I must have attended not less than fifty State or County Fairs for the exhibition (mainly) of Agricultural Machines and Products. From all these, I should have learned something, and presume I did; but I cannot now say what. Hence, I conclude that these Fairs are not what they might and should be. In other words, they should be improved. But how?
As the people compose much the largest and best part of these shows, the reform must begin with them. Two-thirds of them go to a Fair with no desire to learn therefrom—no belief that they can there be taught anything. Of course, not seeking, they do not find. If they could but realize that a Farmer's Fair might and should teach farmers somewhat that would serve them in their vocation, a great point would be gained. But they go in quest of entertainment, and find this mainly in horse-racing.
Of all human opportunities for instruction in humility and self-depreciation, the average public speaker's is the best. He hurries to a place where he has been told that his presence and utterance are earnestly and generally desired—perhaps to find that his invitation came from an insignificant and odious handful, who had some private ax to grind so repugnant to the great majority that they refuse to countenance the procedure, no matter how great the temptation. Even where there is no such feud, many, having satiated their curiosity by a long stare at him, walk whistling off, without waiting or wishing to hear him. But the speaker at a Fair must compete with a thousand counter-attractions, the least of them far more popular and winning than he can hope to be. He is heard, so far as he is heard at all, in presence of and competition with all the bellowing bulls, braying, jacks, and squealing stallions, in the county; if he holds, nevertheless, a quarter of the crowd, he does well: but let two jockeys start a buggy-race around the convenient track, and the last auditor shuts his ears and runs off to enjoy the spectacle. Decidedly, I insist that a Fair-ground is poorly adapted to the diffusion of Agricultural knowledge—that the people present acquire very little information there, even when they get all they want.
What is needed to render our annual Fairs useful and instructive far beyond precedent, I sum up as follows:
I. Each farmer in the county or township should hold himself bound to make some contribution thereto. If only a good hill of Corn, a peck of Potatoes, a bunch of Grapes, a Squash, a Melon, let him send that. If he can send all of these, so much the better. There is very rarely a thrifty farmer who could not add to the attractions and merits of a Fair if he would try. If he could send a coop of superior Fowls, a likely Calf, or a first-rate Cow, better yet; but nine-tenths of our farmers regard a Fair as something wherewith they have nothing to do, except as spectators. When it is half over, they lounge into it with hands in their pockets, stare about for an hour, and go home protesting that they could beat nearly everything they saw there. Then why did they not try? How can we have good Fairs, if those who might make the best display of products save themselves the trouble by not making any? The average meagerness of our Fairs, so generally and justly complained of, is not the fault of those who sent what they had, but of those who, having better, were too lazy to send anything. Until this is radically changed, and the blame fastened on those who might have contributed, but did not, our Fairs cannot help being generally meager and poor.
II. It seems to me that there is great need of an interesting and faithful running commentary on the various articles exhibited. A competent person should be employed to give an hour's off-hand talk on the cattle and horses on hand, explaining the diverse merits and faults of the several breeds there exhibited, and of the representatives of those breeds then present. If any are peculiarly adapted to the locality, let that fact be duly set forth, with the simple object of enabling farmers to breed more intelligently, and more profitably. Then let the implements and machinery on exhibition be likewise explained and discussed, and let their superiority in whatever respect to those they have superseded or are designed to supersede be clearly pointed out. So, if there be any new Grain, Vegetable, or Fruit, on the tables, let it be made the subject of capable and thoroughly impartial discussion, before such only as choose to listen, and without putting the mere sightseers to grave inconvenience. A lecture-room should always be attached to a Fair-ground, yet so secluded as to shut out the noise inseparable from a crowded exhibition. Here, meetings should be held each evening, for general discussion; every one being encouraged to state concisely the impressions made on him, and the improvements suggested to him, by what he had seen. Do let us try to reflect and consider more at these gatherings, even though at the cost of seeing less.
III. The well supported Agricultural Society of a rich and populous county must be able, or should be able, to give two or three liberal premiums for general proficiency in farming. If $100 could be proffered to the owner or manager of the best tilled farm in the county, $50 to the owner of the best orchard, and $50 to the boy under 18 years of age who grew the best acre of Corn or Roots that year, I am confident that an impulse would thereby be given to agricultural progress. Our premiums are too numerous and too petty, because so few, are willing to contribute with no expectation of personal benefit or distinction. If we had but the right spirit aroused, we might dispense with most of our petty premiums, or replace them by medals of no great cost, and devote the money thus saved to higher and nobler ends.
IV. Much of the speaking at Fairs seems to me insulting to the intelligence of the Farmers present, who are grossly flattered and eulogized, when they often need to be admonished and incited to mend their ways. What use or sense can there be in a lawyer, doctor, broker, or editor, talking to a crowd of farmers as if they were the most favored of mortals and their life the noblest and happiest known to mankind? Whatever it might be, and may yet become, we all know that the average farmer's life is not what it is thus represented: for, if it were, thousands would be rushing into it where barely hundreds left it: whereas we all see that the fact is quite otherwise. No good can result from such insincere and extravagant praises of a calling which so few freely choose, and so many gladly shun. Grant that the farmer's ought to be the most enviable and envied vocation, we know that in fact it is not and, agreeing that it should be, the business in hand is to make it so. There must be obstacles to surmount, mistakes to set right, impediments to overcome, before farming can be in all respects the idolized pursuit which poets are so ready to proclaim it and orators so delight to represent it. Let us struggle to make it all that fancy has ever painted it; but, so long as it is not, let us respect undeniable facts, and characterize it exactly as it is.
V. If our counties were thoroughly canvassed by township committees, and each tiller of the soil asked to pledge himself in writing to exhibit something at the next County Fair, we should soon witness a decided improvement. Many would be incited to attend who now stay away; while the very general complaint that there is nothing worth coming to see would be heard no more. As yet, a majority of farmers regard the Fair much as they do a circus or traveling menagerie, taking no interest in it except as it may afford them entertainment for the passing hour. We must change this essentially; and the first step is to induce, by concerted solicitation, at least half the farmers in the county to pledge themselves each to exhibit something at the next annual Fair, or pay $5 toward increasing its premiums.
VI. In short, we must all realize that the County or Township Fair is our Fair—not got up by others to invite our patronage or criticism, but something whereto it is incumbent on us to contribute, and which must be better or worse as we choose to make it. Realizing this, let us stop carping and give a shoulder to the wheel.
I am not a scientific farmer; it is not probable that I ever shall be. I have no such knowledge of Chemistry and Geology as any man needs to make him a thoroughly good farmer. I am quite aware that men have raised good crops—a good many of them—who knew nothing of science, and did not consider any acquaintance with it conducive to efficiency or success in their vocation. I have no doubt that men will continue to grow such crops, and to make money by agriculture, who hardly know what is meant by Chemistry or Geology; and yet I feel sure that, as the years roll by, Science will more and more be recognized and accepted as the true, substantial base of efficient and profitable cultivation. Let me here give briefly the grounds of this conviction:
Every plant is composed of elements whereof a very small portion is drawn from the soil, while the ampler residue, so long as the plant continues green and growing, is mainly water, though a variable and often considerable proportion is imbibed or absorbed from the atmosphere, which is understood to yield freely nearly all the elements required of it, provided the plants are otherwise in healthful and thrifty condition. Water is supplied from the sky, or from springs and streams; and little more than the most ordinary capacity for observation is required to determine when it is present in sufficient quantity, when in baleful excess. But who, unaided by Science, can decide whether the soil does or does not contain the elements requisite for the luxuriant growth and perfect development of Wheat, or Fruit, or Grass, or Beets, or Apples? Who knows, save as he blindly infers from results, what mineral ingredients of this or that crop are deficient in given field, and what are present in excess? And how shall any one be enlightened and assured on the point, unless by the aid of Science?
I have bought and applied to my farm some two thousand bushels of Lime, and ten or a dozen tuns of Plaster; and I infer, from what seemed to be results, that each of these minerals has been applied with profit; but I do not know it. The increased product which I have attributed to one or both of these elements may have had a very different origin and impulse. I only grope my way in darkness when I should clearly and surely see.
An agricultural essayist in Maine has recently put forth a canon which, if well grounded, is of great value to farmers. He asserts that the growth of acid plants like Sorrel, Dock, etc., in a field, results from sourness in the soil, and that, where this exists, Lime—that is, the ordinary Carbonate of Lime—is urgently required; whereas the application of Plaster or Gypsum (Sulphate of Lime) to that field must be useless and wasteful. If such be the truth, a knowledge of it would be worth millions of dollars to our farmers. But I lack the scientific attainment needed to qualify me for passing judgment thereon.
There is great diversity of opinion among farmers with regard to the value of Swamp Muck. One has applied it to his land to good purpose; so he holds Muck, if convenient, the cheapest and best fertilizer a farmer can add to his ordinary barn-yard manure; another has applied cords upon cords of Muck, and says he has derived therefrom no benefit whatever. Now, this contrariety of conclusion may result from imperfect judgment on one side or the other, or from the condition precedent of the diverse soils: one of them requiring what Muck could supply, while the other required something very different from that; or it may be accounted for by the fact that the Muck applied in one case was of superior quality, and in the other good for nothing. Where Muck is composed almost wholly of the leaves of forest-trees which, through thousands of years, have been blown into a bog, or shallow pond, and there been gradually transformed into a fine, black dust or earth, I do not see how it can possibly be applied to an upland, especially a sandy or gravelly soil, without conducing to the subsequent production of bounteous crops. True, it may be sour when first drawn from the stagnant pool or bog in which it has lain so long, and may need to be mixed with Lime, or Salt, or Ashes, and subjected to the action of sun and frost, to ripen and sweeten it. But it seems to me impossible that such Muck should be applied to almost any reasonably dry land, without improving its consistency and increasing its fertility. But all Muck is not the product of decayed forest-leaves; and that which was formed of coarse, rank weeds and brakes, of rotten wood and flags, or skunk cabbage, may be of very inferior quality, so as hardly to repay the cost of digging and applying it. Science will yet enable us to fix, at least approximately, the value of each deposit of Muck, and so give a preference to the best.
The Analysis of Soils, whereof much was heard and whence much was hoped a few years since, seems to have fallen into utter discredit, so that every would-be popular writer gives it a passing fling or kick. That any analysis yet made was and is worthless, I can readily concede, without shaking in the least my conviction that soils will yet be analyzed, under the guidance of a truer, profounder Science, to the signal enlightenment and profit of their cultivators. Here is a retired merchant, banker, doctor, or lawyer, who has bought a spacious and naturally fertile but worn-out, run-down farm, on which he proposes to spend the remainder of his days. Of course, he must improve and enrich it; but with what? and how? All the manure he finds, or, for the present, can make on it, will hardly put the first acre in high condition, while he grows old and is unwilling to wait forever. He is able and ready to buy fertilizers, and does buy right and left, without knowing whether his land needs Lime, or Phosphate, or Potash, or something very different from either. Say he purchases $2,000 worth Of one or more of these fertilizers: it is highly probable that $1,500 might have served him better if invested in due proportion in just what his land most urgently needs; and I unflinchingly believe that we shall yet have an analysis of soils that will tell him just what fertilizers he ought to apply, and what quantity of each of them.
Science has already taught us that every load of Hay or Grain drawn from a field abstracts therefrom a considerable quantity of certain minerals—say Potash, Lime, Soda, Magnesia, Chlorine, Silica, Phosphorus—and that the soil is thereby impoverished until they be replaced, in some form or other. As no deposit in a bank was ever so large that continual drafts would not ultimately exhaust it, so no soil was ever so rich that taking crop after crop from it annually, yet giving nothing back, would not render it sterile or worthless. Sun and rain and wind will do their part in the work of renovation; but all of them together cannot restore to the soil the mineral elements whereof each crop takes a portion, and which, being once completely exhausted, can only be replaced at a heavy cost. Science teaches us to foresee and prevent such exhaustion—in part, by a rotation of crops, and in part by a constant replacement of the minerals annually borne away: the subtraction being greater in proportion as the crop is more exacting and luxuriant.
What I know of Science applicable to Farming is little indeed; but I know that there is such Science, and that each succeeding year enlarges, improves, and perfects it. I know that I should thus far have farmed to far better purpose, if I had been master even of so much Science as already exists.
Understand that I am not a teacher of this Science—I stand very low in the class of learners. I began to learn too late in life, and have been too incessantly harassed by a multiplicity of cares, to make any satisfactory progress. Any tolerably educated boy of fifteen may know far more of Agricultural Science by the time he has passed his eighteenth birthday than I do. What I know in this respect can help him very little; my faith that there is much to be known, and that he may master it if he will, is all that is of much importance. If I can convince a considerable number of our youth that they may surely acquire a competence by the time they shall have passed their fortieth year, without excessive labor or penurious frugality, by means of that knowledge of principles and laws subservient to Agriculture which their fathers could not, but which they easily may attain, I shall have rendered a substantial service alike to them and to our country.
A good workman, it is said, does not quarrel with his tools—which, if true, I judge is due to the fact that he generally manages to have good ones. To work hard throughout a long day under a burning sun, is sufficiently trying, without rendering the labor doubly repugnant by the use of ill-contrived, imperfect, inefficient implements.
The half-century which nearly bounds my recollection has witnessed great improvements in this respect. The Plow, mainly of wood, wherewith my father broke up his stony, hide-bound acres of New-Hampshire pebbles and gravel, in my early boyhood, would now be spurned if offered as a gift to the poorest and most thriftless farmer among us; and the Hoes which were allotted to us boys in those days, after the newer and better had been assigned to the men, would be rejected with disdain by the stupidest negro in Virginia. Though there is still room for improvement, we use far better implements than our grandfathers did, with a corresponding increase in the efficiency of our labor; but the cultivators of Spain, Portugal, and the greater part of Europe, still linger in the dark ages in this respect. Their plows are little better than the forked sticks which served their barbarian ancestors, and their implements generally are beneath contempt. With such implements, deep and thorough culture is simply impossible, unless by the use of the spade; and he must be a hard worker who produces a peck of Wheat or half a bushel of Indian Corn per day by the exclusive use of this tool. The soil of France is so cut up and subdivided into little strips of two or three roods up to as many acres each—each strip forming the entire patrimony of a family—that agricultural advancement or efficiency is, with the great mass of French cultivators, out of the question. Hence, I judge that, outside of Great Britain and Australia, there is no country wherein an average year's work produces half so much grain as in our own, in spite of our slovenly tillage, our neglect and waste of fertilizers, and the frequent failures of our harvests. Belgium, Holland, and northern France, can teach us neatness and thoroughness of cultivation; the British isles may fairly boast of larger and surer crops of Wheat, Oats, Potatoes, and Grass, than we are accustomed to secure; but, in the selection of implements, and in the average efficiency of labor, our best farmers are ahead of then all.
Bear with me, then, while I interpose a timid plea for our inventors and patentees of implements, whose solicitations that a trial, or at least an inspection, be accorded to their several contrivances, are too often repelled with churlish rudeness. I realize that our thriving farmers are generally absorbed in their own plans and efforts, and that the agent or salesman who insists on an examination of his new harrow, or pitchfork, or potato-digger, is often extravagant in his assumptions, and sometimes a bore. Still, when I recollect how tedious and how back-breaking were the methods of mowing Grass and reaping Grain with the Scythe and Sickle, which held unchallenged sway in my early boyhood, I entreat the farmer who is petitioned to accord ten or fifteen minutes to the setting forth, by some errant stranger, of the merits of his new horse-hoe or tedder, to give the time, if he can; and that without sour looks or a mien of stolid incredulity. The Biblical monition that, in evincing a generous hospitality, we may sometimes entertain angels unawares, seems to me in point. A new implement may be defective and worthless, and yet contain the germ or suggest the form of a thoroughly good one. Give the inventor or his representative a courteous hearing if you can, even though this should constrain you to make up the time so lost after the day's work would otherwise have ended.
I suspect that the average farmer of our completely rural districts would be surprised, if not instructed, by a day's careful scrutiny of the contents of one of our great implement warehouses. So many and such various and ingenious devices for pulverizing the earth applying fertilizers to the soil, planting or sowing rapidly, eradicating weeds, economizing labor in harvesting, etc., will probably transcend not merely his experience, but his imagination; and every one of these myriad implements is useful in its place, though no single farmer can afford to buy all or half of them. It will yet, I think, be found necessary by the farmers of a school-district, if not of a township, to meet and agree among themselves that one will buy this implement, another that, and so on, until twenty or thirty such devices as a Stump or Rock-Puller, a Clod-Crusher, Thrashing-Machine, Fanning-Mill, etc., shall be owned in the neighborhood—each by a separate farmer, willing to live and let live—with an understanding that each shall be used in turn by him who needs it; and so every one shall be nearly as well accommodated as though he owned them all.
For the number and variety of useful implements increase so rapidly, while their usefulness is so palpable, that, though it is difficult to farm efficiently without many if not most of them, it is impossible that the young farmer of moderate means should buy and keep them all. True, he might hire when he needed, if what he wanted were always at hand; but this can only be assured by some such arrangement as I have suggested, wherein each undertakes to provide and keep that which he will most need; agreeing to lend it whenever it can be spared to any other member of the combination, who undertakes to minister in like manner to his need in return.
I think few will doubt that the inventions in aid of Agriculture during the last forty years will be far surpassed by those of the forty years just before us. The magnificent fortunes which, it is currently understood, have rewarded the inventors of the more popular Mowers, Reapers, etc., of our day, are sure to stimulate alike the ingenuity and the avarice of clever men throughout the coming years, and to call into existence ten thousand patents, whereof a hundred will be valuable, and ten or twelve eminently useful. Plowing land free from stumps and stones cannot long be the tedious, patience-trying process we have known it. The machinery which will at once pulverize the soil to a depth of two feet, fertilize and seed it, not requiring it to be trampled by the hoofs of animals employed in subsoiling and harrowing, will soon be in general use, especially on the spacious, deep, inviting prairies of the Great West.—But I must defer what I have to say of Steam and its uses in Agriculture to another chapter.
As yet, the great body of our farmers have been slow in availing themselves of the natural forces in operation around them. Vainly for them does the wind blow across their fields and over their hill-tops. It neither thrashes nor grinds their grain; it has ceased even to separate it from the chaff. The brook brawls and foams idly adown the precipice or hillside: the farmer grinds his grain, churns his cream, and turns his grindstone, just as though falling water did not embody power. He draws his Logs to one mill, and his Wheat, Corn, or Rye to another, and returns in due season with his boards or his meal; but the lesson which the mill so plainly teaches remains, by him unread. Where running or leaping water is not, there brisk breezes and fiercer gales are apt to be. But the average farmer ignores the mechanical use of stream and breeze alike, taxing his own muscle to achieve that which the blind forces of Nature stand ready to do at his command. It may not, and I think it will not, be always thus.
Steam, as a cheap source of practically limitless power, is hardly a century old; yet it has already revolutionized the mechanical and manufacturing industry of Christendom. It weaves the far greater part of all the Textile Fabrics that clothe and shelter and beautify the human family. It fashions every bar and every rail of Iron or of Steel; it impels the machinery of nearly every manufactory of wares or of implements; and it is very rapidly supplanting wind in the propulsion of vessels on the high seas, as it has already done on rivers and on most inland waters.
Water is, however, still employed as a power in certain cases, but mainly because its adaptation to this end has cost many thousands of dollars which its disuse would render worthless.
I am quite within bounds in estimating that nine-tenths of all the material force employed by man in Manufactures, Mechanics, and Navigation, is supplied by Steam, and that this disproportion will be increased to ninety-nine hundredths before the close of this century.
For Agriculture, Steam has done very much, in the transportation of crops and of fertilizers, but very little in the preparation or cultivation of the soil. Of steam-wagons for roads or fields, steam-plows for pulverizing and deepening the soil, and steam-cultivators for keeping weeds down and rendering tillage more efficient, we have had many heralded in sanguine bulletins throughout the last forty years, but I am not aware that one of them has fulfilled the sanguine hopes of its author. Though a dozen Steam-Plows have been invented in this country, and several imported from Europe, I doubt that a single square mile of our country's surface has been plowed wholly by steam down to this hour. If it has, Louisiana—a State which one would not naturally expect to find in the van of industrial progress—has enjoyed the benefit and earned the credit of the achievement.
Of what Steam has yet accomplished in direct aid of Agriculture, I have little to say, though in Great Britain quite a number of steam-plows are actually at work in the fields, and (I am assured), with fair success. Until something breaks or gives out, one of these plows does its appointed work better and cheaper than such work is or can be done by animal power; but all the steam-plows whereof I have any knowledge seem too bulky, too complicated, too costly, ever to win their way into general use. I value them only as hints and incitements toward something better suited to the purpose.
What our farmers need is not a steam-plow as a specialty, but a locomotive that can travel with facility, not only on common wagon-roads, but across even freshly-plowed fields, without embarrassment, and prove as docile to its manager's touch as an average span of horses. Such a locomotive should not cost more then $500, nor weigh more than a tun when laden with fuel and water for a half-hour's steady work. It should be so contrived that it may be hitched in a minute to a plow, a harrow, a wagon, or cart, a saw or grist-mill, a mower or reaper, a thresher or stalk-cutter, a stump or rock-puller, and made useful in pumping and draining operations, digging a cellar or laying up a wall, as also in ditching or trenching. We may have to wait some years yet for a servant so dexterous and docile, yet I feel confident that our children will enjoy and appreciate his handiwork.
The farmer often needs far more power at one season than at another, and is compelled to retain and subsist working animals at high cost through months in which he has no use for them, because he must have them when those months have transpired. If he could replace those animals by a machine which, when its season of usefulness was over, could be cleaned, oiled, and put away under a tight roof until next seeding-time, the saving alike of cost and trouble would be very considerable.
When our American reapers first challenged attention in Great Britain, the general skepticism as to their efficiency was counteracted by the suggestion that, even though reaping by machinery should prove more expensive than reaping by hand, the ability to cut and save the grain-crop more rapidly than hitherto would over-balance that enhancement of cost. In the British Isles, day after day of chilling wind and rain is often encountered in harvest-time: the standing Wheat or Oats or Barley becoming draggled, or lodged, or beaten out, while the owner impatiently awaits the recurrence of sunny days. When these at length arrive, he is anxious to harvest many acres at once, since his Grain is wasting and he knows not how soon cloud and tempest may again be his portion. But all his neighbors are in like predicament with himself, and all equally intent on hurrying the harvest; so that little extra help is attainable. If now the aid of a machine may be commanded, which will cut 15 or 20 acres per day, he cares less how much that work will cost than how soon it can be effected. Hence, even though cutting by horse-power had proved more costly than cutting by hand, it would still have been welcome.
So it is with Plowing, here and almost everywhere. Our farmers have this year been unable to begin Plowing for Winter Grain so early as they desired, by reason of the intense heat and drouth, whereby their fields were baked to the consistency of half-burned brick. Much seed will in consequence have been sown too late, while much seeding will have been precluded altogether, by inability to prepare the ground in due season. If a machine had been at hand whereby 15 or 20 acres per day could have been plowed and harrowed, thousands would have invoked its aid to enable them to sow their Grain in tolerable season, even though the cost had been essentially heavier than that of old-fashioned plowing. I traversed Illinois on the 13th and 14th of May, 1859, when its entire soil seemed soaked and sodden with incessant rains, which had not yet ceased pouring. Inevitably, there had been little or no plowing yet for the vast Corn-crop of that State; yet barely two weeks would intervene before the close of the proper season for Corn-planting. Even if these should be wholly favorable, the plowing could not be effected in season, and much ground must be planted too late or not planted at all. In every such case, a machine that would plow six or eight furrows as fast as a man ought to walk, would add immensely to the year's harvest, and be hailed as a general blessing.
I recollect that a German observer of Western cultivation—a man of decided perspicacity and wide observation—recommended that each farmer who had not the requisite time or team for getting in his Corn-crop in due season should plow single furrows through his field at intervals of 3 to 3-1/2 feet, plant his Corn on the earth thus turned, and proceed, so soon as his planting was finished, to plow out the spaces as yet undisturbed between the springing rows of Corn. I do not know that this recommendation was ever widely followed; but I judge that, under certain circumstances, it might be, to decided advantage and profit.
I have not attempted to indicate all the benefits which Steam is to confer directly on Agriculture, within the next half-century. That Irrigation must become general, I confidently believe; and I anticipate a very extensive sinking of wells, at favorable points, in order that water shall be drawn therefrom by wind or steam to moisten and enrich the slopes and plains around them. Such a locomotive as I have foreshadowed might be taken from well to well, pumping from each in an hour or two sufficient water to irrigate several of the adjacent acres; thus starting a second crop of Hay on fields whence the first had been taken, and renewing verdure and growth where we now see vegetation suspended for weeks, if not months. I feel sure that the mass of our farmers have not yet realized the importance and beneficence of Irrigation, nor the facility wherewith its advantages may be secured.
The word of hope and cheer for Labor in our days is Coöperation—that is, the combination by many of their means and efforts to achieve results beneficial to them all. It differs radically from Communism, which proposes that each should receive from the aggregate product of human labor enough to satisfy his wants, or at least his needs, whether he shall have contributed to that aggregate much, or little, or nothing at all. Coöperation insists that each shall receive from the joint product in proportion to his contributions thereto, whether in capital, skill, or labor. If one associate has ten children and another none, Communism would apportion to each according to the size of his family alone; while Coöperation would give to each what he had earned, regardless of the number dependent upon him. Thus the two systems are radical antagonists, and only the grossly ignorant or willfully blind will confound them.
A young farmer, whose total estate is less than $500, not counting a priceless wife and child, resolves to migrate from one of the old States to Kansas, Minnesota, or one of the Territories: he has heard that he will there find public land whereon he may make a home of a quarter-section, paying therefor $20 or less for the cost of survey and of the necessary papers. So he may: but, on reaching the Land of Promise, whether with or without his family, he finds a very large belt of still vacant land beyond the settlements already transformed into private property, and either not for sale at all or held on speculation, quite out of his reach. The public land which he may take under the Homestead law lies a full day's journey beyond the border settlements, to which he must look for Mills, Stores, Schools, and even Highways. If he persists in squatting, with intent to earn his quarter-section by settlement and cultivation, he must take a long day's journey across unbridged streams and sloughs, over unmade roads, to find boards, or brick, or meal, or glass, or groceries; while he must postpone the education of his children to an indefinite future day. Gradually, the region will be settled, and the conveniences of civilization will find their way to his door, but not till after he will have suffered through several years for want of them; often compelled to make a journey to get a plow or yoke mended, a grist of grain ground, or to minister to some other trivial but inexorable want. He who thus acquires his quarter-section must fairly earn it, and may be thankful if his children do not grow up rude, coarse, and illiterate.
But suppose one thousand just such young farmers as he is, with no more means and no greater efficiency than his, were to set forth together, resolved to find a suitable location whereon they might all settle on adjoining quarter-sections, thus appropriating the soil of five or six embryo townships: who can fail to see that three-fourths of the obstacles and discouragements which confront the solitary pioneer would vanish at the outset? Roads, Bridges, Mills,—nay, even Schools and Churches—would be theirs almost immediately; while mechanics, merchants, doctors, etc., would fairly overrun their settlement and solicit their patronage at every road-crossing. Within a year after the location of their several claims, they would have achieved more progress and more comfort than in five years under the system of straggling and isolated settlement which has hitherto prevailed. The change I here indicate appeals to the common sense and daily experience of our whole people. It is not necessary, however desirable, that the pioneers should be giants in wisdom, in integrity, or in piety, to secure its benefits. A knave or a fool may be deemed an undesirable neighbor; but a dozen such in the township would not preclude, and could hardly diminish, the advantages naturally resulting from settlement by Coöperation.
Nor are these confined to pioneers transcending the boundaries of civilization. I wish I could induce a thousand of our colored men now precariously subsisting by servile labor in the cities, to strike out boldly for homes of their own, and for liberty to direct their own labor, whether they should settle on the frontier in the manner just outlined, or should buy a tract of cheap land on Long Island, in New-Jersey, Maryland, or some State further South. I cannot doubt that the majority of them would work their way up to independence; and this very much sooner, and after undergoing far less privation, than almost every pioneer who has plunged alone into the primitive forest or struck out upon the broad prairie and there made himself a farm.
The insatiable demand for fencing is one of the pioneer's many trials. Though he has cleared off but three acres of forest during his first Fall and Winter, he must surround those acres with a stout fence, or all he grows will be devoured by hungry cattle—his own, if no others. Whether he adds two or ten acres to his clearing during the next year, they must in turn be surrounded by a fence; and nothing short of a very stout one will answer: so he goes on clearing and fencing, usually burning up a part of his fence whenever he burns over his new clearing; then building a new one around this, which will have to be sacrificed in its turn. I believe that many pioneers have devoted as much time to fencing their fields as to tilling them throughout their first six or eight years.
It is different with those who settle on broad prairies, but not essentially better. Each pioneer must fence his patch of tillage with material which costs him more, and is procured with greater difficulty, than though he were cutting a hole in the forest. Often, when he thinks he has fenced sufficiently, the hungry, breachy cattle, who roam the open prairies around him, judge his handiwork less favorably; and he wakes some August morning, when feed is poorest outside and most luxuriant within his inclosure, to find that twenty or thirty cattle have broken through his defenses and half destroyed his growing crop.
If, instead of this wasteful lack of system, a thousand or even a hundred farmers would combine to fence several square miles into one grand inclosure for cultivation, erecting their several habitations within or without its limits, as to each should be convenient—apportioning it for cultivation, or owning it in severalty, as they should see fit—an immense economy would be secured, just when, because of their poverty, saving is most important. Their stock might range the open prairie unwatched; and they might all sleep at night in serene confidence that their corn and cabbages were not in danger of ruthless destruction. Among the settlers in our great primitive forests, the system of Coöperative Farming would have to be modified in details, while it would be in essence the same.
And, once adopted with regard to fencing, other adaptations as obvious and beneficent would from day to day suggest themselves. Each pioneer would learn how to advance his own prosperity by combining his efforts with those of his neighbors. He would perceive that the common wants of a hundred may be supplied by a combined effort at less than half the cost of satisfying them when each is provided for alone. He would grow year by year into a clearer and firmer conviction that short-sighted selfishness is the germ of half the evils that afflict the human race, and that the true and sure way to a bounteous satisfaction of the wants of each is a generous and thoughtful consideration for the needs of all.
And here let me pay my earnest and thankful tribute to Mr. E. V. de Boissière, a philanthropic Frenchman, who has purchased 3,300 acres of mainly rolling prairie-land in Kansas, near Princeton, Franklin County, and is carefully, cautiously, laying thereon the foundations of a great coöperative farm, where, in addition to the usual crops, it is expected that Silk and other exotics will in due time be extensively grown and transformed into fabrics, and that various manufactures will vie with Agriculture in affording attractive and profitable employment to a considerable population. I have not been accustomed to look with favor on our new States and unpeopled Territories as an arena for such experiments, since so many of their early settlers are intent on getting rich by land-speculation—at all events, through the exercise of some others' muscles than their own—while the opportunities for and incitements to migration and relocation are so multiform and powerful. Doubtless, M. de Boissière will be often tried by stampedes of his volunteer associates, who, after the novelty of coöperative effort has worn off, will find life on his domain too tame and humdrum for their excitable and high-strung natures. I trust, however, that he will persevere through every discouragement, and triumph over every obstacle; that the right men for associates will gradually gather about him; that his enterprise and devotion will at length be crowned by a signal and inspiring success; and that thousands will be awakened by it to a larger and nobler conception of the mission of Industry, and the possibilities of achievement which stud the path of simple, honest, faithful, persistent Work.