that the agriculture of Continental Europe is far more wisely arranged
than ours; for there, almost as a universal rule, isolated farm-life is
unknown. The reward of the cultivator is less, and his labor is at least
as great. The people are of a very much lower order, and are lacking in
the cultivated intelligence which distinguishes so many of our own
farming class. Women and even young girls perform rude labor in the
field and in the stable; and those aspirations which are born of a
universal diffusion of periodical literature are almost unknown. At the
same time, when the hard and long day's work is over, there comes to all
the inexpressible relief and delight of the active social intercourse of
the village, where the tillers of the country for a mile around have
gathered together their homes and their herds, and where the most
intimate social life prevails.
Observation even indicates that the habit of out-of-door labor has had
no injurious effect upon the women of these villages. The "nut-brown
maid" grows too fast into the wrinkled-brown woman; but better a
sunburnt and weather-beaten cheek than that pallor that comes of
anthracite and in-door toil. Better the broad back and stout limb of the
peasant mother than the hollow chest and wasted energy of the American
farmer's wife.
I by no means intend to say that our own farming class is not far
superior to the peasantry of Europe; but I do believe that if a good
system of village life for farmers could be adopted here under the
modifying influences of the more refined and intelligent American
character, we should have gained a most important step in advance. We
have in New England many villages almost exclusively of
farmers,--villages where the old-time settlers gathered together for
defence against the Indians, and for the protection of houses and stock
and store from river floods. These villages are as different as it is
possible to conceive from the ordinary European cluster of unattractive
cottages, lining both sides of a street which is filled for one-half of
its width with manure-heaps. It may be naturally assumed that any
adaptation of the village system among us would be governed by the same
refining influences which have made our few existing agricultural
villages so beautiful and attractive.
That which most distinguishes American people is the general spread of
education among them; but it is, after all, an education which soon
reaches its limit, and, so far as the district-school of a
sparsely-settled country neighborhood is concerned, it goes little
beyond the simplest rudiments. An inexperienced young miss holds school
for not more than one-half the year in an unattractive and inconvenient
room, in which are gathered together most of the boys and girls of the
school-going age from all the farms about. The books and other
appliances of instruction are inadequate. There is no grading of the
pupils, and the frequent change of teachers prevents the possibility of
experienced instructions. Even in the meanest peasant village of
Germany, a village always prolific in children, an inexorable law
compels all between the ages of five and fourteen to attend regularly
the teaching of a master, an officer of the state, who has generally
adopted his profession for life, and who adds to a certain specified
degree of capability the advantages of long experience.
No thoughtful person can fail to be convinced, after a due consideration
of the argument in its favor, that, if the social influences
inseparable from village-life could be secured to the American farmer,
the greatest drawback of his life would be done away with. It remains,
unfortunately, a serious question, how far such a radical change is
practicable. There is little doubt that the family would naturally drift
into some more costly style of living; and the necessity for hauling to
a distant home all the crops of the fields, and of hauling out the
manure made at the homestead, would add somewhat to the expenses of the
business.
In the case of the individual farmer now cultivating land upon which he
lives, it is not unlikely that he would find a certain pecuniary
disadvantage in the change. But, as a broad question of the future
benefit of our agriculture, it must be conceded that whatever will tend
to make the occupation more attractive cannot fail, by enlisting the
services of more intelligent minds, to insure its very decided
improvement. As the case now stands, the farmer's son will become a
clerk or a mechanic rather than remain a farmer, because clerks and
mechanics live in communities where there is more to interest the mind,
and where, too, the opportunities for enjoyment and amusement are
greater. The farmer's daughter will marry the clerk or the mechanic
rather than a farmer, because she knows the life of a farmer's wife to
be a life of dulness and dearth, while she believes that the wife of the
clerk or mechanic will be condemned to less arduous labor, and will have
much more agreeable surroundings. I have no means of judging what may
have been the experience in Deerfield, Mass., for instance; but I am
confident that many a mechanic's daughter, and indeed many young women
of much higher position in life, would consider her lot a fortunate one
in becoming the wife of a farmer whose homestead lay on the beautiful
street of this old village.
All that is here said is, to a certain extent, mere theory; but the
subject is one that has not thus far met any practical solution, and in
which, therefore, nothing except theorizing is possible. The broad fact
is that the farming class in this country is degenerating by the
withdrawal of its best blood; and still more serious injury is being
done to it by the introduction of the lower class of foreigners. It may
well be doubted whether it is possible so to modify the manner of life
of the isolated farmhouse as to make it materially more attractive to
American boys and girls. All that can be done is to rob it of its
isolation by withdrawing its people, and placing them under better
conditions of life.
In a word, the only way that seems to offer to keep the boys on the farm
is to move everybody off of the farm, bringing them together into snug
little communities, where they may secure, without abandoning the
manifest advantages of their occupation, the greater social interest and
stimulus which they now hope to enjoy by going into other callings whose
natural advantages are less. That such a course as this would restore
the farmer to his former position as a leading element in Eastern
civilization, cannot be questioned. That he will retain even the
relative influence that he exercises to-day, unless some radical change
is made, is at least very doubtful.
In considering the questions here suggested, we must never lose sight of
the fact that the controlling element is economy. The farmer exists
because he is needed. The world demands the products that he produces,
and the world must needs pay him a living compensation for them. No
change will be possible which disregards this; and all who know the
present circumstances which control the reward of the farming class know
that these circumstances would be inadequate to maintain him in a life
of greater ease, while calling for greater expense. This gives the added
embarrassment that we must not only change the mode of life, but must
also increase the ratio of profit, if this is possible. This is possible
only through a reduction of the area cultivated, the cultivation of this
reduced area in a more thorough and profitable way, and the turning of
farming industry into channels better adapted to securing a profitable
return.
To discuss a modification of the whole system of farming would involve
far more detail than is possible in this paper, since such a discussion
must include the consideration of features which would change with
changing locality; but, by way of illustration, we may take the
previously supposed case of a farmer owning one hundred acres of land,
and milking a dozen cows, selling the milk as before in the distant
town. Assume that he and his neighbors within a radius of about a mile
are living in a central village, from which his land is one mile
distant. During the working season, say from the middle of April until
late in October, he must, with his teams and assistants, spend the whole
day on the land. The cows are milked and all stable work done before
breakfast, and some one drives them out to pasture. The men remain
a-field until an hour before sunset. They must be content with a cold
dinner, as is the usual custom with mechanics and laborers. The cows are
driven home in time for the evening milking, and are put into the
barnyard at night with green fodder brought home by the returning teams.
After the "chores" are done, and a hearty and substantial supper is
eaten,--the principal meal of the day,--all hands will be too weary for
much enjoyment of the evening, but not so weary that they will not
appreciate the difference between the lounging places of a village and
the former dulness at the farm. Other farmers in the neighborhood will,
many of them, also be milk producers; and, as the stables are near
together, they will naturally co-operate, sending their milk to market
with a single team, employing the services of a single man in the place
of five or six men and teams heretofore needed to market the same milk.
I have recently received an account of this sort of co-operation, where
the cost of selling was reduced to a fraction over eight cents for each
hundred quarts.
This arrangement will have the still further benefit of allowing the
farmer to remain at home and attend to his more important work, leaving
the detail of marketing to be done by a person especially qualified for
it and therefore able to do it more cheaply than he could do it in
person. During the working season there will be enough rainy weather to
allow the work of the stable, the barnyard, and the woodshed to be
properly attended to. There will of course be sudden showers and
occasional storms, and other inconveniences, which will make the farmer
regret at times that he lives at such a distance from his field work;
but he will find more than compensation in the advantages that come
naturally from living in a village.
For his wife and children the improvement will be absolute; and it will
be no slight argument in favor of the change, that both in doors and
out of doors a better class of servants will be available, because of
the better life that can be offered. It will be easier to secure the
services of laborers who are married and who live in their own houses,
and so avoid the serious annoyance to the household that attends the
boarding of hired men.
To make this radical change in any farming neighborhood as at present
constituted, would be impracticable. It would probably take a generation
to convince the farmers of a community of its advantages; it would cost
too much, even if not entirely impracticable, to move the house and
stables to the central point; and it would involve such a change of
habits of labor and of living as must necessarily be the work of time.
However, if the principle commends itself to the leading men of the
neighborhood, and especially to young men about to marry, the nucleus of
a village may be established, and sooner or later the present or the
coming generation will find a way to come into the fold.
If we assume that by this or some other means the more intelligent of
the young men are induced to remain farmers, it is interesting to
consider in what way their greater intelligence is to be made to tell on
their work so as to secure the necessary improvement. It would not be
unreasonable to suppose that young men of the class we have in mind,
those who now seek occupations which afford a better field for their
intelligence, and who seek them because of their intelligence, would
establish such centres of discussion and interest in improved farming as
would not only mitigate the worthless gossip now so common at the
country store, but would awaken a real enthusiasm in better processes
and systems.
Not only would there be this tendency toward improvement; but where
farmers are close neighbors, and are able to conduct their interests in
such a way as to help each other, there would naturally grow up some
sort of co-operative business. By the establishment of a butter-factory
or cheese-factory, or by the common ownership of a milk-route, or where
tobacco is grown by the undertaking of its manufacture as an employment
for winter, or by the raising of honey or of poultry, or by the
establishment of some valuable breed of live stock with a reputation for
excellence that will cause it to be sought for from abroad, or by some
other combination, they would secure profitable business.
Of course all the farmers in New England cannot within the next ten
years move into villages; but what is suggested is that the farmers of
some one community should try the experiment. Their success might induce
others to follow the example; and little by little, in proportion to the
promise of a good result, more and more would seek the advantages which
the system would offer, so that sooner or later the benefits which are
now experienced in village life in Europe might be felt here in the
higher degree which greater intelligence and greater freedom would be
sure to produce.
While advancing these suggestions, with much confidence in their
practical value, I would by no means confine the outlook for Eastern
farming to this single road to success. Co-operative industry may be
largely adopted among farmers living at some distance from each other.
The cheese-factory has become an institution. The better quality of the
product when made in large quantities, and the better price that its
quality and the improved system for marketing have secured, constitute
a very decided success in our agriculture. Butter-factories are coming
into vogue with a promise of equally good results.
A very good substitute for the co-operative management of a milk route
is in very general adoption throughout New England, where some single
farmer who devotes himself to selling milk buys the product of his
neighbor's dairies for a certain fixed price, taking upon himself the
labor, the risk, and the profit of marketing. The co-operative breeding
of live stock cannot as yet be said to have become well established, but
its possibilities of success are considerable. A community can afford to
buy and keep a thorough-bred horse, or bull, or boar, or buck, which
would cost far too much for the means of a single owner, and thus
gradually give to the stock of the whole neighborhood a superiority that
will secure it a wide-spread reputation and insure good prices. Let us
keep always in view the important principle of making two blades of
grass grow where but one grew before; but let us remit no effort which
may tend to make one blade worth what two were worth before.
Incidentally, there may be combinations to secure good outlet drainage
for tracts of land belonging to different owners, and later a provision
for the general irrigation of these lands.
It is not to be hoped, that, either as a whole or in its details,
agricultural improvement is to be advanced with any thing like a rush.
Farmers are generally "conservative" in the worst sense of the term.
They have during the past generation adopted many improvements and
modifications in the methods of their work, the mere suggestion of which
would have been scouted by their fathers; but they are themselves as
ready as their fathers were to scout any further new suggestion, and it
is only by iteration and reiteration that the shorter steps of tentative
experiment can be urged upon their acceptance.
In reviewing what is written above, the thought arises that the one
impression that it will surely produce will be that its writer fails to
appreciate the better influences that cluster around the better class of
farmers' homes. Such an inference would be quite unjust. Knowing as I do
the intrinsic worth and the charming qualities of very many of these
households, I appeal to the best of the thoughtful men and women whom
they include, to confirm my statement that they find many elements of
their life to be pinching and hard, and that however admirable they may
now be, they would be in no way injured, but in many ways improved, by
more frequent intercourse with their equals, and especially with their
betters.
That the picture I have sketched of the average farmer's family is not
overdrawn, I appeal to every country clergyman and physician to bear
witness. The truths suggested are patent to all. They are set forth in
no spirit of hypercriticism, and with no other view than to help to
ameliorate the condition of those to whom they refer. Knowing the farmer
more intimately than does the average editor or orator, I am confident
that my estimate of his character and of his life will strike him as
being more just, if not more honest.
* * * * *
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
~A FARMER'S VACATION.~ Sketches of Travel in Europe; with a very complete
Account of the Drainage of the Great Haarlem Lake in Holland; Notes on
Dutch Farming; a Journey in Normandy and Brittany; and an Elaborate
Description of the Channel Islands,--their Agriculture, Social Customs,
Scenery, &c. Beautifully illustrated. Price $3.00.
~WHIP AND SPUR.~ Papers reprinted from the "Atlantic Monthly,"--largely
about Army Experiences; and certain Horses, at Home and in the Field.
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~THE ELEMENTS OF AGRICULTURE.~ A work of Practical Science for Farmers.
Price $1.00.
~THE SANITARY DRAINAGE OF HOUSES AND TOWNS.~ Illustrated. Price $2.00.
~DRAINING FOR PROFIT, and DRAINING FOR HEALTH.~ Complete Directions for
the Drainage of Agricultural Lands, Swamps, Malarious Districts, &c.
Fully illustrated. Price $1.50.
~THE HANDY BOOK OF HUSBANDRY.~ A Manual for American Farmers. Fully
illustrated. Price $2.50.
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IN PRESS. _THE BRIDE OF THE RHINE; Two Hundred Miles in a Mosel
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