better for the women and children; but there are reasons, in the same
direction, why better social conditions would give the farmer himself
decided benefits. The life, too, would be more _attractive_ for both
boys and girls, and would be divested of that naked and dismal gloom and
dryness which now drive so much of the best farmer blood of the whole
country to work-benches and counters,--to any position, in fact, which
promises relief from the stifling isolation of the country.
While conceding that, just as a cabinet-maker would make more money if
he lived in his back shop, and had little thought from early dawn until
late evening except for his work, so the farmer may make more money if
he lives on his farm than if he lives at a distance, still it must be
said that the difference in profit is by no means so great as would be
supposed.
It may be fairly assumed, that, at least in the more thickly settled
farming regions at the East, the average distance at which farmers live
from the nearest centre of population that supplies their "shopping,"
and from church, is not less than three miles. The visiting acquaintance
of the family is nearly or quite as remote; and there is, altogether, so
much driving to be done, as to make it necessary to keep a decent
carriage and horses, and to supply a certain amount of extra horse
service. Indeed, among those who are tolerably well off it would be
moderate to set down the total services of one good horse as needed to
supply the family's demand for transportation.
Then, too, the need of the farmer himself to go to town to sell and to
buy, to get repairs and information, and (a much more generally
gratified taste than he would always care to confess to his wife) to
satisfy his craving after intercourse with his kind,--who shall estimate
the aggregate of all this travel, or even of that part of it which,
under the pretext of business, is really only an habitual going for
gossip? All of this driving is confined to no season; it is
perennial,--in good weather and in bad,--and it costs an amount of time
and money that few farmers would like to put down in black and white,
and charge to their expense accounts. It would form one of the most
serious items of their budget.
Did the farmer live in a pleasant and attractive village, among
neighbors and friends, nearly all of this driving would be saved. The
appliances for the family's pleasure-driving might be entirely done away
with, for the wife and daughters would gladly exchange the means for
occasional visiting and for distant shopping, for an agreeable circle of
friends near at hand and a good village store and post-office within
five minutes' walk. In such a settlement as is contemplated, most of the
business needs of the farmer would be amply supplied, and he would find
the companionship at hand even more satisfactory, because more familiar,
than that which he now finds in the town.
It is not worth while to calculate the cash saving that would come of
this reduction of road-*work. It is enough to consider it as an
important offset to the cost of carrying men and manure to the field and
of bringing crops to the village.
Under the present system the women have the worst of it. They have the
confinement and seclusion and dulness. Under the village system the men
would have the discomfort, and this is why it will be less easy to
secure its adoption; for the men control, and prefer _not_ to have the
heavy end of life's log to carry.
Under either of the plans given herewith, the greatest--not the
average--distance from the house to the farm would be about one mile,
and it would have to be travelled only during the working weather of the
warmer months, and during the good wheeling of winter. In summer, all
hands would have to set off early, and come home late, often carrying
their dinner with them as mechanics do; but when field-work did not call
them out, as during rains, or when the ground is too wet to be
disturbed, their barn-work and shop-work would be at home; and, all the
winter through, the only road-work to be done would be to send the teams
to haul out the manure, and to bring home the hay, which would be best
stored under "Dutch hay-barracks" in the fields when it was made. This
work would be systematic and simple; and it may fairly be questioned
whether it would not, in many cases, amount to _less_ than the cost of
the "driving" that is now done, and which in the village might be
foregone. Especially would this be the case when all the heavy farm-work
is done by oxen, which when idle, instead of eating their heads off like
horses, are accumulating valuable flesh. With sufficient ox-power to do
the work easily, the whole transportation of tools and men, and all the
hay-tedding and hay-raking, would be easily done by one horse, with
leeway enough to allow for a fair amount of business or pleasure travel.
So far as the presence of the farmer himself is concerned, it is to be
considered that if his farm and cattle are near his house in the
village, he will be within easy reach of them very often at times when
his visits to the distant town would take him away from them if they
were on the farm. In the village, during the whole winter, and in bad
weather at other seasons, he would have little necessity or temptation
to absent himself from home. Indeed, those who have had an opportunity
to watch the life of the exceptional farmers whose houses and barns and
stables are in a village cannot have failed to notice how much more
home-like and engaging is the whole farm establishment than it usually
is in the country. It is hardly too much to say that the few instances
that we have, as in the farm-villages of New England, show that these
village-living farmers are apparently more attentive to their home
duties than are their isolated brethren, at least in the matter of
tidiness.
To complete the comparison with the merchant or manufacturer, who takes
his papers or plans home with him for work out of regular hours, one
might say that the farmer who lives at a distance from his land, with
his flocks and herds gathered about his homestead, has such of his work
as needs early and late attention close at hand, while his regular
workshop, the farm, calls him away for certain regular hours and regular
duties.
It is not worth while here to enter into the details of the question.
They are of serious moment, and involve among other things the driving
of animals to and from pasture, _versus_ the raising of soiling crops to
be fed in the stall or yard. All of these questions have been
satisfactorily solved in the experience of many exceptional cases in
this country, and of the almost universal conditions obtaining in
Europe. They present no practical difficulty, and need constitute no
serious objection to the general plan.
The items of economical working and money-making being fully weighed,
the more serious considerations of the mode of life, and the good to be
got from it, demand even greater attention. It may seem a strange
doctrine to be advanced by a somewhat enthusiastic farmer, but it is a
doctrine that has been slowly accepted after many years' observation, a
conviction that has taken possession of an unwilling mind, that the
young man who takes his young wife to an isolated farmhouse dooms her
and himself and their children to an unwholesome, unsatisfactory, and
vacant existence,--an existence marked by the absence of those more
satisfying and more cultivating influences which the best development of
character and intelligence demand. It is a common experience of farmers'
wives to pass week after week without exchanging a word or a look with a
single person outside of their own family circles.
The young couple start bravely, and with a determination to struggle
against the habit of isolation which marks their class. But this habit
has grown from the necessity of the situation; and the necessities of
their own situation bring them sooner or later within its bonds. During
the first few years they adhere to their resolution, and go regularly to
church, to the lecture, and to the social gatherings of their friends;
but home duties increase with time, and the eagerness for society grows
dull with neglect. Those who have started out with the firmest
determination to avoid the rock on which their fathers have split, give
up the struggle at last, and settle down to a humdrum, uninteresting,
and uninterested performance of daily tasks.
In saying all this,--and I speak from experience, for I have led the
dismal life myself,--it is hardly necessary to disclaim the least want
of appreciation of the sterling qualities which have been developed in
the American farm household. But it may be safely insisted that these
qualities have been developed, not because of the American mode of farm
life, but in spite of it; and, as I think over the long list of
admirable men and women whose acquaintance I have formed on distant and
solitary farms, I am more and more impressed with certain shortcomings
which would have been avoided under better social conditions. If any of
these is disposed to question the justice of this conclusion, I am
satisfied to leave the final decision with his own judgment, formed
after a fair consideration of what is herein suggested.
If American agriculture has an unsatisfied need, it is surely the need
for more intelligence and more enterprising interest on the part of its
working men and women. From one end of the land to the other, its crying
defect--recognized by all--is, that its best blood, or, in other words,
its best brains and its best energy, is leaving it to seek other fields
of labor. The influence which leads these best of the farmers' sons to
other occupations is not so much the desire to make more money, or to
find a less laborious occupation, as it is the desire to lead a more
satisfactory life,--a life where that part of us which has been
developed by the better education and better civilization for which in
this century we have worked so hard and so well, may find responsive
companionship and encouraging intercourse with others.
It so happens that the few farm villages to which we can refer--such as
Farmington, Hadley, and Deerfield--have become so attractive by means of
their full-grown beauty, or have been so encroached upon by the wealth
that has come over the district to which they belong, that they are no
longer to be taken as types of pure country villages; nor do I recall a
single village in the land which is precisely what I have now in mind.
Assuming that a farming neighborhood--two miles, or at the utmost three
miles, square--had been so arranged as to have all of its buildings
(with the exception of hay-barracks in the fields, and cattle-shelters
in the pastures) in a village, let us consider what would be the
advantages in the manner of living which it would have to offer.
The social benefits, and the facilities for frequent neighborly and
informal intercourse, are obvious. To say nothing of the companionships
and intimacies among the young people, their fathers and mothers would
be kept from growing old and glum by constant friction with their kind;
and, in so far as a more satisfactory social relation with one's
fellow-men gives cheerfulness and the richness of a wider human
interest, in that proportion would the village life have a wholesome,
mellowing effect that is not to be found in the remote farmhouse, nor
even in the sort of neighborhood we sometimes find in the country where
several farmhouses are within a quarter of a mile of each other. The
habit of "running in" for a moment's chat with a neighbor is a good one,
and it gets but scant development among American farmers. This view of
the case will suggest itself quite naturally on the first consideration
of the subject.
If the first need of the rising generation--the men and women of the
future--is education, then the village beats the farm by long odds. The
country school-district, sparsely settled and chary of its taxes, is apt
to obey the law in the scantiest way possible. Three months school in
winter and three months more in summer, under the supervision--it can
hardly be called the instruction--of a young miss who is by no means
well educated herself, and who is entirely often without training as a
teacher, gathers together all of the school-going children of a wide
neighborhood. Big and little, boys and girls, are huddled together in a
sort of mental jumble, where the best that the most skilful manager can
hope for is to regulate the instruction and the discipline to suit the
average of the scholars. The best result attainable is to secure a good
amount of _schooling_: the word "education" would be quite misapplied
here.
In the village, the number of scholars would be sufficiently large to
warrant the establishment and to bear the maintenance of one good
school, with one, if not more, teachers, regularly employed, and worthy
to be called teachers rather than "school-marms." Pupils would be graded
according to their ages and acquirements, and a due use could be made of
the stimulus of competition. A real school, a real instrument of
education, would take the place of the noisy congregation of
uncontrolled boys and girls, who, in the country district-school, are
apt to acquire less of valuable learning than of the minor viciousness
that prevails among country children.
In this connection, I was forcibly struck with the announcement of a
German farmer once in my employ, whose reason for leaving me, after his
children had reached the ages of seven and eleven, to return to his
little village in Germany, was that it was impossible in this
country--and this, be it remembered, was in New England--to secure
satisfactory instruction for them. He thought that in their experience
at school here they had gained little beyond a familiarity with English,
and with a large admixture of "bad words" at that. At home they would
have, within the elementary range of a primary-school education, a
thorough training and a severe drilling which he could not hope for
here, and without which he was unwilling that they should grow up. I
have seen his village school in Germany, and the cloud of tow-headed
children who fill it; and I am prepared to believe that his preference
was not without foundation. Of course we have all the material for as
good or better schools in this country. What we need is longer terms,
better trained and educated teachers, graded classes, and better books
and appliances. These cannot be afforded in the small country
school-district. They can be had in their perfection in even a small
village; and this consideration alone, even if this were all, should be
a controlling argument in favor of village life.
But this is by no means all. Another great benefit is to be found in the
post-office near at hand, with its daily mail as an encouragement to
correspondence and to interest in the affairs of the outside world. A
village, such as is here pictured, could afford its weekly or
semi-monthly public lecture, furnishing a means for instruction and
entertainment, and for frequent gatherings. The church, too, would
probably be conducted in a more satisfactory way than is usual in the
country; and the conditions would be the best suited for fostering that
interest in the collateral branches of the church, the Bible-class, the
Sunday school, and the Dorcas society, by which the women of the
community get, aside from the other good that they receive and do,
advantages of a character somewhat corresponding to those which men get
from their clubs.
I should hope further, as an outgrowth from the community of living, for
a modest village library and reading-room. Indeed, if I could have my
own way, I should not confine the attraction and entertainment of the
village to strictly "moral" appliances. It would probably be wiser to
recognize the fact that young men find an attraction in amusements which
our sterner ancestors regarded as dangerous; and I would not eschew
billiards, nor even, "by rigorous enactment," the milder vice of social
tobacco. Better have a little _harmless_ wickedness near home and under
the eye of parents than to encounter the risk that boys, after a certain
age, would seek a pretext for more uncontrolled indulgences in the
neighboring town.
One might go on through the long range of incidental arguments--such as
lighted streets, well-kept sidewalks, winter snow-ploughs, and good
drainage, and a wholesome pride in a tidy, cosey village, until even the
most close-fisted of all our class would confess that the extra cost
would bring full value in return, and until he would recognize the fact
that the attractions of such a home as the village would make possible
would be likely to insure his being succeeded in his wholesome trade by
the brightest and best of his sons,--a result that would surely be worth
more than all it would cost.
But my purpose has been only to suggest a scheme which seems to me
entirely, even though remotely, practicable, and in which I hope for the
sympathy and help of the country-bound farmers' wives and daughters,--a
scheme which promises what seems the easiest, if not the only, relief
for the dulness and desolation of living which make American farming
loathsome to so many who ought to glory in its pursuit, but who now are
only bound to it by commanding necessity.
LIFE AND WORK OF THE EASTERN FARMER.
We are all familiar with the lavish praise bestowed--especially when
votes are to be secured--upon the "bone and sinew of the country;" but
the farmers themselves are very far from accepting as true, even if
sincere, the estimate of their qualities which the editor and the public
speaker so loudly profess.
The average farmer is precisely what any other average man would be who
had grown up under the same conditions. There is no mysterious charm
belonging to his occupation which removes him beyond the reach of the
influences by which all mankind are controlled. Coming from the same
original stock and inheriting the same peculiarities of race, he is
essentially the same as men in other vocations. The character of his
work, the necessities of his financial condition, and the social
surroundings amid which he has been reared, have had the same influence
in moulding his character that similar conditions have had in moulding
the characters of others.
Farming is in a certain sense the basis of all individual and national
prosperity; but the case would be more fairly stated were we to say that
farming happens to be the first step in an industrial process, many
steps of which are alike essential to civilization. The farmer produces
raw material, and without raw material the world must come to a stop;
but the butcher, the baker, the spinner, the weaver, and every artisan,
render as essential service in the development of this raw material into
the forms demanded by modern life, as does the farmer in growing it.
As a member of the farmer class, I hasten to disclaim for it any
_especial_ consideration given it because of its contribution to the
welfare of mankind. We are as useful as any other hard-working people,
no more and no less. We claim no higher appreciation for muscular effort
exerted in swinging the flail than for that applied to the wielding of
the hammer.
The controlling motive of a farmer in performing his work and carrying
on his business is the hope of material gain. He works for the money
that he expects to earn, and not with any conscious reference to the
service he is rendering to the world. In this capacity as a farmer he is
neither a philanthropist nor a patriot, only a man of business. If we
wish properly to estimate his character and his value as a factor of
modern civilization, we must not be misled by sentimental considerations
as to his relation with nature and his "noble" occupation.
The conditions of Eastern farming and of Eastern farm life are the true
index, as they are the true cause, of the character of the Eastern
farmer. These conditions are constantly varying, and their effect is
always modified by individual qualities.
It may be possible to strike such an average as shall afford a tolerably
good suggestion of the real character and condition of the farmer, and a
hint as to his future; that is to say, certain prevalent influences tend
to mark the type, and certain modifications of these influences may lead
to its improvement. Any attempt to portray the class as a whole would
be met by such a list of exceptions as would seriously affect the
result; but the following may be considered true in a large number of
cases, and applicable, with minor changes, to many more.
Let us take the case of an outlying farm in New England, of one hundred
acres,--a farm that has been in cultivation from the earlier settlement
of the country, and which is of the average degree of improvement, with
the usual division into arable, mowing, pasture, and wood land. It lies
two or three miles away from a considerable town or village, and its
chief industry is the selling of milk in the town. With an allowance of
two acres per cow for summer pasture, and of one and a half acres of
mowing-land for winter feeding, the cows it keeps number about a dozen.
For team-work on the farm and for road-work and pleasure-driving, there
are kept two horses and two oxen. In addition to these there will be a
greater or less amount of young stock and the usual swine and poultry,
and perhaps a few sheep. The farmer himself is the chief workman on the
place, and he has the regular help of a hired man or a grown son. An
extra hand during the working season is usual; but in winter the farmer
and his one assistant will do all of the work of feeding, milking,
delivering the milk, hauling out manure, etc.
A few years ago the housework was done almost entirely by the mother of
the family and her daughters, or by a girl taken to "bring up;" but
latterly the more troublesome element of an Irish girl in the kitchen
has become general, for the daughter of the farmer has aspirations and
tastes which disqualify her for efficient household drudgery. In spite
of all modern appliances, much of the work of the farmer's household
must be so characterized. The life of American farm women is, however,
not now under discussion: the subject is a fruitful one, and has
important bearings upon the development of the race; but what we are to
consider here is simply the work and condition of the farmer himself.
The milk-selling farmer--and this industry is one of the most
wide-spread in Eastern farming--is more regularly employed than any
other. Winter and summer his cows must be milked twice a day. Evening's
milk must be cooled and safely kept until morning; and morning's milk
must be ready for early delivery. It is usual for the farmer to rise at
three every morning, winter and summer, to milk his cows,--with one
assistant,--and to start as early as five o'clock to deliver his milk.
Returning about the middle of the forenoon, he is able to attend to the
details of barn-work in winter and field-work in summer, until half-past
two or three o'clock in the afternoon, less the brief interval needed
for the consumption of food. Early in the afternoon the cows must be
again milked, and the cans of milk must in summertime be set in spring
water for cooling. Then comes the feeding of the stock and the greasing
of axles, the mending of harness, the repairing of tools, and the
thousand and one odds and ends of the farmer's irregular work. In the
winter, save for the early rising and the work of cold mornings, life is
by no means hurried; and after a very early supper there is often a
stroll to the corner store or to a neighbor's house, for a little
wholesome idleness and gossip,--the latter not invariably wholesome. At
about the hour when the average reader of "The Atlantic" has finished
his after-dinner cigar, all lights are extinguished, and the farm
household is wrapped in heavy slumber; for such early rising as the
milk-farmer is condemned to must needs trench upon the valuable evening
hours for requisite rest and sleep.