FIRST DAY'S OBSERVATIONS AND ENJOYMENT--RURAL FOOT-PATHS; VISIT TO
TIPTREE FARM--ALDERMAN MECHI'S OPERATIONS--IMPROVEMENTS INTRODUCED,
DECRIED, AND ADOPTED--STEAM POWER, UNDER-DRAINING, DEEP TILLAGE,
IRRIGATION--PRACTICAL RESULTS.
On Wednesday, July 15th, 1863, I left London with the hope that I
might be able to accomplish the northern half of my proposed "Walk
from Land's End to John O'Groat's." I had been practically
prostrated by a serious indisposition for nearly two months, and was
just able to walk one or two miles at a time about the city.
Believing that country air and exercise would soon enable me to be
longer on my feet, I concluded to set out as I was, without waiting
for additional strength, so slow and difficult to attain in the
smoky atmosphere and hot streets of London.
Few reading farmers in America there are who are not familiar with
the name and fame of Alderman Mechi, as an agriculturist of that new
and scientific school that is making such a revolution in the great
primeval industry of mankind. His experiments on his Tiptree Farm
have attained a world-wide publicity, and have given that homestead
an interest that, perhaps, never attached to the same number of
acres in any country or age. Thinking that this famous
establishment would be a good starting point for my pedestrian tour,
I concluded to proceed thither first by railway, and thence to walk
northward, by easy stages, through the fertile and rural county of
Essex. Taking an afternoon train, I reached Kelvedon about 5 p.m.,-
-the station for Tiptree, and a good specimen of an English village,
at two hours' ride from London. Calling at the residence of a
Friend, or Quaker, to inquire the way to the Alderman's farm, he
invited me to take tea with him, and be his guest for the night,--a
hospitality which I very gladly accepted, as it was a longer walk
than I had anticipated. After tea, my host, who was a farmer as
well as miller, took me over his fields, and showed me his live
stock, his crops of wheat, barley, oats, beans, and roots, which
were all large and luxuriant, and looked a tableau vivant of plenty
within the green hedges that enclosed and adorned them.
The next morning, after breakfast, my kind host set me on the way to
Tiptree by a footpath through alternating fields of wheat, barley,
oats, beans, and turnips, into which an English farm is generally
divided. These footpaths are among the vested interests of the
walking public throughout the United Kingdom. Most of them are
centuries old. The footsteps of a dozen generations have given them
the force and sanctity of a popular right. A farmer might as well
undertake to barricade the turnpike road as to close one of these
old paths across his best fields. So far from obstructing them, he
finds it good policy to straighten and round them up, and supply
them with convenient gates or stiles, so that no one shall have an
excuse for trampling on his crops, or for diverging into the open
field for a shorter cut to the main road. Blessings on the man who
invented them! It was done when land was cheap, and public roads
were few; before four wheels were first geared together for business
or pleasure. They were the doing of another age; this would not
have produced them. They run through all the prose, poetry, and
romance of the rural life of England, permeating the history of
green hedges, thatched cottages, morning songs of the lark,
moonlight walks, meetings at the stile, harvest homes of long ago,
and many a romantic narrative of human experience widely read in
both hemispheres. They will run on for ever, carrying with them the
same associations. They are the inheritance of landless millions,
who have trodden them in ages past at dawn, noon, and night, to and
from their labor; and in ages to come the mowers and reapers shall
tread them to the morning music of the lark, and through Spring,
Summer, Autumn, and Winter, they shall show the fresh checker-work
of the ploughman's hob-nailed shoe. The surreptitious innovations
of utilitarian science shall not poach upon these sacred preserves
of the people, whatever revolutions they may produce in the
machinery and speed of turnpike locomotion. These pleasant and
peaceful paths through park, and pasture, meandering through the
beautiful and sweet-breathing artistry of English agriculture, are
guaranteed to future generations by an authority which no
legislation can annul.
A walk of a few miles brought me in sight of Tiptree Hall; and its
first aspect relieved my mind of an impression which, in common with
thousands better informed, I had entertained in reference to the
establishment. An idea has generally prevailed among English
farmers, and agriculturists of other countries who have heard of
Alderman Mechi's experiments, that they were impracticable and
almost valueless, because they would not _pay_; that the balance-
sheet of his operations did and must ever show such ruinous
discrepancy between income and expenditure as must deter any man, of
less capital and reckless enthusiasm, from following his lead into
such unconsidered ventures. In short, he has been widely regarded
at home and abroad as a bold and dashing novice in agricultural
experience, ready to lavish upon his own hasty inventions a fortune
acquired in his London warehouse; and all this to make himself
famous as a great light in the agricultural world, which light,
after all, was a mere will-o'-the-wisp sort of affair, leading its
dupes into the veriest bog of bankruptcy. In common with all those
bold, self-reliant spirits that have ventured to break away from the
antecedents of public opinion and custom, he has been the subject of
many ungenerous innuendoes and criticisms. All kinds of ambitions
and motives have been ascribed to him. Many a burly, red-faced
farmer, who boasts of an unbroken agricultural lineage reaching back
into the reign of Good Queen Bess, will tell you over his beer that
the Alderman's doings are all _gammon_; that they are all to
advertise his cutlery business in Leadenhall Street, Barnum fashion;
to inveigle down to Tiptree Hall noblemen, foreign ambassadors, and
great people of different countries, and bribe "an honourable
mention" out of them with champagne treats and oyster suppers.
Indeed, my Quaker host largely participated in this opinion, and
took no pains to conceal it when speaking of his enterprising
neighbor.
From what I had read and heard of the Tiptree Hall estate, I
expected to see a grand, old, baronial mansion, surrounded with
elegant and costly buildings for housing horses, cattle, sheep, and
other live stock, all erected on a scale which no bona fide farmer
could adopt or approximately imitate. In a word, I fancied his
barns and stables would even surpass in this respect the
establishments of some of those most wealthy New York or Boston
merchants, who think they are stimulating country farmers to healthy
emulation by lavishing from thirty to forty thousand dollars on a
barn and its appurtenant out-houses. With these preconceived ideas,
it was an unexpected satisfaction to see quite a simple-looking,
unassuming establishment, which any well-to-do farmer might make and
own. The house is rather a large and solid-looking building,
erected by Mr. Mechi himself, but not at all ostentatious of wealth
or architectural taste. The barns and "steddings," or what we call
cowhouses in America, are of a very ordinary cast, or such as any
country-bred farmer would call economical and simple. The homestead
occupies no picturesque site, and commands no interesting scenery.
The farm consists of about 170 acres, which, in England, is regarded
as a rather small holding. The land is naturally sterile and hard
of cultivation, most of it apparently being heavily mixed with
ferruginous matter. When ploughed deeply, the clods turned up look
frequently like compact masses of iron ore. Every experienced
farmer knows the natural poverty of such a soil, and the hard labor
to man and beast it costs to till it.
To my great regret, Mr. Mechi was not at home, though he passes most
of his time in Summer at Tiptree. But his foreman, who enters into
all the experiments and operations which have made the establishment
so famous, with almost equal interest and enthusiasm, took me
through the farm buildings, and all the fields, and showed me the
whole process and machinery employed. Any English or American
agriculturist who has read of Alderman Mechi's operations, would be
inclined to ask, on looking, for the first time, at his buildings
and the fields surrounding them, what is the great distinguishing
speciality of his enterprise. His land is poor; his housings are
simple; there is no outside show of uncommon taste or genius. Every
acre is tile-drained, to be sure. But that is nothing new nor
uncommon. Drainage is the order of the day. Any tenant farmer in
England can have his land drained by the Government by paying six
per cent. annually on the cost of the job. His expenditure for
artificial manure does not exceed that of hundreds of good farmers.
He carries out the deep tillage system most liberally. So do other
scientific agriculturalists in Europe and America. Of course, a few
hours' observation would not suffice for a full and correct
conclusion on this point, but it gave me the impression that the
great operation which has won for the Tiptree Farm its special
distinction is its irrigation with liquid manure. In this respect
it stands unrivalled, and, perhaps, unimitated. And this, probably,
is the head and front of his offending to those who criticise his
economy and decry his experiments.
This irrigation is performed through the medium of a small steam
engine and sixteen hydrants, so posted and supplied with hose as to
reach every square foot of the 170 acres. The water used for this
purpose is mostly, if not entirely, supplied from the draining
pipes, even in the dryest season. The manure thus liquified is made
by a comparatively small number of animals. Calves to the value of
50 pounds are bought, and fat stock to that of 500 pounds are sold
annually. They are all stabled throughout the year, except in
harvest time, when they are turned out for a few weeks to rowen
feed. The calves are housed until a year old in a large stedding by
themselves. They are then transferred to another building, and put
upon "the boards;" that is in a long stable or cowhouse, with a
flooring of slats, through which the manure drops into a cellar
below, made water-tight. Here the busiest little engine in the
world is brought to bear upon it, with all its faculties of suction
and propulsion. Through one pipe it forces fresh water in upon this
mass of manure, which, when liquified, runs down into a subterranean
cistern or reservoir capable of holding over 100,000 gallons. From
this it is propelled into any field to be irrigated. To prevent any
sediment in the great reservoir, or to make an even mixture of the
liquified manure, a hose is attached to the engine, and the other
end dropped into the mass. Through this a constant volume of air is
propelled with such force as to set the whole boiling and foaming
like a little cataract. One man at the engine and two at the hose
in the distant field perform the whole operation. The chapped and
"baky" surface of the farm is thus softened and enriched at will,
and rendered productive.
Now, this operation seems to constitute the present distinctive
speciality of Alderman Mechi's Tiptree Farm. Will it pay? ask a
thousand voices. In how many years will he get his money back?
Give us the balance sheet of the experiment. A New Englander,
favorably impressed with the process, would be likely to answer
these questions by another, and ask, will _drainage_ pay? Not in
one year, assuredly, nor in five; not in ten, perhaps. The British
Government assumes that all the expenditure upon under-drainage will
be paid back in fifteen or twenty years at the farthest. It lends
money to the land-owner on this basis; and the land-owner stipulates
with his tenant that he shall reimburse him by annual instalments of
six or seven per cent. until the whole cost of the operation is
liquidated. Thus the tenant-farmer is willing to pay six, sometimes
seven per cent. annually, for twenty years, for the increased
capacity of production which drainage gives to the farm he
cultivates. At the end of that period the Government is paid by the
landlord, and the landlord by the tenant, and the tenant by his
augmented crops for the whole original outlay upon the land. For
aught either of the three parties to the operation knows to the
contrary, it must all be done over again at the end of twenty years.
The system is too young yet, even in England, for any one to say how
long a course of tubing will last, or how often it must be relaid.
One point, therefore, has been gained. No intelligent English
farmer, who has tried the system, now asks if under-drainage will
pay; nor does he expect that it will pay back the whole expenditure
in less than twelve or fifteen years. Here is a generous faith in
the operation on the side of all the parties concerned. Then why
should not Alderman Mechi's irrigation system be put on the same
footing, in the matter of public confidence? It is nothing very
uncommon even for a two-hundred-acre farmer in England to have a
small stationary or locomotive steam-engine, and to find plenty of
work for it, too, in threshing his grain, grinding his fodder,
pulping his roots, cutting his hay and straw, and for other
purposes. Mr. Mechi would doubtless have one for these objects
alone. So its cost must not be charged to the account of
irrigation. A single course of iron tubing, a third of a mile long,
reaching to the centre of his farthest field, cannot cost more, with
all the hose employed, than the drainage of that field, while it
would be fair to assume that the iron pipes will last twice as long
as those of burnt clay. They might fairly be expected to hold good
for forty years. If, then, for this period, or less, the process
yields ten per cent. of increased production annually, over and
above the effect of all other means employed, it is quite evident
that it will pay as well as drainage.
But does it augment the yearly production of the farm by this
amount? To say that it is the only process by which the baky and
chappy soil of Tiptree can be thoroughly fertilised, would not
suffice to prove its necessity or value to other soils of different
composition. One fact, however, may be sufficient to determine its
virtue. The fields of clover, and Italian rye-grass, etc., are mown
three and even four times in one season, and afterwards fed with
sheep. Certainly, no other system could produce all this cropping.
The distinctive difference it makes in other crops cannot, perhaps,
be made so palpable. The wheat looked strong and heavy, with a fair
promise of forty-five bushels to an acre. The oats, beans, and
roots showed equally well.
The irrigation and deep tillage systems were going on simultaneously
in the same field, affording me a good opportunity of seeing the
operation of both. Two men were plying the hose upon a portion of
the field which had already been mowed three times. Two teams were
at work turning up the other, which had already been cropped once or
twice. One of two horses went first, and, with a common English
plough, turned an ordinary furrow. Then the other followed, of
twice the force of the first, in the same furrow, with a subsoil
plough held to the work beam-deep. The iron-stones and ferruginous
clods turned up by this "deep tillage" would make a prairie farmer
of Illinois wonder, if not shudder, at the plucky and ingenious
industry which competes with his easy toil and cheap land in
providing bread for the landless millions of Great Britain.
The only exceptional feature or arrangement, besides the irrigating
machinery and process, that I noticed, was an iron hurdling for
folding sheep. This, at first sight, might look to a practical
farmer a little extravagant, indicating a city origin, or the notion
of an amateur agriculturist, more ambitious of the new than of the
necessary. Each length of this iron fencing is apparently about a
rod, and cost 1 pound, or nearly five dollars. It is fitted to low
wheels, or rollers, on an axle two or three feet in length, so that
it can be moved easily and quickly in any direction. It would cost
over fifty pounds, or two hundred and fifty dollars, to enclose an
acre entirely with this kind of hurdling. Still, Mr. Mechi would
doubtless be able to show that this large expenditure is a good
investment, and pays well in the long run. The folding of sheep for
twenty-four or forty-eight hours on small patches of clover,
trefoil, or turnips, is a very important department of English
farming, both for fattening them for the market and for putting the
land in better heart than any other fertilising process could
effect. Now, a man with this iron fencing on wheels must be able to
make in two hours an enclosure that would cost him a day or more of
busy labor with the old wooden hurdles.
On the whole, a practical farmer, who has no other source of income
than the single occupation of agriculture, would be likely to ask,
what is the realised value of Alderman Mechi's operations to the
common grain and stock-growers of the world? They have excited more
attention or curiosity than any other experiments of the present
day; but what is the real resume of their results? What new
principles has he laid down; what new economy has he reduced to a
science that may be profitably utilised by the million who get their
living by farming? What has he actually done that anybody else has
adopted or imitated to any tangible advantage? These are important
questions; and this is the way he undertakes to answer them,
beginning with the last.
About twenty years ago, he inaugurated the system of under-draining
the heavy tile-clay lands in Essex. Up to his experiment, the
process was deemed impracticable and worthless by the most
intelligent farmers of the county. It was more confidently decried
than his present irrigation system. The water would never find its
way down into the drain-pipes through such clay. It stood to reason
that it would do no such thing. Did not the water stand in the
track of the horse's hoof in such rich clay until evaporated by the
sun? It might as well leak through an earthenware basin. It was
all nonsense to bury a man's money in that style. He never would
see a shilling of it back again. In the face of these opinions, Mr.
Mechi went on, training his pipes through field after field, deep
below the surface. And the water percolated through the clay into
them, until all these long veins formed a continuous and rushing
stream into the main artery that now furnishes an ample supply for
his stabled cattle, for his steam engine, and for all the barn-yard
wants. His tile-draining of clay-lands was a capital success; and
those who derided and opposed it have now adopted it to their great
advantage, and to the vast augmentation of the value and production
of the county. Here, then, is one thing in which he has led, and
others have followed to a great practical result.
His next leading was in the way of agricultural machinery. He first
introduced a steam engine for farming purposes in a district
containing a million of acres. That, too, at the outset, was a
fantastic vagary in the opinion of thousands of solid and
respectable farmers. They insisted the Iron Horse would be as
dangerous in the barn-yard or rick-yard as the very dragon in
Scripture; that he would set everything on fire; kill the men who
had care of him; burst and blow up himself and all the buildings
into the air; that all the horses, cows, and sheep would be
frightened to death at the very sight of the monster, and never
could be brought to lie down in peace and safety by his side, even
when his blood was cold, and when he was fast asleep. To think of
it! to have a tall chimney towering up over a barn-gable or barn-
yard, and puffing out black coal smoke, cotton-factory-wise! Pretty
talk! pretty terms to train an honest and virtuous farmer to mouth!
Wouldn't it be edifying to hear him string the yarn of these new
words! to hear him tell of his _engineer_ and ploughman; of his
_pokers_ and pitchforks; of _six-horse power, valves, revolutions,
stopcocks, twenty pounds of steam_, etc.; mixing up all this
ridiculous stuff with yearling-calves, turnips, horse-carts, oil-
cake, wool, bullocks, beans, and sheep, and other vital things and
interests, which forty centuries have looked upon with reverence!
To plough, thresh, cut turnips, grind corn, and pump water for
cattle by steam! What next?
Why, next, the farmers of the region round about
"First pitied, then embraced"
this new and powerful auxiliary to agricultural industry, after
having watched its working and its worth. And now, thanks to such
bold and spirited novices as Mr. Mechi--men who had the pluck to
work steadily on under the pattering rain of derisive epithets--
there are already nearly as many steam engines working at farm labor
between Land's End and John O'Groat's as there are employed in the
manufacture of cotton in Great Britain.
His irrigation system will doubtless be followed in the same order
and interval by those who have pooh-poohed it with the same derision
and incredulity as the other innovations they have already adopted.
The utilising of the sewage of large towns, especially of London,
has now become a prominent idea and movement. Mr. Mechi's machinery
and process are admirably adapted to the work of distributing a
river of this fertilising material over any farm to which it may be
conducted. Thus, there is good reason to believe that the very
process he originated for softening and enriching the hard and
sterile acres of his small farm in Essex will be adopted for
saturating millions of acres in Great Britain with the millions of
tons of manurial matter that have hitherto blackened and poisoned
the rivers of the country on their wasteful way to the sea. This
will be only an additional work for the farm engines now in
operation, accomplished with but little increased expense. A single
fact may illustrate the irrigating capacity of Mr. Mechi's
machinery. It throws upon a field a quantity of the fertilising
fluid equal to one inch of rainfall at a time, or 100 tons per
imperial acre. And, as a proof of how deep it penetrates, the
drains run freely with it, thus showing conclusively that the
subsoil has been well saturated, a point of vital importance to the
crop.
Deep tillage is another speciality that distinguished the Tiptree
Farm regime at the beginning, in which Mr. Mechi led, and in which
he has been followed by the farmers of the country, although few
have come up abreast of him as yet in the system.
Here, then, are four specific departments of improvement in
agricultural industry which the Alderman has introduced. Every one
of them has been ridiculed as an impracticable and useless
innovation in its turn. Three of them have already been adopted,
and virtually incorporated with agricultural science and economy;
and the fourth, or irrigation by steam power, bids fair to find as
much favor, and as many adherents in the end as the others have
done.
He has not only originated these improvements, or been the first to
give them practical experiment, but he has laid down certain
principles which will doubtless exercise much influence in shaping
the industrial economy of agriculture hereafter in different
countries. One of the best of these principles he puts in the form
of a mathematical proposition. Thus:--As the meat is to the manure,
so is the crop to the land. Tell me, he says, how much meat you
make, and I will tell you how much corn you make, to the acre.
Meat, then, is the starting point with him; the basis of his annual
production, to which he looks for a satisfactory decision of his
balance-sheet. To show the value he attaches to this element, the
fact will suffice that he usually keeps 65 bullocks, cows, and
calves, 100 sheep, and a number of pigs, besides his horses, making
one head to every acre of his farm. With this amount of live stock
he makes from 4 to 5 pounds worth of meat per acre annually.
Perhaps it would be safe to say that no other 170 acres of land in
the world make more meat, manure, and grain in the year than the
Tiptree Farm. In these results Mr. Mechi thinks his experiments and
improvements have proved
Quod es demonstrandum.
Having gone over the farm pretty thoroughly, and noticed all the
leading features of the establishment, I was requested by the
foreman to enter my name in the visitor's book kept in his neat
cottage parlor. It is a large volume, with the ruling running
across both the wide pages; the left apportioned to name, town,
country, and profession; the right to remarks of the visitor. It is
truly a remarkable book of interesting autographs and observations,
which the philologist as well as agriculturist might pore over with
lively satisfaction. It not only contains the names and comments of
many of the most distinguished personages in Great Britain, but
those of all other countries of Europe, even of Asia and Africa, as
well as America. Foreign ambassadors, Continental savans, men of
fame in the literary, scientific, and political world have here
recorded their names and impressions in the most unique succession
and blending. Here, under one date, is a party of Italian
gentlemen, leaving their autographs and their observations in the
softest syllables of their language. Then several German
connoisseurs follow in their peculiar script, with comments worded
heavily with hard-mouthed consonants. Then comes, perhaps, a single
Russian nobleman, who expresses his profound satisfaction in the
politest French. Next succeed three or four Spanish Dons, with a
long fence of names attached to each, who give their views of the
establishment in the grave, sonorous words of their language. Here,
now, an American puts in his autograph, with his sharp, curt notion
of the matter, as "first-rate." Very likely a turbaned Mufti or
Singh of the Oriental world follows the New England farmer. Danish
and Swedish knights prolong the procession, mingling with Australian
wool-growers, Members of the French Royal Academy, Canadian timber-
merchants, Dutch Mynheers, Brazilian coffee-planters, Belgian lace-
makers, and the representatives of all other countries and
professions in Christendom. An autograph-monger, with the mania
strong upon him, of unscrupulous curiosity, armed furtively with a
keen pair of scissors would be a dangerous person to admit to the
presence of that big book without a policeman at his elbow.
Tiptree Hall has its own literature also, in two or three volumes,
written by Mr. Mechi himself, and describing fully his agricultural
experience and experiments, and giving facts and arguments which
every English and American farmer might study with profit.