that magnificent Turnip-culture which has so largely transformed the
agricultural industry of England and Scotland, while signally and
beneficently increasing its annual product, I judge that time will prove
them mistaken. The striking diversity of climate between the opposite
coasts of the Atlantic forbids the realization of their hopes. The
British Isles, with a considerable portion of the adjacent coast of
Continental Europe, have a climate so modified by the Gulf Stream and
the ocean that their Summers are usually moist and cool, their Autumns
still more so, and their Winters rarely so cold as to freeze the earth
considerably; while our Summers and Autumns, are comparatively hot and
dry; our Winters in part intensely cold, so as to freeze the earth solid
for a foot or more. Hence, every variety of turnip is exposed here in
its tenderer stages to the ravages of every devouring insect; while the
1st of December often finds the soil of all but our Southern and Pacific
States so frozen that cannon-wheels would hardly track it, and roots
not previously dug up must remain fast in the earth for weeks and often
for months. Hence, the turnip can never grow so luxuriantly, nor be
counted on with such certainty, here as in Great Britain; nor can
animals be fed on it in Winter, except at the heavy cost of pulling or
digging, cutting off the tops and carefully housing in Autumn, and then
slicing and feeding out in Winter. It is manifest that turnips thus
handled, however economically, cannot compete with hay and corn-fodder
in our Eastern and Middle States; nor with these and the cheaper species
of grain in the West, as the daily Winter food of cattle.
Still, I hold that our stock-growing farmers profitably may, and
ultimately will, grow _some_ turnips to be fed out to their growing and
working animals. A good meal of turnips given twice a week, if not
oftener, to these, will agreeably and usefully break the monotony of
living exclusively on dry fodder, and will give a relish to their hay or
cut stalks and straw, which cannot fail to tell upon their appetite,
growth and thrift. Let our cattle-breeders begin with growing an acre or
two each of Swedes per annum, so as to give their stock a good feed of
them, sliced thin in an effective machine, at least once in each week,
and I feel confident that they will continue to grow turnips, and will
grow more and more of them throughout future years.
The Beet seems to me better adapted to our climate, especially south of
the fortieth degree of north latitude, than any variety of the Turnip
with which I am acquainted, and destined, in the good time coming, when
we shall have at least doubled the average depth of our soil, to very
extensive cultivation among us. I am not regarding either of these roots
with reference to its use as human food, since our farmers generally
understand that use at least as well as I do; nor will I here consider
at length the use of the Beet in the production of Sugar. I value that
use highly, believing that millions of the poorer classes throughout
Europe have been enabled to enjoy Sugar through its manufacture from the
Beet who would rarely or never have tasted that luxury in the absence of
this manufacture. The people of Europe thus made familiar with Sugar can
hardly be fewer than 100,000,000; and the number is annually increasing.
The cost of Sugar to these is considerably less in money, while
immeasurably less in labor, than it would or could have been had the
tropical Cane been still regarded as the only plant available for the
production of Sugar.
But the West Indies, wherein the Cane flourishes luxuriantly and renews
itself perennially, lie at our doors. They look to us for most of their
daily bread, and for many other necessaries of life; while several, if
not all of them, are manifestly destined, in the natural progress of
events, to invoke the protection of our flag. I do not, therefore, feel
confident that Beet Sugar now promises to become an important staple
destined to take a high rank among the products of our national
industry. With cheap labor, I believe it might to-day he manufactured
with profit in the rich, deep valleys of California, and perhaps in
those of Utah and Colorado as well. On the whole, however, I cannot deem
the prospect encouraging for the American promoters of the manufacture
of Beet Sugar.
But when we shall have deepened essentially the soil of our arable
acres, fertilized it abundantly, and cured it by faithful cultivation of
its vicious addiction to weed-growing, I believe we shall devote
millions of those acres to the growth of Beets for cattle-food, and,
having learned how to harvest as well as till them mainly by machinery,
with little help from hand labor, we shall produce them with eminent
profit and satisfaction to the grower. On soil fully two feet deep,
thoroughly underdrained and amply fertilized, I believe we shall often
produce one thousand bushels of Beets to the acre; and so much
acceptable and valuable food for cattle can hardly be obtained from an
acre in any other form.
* * * * *
So with regard to Carrots. I have never achieved eminent success in
growing these, nor Beets; mainly because the soil on which I attempted
to grow them was not adapted to, or rather not yet in condition for,
such culture. But, should I live a few years longer, until my reclaimed
swamp shall have become thoroughly sweetened and civilized, I mean to
grow on some part thereof 1,000 bushels of Carrots per acre, and a
still larger product of Beets; and the Carrot, in my judgment, ought now
to be extensively grown in the South and West, as well as in this
section, for feeding to horses. I hold that 60 bushels of Carrots and 50
of Oats, fed in alternate meals, are of at least equal value as
horse-feed with 100 bushels of Oats alone, while more easily grown in
this climate. The Oat-crop makes heavy drafts upon the soil, while our
hot Summers are not congenial to its thrift or perfection. Since we must
grow Oats, we must be content to import new seed every 10 or 15 years
from Scotland, Norway, and other countries which have cooler, moister
Summers than our own; for the Oat will inevitably degenerate under such
suns as blazed through the latter half of our recent June. Believing
that the Carrot may profitably replace at least half the Oats now grown
in this country, I look forward with confidence to its more and more
extensive cultivation.
The advantage of feeding Roots to stock is not to be measured and
bounded by their essential value. Beasts, like men, require a variety of
food, and thrive best upon a regimen which involves a change of diet.
Admit that hay is their cheapest Winter food; still, an occasional meal
of something more succulent will prove beneficial, and this is best
afforded by Roots.
XXXI
THE FARMER'S CALLING.
If any one fancies that he ever heard _me_ flattering farmers as a
class, or saying anything which implied that they were more virtuous,
upright, unselfish, or deserving, than other people, I am sure he must
have misunderstood or that he now misrecollects me. I do not even join
in the cant, which speaks of farmers as supporting everybody else--of
farming as the only indispensable vocation. You may say if you will that
mankind could not subsist if there were no tillers of the soil; but the
same is true of house-builders, and of some other classes. A thoroughly
good farmer is a useful, valuable citizen: so is a good merchant,
doctor, or lawyer. It is not essential to the true nobility and genuine
worth of the farmer's calling that any other should be assailed or
disparaged.
Still, if one of my three sons had been spared to attain manhood, I
should have advised him to try to make himself a good farmer; and this
without any romantic or poetic notions of Agriculture as a pursuit. I
know well, from personal though youthful experience, that the farmer's
life is one of labor, anxiety, and care; that hail, and flood, and
hurricane, and untimely frosts, over which he can exert no control, will
often destroy in an hour the net results of months of his persistent,
well-directed toil; that disease will sometimes sweep away his animals,
in spite of the most judicious treatment, the most thoughtful
providence, on his part; and that insects, blight, and rust, will often
blast his well-grounded hopes of a generous harvest, when they seem on
the very point of realization. I know that he is necessarily exposed,
more than most other men, to the caprices and inclemencies of weather
and climate; and that, if he begins responsible life without other means
than those he finds in his own clear head and strong arms, with those of
his helpmeet, he must expect to struggle through years of poverty,
frugality, and resolute, persistent, industry, before he can reasonably
hope to attain a position of independence, comfort, and comparative
leisure. I know that much of his work is rugged, and some of it
absolutely repulsive; I know that he will seem, even with unbroken good
fortune, to be making money much more slowly than his neighbor, the
merchant, the broker, or eloquent lawyer, who fills the general eye
while he prospers, and, when he fails, sinks out of sight and is soon
forgotten; and yet, I should have advised my sons to choose farming as
their vocation, for these among other reasons:
I. There is no other business in which success is so nearly certain as
in this. Of one hundred men who embark in trade, a careful observer
reports that ninety-five fail; and, while I think this proportion too
large, I am sure that a large majority do, and must fail, because
competition is so eager and traffic so enormously overdone. If ten men
endeavor to support their families by merchandise in a township which
affords adequate business for but three, it is certain that a majority
must fail; no matter how judicious their management or how frugal their
living. But you may double the number of farmers in any agricultural
county I ever traversed, without necessarily dooming one to failure, or
even abridging his gains. If half the traders and professional men in
this country were to betake themselves to farming to-morrow, they would
not render that pursuit one whit less profitable, while they would
largely increase the comfort and wealth of the entire community; and,
while a good merchant, lawyer, or doctor, may be starved out of any
township, simply because the work he could do well is already confided
to others, I never yet heard of a temperate, industrious, intelligent,
frugal, and energetic farmer who failed to make a living, or who, unless
prostrated by disease or disabled by casualty, was precluded from
securing a modest independence before age and decrepitude divested him
of the ability to labor.
II. I regard farming as that vocation which conduces most directly and
palpably to a reverence for Honesty and Truth. The young lawyer is often
constrained, or at least tempted, by his necessities, to do the dirty
professional work of a rascal intent on cheating his neighbor out of his
righteous dues. The young doctor may be likewise incited to resort to a
quackery he despises in order to secure instant bread; the unknown
author is often impelled to write what will sell rather than what the
public ought to buy; but the young farmer, acting _as_ a farmer, must
realize that his success depends upon his absolute verity and integrity.
He deals directly with Nature, which never was and never will be
cheated. He has no temptation to sow beach sand for plaster, dock-seed
for clover, or stoop to any trick or juggle whatever. "Whatsoever a man
soweth that shall he also reap," while true, in the long run, of all
men, is instantly and palpably true as to him. When he, having grown his
crop, shall attempt to sell it--in other words, when he ceases to be a
farmer and becomes a trader--he may possibly be tempted into one of the
many devious ways of rascality; but, so long as he is acting simply as a
farmer, he can hardly be lured from the broad, straight highway of
integrity and righteousness.
III. The farmer's calling seems to me that most conducive to thorough
manliness of character. Nobody expects him to cringe, or smirk, or curry
favor, is order to sell his produce. No merchant refuses to buy it
because his politics are detested or his religious opinions heterodox.
He may be a Mormon, a Rebel, a Millerite, or a Communist, yet his Grain
or his Pork will sell for exactly what it is worth--not a fraction less
or more than the price commanded by the kindred product of like quality
and intrinsic value of his neighbor, whose opinions on all points are
faultlessly orthodox and popular. On the other hand, the merchant, the
lawyer, the doctor, especially if young and still struggling dubiously
for a position, are continually tempted to sacrifice or suppress their
profoundest convictions in deference to the vehement and often
irrational prepossessions of the community, whose favor is to them the
breath of life. "She will find that _that_ won't go down here," was the
comment of an old woman on a Mississippi steamboat, when told that the
plain, deaf stranger, who seemed the focus of general interest, was Miss
Martineau, the celebrated Unitarian; and in so saying she gave
expression to a feeling which pervades and governs many if not most
communities. I doubt whether the social intolerance of adverse opinions
is more vehement anywhere else than throughout the larger portion of our
own country. I have repeatedly been stung by the receipt of letters
gravely informing me that my course and views on a current topic were
adverse to public opinion: the writers evidently assuming, as a matter
of course, that I was a mere jumping-jack, who only needed to know what
other people thought to insure my instant and abject conformity to their
prejudices. Very often, in other days, I was favored with letters from
indignant subscribers, who, dissenting from my views on some question,
took this method of informing me that they should no longer take my
journal--a superfluous trouble, which could only have meant dictation or
insult, since they had only to refrain from renewing their
subscriptions, and their _Tribune_ would stop coming, whenever they
should have received what we owed them; and it would in no case stop
till then. That a journalist was in any sense a public teacher--that he
necessarily had convictions, and was not likely to suppress them because
they were not shared by others--in short, that his calling was other and
higher than that of a waiter at a restaurant, expected to furnish
whatever was called for, so long as the pay was forthcoming--these
ex-subscribers had evidently not for one moment suspected. That such
persons have little or no capacity to insult, is very true; and yet, a
man is somewhat degraded in his own regard by learning that his vocation
is held in such low esteem by others. The true farmer is proudly aware
that it is quite otherwise with _his_ pursuit--that no one expects him
to swallow any creed, support any party, or defer to any prejudice, as a
condition precedent to the sale of his products. Hence, I feel that it
is easier and more natural in his pursuit than in any other for a man to
work for a living, and aspire to success and consideration, without
sacrificing self-respect, compromising integrity, or ceasing to be
essentially and thoroughly a gentleman.
XXXII.
A LESSON OF TO-DAY.
The current season is quite commonly characterized as the coldest, the
hottest, the wettest, or the dryest, that was ever known. Men
undoubtingly assert that they never knew a Summer so hot, or a Winter so
cold, when in fact several such have occurred within the cycle of their
experience. Hardly anything else is so easily or so speedily forgotten
as extremes of temperature or inclemencies of weather, after they have
passed away. I presume there have been six to ten Summers, since the
beginning of this century, as hot and as dry as that of 1870; yet the
fact remains that, throughout the Eastern section of our country, to say
nothing of the rest, the heat and drouth of the current Summer have been
quite remarkable. For two months past, counting from the 10th of June,
nearly every day has been a hot one, with blazing sunshine throughout,
rarely interrupted and slightly modified by infrequent and inadequate
showers; and, as a general result of this tropical fervor, the earth is
parched and baked from ten to forty inches from the surface; streams
and ponds are dried up or shrunk to their lowest dimensions; forests are
often ravaged and desolated by fires; our pastures are dry and brown;
while crops of Hay, Oats, Potatoes, Buckwheat, etc., either have proved,
or certainly must prove, a disappointment to the hopes of the growers. I
estimate the average product for 1870 of the farms of New-England,
eastern New-York and New-Jersey, as not more than two-thirds of a full
harvest; while the earth remains at this moment so baked and incrusted
that several days' rain is needed to fit it for Fall plowing and the
sowing of Winter grain.
Such seasons must not be regarded as extraordinary. The Summer of 1854
was nearly or quite as dry as this; and I presume one or two such have
intervened since that time. The heat of 1870 is remarkable for its
persistence rather than its intensity. Every Summer has its heated term;
that of 1870 has been longer in this region than any before it that I
can remember, though doubtless the recollection of others might supply
its perfect counterpart. Nearly every Summer has its drouth; the present
is peculiar rather for its early commencement than its extreme duration.
As our country is more and more denuded of its primitive forests,
drouths longer and severer even than this may naturally be expected.
What our farmers have to do is, to prepare for and provide against them.
Such seasons are disastrous to those only who farm as if none such were
to be expected. Those who plow deeply, fertilize bountifully, and
cultivate thoroughly, need not fear them, as fields of Hay and Oats
already harvested, and of Corn and Potatoes now hastening to maturity in
almost every township of the suffering region, abundantly attest. I
doubt that more luxuriant crops of Corn, Tobacco, or Onions, were ever
grown on the bottom-lands of the Connecticut Valley than may be seen
there to-day, with failures all about them, and under drouth so fierce
that Blackberries and Whortleberries are withered when half grown; even
the bushes in some cases perishing for lack of moisture.
My last trip took me along the banks of the upper Hudson, through the
rugged county of Warren, N. Y. The narrow, irregular intervale of this
mountain stream appear to have been cultivated for the last fifty or
sixty years by a hardy race, who look mainly to the timber of the wild
region north of them for a subsistence. In such a district, whatever
ministers to the sustenance of man or beast bears a high price; and
Corn, Rye, Oats, Buckwheat, Apples and Grass, are grown wherever the
soil is not too rugged or too sterile for culture. I presume half a crop
of Hay has been secured throughout this valley, with perhaps a full crop
of Rye where Rye was sown; but of Oats the yield will be considerably
less than that, while of Corn and Buckwheat it will range from ten
bushels per acre down to nothing. When I, last Summer, passed through
spacious field after field of Corn in Virginia that would not mature a
single ear, I spoke of it as something unknown at the North; but there
are fields planted to Corn, in the upper valley of the Hudson, that will
not produce a single sound ear, nor one bushel even of the shortest and
poorest "nubbins;" and alongside of these are acres of Buckwheat,
blossoming at an average hight of four inches, and not likely to get two
inches higher.
Now, if this land were so poor or so rocky that good crops could not be
extracted from it, far be it from me to disparage the agriculture
whereof the results are so meagre; but I am speaking of a river
intervale of considerable natural fertility, from which deep and
thorough cultivation would insure ample harvests, subject only to the
contingency of early frosts in Autumn. Were these lands fertilized and
cultivated as they might be, and as mine are, they would yield 30
bushels of Rye or 60 of Indian Corn per acre, and would richly repay the
husbandman's outlay and efforts. Now, I venture to say that all the
grain I saw growing in the valley of the Hudson through Warren County
will not return the farmer 75 cents for each day's labor expended
thereon, allowing nothing for the use of the land.
"But how shall we obtain fertilizers?" I am often asked. "We are poor;
we can afford to keep but few cattle; Guano, Phosphate, Bones, Lime,
etc., are beyond our means. Even if we could pay for them, the cost of
transportation to our out-of-the-way nooks would be heavy. We cannot
deal with our lands so bountifully as you do, but must be content to do
as we can."
To all which I make answer: No man ever lacked fertilizers who kept his
eyes wide open and devoted two months of each Fall and Winter to
collecting and preparing them. Wherever swamp muck may be had, wherever
bogs exist or flags or rushes grow, there are materials which, carted
into the barn-yard in Autumn or Winter, may be drawn out fertilizers in
season for Corn-planting next Spring. Wherever a pond or slough dries up
in Summer or Autumn, there is material that may be profitably
transformed into next year's grass or grain. In the absence of all
these--and they are seldom very far from one who knows how to look for
them--rank weeds of all sorts, if cut while green and tender, or forest
leaves, gathered in the Fall, used for litter in the stable, and thence
thrown into the yard, will serve an excellent purpose. Nay, more: I am
confident that the farmer who lacks these, but has access to a bed or
bank of simple clay, may cart 200 loads of it in November into an
ordinary farm-yard, have it trampled into and mixed with his manure in
the Winter, and draw it out in the Spring, excellently fitted to enrich
his sandy or gravelly land, and insure him, in connection with deep and
thorough culture, a generous yield of Corn, even in such a season as the
present. Dr. George B. Loring, the most successful farmer in
Massachusetts, uses naked beach sand in abundance as litter for his 80
cows, mixes it with his manure throughout the Winter, and draws out the
compound to fertilize his clay meadows in the Spring, with most
satisfactory results. Depend on it, no man need lack fertilizers who
begins in season and is willing to work for them.
And yet once more:
From the hills which inclose this valley of the upper Hudson (and from
ever so many other valleys as well), brooks and rivulets, copious in
Spring, when their waters are surcharged and discolored by the richest
juices of the uplands, pour down in frequent cascades and dance across
the intervale to be lost in the river. There is scarcely an acre of that
intervale which might not be irrigated from these streams at a very
moderate outlay of work at the season when work is least pressing: the
water thus held back by dams being allowed to flow thence gently and
equably across the intervale, conveying not moisture only, but fertility
also, to every plant growing thereon. I am confident that I passed many
places on the upper Hudson, as well as on the Connecticut and
Ammonoosuc, where 100 faithful days' work providing for irrigation would
have given 100 bushels of grain, or 10 tuns of hay additional this year,
and as much per annum henceforth, at a cost of not more than two days'
work in each year hereafter.
Farmers, but above all farmers' sons, think of these things.
XXXIII.
INTELLECT IN AGRICULTURE.
If a man whose capital consists of the clothes on his back, $5 in his
pocket, and an ax over his right shoulder, undertakes to hew for himself
a farm out of the primitive forest, he must of course devote some years
to rugged manual labor, or he will fail of success. It is indeed
possible that he should find others, even on the rude outposts of
civilization, who will hire them to teach school, or serve as county
clerk, or survey lands, or do something else of like nature: thus
enabling him to do his chopping trees, and rolling logs, and breaking up
his stumpy acres, by proxy; but the fair presumption is that he will
have to chop and log, and burn off and fence, and break up, by the use
of his own proper muscle; and he must be energetic and frugal, as well
as fortunate, if he gets a comfortable house over his head, with forty
arable acres about him, at the end of fifteen years' hard work. If he
has brains, and has been well educated, he may possibly shorten this
ordeal to ten years; but, should he begin by fancying hard work beneath
him, or his abilities too great to be squandered in bushwhacking, he is
very likely to come out at the little end of the horn, and, straggling
back to some populous settlement, more needy and seedy than when he set
forth to wrest a farm from the wilderness, declare the pioneer's life
one of such dreary, hopeless privation that no one who can read or
cypher ought ever to attempt it.
A poor man, who undertakes to live by his wits on a farm that he has
bought on credit, is not likely to achieve a brilliant success; but the
farmer whose hand and brain work in concert will never find nor fancy
his intellect or his education too good for his calling. He may very
often discover that he wasted months of his school-days on what was
ill-adapted to his needs, and of little use in fighting the actual
battle of life; but he will at the same time have ample reason to lament
the meagerness and the deficiency of his knowledge.