The Story of the Soil Part 2

"Perhaps," said Percy, "in some ways; but not in other ways. We hear on every hand that this is an age of specialists, that the most successful man cannot take time to prepare himself well for many different lines of work; that he must make the best possible preparation in some one line for which he may have special talent or special interest; and then endeavor to go farther in that line than any one has gone before. When I first wrote to the State University I asked how long a time would likely be required for me to complete all the subjects that are taught there, and the registrar replied that, if I could carry heavy work every year, I might hope to take all the courses now offered in about seventy years. In considering this point of preparation for future work, it has seemed to me that if I leave the farm life and devote myself to law or to engineering, I must in large measure sacrifice about ten years of valuable experience in practical agriculture. I have learned enough about farming so that I can manage almost as well as the neighbors; and without this knowledge, gathered, as you say, in the school of experience, I can see that serious mistakes would often be made.

"You know that Doctor Miller bought the Bronson farm two years ago.

Well, he has been giving some directions himself concerning its management. He has had no experience in farming, and last year, after he had the new barn built, he directed his men to put the sheaf oats in the barn so they would be safe from the weather. He did not understand that oats must stand in the shock for two or three weeks to become thoroughly "cured" before they can safely be even stacked out of doors; and the result was that his entire oat crop rotted in the barn.

"People who have lived always in the city sometimes express the most amusing opinions of farm conditions so well understood even by a ten-year-old country boy. I recently overheard two traveling men remarking about the differences which they could plainly observe between the corn crops in different fields as they rode past in the train.

"'Some fields have twice as good corn as other adjoining fields,'

one remarked. 'How do you account for the difference,' asked the other. 'oh, I suppose the one farmer was too stingy of his seed,'

was the reply.

"I am convinced that there are hundreds or perhaps thousands of valuable facts that have been acquired through experience and observation by the average farm boy of eighteen or twenty years that would be of little or no value to him in most other occupations; and in this respect I should be handicapped if I leave the farm life and begin wholly at the bottom in some other profession. Perhaps agriculture is not a profession, but I think it should be if the highest success is to be attained."

"I surely hope you will be successful, Percy, and your reasoning sounds all right; but other occupations seem to lead to greater wealth than farming."

"I very much doubt," replied Percy, "if there is any other occupation that is so uniformly successful as farming, in the truest sense. It provides constant employment, a good living, and a comfortable home for nearly all who engage in it; and as a rule they have made no such preparation as is required for most other lines of work.

"But there is still another side to the farm life, Mother dear, or to any life for that matter. Your own life has taught me that to work for the love of others is a motive which directs the n.o.blest lives. If agricultural missionaries are needed in India, they are also needed in parts of our own country where farm lands that were once productive are now greatly depleted and in some cases even abandoned for farming; and. if the older lands of the corn belt are already showing a decrease in productive power, we need the missionary even here. If I can learn how to make land richer and richer and lead others to follow such a system, I should find much satisfaction in the effort."

CHAPTER V

WORN OUT FARMS

"WELL, you found some mighty poor land, I reckon," was the greeting Percy received from Grandma West as he returned from his walk over Westover and some neighboring farms.

"I found some land that produces very poor crops," he replied, "but I don't know yet whether I should say that the land is poor."

"Well, I know it's about as poor as poor can be; but it was not always poor, I can tell you. When I was a girl, if this farm did not produce five or six thousands bushels of wheat, we thought it a poor crop; but now, if we get five or six hundred bushels, we think we are doing pretty well. My husband's father paid sixty-eight dollars an acre for some of this land, and it was worth more than that a few years later and, mind you, in those days wheat was worth less and n.i.g.g.e.rs a mighty sight more than they are nowadays; but, somehow, the land has just grown poor. We don't know how. We have worked hard, and we have kept as much stock as we could, but we could never produce enough fertilizer on the farm to go very far on a thousand acres.

"Yes, Sir, we have just about a thousand acres here and we still own it,--and with no mortgage on it, I'm mighty glad to say. But, laws, the land is poor, and you can get all the land you want about here for ten dollars an acre. There comes Charles, now. He can tell you all about this country for more than twenty miles, I reckon.

"Wilkes!" A negro servant answered the call, and took the horse as Charles West stopped at the side gate.

"Wilkes was born here in slave times, nigh sixty years ago," she continued. "He is three years older than my son Charles. He has remained with us ever since the war, except for a few months when he went away one time just to see for sure that he was free and _could _go. But he came back mighty homesick and he'll want to stay here till he dies, I reckon.

"Charles, this is Mr. Johnston, Percy Johnston, as he says; but he thinks he is no kin of General Joe or Albert Sidney. He's been looking at the land hereabout, but I don't think he'll want any of it after seeing the kind of crops we raise."

With this introduction, the mother disappeared within the house, and Charles took her seat on the vine-covered veranda.

"I feel that I owe an apology to you, Sir," said Percy, "for presenting myself here with bag and baggage, and asking to share the hospitality of your home, with no previous arrangements having been made; but by chance I met your friend, Doctor G.o.ddard, on the train, and, in answer to my inquiry as to whom I could go to for correct information concerning the history and present condition and value of farm lands in this section of the country, he advised me to stop off at Blue Mound Station and consult with you. Had I known that you were to be in Montplain to-day, of course I should have gone directly there. Your mother very graciously consented to receive me as a belated summer boarder, a kindness which I greatly appreciate, I a.s.sure you.

"My mother and I have a small farm in Illinois,--so small that it would be lost in such an estate as Westover, but the price of land is very high in the West at the present time; and I am really considering the question of selling our little forty-acre farm and purchasing two or three hundred acres in the East or South. My thought is that I might secure a farm that was once good land, but that has been run down to such an extent that it can be bought for perhaps ten or twenty dollars an acre. I should want the land to be nearly level so that it would not be difficult to prevent damage from surface was.h.i.+ng. I should prefer, of course, to purchase where there is a good road and not more than five miles from a railway station.

"If I secure such a farm, it would be my purpose to restore its fertility. If possible I should want to make the land at least as productive as it ever was, even in its virgin state."

"Well, Sir," said Mr. West, "if you could accomplish your purpose and ultimately show a balance on the right side of the ledger, it would be a work of very great value to this country. There will be no difficulty in securing such land as you want with location and price to suit you; but I think that you should know in advance that older men than you have purchased farms hereabout with very similar intentions, but with the ultimate result that they have lost more, financially, than we who are native to the soil; for, while we were once well-to-do and are now poor, we still own our land, impoverished as it is. However, the farm still furnishes us a comfortable living, supplemented, to be sure, with some income from other sources.

"I am very willing to give as much information as I can regarding our lands and the agricultural conditions and common practices, although I fear that this knowledge will discourage you from making any investments in our worn-out farms. If you still decide to make the trial, I surely hope you will be successful, for we need such an object lesson above all else.

"I a.s.sume that you will wish to locate near a town of considerable size, in order that you can haul manures from town, and perhaps some feed also; and have a good market for your milk and other products."

"No, Sir," said Percy, "I should prefer not to engage in dairying, and I do not wish to make use of fertilizer made from my neighbors'

crops. We have some object lessons of that kind in my own state; and I have no doubt that some can be found in this state who feed all they produce on their own land and perhaps even larger amounts of feed purchased from their neighbors, or hauled from town, and who, in addition to using all of the farm fertilizer thus produced, haul considerable amounts of such materials from the livery stables in town. With much hard work, with a good market for the products of the dairy and truck garden, and with business skill in purchasing feed from their neighbors when prices are low, such men succeed as individuals; but do they furnish an object lesson which could be followed by the general farmer?"

"I had not looked at the matter from that point of view," said Mr.

West, "but it is plain to see that on the whole there can be only a small percentage of such farmers; and in reality they are a detriment to their neighbors who permit their own hay and grain to be hauled off from their farms; but certainly these are the methods followed by our most successful farmers, and these are they who live on the fat of the land."

"Are they farmers or are they manufacturers?" asked Percy. "It seems to me that, in large measure, their business is to manufacture a finished product from the raw materials produced upon other farms, either in the immediate neighborhood or in the newer regions of the West. As you know, much of our surplus produce from the farms of the corn belt is s.h.i.+pped into the eastern and southern states, there to be used as food for man and beast, not only in the cities, but also to a considerable extent in the country. Instead of living on the fat of the land, such manufacturers live in the country at the expense of special city customers who may have fat jobs and are able to pay fancy prices for country produce made by the impoverishment of many farms. In most cases, if such a 'successful farmer' were compelled to pay average prices for what he buys and allowed to receive only average prices for what he sells, his fat would have plenty of lean streaks."

CHAPTER VI

THE MUSICALE

DINNER was served at the family table, with Mr. West at the head and his mother at the foot.

"The eye is the window of the soul," thought Percy, as he met the glance of Adelaide sitting opposite. Certain he was that he had never before looked into such alluring eyes.

Adelaide was neither a girl nor a woman and yet at times she was both. With the other children she was a child that still loved to romp and play with the rest, free as a bird. Her mother, a sweet-faced woman, some years her husband's junior, made sisters of all her daughters, the more naturally perhaps, because the grandmother was still so active and so interested in all phases of homemaking that she seemed mother to them all. Adelaide's two older sisters were married and her brother Charles, also older than herself, by three years, was a senior in college. Adelaide had just finished her course in the Academy where the long service of a maiden aunt as a teacher had secured certain appreciated privileges, without which it is doubtful if both Charles and Adelaide could have been sent away to school at the same time. A boy of fourteen and the eight-year old baby brother with two sisters between comprised the younger members of the family.

Miss Bowman, the teacher of the district school, also occupied a place at the table. The evening meal was disposed of without delay, for there was something of greater importance to follow. A musicale in the near-by country church had been in preparation and Percy heartily accepted an invitation to accompany the family to the evening's entertainment. Or rather he accompanied Mr. and Mrs. West and the grandmother, for all the children had walked the distance before the carriage arrived.

Without having specialized in music, nevertheless Percy had improved the frequent opportunities he had had, especially while at the university, and he had learned to appreciate quality in the musical world. Consequently he was not a little surprised and greatly pleased to sit and listen to a cla.s.s of music that he had never before heard rendered in country places; but, as he listened for Adelaide's singing in chorus, duet, and solo, he found himself wondering whether the eye or the voice more clearly revealed the soul.

"It seemed like the old times," said the grandmother, with something like a sigh, as she took her place in the carriage. "If our land was only like it used to be! but it's become so mighty poor our children can't have many advantages these days. The Harcourt's and Staunton's whom you met are descendants of ancestors once well known in this state."

"It seems to me that the land need not have grown poor," said Percy. "If the land was once productive, its fertility ought to be maintained by the return of the essential materials removed in crops or destroyed by cultivation. Surely land need not become poor; but of course I know too little about this land to suggest at the present time what method could best be adopted for its improvement."

"We can tell you what the best method is," she quickly replied.

"Just put on plenty of ordinary farm fertilizer, but, laws, we don't have enough to cover fifty acres a year."

For a time each seemed lost in thought, or listening to the husband and wife who sat in the front seat quietly talking of the evening's performances. Percy recognized some of the names they mentioned as belonging to persons to whom he had been presented at the church. It gradually dawned upon him that he had spent the evening with the aristocracy of the Blue Mound neighborhood. Culture, refinement, and poverty were the chief characteristics of the people who had been a.s.sembled.