What I know of farming Part 12

XLI.

STEAM IN AGRICULTURE.

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 fas.h.i.+ons 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 a.s.sured), 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 embarra.s.sment, 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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 s.p.a.ces 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 antic.i.p.ate 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 ma.s.s of our farmers have not yet realized the importance and beneficence of Irrigation, nor the facility wherewith its advantages may be secured.

XLII.

CO-OPERATION IN FARMING.

The word of hope and cheer for Labor in our days is COoPERATION--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. Cooperation insists that each shall receive from the joint product in proportion to his contributions thereto, whether in capital, skill, or labor. If one a.s.sociate has ten children and another none, Communism would apportion to each according to the size of his family alone; while Cooperation 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 gla.s.s, 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, coa.r.s.e, 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 towns.h.i.+ps: 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. .h.i.therto 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 towns.h.i.+p would not preclude, and could hardly diminish, the advantages naturally resulting from settlement by Cooperation.

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 Cooperative 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 Boissiere, 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 cooperative 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 Boissiere will be often tried by stampedes of his volunteer a.s.sociates, who, after the novelty of cooperative 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 a.s.sociates 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 n.o.bler conception of the mission of Industry, and the possibilities of achievement which stud the path of simple, honest, faithful, persistent Work.

XLIII.

FARMERS' CLUBS.

Farmers, like other men, divide naturally into two cla.s.ses--those who do too much work, and those who do too little. I know men who are no farmers at all, only by virtue of the fact that each of them inherited, or somehow acquired, a farm, and have since lived upon and out of it, in good part upon that which it could not help producing--they not doing so much as one hundred fair days' work each per annum. One of this cla.s.s never takes a periodical devoted to farming; evinces no interest in county fairs or towns.h.i.+p clubs, save as they may afford him an excuse for greater idleness; and insists that there is no profit in farming. As land steadily depreciates in quality under his management, he is apt to sell out whenever the increase of population or progress of improvement has given additional value to his farm, and move off in quest of that undiscovered country where idleness is compatible with thrift, profits are realized from light crops, and men grow rich by doing nothing.

The opposite cla.s.s of wanderers from the golden mean is hardly so numerous as the idlers, yet it is quite a large one. Its leading embodiment, to my mind, is one whom I knew from childhood, who, born poor and nowise favored by fortune, was rated as a tireless worker from early boyhood, and who achieved an independence before he was forty years old in a rural New-England towns.h.i.+p, simply by rugged, persistent labor--in youth on the farms of other men; in manhood, on one of his own. This man was older at forty than his father, then seventy, and died at fifty, worn out with excessive and unintermitted labor, leaving a widow who greatly preferred him to all his ample wealth, and an only son who, so soon as he can get hold of it, will squander the property much faster, and even more unwisely, than his father acquired it.

To the cla.s.s of which this man was a fair representative, Farmers' Clubs must prove of signal value. Though there should be nothing else than a Farmers' Club in his neighborhood, it can hardly fail in time to make such a one realize that life need not and should not be all drudgery; that there are other things worth living for beside acc.u.mulating wealth.

Let his wife and his neighbor succeed in drawing such a one into two or three successive meetings, and he can hardly fail to perceive that thrift is a product of brain as well as of muscle; that he may grow rich by learning and knowing as well as by delving, and that, even though he should not, there are many things desirable and laudable beside the acc.u.mulation of wealth.

A true Farmers' Club should consist of all the families residing in a small towns.h.i.+p, so far as they can be induced to attend it, even though only half their members should be present at any one meeting. It should limit speeches to ten minutes, excepting only those addresses or essays which eminently qualified persons are requested to specially prepare and read. It should have a president, ready and able to repress all ill-natured personalities, all irrelevant talk, and especially all straying into the forbidden regions of political or theological disputation. At each meeting, the subject should be chosen for the next, and not less than four members pledged to make some observations thereon, with liberty to read them if unused to speaking in public.

Those having been heard, the topic should be open to discussion by all present: the humblest and youngest being specially encouraged to state any facts within their knowledge which they deem pertinent and cogent.

Let every person attending be thus incited to say something calculated to shed light on the subject, to say this in the fewest words possible, and with the utmost care not to annoy or offend others, and it is hardly possible that one evening per week devoted to these meetings should not be spent with equal pleasure and profit.

The chief end to be achieved through such meetings is a development of the faculty of observation and the habit of reflection. Too many of us pa.s.s through life essentially blind and deaf to the wonders and glories manifest to clearer eyes all around us. The magnificent phenomena of the Seasons, even the awakening of Nature from death to life in Spring-time, make little impression on their senses, still less on their understandings. There are men who have pa.s.sed forty times through a forest, and yet could not name, within half a dozen, the various species of trees which compose it; and so with everything else to which they are accustomed. They need even more than knowledge an intellectual awakening; and this they could hardly fail to receive from the discussions of an intelligent and earnest Farmers' Club.

A genuine and lively interest in their vocation is needed by many farmers, and by most farmers' sons. Too many of these regard their homesteads as a prison, in which they must remain until some avenue of escape into the great world shall open before them. The farm to such is but the hollow log into which a bear crawls to wear out the rigors of Winter and await the advent of Spring. Too many of our boys fancy that they know too much for farmers, when in fact they know far too little. A good Farmers' Club, faithfully attended, would take this conceit out of them, imbuing them instead with a realizing sense of their ignorance and incompetency, and a hearty desire for practical wisdom.

A recording secretary, able to state in the fewest words each important suggestion or fact elicited in the course of an evening's discussion, would be hardly less valuable or less honored than a capable president.

A single page would often suffice for all that deserves such record out of an evening's discussion; and this, being transferred to a book and preserved, might be consulted with interest and profit throughout many succeeding years. No other duty should be required of the member who rendered this service, the correspondence of the Club being devolved upon another secretary. The habit of bringing grafts, or plants, or seeds, to Club meetings, for gratuitous distribution, has been found to increase the interest, and enlarge the attendance of those formerly indifferent. Almost every good farmer or gardener will sometimes have choice seeds or grafts to spare, which he does not care or cannot expect to sell, and these being distributed to the Club will not only increase its popularity, but give him a right to share when another's surplus is in like manner distributed. If one has choice fruits to give away, the Club will afford him an excellent opportunity; but I would rather not attract persons to its meetings by a prospect of having their appet.i.tes thus gratified at others' expense. A Flower-Show once in each year, and an Exhibition of Fruits and other choice products at an evening meeting in September or October, should suffice for festivals. Let each member consider himself pledged to bring to the Exhibition the best material result of his year's efforts, and the aggregate will be satisfactory and instructive.

The organization of a Farmers' Club is its chief difficulty. The larger number of those who ought to partic.i.p.ate usually prefer to stand back, not committing themselves to the effort until after its success has been a.s.sured. To obviate this embarra.s.sment, let a paper be circulated for signatures, pledging each signer to attend the introductory meeting and bring at least a part of his family. When forty have signed such a call, success will be well-nigh a.s.sured.

XLIV.