mother Earth is an exacting parent, calling for constant and regular toil, and whipping him on day by day with weeds to be hoed, dry gardens to be watered, snowdrifts to be shovelled, and an almost endless round of embarrassments to be overcome. As for the purity and simplicity of the farmer's life, he knows very much better than to pin his faith to it. To him the farmer's house is too often a place where the mother is overworked, tired, wearied with constant annoyance, and made peevish and fretful. The conversation of hired men and young neighbors and brothers is not marked by refined delicacy and simplicity, as he understands these terms. At the end of all our preaching he will say, at least to himself, that this is probably the sort of talk that we consider appropriate to the occasion, but that, if we knew what he knows about farming, we should see how little effect it is likely to have. If he sought our motive in saying it, he would conclude that we were interested in keeping up the supply of farm labor; and that so far as he was concerned, since he must work for a living, he would work at some other industry if he could get a chance, and leave those who were less fortunate to work on the farm.

The more sentimental and more influential considerations governing in this matter were very well set forth by Dr. Holland in a paper on Farm Life in New England, published in "The Atlantic Monthly" some twenty years ago. While acknowledging the frequency of bright exceptions to the rule, he does not hesitate to set it down as a rule that the life described is in every way a hateful one; where every member of the family, from father to child, is driven by the lash of stern necessity, and where many conditions which are deemed requisite in the life of all other classes of the same wealth are comparatively rare; where the expectant mother of the child is worked without stint to her last day, while the mother of the colt is relieved from all hard toil and treated with consideration throughout the last months of her time; where, in short, whether from interest or from a mistaken idea of necessity, hard work long hours, poor food, and dismal surroundings are the rule of the farmer's household.

Since that time there have been noticeable modifications, involving the introduction of more or less tastefulness, because of the cheap literature and cheap music of these later days. But, much as these have done to affect the individual characters of the younger members of the family, they have only aggravated the evil, so far as farm-work is concerned, by creating a desire, born of knowledge, for the pleasanter manner of life which the town has to offer. The young girls whom one now sees about railway stations in the most distant part of the country are dressed after the instructions of "Harper's Bazar" and "Peterson's Magazine;" and they know more than their older sisters did of the difference between their own life and that of their city cousins. They are certainly not to be blamed if they long for some vocation in which they can more freely indulge their growing ideas of luxury, and gratify their growing desire for better dress and more interesting companionship.

All that has here been said is seriously true and important. The circumstances described are so generally prevalent as to constitute, with constant minor variations, an almost universal rule. Where we are to look for relief, is the most serious problem. Relief must be found, or the character of our farming class must assuredly degenerate. In one way or another we must change, in a radical degree, the conditions of the farmer's life. We can perfectly understand why it should be distasteful to any young person of ordinary ambition or intelligence; and we know, from the constant flocking of farmers' sons and daughters to even the least attractive employments of the town or village, that this distaste is everywhere a controlling one.

It is easy to say that the farmer's life must be made more cheerful, attractive, and refined, and less arduous; but it is by no means easy to see how the improvement is to be brought about. The cardinal defect is the loneliness and dulness of the isolated farmhouse. Intelligent and educated young women, brought up among the pleasantest surroundings, marry young farmers, and undertake their new life with the determination that, in their case at least, the more obvious social requirements shall be met. During the earlier years after marriage they adhere to their resolution, and are regular in attendance at the church and public lecture; and they keep up, so far as possible, social intercourse with their neighbors. But as time goes on, as the family increases, as toil begins to tell on health and strength and energy, they drop out, little by little, from the habit of going abroad, until often for weeks together they never exchange a look or thought with any human being outside of their own households. Aside from the overworked members of their own families, their companionship is confined to hired men who smell of the stable, and to hired girls with whom they are yoked in the daily round of household duties.

Having given much consideration to the subject, I have come to believe that the agriculture of Continental Europe is far more wisely arranged than ours; for there, almost as a universal rule, isolated farm-life is unknown. The reward of the cultivator is less, and his labor is at least as great. The people are of a very much lower order, and are lacking in the cultivated intelligence which distinguishes so many of our own farming class. Women and even young girls perform rude labor in the field and in the stable; and those aspirations which are born of a universal diffusion of periodical literature are almost unknown. At the same time, when the hard and long day's work is over, there comes to all the inexpressible relief and delight of the active social intercourse of the village, where the tillers of the country for a mile around have gathered together their homes and their herds, and where the most intimate social life prevails.

Observation even indicates that the habit of out-of-door labor has had no injurious effect upon the women of these villages. The "nut-brown maid" grows too fast into the wrinkled-brown woman; but better a sunburnt and weather-beaten cheek than that pallor that comes of anthracite and in-door toil. Better the broad back and stout limb of the peasant mother than the hollow chest and wasted energy of the American farmer's wife.

I by no means intend to say that our own farming class is not far superior to the peasantry of Europe; but I do believe that if a good system of village life for farmers could be adopted here under the modifying influences of the more refined and intelligent American character, we should have gained a most important step in advance. We have in New England many villages almost exclusively of farmers,—villages where the old-time settlers gathered together for defence against the Indians, and for the protection of houses and stock and store from river floods. These villages are as different as it is possible to conceive from the ordinary European cluster of unattractive cottages, lining both sides of a street which is filled for one-half of its width with manure-heaps. It may be naturally assumed that any adaptation of the village system among us would be governed by the same refining influences which have made our few existing agricultural villages so beautiful and attractive.

That which most distinguishes American people is the general spread of education among them; but it is, after all, an education which soon reaches its limit, and, so far as the district-school of a sparsely-settled country neighborhood is concerned, it goes little beyond the simplest rudiments. An inexperienced young miss holds school for not more than one-half the year in an unattractive and inconvenient room, in which are gathered together most of the boys and girls of the school-going age from all the farms about. The books and other appliances of instruction are inadequate. There is no grading of the pupils, and the frequent change of teachers prevents the possibility of experienced instructions. Even in the meanest peasant village of Germany, a village always prolific in children, an inexorable law compels all between the ages of five and fourteen to attend regularly the teaching of a master, an officer of the state, who has generally adopted his profession for life, and who adds to a certain specified degree of capability the advantages of long experience.

No thoughtful person can fail to be convinced, after a due consideration of the argument in its favor, that, if the social influences inseparable from village-life could be secured to the American farmer, the greatest drawback of his life would be done away with. It remains, unfortunately, a serious question, how far such a radical change is practicable. There is little doubt that the family would naturally drift into some more costly style of living; and the necessity for hauling to a distant home all the crops of the fields, and of hauling out the manure made at the homestead, would add somewhat to the expenses of the business.

In the case of the individual farmer now cultivating land upon which he lives, it is not unlikely that he would find a certain pecuniary disadvantage in the change. But, as a broad question of the future benefit of our agriculture, it must be conceded that whatever will tend to make the occupation more attractive cannot fail, by enlisting the services of more intelligent minds, to insure its very decided improvement. As the case now stands, the farmer's son will become a clerk or a mechanic rather than remain a farmer, because clerks and mechanics live in communities where there is more to interest the mind, and where, too, the opportunities for enjoyment and amusement are greater. The farmer's daughter will marry the clerk or the mechanic rather than a farmer, because she knows the life of a farmer's wife to be a life of dulness and dearth, while she believes that the wife of the clerk or mechanic will be condemned to less arduous labor, and will have much more agreeable surroundings. I have no means of judging what may have been the experience in Deerfield, Mass., for instance; but I am confident that many a mechanic's daughter, and indeed many young women of much higher position in life, would consider her lot a fortunate one in becoming the wife of a farmer whose homestead lay on the beautiful street of this old village.

All that is here said is, to a certain extent, mere theory; but the subject is one that has not thus far met any practical solution, and in which, therefore, nothing except theorizing is possible. The broad fact is that the farming class in this country is degenerating by the withdrawal of its best blood; and still more serious injury is being done to it by the introduction of the lower class of foreigners. It may well be doubted whether it is possible so to modify the manner of life of the isolated farmhouse as to make it materially more attractive to American boys and girls. All that can be done is to rob it of its isolation by withdrawing its people, and placing them under better conditions of life.

In a word, the only way that seems to offer to keep the boys on the farm is to move everybody off of the farm, bringing them together into snug little communities, where they may secure, without abandoning the manifest advantages of their occupation, the greater social interest and stimulus which they now hope to enjoy by going into other callings whose natural advantages are less. That such a course as this would restore the farmer to his former position as a leading element in Eastern civilization, cannot be questioned. That he will retain even the relative influence that he exercises to-day, unless some radical change is made, is at least very doubtful.

In considering the questions here suggested, we must never lose sight of the fact that the controlling element is economy. The farmer exists because he is needed. The world demands the products that he produces, and the world must needs pay him a living compensation for them. No change will be possible which disregards this; and all who know the present circumstances which control the reward of the farming class know that these circumstances would be inadequate to maintain him in a life of greater ease, while calling for greater expense. This gives the added embarrassment that we must not only change the mode of life, but must also increase the ratio of profit, if this is possible. This is possible only through a reduction of the area cultivated, the cultivation of this reduced area in a more thorough and profitable way, and the turning of farming industry into channels better adapted to securing a profitable return.

To discuss a modification of the whole system of farming would involve far more detail than is possible in this paper, since such a discussion must include the consideration of features which would change with changing locality; but, by way of illustration, we may take the previously supposed case of a farmer owning one hundred acres of land, and milking a dozen cows, selling the milk as before in the distant town. Assume that he and his neighbors within a radius of about a mile are living in a central village, from which his land is one mile distant. During the working season, say from the middle of April until late in October, he must, with his teams and assistants, spend the whole day on the land. The cows are milked and all stable work done before breakfast, and some one drives them out to pasture. The men remain a-field until an hour before sunset. They must be content with a cold dinner, as is the usual custom with mechanics and laborers. The cows are driven home in time for the evening milking, and are put into the barnyard at night with green fodder brought home by the returning teams. After the "chores" are done, and a hearty and substantial supper is eaten,—the principal meal of the day,—all hands will be too weary for much enjoyment of the evening, but not so weary that they will not appreciate the difference between the lounging places of a village and the former dulness at the farm. Other farmers in the neighborhood will, many of them, also be milk producers; and, as the stables are near together, they will naturally co-operate, sending their milk to market with a single team, employing the services of a single man in the place of five or six men and teams heretofore needed to market the same milk. I have recently received an account of this sort of co-operation, where the cost of selling was reduced to a fraction over eight cents for each hundred quarts.

This arrangement will have the still further benefit of allowing the farmer to remain at home and attend to his more important work, leaving the detail of marketing to be done by a person especially qualified for it and therefore able to do it more cheaply than he could do it in person. During the working season there will be enough rainy weather to allow the work of the stable, the barnyard, and the woodshed to be properly attended to. There will of course be sudden showers and occasional storms, and other inconveniences, which will make the farmer regret at times that he lives at such a distance from his field work; but he will find more than compensation in the advantages that come naturally from living in a village.