is, the combination by many of their means and efforts to achieve
results beneficial to them all. It differs radically from Communism,
which proposes that each should receive from the aggregate product of
human labor enough to satisfy his wants, or at least his needs, whether
he shall have contributed to that aggregate much, or little, or nothing
at all. Cooperation insists that each shall receive from the joint
product in proportion to his contributions thereto, whether in capital,
skill, or labor. If one associate has ten children and another none,
Communism would apportion to each according to the size of his family
alone; while Cooperation would give to each what he had earned,
regardless of the number dependent upon him. Thus the two systems are
radical antagonists, and only the grossly ignorant or willfully blind
will confound them.
A young farmer, whose total estate is less than $500, not counting a
priceless wife and child, resolves to migrate from one of the old
States to Kansas, Minnesota, or one of the Territories: he has heard
that he will there find public land whereon he may make a home of a
quarter-section, paying therefor $20 or less for the cost of survey and
of the necessary papers. So he may: but, on reaching the Land of
Promise, whether with or without his family, he finds a very large belt
of still vacant land beyond the settlements already transformed into
private property, and either not for sale at all or held on speculation,
quite out of his reach. The public land which he may take under the
Homestead law lies a full day's journey beyond the border settlements,
to which he must look for Mills, Stores, Schools, and even Highways. If
he persists in squatting, with intent to earn his quarter-section by
settlement and cultivation, he must take a long day's journey across
unbridged streams and sloughs, over unmade roads, to find boards, or
brick, or meal, or glass, or groceries; while he must postpone the
education of his children to an indefinite future day. Gradually, the
region will be settled, and the conveniences of civilization will find
their way to his door, but not till after he will have suffered through
several years for want of them; often compelled to make a journey to get
a plow or yoke mended, a grist of grain ground, or to minister to some
other trivial but inexorable want. He who thus acquires his
quarter-section must fairly earn it, and may be thankful if his children
do not grow up rude, coarse, and illiterate.
But suppose one thousand just such young farmers as he is, with no more
means and no greater efficiency than his, were to set forth together,
resolved to find a suitable location whereon they might all settle on
adjoining quarter-sections, thus appropriating the soil of five or six
embryo townships: who can fail to see that three-fourths of the
obstacles and discouragements which confront the solitary pioneer would
vanish at the outset? Roads, Bridges, Mills,--nay, even Schools and
Churches--would be theirs almost immediately; while mechanics,
merchants, doctors, etc., would fairly overrun their settlement and
solicit their patronage at every road-crossing. Within a year after the
location of their several claims, they would have achieved more progress
and more comfort than in five years under the system of straggling and
isolated settlement which has hitherto prevailed. The change I here
indicate appeals to the common sense and daily experience of our whole
people. It is not necessary, however desirable, that the pioneers should
be giants in wisdom, in integrity, or in piety, to secure its benefits.
A knave or a fool may be deemed an undesirable neighbor; but a dozen
such in the township would not preclude, and could hardly diminish, the
advantages naturally resulting from settlement by Cooperation.
Nor are these confined to pioneers transcending the boundaries of
civilization. I wish I could induce a thousand of our colored men now
precariously subsisting by servile labor in the cities, to strike out
boldly for homes of their own, and for liberty to direct their own
labor, whether they should settle on the frontier in the manner just
outlined, or should buy a tract of cheap land on Long Island, in
New-Jersey, Maryland, or some State further South. I cannot doubt that
the majority of them would work their way up to independence; and this
very much sooner, and after undergoing far less privation, than almost
every pioneer who has plunged alone into the primitive forest or struck
out upon the broad prairie and there made himself a farm.
The insatiable demand for fencing is one of the pioneer's many trials.
Though he has cleared off but three acres of forest during his first
Fall and Winter, he must surround those acres with a stout fence, or all
he grows will be devoured by hungry cattle--his own, if no others.
Whether he adds two or ten acres to his clearing during the next year,
they must in turn be surrounded by a fence; and nothing short of a very
stout one will answer: so he goes on clearing and fencing, usually
burning up a part of his fence whenever he burns over his new clearing;
then building a new one around this, which will have to be sacrificed in
its turn. I believe that many pioneers have devoted as much time to
fencing their fields as to tilling them throughout their first six or
eight years.
It is different with those who settle on broad prairies, but not
essentially better. Each pioneer must fence his patch of tillage with
material which costs him more, and is procured with greater difficulty,
than though he were cutting a hole in the forest. Often, when he thinks
he has fenced sufficiently, the hungry, breachy cattle, who roam the
open prairies around him, judge his handiwork less favorably; and he
wakes some August morning, when feed is poorest outside and most
luxuriant within his inclosure, to find that twenty or thirty cattle
have broken through his defenses and half destroyed his growing crop.
If, instead of this wasteful lack of system, a thousand or even a
hundred farmers would combine to fence several square miles into one
grand inclosure for cultivation, erecting their several habitations
within or without its limits, as to each should be convenient--
apportioning it for cultivation, or owning it in severalty, as they
should see fit--an immense economy would be secured, just when, because
of their poverty, saving is most important. Their stock might range the
open prairie unwatched; and they might all sleep at night in serene
confidence that their corn and cabbages were not in danger of ruthless
destruction. Among the settlers in our great primitive forests, the
system of Cooperative Farming would have to be modified in details,
while it would be in essence the same.
And, once adopted with regard to fencing, other adaptations as obvious
and beneficent would from day to day suggest themselves. Each pioneer
would learn how to advance his own prosperity by combining his efforts
with those of his neighbors. He would perceive that the common wants of
a hundred may be supplied by a combined effort at less than half the
cost of satisfying them when each is provided for alone. He would grow
year by year into a clearer and firmer conviction that short-sighted
selfishness is the germ of half the evils that afflict the human race,
and that the true and sure way to a bounteous satisfaction of the wants
of each is a generous and thoughtful consideration for the needs of all.
* * * * *
And here let me pay my earnest and thankful tribute to Mr. E. V. de
Boissiere, a philanthropic Frenchman, who has purchased 3,300 acres of
mainly rolling prairie-land in Kansas, near Princeton, Franklin County,
and is carefully, cautiously, laying thereon the foundations of a great
cooperative farm, where, in addition to the usual crops, it is expected
that Silk and other exotics will in due time be extensively grown and
transformed into fabrics, and that various manufactures will vie with
Agriculture in affording attractive and profitable employment to a
considerable population. I have not been accustomed to look with favor
on our new States and unpeopled Territories as an arena for such
experiments, since so many of their early settlers are intent on getting
rich by land-speculation--at all events, through the exercise of some
others' muscles than their own--while the opportunities for and
incitements to migration and relocation are so multiform and powerful.
Doubtless, M. de Boissiere will be often tried by stampedes of his
volunteer associates, who, after the novelty of cooperative effort has
worn off, will find life on his domain too tame and humdrum for their
excitable and high-strung natures. I trust, however, that he will
persevere through every discouragement, and triumph over every obstacle;
that the right men for associates will gradually gather about him; that
his enterprise and devotion will at length be crowned by a signal and
inspiring success; and that thousands will be awakened by it to a larger
and nobler conception of the mission of Industry, and the possibilities
of achievement which stud the path of simple, honest, faithful,
persistent Work.
XLIII.
FARMERS' CLUBS.
Farmers, like other men, divide naturally into two classes--those who do
too much work, and those who do too little. I know men who are no
farmers at all, only by virtue of the fact that each of them inherited,
or somehow acquired, a farm, and have since lived upon and out of it, in
good part upon that which it could not help producing--they not doing so
much as one hundred fair days' work each per annum. One of this class
never takes a periodical devoted to farming; evinces no interest in
county fairs or township clubs, save as they may afford him an excuse
for greater idleness; and insists that there is no profit in farming. As
land steadily depreciates in quality under his management, he is apt to
sell out whenever the increase of population or progress of improvement
has given additional value to his farm, and move off in quest of that
undiscovered country where idleness is compatible with thrift, profits
are realized from light crops, and men grow rich by doing nothing.
The opposite class of wanderers from the golden mean is hardly so
numerous as the idlers, yet it is quite a large one. Its leading
embodiment, to my mind, is one whom I knew from childhood, who, born
poor and nowise favored by fortune, was rated as a tireless worker from
early boyhood, and who achieved an independence before he was forty
years old in a rural New-England township, simply by rugged, persistent
labor--in youth on the farms of other men; in manhood, on one of his
own. This man was older at forty than his father, then seventy, and died
at fifty, worn out with excessive and unintermitted labor, leaving a
widow who greatly preferred him to all his ample wealth, and an only son
who, so soon as he can get hold of it, will squander the property much
faster, and even more unwisely, than his father acquired it.
To the class of which this man was a fair representative, Farmers' Clubs
must prove of signal value. Though there should be nothing else than a
Farmers' Club in his neighborhood, it can hardly fail in time to make
such a one realize that life need not and should not be all drudgery;
that there are other things worth living for beside accumulating wealth.
Let his wife and his neighbor succeed in drawing such a one into two or
three successive meetings, and he can hardly fail to perceive that
thrift is a product of brain as well as of muscle; that he may grow rich
by learning and knowing as well as by delving, and that, even though he
should not, there are many things desirable and laudable beside the
accumulation of wealth.
A true Farmers' Club should consist of all the families residing in a
small township, so far as they can be induced to attend it, even though
only half their members should be present at any one meeting. It should
limit speeches to ten minutes, excepting only those addresses or essays
which eminently qualified persons are requested to specially prepare and
read. It should have a president, ready and able to repress all
ill-natured personalities, all irrelevant talk, and especially all
straying into the forbidden regions of political or theological
disputation. At each meeting, the subject should be chosen for the next,
and not less than four members pledged to make some observations
thereon, with liberty to read them if unused to speaking in public.
Those having been heard, the topic should be open to discussion by all
present: the humblest and youngest being specially encouraged to state
any facts within their knowledge which they deem pertinent and cogent.
Let every person attending be thus incited to say something calculated
to shed light on the subject, to say this in the fewest words possible,
and with the utmost care not to annoy or offend others, and it is hardly
possible that one evening per week devoted to these meetings should not
be spent with equal pleasure and profit.
The chief end to be achieved through such meetings is a development of
the faculty of observation and the habit of reflection. Too many of us
pass through life essentially blind and deaf to the wonders and glories
manifest to clearer eyes all around us. The magnificent phenomena of the
Seasons, even the awakening of Nature from death to life in Spring-time,
make little impression on their senses, still less on their
understandings. There are men who have passed forty times through a
forest, and yet could not name, within half a dozen, the various species
of trees which compose it; and so with everything else to which they are
accustomed. They need even more than knowledge an intellectual
awakening; and this they could hardly fail to receive from the
discussions of an intelligent and earnest Farmers' Club.
A genuine and lively interest in their vocation is needed by many
farmers, and by most farmers' sons. Too many of these regard their
homesteads as a prison, in which they must remain until some avenue of
escape into the great world shall open before them. The farm to such is
but the hollow log into which a bear crawls to wear out the rigors of
Winter and await the advent of Spring. Too many of our boys fancy that
they know too much for farmers, when in fact they know far too little. A
good Farmers' Club, faithfully attended, would take this conceit out of
them, imbuing them instead with a realizing sense of their ignorance and
incompetency, and a hearty desire for practical wisdom.
A recording secretary, able to state in the fewest words each important
suggestion or fact elicited in the course of an evening's discussion,
would be hardly less valuable or less honored than a capable president.
A single page would often suffice for all that deserves such record out
of an evening's discussion; and this, being transferred to a book and
preserved, might be consulted with interest and profit throughout many
succeeding years. No other duty should be required of the member who
rendered this service, the correspondence of the Club being devolved
upon another secretary. The habit of bringing grafts, or plants, or
seeds, to Club meetings, for gratuitous distribution, has been found to
increase the interest, and enlarge the attendance of those formerly
indifferent. Almost every good farmer or gardener will sometimes have
choice seeds or grafts to spare, which he does not care or cannot expect
to sell, and these being distributed to the Club will not only increase
its popularity, but give him a right to share when another's surplus is
in like manner distributed. If one has choice fruits to give away, the
Club will afford him an excellent opportunity; but I would rather not
attract persons to its meetings by a prospect of having their appetites
thus gratified at others' expense. A Flower-Show once in each year, and
an Exhibition of Fruits and other choice products at an evening meeting
in September or October, should suffice for festivals. Let each member
consider himself pledged to bring to the Exhibition the best material
result of his year's efforts, and the aggregate will be satisfactory and
instructive.
The organization of a Farmers' Club is its chief difficulty. The larger
number of those who ought to participate usually prefer to stand back,
not committing themselves to the effort until after its success has been
assured. To obviate this embarrassment, let a paper be circulated for
signatures, pledging each signer to attend the introductory meeting and
bring at least a part of his family. When forty have signed such a call,
success will be well-nigh assured.
XLIV.
WESTERN IRRIGATION.
I have already set forth my belief that Irrigation is everywhere
practicable, is destined to be generally adopted, and to prove signally
beneficent. I do not mean that every acre of the States this side of the
Missouri will ever be thus supplied with water, but that _some_ acres of
every township, and of nearly every farm, should and will be. I propose
herein to speak with direct reference to that large portion of our
country which cannot be cultivated to any purpose without Irrigation.
This region, which is practically rainless in Summer, may be roughly
indicated as extending from the forks of the Platte westward, and as
including all our present Territories, a portion of Western Texas, the
entire State of Nevada, and at least nine-tenths of California. On this
vast area, no rain of consequence falls between April and November,
while its soil, parched by fervid, cloudless suns, and swept by
intensely dry winds, is utterly divested of moisture to a depth of three
or four feet; and I have seen the tree known as Buckeye growing in it,
at least six inches in diameter, whereon every leaf was withered and
utterly dead before the end of August, though the tree still lived, and
would renew its foliage next Spring.
Most of this broad area is usually spoken of as desert, because
treeless, except on the slopes of its mountains, where certain
evergreens would seem to dispense with moisture, and on the brink of
infrequent and scanty streams, where the all but worthless Cotton-wood
is often found growing luxuriantly. A very little low Gamma Grass on the
Plains, some straggling Bunch-grass on the mountains, with an endless
profusion of two poor shrubs, popularly known as Sage-brush and
Grease-wood, compose the vegetation of nearly or quite a million square
miles.
I will confine myself in this essay to the readiest means of irrigating
the Plains, by which I mean the all but treeless plateau that stretches
from the base of the Rocky Mountains, 300 to 400 miles eastward, sloping
imperceptibly toward the Missouri, and drained by the affluents of the
Platte, the Kansas, and the Arkansas rivers.
The North Platte has its sources in the western, as the South Platte has
in the eastern, slopes of the Rocky Mountains. Each of them pursues a
generally north-east course for some 300 miles, and then turns sharply
to the eastward, uniting some 300 miles eastward of the mountains, where
the Plains melt into the Prairies. Between these two rivers and the
eastern base of the mountains lies an irregular delta or triangle, which
seems susceptible of irrigation at a smaller cost than the residue. The
location of Union Colony may be taken as a fair illustration of the
process, and the facilities therefor afforded by nature.
Among the streams which, taking rise in the eastern gorges of the Rocky
Mountains, run into the South Platte, the most considerable has somehow
acquired the French name of Cache la Poudre. It heads in and about
Long's Peak, and, after emerging from the mountains, runs some 20 to 25
miles nearly due east, with a descent in that distance of about 100
feet. Its waters are very low in Autumn and Winter, and highest in May,
June and July, from the melting of snow and ice on the lofty mountains
which feed it. Like all the streams of this region, it is broad and
shallow, with its bed but three to four feet below the plains on either
side.
Greeley, the nucleus of Union Colony, is located at the crossing of the
Cache la Poudre by the Denver-Pacific Railroad, about midway of its
course from the Kansas Pacific at Denver northward to the Union Pacific
at Cheyenne. Here a village of some 400 to 500 houses has suddenly grown
up during the past Summer.
The first irrigating canal of Union Colony leaves the Cache la Poudre
six or eight miles above Greeley, on the south side, and is carried
gradually further and further from the stream until it is fully a mile
distant at the village, whence it is continued to the Platte. Branches
or ditches lead thence northward, conveying rills through the streets
of the village, the gardens or plats of its inhabitants, and the public
square, or plaza, which is designed to be its chief ornament. Other
branches lead to the farms and five-acre allotments whereby the village
is surrounded; as still others will do in time to all the land between
the canal and the river. In due time, another canal will be taken out
from a point further up the stream, and will irrigate the lands of the
colony lying south of the present canal, and which are meantime devoted
to pasturage in common.
Taking the water out of the river is here a very simple matter. At the
head of an island, a rude dam of brush and stones and earth is thrown
across the bed of the stream, so as to raise the surface two or three
feet when the water is lowest, and very much less when it is highest.
Thus deflected, a portion of the water flows easily into the canal.
A very much larger and longer canal, leaving the Cache la Poudre close
to the mountains, and gradually increasing its distance from that stream
to four or five miles, is now in progress by sections, and is to be
completed this Winter. Its length will be thirty miles, and it will
irrigate, when the necessary sub-canals shall have been constructed, not
less than 40,000 acres. But it may be ten years before all this work is
completed or even required. The lands most easily watered from the main
canal will be first brought into cultivation; the sub-canals will be dug
as they shall be wanted.
At first, members of the Colony arriving at its location, hesitated to
take farm allotments and build upon them, from distrust of the
capacities of the soil. They saw nothing of value growing upon it; the
little grass found upon it was short, thin, and brown. It was not black,
like the prairies and bottoms of Illinois and Kansas, but of a light
yellow snuff-color, and deemed sterile by many. But a few took hold, and
planted and sowed resolutely; and, though it was too late in the season
for most grains, the results were most satisfactory. Wheat sown in June
produced 30 bushels to the acre; Oats did as well; while Potatoes,
Beets, Turnips, Squashes, Cabbages, etc., yielded bounteously; Tomatoes
did likewise, but the plants were obtained from Denver. Little was done
with Indian Corn, but that little turned out well, though I judge that
the Summer nights are too cold here to justify sanguine expectations of
a Corn-crop--the altitude being 5,000 feet above the sea, with
snow-covered mountains always visible in the west. For other Grains, and
for all Vegetables and Grasses, I believe there is no better soil in the
world.