grow Indian Corn abundantly and profitably, while I cheerfully admit
that they have taught _me_ somewhat thoroughly worth knowing. In my
boyhood, I hoed Corn diligently for weeks at a time, drawing the earth
from between the rows up about the stalks to a depth of three or four
inches; thus forming hills which the West has since taught me to be of
no use, but rather a detriment, embarrassing the efforts of the growing,
hungry plants to throw out their roots extensively in every direction,
and subjecting them to needless injury from drouth. I am thoroughly
convinced that Corn, properly planted, will, like Wheat and all other
grains, root itself just deep enough in the ground, and that to keep
down all weeds and leave the surface of the corn-field open, mellow and
perfectly flat, is the best as well as the cheapest way to cultivate
Corn. And I do not believe that so much human food, with so little
labor, is produced elsewhere on earth as in the spacious fields of
Wheat and Corn in our grand Mississippi valley.
And yet I have seen in that valley many ample stretches covered with
Corn, whereof the tillage seemed susceptible of improvement. Riding
between these great corn-fields in October, after everything standing
thereon had been killed by frost, it seemed to my observation that,
while the corn-crop was fair, the weed-crop was far more luxuriant; so
that, if everything had been cut clean from the ground, and the corn and
the weeds placed in opposite scales, the latter would have weighed down
the former. I cannot doubt that the cultivation, or lack of cultivation,
which produces or permits such results, is not merely slovenly, but
unthrifty.
The West is for the present, as for a generation she has been, the
granary of the East. In my judgment, she will not long be content to
remain so. Fifty years ago, the Genesee valley supplied most of the
wheat and flour imported into New-England; ten years later, Northern
Ohio was our principal resource; ten years later still, Michigan,
Indiana, northern Illinois, and eastern Wisconsin, had been added to our
grain-growing territory. Another decade, and our flour manufacturers had
crossed the Mississippi, laying Iowa and Minnesota under liberal
contributions, while western New-York had ceased to grow even her own
breadstuffs, and Ohio to produce one bushel more than she needed for
home consumption. Can we doubt that this steady recession of our Egypt,
our Hungary, is destined to continue? Twenty-three years ago, when I
first rode out from the then rising village of Chicago to see the
Illinois prairies, nearly every wagon I met was loaded with wheat, going
into Chicago, to be sold for about fifty cents per bushel, and the
proceeds loaded back in the form of lumber, groceries, and almost
everything else, grain excepted, needed by the pioneers, then dotting,
thinly and irregularly, that whole region with their cabins. Now, I
presume the district I then traversed produces hardly more grain than it
consumes; taking Illinois altogether, I doubt that she will grow her own
breadstuffs after 1880; not that she will be unable to produce a large
surplus, but that her farmers will have decided that they can use their
lands otherwise to greater advantage. Iowa and Minnesota will continue
to export grain for perhaps twenty years longer; but even their time
will come for saying, "New-York and New-England (not to speak of _Old_
England) are too far away to furnish profitable markets for such bulky
products; the cost of transportation absorbs the larger part of the
cargo. We must export instead Wool, Meat, Lard, Butter, Cheese, Hops,
and various Manufactures, whereof the freight will range from 2 up to
not more than 25 per cent. of the value." They thus save their soil from
the tremendous exaction made by taking grain-crop after grain-crop
persistently, which long ago exhausted most of New-England and eastern
New-York of wheat-forming material, and has since wrought the same
deplorable result in our rich Genesee valley; while eastern
Pennsylvania, though settled nearly two centuries ago, having pursued a
more rational and provident system of husbandry, grows excellent
wheat-crops to this day.
I insist that the States this side of the Delaware; though they will
draw much grain from the Canadas after the political change that cannot
be far distant, will be compelled to grow a very considerable share of
their own breadstuff; that the West will cease to supply them unless at
prices which they will deem exorbitant; and that grain-growing eastward
of a line drawn from Baltimore this north to the Lakes will have to be
very considerably extended. Let us see, then, whether this might not be
done with profit even now, and whether the East is not unwise in having
so generally abandoned grain-growing.
I leave out of the account most of New-England, as well as of Eastern
New-York, and the more rugged portions of New-Jersey and Pennsylvania,
where the rocky, hilly, swampy face of the country seems to forbid any
but that _patchy_ cultivation, wherein machinery and mechanical power
can scarcely be made available, and which seem, therefore, permanently
fated to persevere in a system of agriculture and horticulture not
essentially unlike that they now exhibit. In the valleys of the
Penobscot, the Kennebec, the Hudson, and of our smaller rivers, there
are considerable tracts absolutely free from these natural impediments,
whereon a larger and more efficient husbandry is perfectly practicable,
even now; but these intervales are generally the property of many
owners; are cut up by roads and fences; and are held at high prices: so
that I will simply pass them by, and take for illustration the "Pine
Barrens" of Southern New-Jersey, merely observing that what I say of
them is equally applicable, with slight modifications, to large portions
of Long Island, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas.
The "Pine Barrens" of New-Jersey are a marine deposit of several hundred
feet in depth, mainly sand, with which more or less clay is generally
intermingled, while there are beds and even broader stretches of this
material nearly or quite pure; the clay sometimes underlying the sand at
a depth of 10 to 30 or 40 inches. Vast deposits of muck or leaf-mold,
often of many acres in extent and from two to twenty feet in depth, are
very common; so that hardly any portion of the dry or sandy land is two
miles distant from one or more of them, while some is usually much
nearer; and half the entire region is underlaid by at least one stratum
of the famous marl (formed of the decomposed bones of gigantic marine
monsters long ago extinct) which has already played so important and
beneficent a part in the renovation and fertilization of large districts
in Monmouth, Burlington, Salem, and other counties.
Let us suppose now that a farmer of ample means and generous capacity
should purchase four hundred acres of these "barrens," with intent to
produce therefrom, not sweet potatoes, melons, and the "truck" to which
Southern Jersey is so largely devoted, but substantial Grain and Meat;
and let us see whether the enterprise would probably pay.
Let us not stint the outlay, but, presuming the tract to be eligibly
located on a railroad not too distant from some good marl-bed, estimate
as follows:
Purchase-money of 400 acres at $25 per acre $10,000
Clearing, grubbing, fencing and breaking up ditto at $20
per acre, over and above the proceeds of the wood 8,000
One thousand bushels of best Marl per acre, at 6 cents per
bushel delivered 24,000
One hundred loads of Swamp Muck, per acre, at 50 cents
per load 20,000
Fifty bushels (unslaked) of Oyster-shell Lime (to compost
with the Muck), per acre, at 25 cents per bushel, delivered 5,000
One hundred tuns of Bone Flour at $50 per tun 5,000
-------
[Net cost, $180 per acre.] Total $72,000
I believe that this tract, divided by light fences into four fields of
100 acres each, and seeded in rotation to Corn, Wheat, Clover and other
grasses, would produce fully 60 bushels of Corn and 30 of Wheat per
acre, with not less than 3 tuns of good Hay; and that by cutting,
steaming, and feeding the stalks and straw on the place, not pasturing,
but keeping up the stock, and feeding them, as indicated in a former
chapter of these essays, and selling their product in the form of Milk,
Butter, Cheese and Meat, a greater profit would be realized than could
be from a like investment in Iowa or Kansas. The soil is warm, readily
frees itself, or is freed, from surplus water; is not addicted to weeds;
may be plowed at least 200 days in a year; may be sowed or planted in
the Spring, when Minnesota is yet solidly frozen; while the crop, early
matured, is on hand to take advantage of any sudden advance in the
European or our own seaboard markets. Labor, also, is cheaper and more
rapidly procured in the neighborhood of this great focus of immigration
than it is or can be in the West; and our capable farmers may take their
pick of the workers thronging hither from Europe, at the moment of their
landing on our shore. Of course, the owner of such an estate as I have
roughly outlined, would be likely to keep a part of his purchase in
timber, proving the quality thereof by cutting out the less desirable
trees, trimming up the rest, and planting new ones among them; and he
would be almost certain to devote some part of his farm annually to the
growth of Roots, Vegetables, and Fruits. But I have aimed to show only
that he would grow grain here at a profit, and I think I have succeeded.
His 60 bushels of corn (shelled) per acre could be sold at his crib, one
year with another, for 60 silver dollars; and he need seldom wait a
month after husking it for customers who would gladly take his grain and
pay the money for it. This would be just about double what the Iowa or
Missouri farmer can expect to average for _his_ Corn. The abundant
fodder would also be worth in New-Jersey at least double its value in
Iowa; and I judge that the farmer able to buy, prepare, fertilize, and
cultivate 1,200 acres of the Jersey "barrens," could make more than
thrice the profit to be realized by the owner of 400 acres. He would
plow and seed as well as thrash, shell, cut stalks and straw, and
prepare the food of his animals, wholly by steam-power, and would soon
learn to cultivate a square mile at no greater expense than is now
involved in the as perfect tillage of 200 acres.
This essay is not intended to prove that Grain is not or may not be
profitably cultivated at the West, nor that it is unadvisable for
Eastern farmers to migrate thither in order so to cultivate it. What I
maintain is, that Wheat, Indian Corn, and nearly all our great food
staples, may also be profitably produced on the seaboard, and that
thousands of square miles, now nearly or quite unproductive, may be
wisely and profitably devoted to such production. Let us regard,
therefore, without alarm, the prospect of such a development and
diversification of Western Industry as will render necessary a large and
permanent extension (or rather revival) of Eastern grain-growing.
XXIX.
ESCULENT ROOTS--POTATOES.
In no other form can so large an amount and value of human food be
obtained from an acre of ground as in that of edible roots or tubers;
and of these the Potato is by far the most acceptable, and in most
general use. Our ancestors, it is settled, were destitute and ignorant
of the Potato prior to the discovery of America, though Europe would now
find it difficult to subsist her teeming millions without it. In
travelling pretty widely over that continent, I cannot remember that I
found, any considerable district in which the Potato was not cultivated,
though Ireland, western England, and northern Switzerland, with a small
portion of northern Italy, are impressed on my mind as the most addicted
to the growth of this esculent. Other roots are eaten occasionally, by
way of variety, or as giving a relish to ordinary food; but the Potato
alone forms part of the every day diet alike of prince and peasant. It
is an almost indispensable ingredient of the feasts of Dives, while it
is the cheapest and commonest resort for satiating or moderating the
hunger of Lazarus. I recollect hearing my parents, fifty years ago,
relate how, in their childhood and youth, the poor of New-England, when
the grain-crop of that region was cut short, as it often was, were
obliged to subsist through the following Winter mainly on Potatoes and
Milk; and I then accorded to those unfortunates of the preceding
generation a sympathy which I should now considerably abate, provided
the Potatoes were of good quality. Roasted Potatoes, seasoned with salt
and butter and washed down with bounteous draughts of fresh buttermilk,
used in those days to be the regular supper served up in farmers' homes
after a churning of cream into butter; and I have since eaten costly
suppers that were not half so good.
The Potato, say some accredited accounts, was first brought to Europe
from Virginia, by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1586 or 1587; but I do not
believe the story. Authentic tradition affirms that the Potato was
utterly unknown in New-England, or at all events east of the
Connecticut, when the Scotch-Irish who first settled Londonderry, N. H.,
came over from _old_ Londonderry, Ireland, bringing the Potato with
them. They spent the Winter of 1719 in different parts of Massachusetts
and Maine--quite a number of them at Haverhill, Mass., where they gave
away a few Potatoes for seed, on leaving for their own chosen location
in the Spring; and they afterward learned that the English colonists,
who received them, tried hard to find or make the seed-balls edible the
next Fall but were obliged to give it up as a bad job; leaving the
tubers untouched and unsuspected in the ground.
I doubt that the Potato was found growing by Europeans in any part of
this country, unless it be in that we have acquired from Mexico. It is
essentially a child of the mountains, and I presume it grew wild nowhere
else than on the sides of the great chain which traversed Spanish
America, at a height of from 5,000 to 8,000 feet above the surface of
the ocean. Here it found a climate cooled by the elevation and moistened
by melting snows from above and by frequent showers, yet one which
seldom allowed the ground to be frozen to any considerable depth, while
the pure and bracing atmosphere was congenial to its nature and
requirements. In this country, the Potato is hardiest and thriftiest
among the White Mountains of New-Hampshire, the Green Mountains of
Vermont, on the Catskills and kindred elevations in our own State, and
in similar regions of Pennsylvania and the States further South and
West.
My own place is at least 15 miles from, and 500 feet above, Long Island
Sound; yet I cannot make the Potato, by the most generous treatment, so
prolific as it was in New-Hampshire in my boyhood, where I dug a bushel
from 14 hills, grown on rough, hard ground, but which, having just been
cleared of a thick growth of bushes and briars, was probably better
adapted to this crop than though it had been covered an inch deep with
barn-yard manure.
He who has a tolerably dry, warm sandy soil, covered two or three
inches deep with decayed or decaying leaves and brush, may count with
confidence on raising from it a good crop of Potatoes, provided his seed
be sound and healthy. On the other hand, all authorities agree that
animal manures, unless very thoroughly rotted and intimately mixed with
the soil, are injurious to the quality of Potatoes grown thereon,
stimulating any tendency to disease, if they do not originally produce
such disease. I believe that Swamp Muck, dug in Summer or Autumn,
deposited on a dry bank or glade, and cured of its acidity by an
admixture of Wood-Ashes, of Lime, or of Salt (better still, of Lime and
Salt chemically compounded by dissolving the Salt in the least possible
quantity of Water, and slaking the lime with that Water), forms an
excellent fertilizer for Potatoes, if administered with a liberal hand.
A bushel of either of these alkalies to a cord of muck is too little;
the dose should be doubled if possible; but, if the quantity be small,
mix it more carefully, and give it all the time you can wherein to
operate upon the muck before applying the mixture to your fields.
Where the muck is not easily to be had, yet the soil is thin and poor, I
would place considerable reliance on deep plowing and subsoiling in the
Fall, and cross-plowing just before planting in the Spring. Give a good
dressing of Plaster, not less than 200 lbs. to the acre, directly after
the Fall plowing; if you have Ashes, scatter them liberally in the drill
or hill as you plant; and, if you have them not, supply their place
with Superphosphate or Bone-dust. I think many farmers will be agreeably
surprised by the additional yield which will accrue from this treatment
of their soil.
Those who have no swamp muck, and feel that they can afford the outlay,
may, by plowing or subsoiling early in the Fall, seeding heavily with
rye, and turning this under when the time comes for planting in the
Spring, improve both crop and soil materially. But even to these I would
say: Apply the Gypsum in the Fall, and the Ashes or Lime and Salt
mixture in the Spring; and now, with good seed and good luck, you will
be reasonably sure of a bounteous harvest. If a farmer, having a poor
worn-out field of sandy loam, wants to do his very best by it, let him
plow, subsoil, sow rye and plaster in the Fall, as above indicated, turn
this under, and sow buckwheat late in the next Spring; plow this under
in turn when it has attained its growth, and sow to clover; turn this
down the following Spring, and Plant to late potatoes, and he will not
merely obtain a large crop, but have his land in admirable condition for
whatever way follow.
I am quite well aware that such an outlay of labor and seed, with an
entire loss of crop for one season, will seem to many too costly. I do
not advise it except under peculiar circumstances; and yet I am
confident that there are many fields that would be doubled in value by
such treatment, which would richly repay all its cost. That most
farmers could not afford thus to treat their entire farms at once, is
very true; yet it does not follow that they might not deal with field
after field thus thoroughly, living on the products of 40 or 50 acres,
while they devoted five or six annually to the work of thorough
renovation.
A quarter of a century ago, we were threatened with a complete
extinction of the Potato, as an article of food: the stalks, when
approaching or just attaining maturity, were suddenly smitten with fatal
disease--usually, after a warm rain followed by scalding sunshine--the
growing tubers were speedily affected; they rotted in the ground, and
they rotted nearly as badly if dug; and whole townships could hardly
show a bushel of sound Potatoes.
A desolating famine in Ireland, which swept away or drove into exile
nearly two millions of her people, was the most striking and memorable
result of this wide-spread disaster. For several succeeding seasons, the
Potato was similarly, though not so extensively, affected; and the fears
widely expressed that the day of its usefulness was over, seemed to have
ample justification. Speaking generally, the Potato has never since been
so hardy or prolific as it was half a century ago; it has gradually
recovered, however, from its low estate, and, though the malady still
lingers, and from time to time renews its ravages in different
localities, the farmer now plants judiciously and on fit ground, with a
reasonable hope that his labor will be duly rewarded.
It seems to be generally agreed that clayey soils are not adapted to its
growth; that, if the quantity of the crop be not stinted, its quality is
pretty sure to be inferior; and I can personally testify that the
planting of Potatoes on wet soil--that is, on swampy or spongy land
which has not been thoroughly drained and sweetened--is a hopeless,
thriftless labor--that the crop will seldom be worth the seed.
As to the ten or a dozen different insects to which the Potato-rot has
been attributed, I regard them all as consequences, not causes;
attracted to prey on the plant by its sickly, weakly condition, and not
really responsible for that condition. If any care for my reasons, let
him refer to what I have said of the Wheat-plant and its insect
enemies.[1]
There has been much discussion as to the kind of seed to be planted; and
I think the result has been a pretty general conviction that it is
better to cut the tuber into pieces having two or three eyes each, than
to plant it whole, since the whole Potato sends up a superfluity of
stalks, with a like effect on the crop to that of putting six or eight
kernels of corn in each hill.
Small Potatoes are immature, unripe, and of course should never be
planted, since their progeny will be feeble and sickly. Select for seed
none but thoroughly ripe Potatoes, and the larger the better.
My own judgment favors planting in drills rather than hills, with ample
space for working between them; not less than 30 inches: the seed being
dropped about 6 inches apart in the drill. The soil must be deep and
mellow, for the Potato suffers from drouth much sooner than Indian Corn
or almost any other crop usually grown among us. I believe in covering
the seed from 2 to 2-1/2 inches; and I hold to flat or level culture for
this as for everything else. Planting on a ridge made by turning two
furrows together may be advisable where the land is wet; but then wet
land never can be made fit for cultivation, except by underdraining. And
I insist upon setting the rows or drills well apart, because I hold that
the soil should often be loosened and stirred to a good depth with the
subsoil plow; and that this process should be persevered in till the
plant is in blossom. Hardly any plant will pay better for persistent
cultivation than the Potato.
As to varieties, I will only say that planting the tubers for seed is an
unnatural process, which tends and must tend to degeneracy. The new
varieties now most prized will certainly run out in the course of twenty
or thirty years at furthest, and must be replaced from time to time by
still newer, grown from the seed. This creation of new species is, and
must be, a slow, expensive process; since not one in a hundred of these
varieties possess any value. I don't quite believe in selling--I mean in
buying--Potatoes at $1 per pound; but he who originates a really
valuable new Potato deserves a recompense for his industry, patience,
and good fortune; and I shall be glad to learn that he receives it.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See Chapter XXII.
XXX.
ROOTS--TURNIPS--BEETS--CARROTS