CHAPTER V_The Workers: An Experiment in Reality. The East

A FARM HAND

WILLIAMSPORT, LYCOMING COUNTY, PA.,

Saturday, 3 October, 1891.

From Wilkesbarre it was an easy day's march to the village of Pleasant

Hill, which lies in the way to Williamsport. The only notable incident

of the tramp was one which confirmed me in an early formed policy. I

have avoided railways, and have walked in preference along the country

roads, as affording better opportunities of intercourse with people.

But in going on that morning from Wilkesbarre to the ferry which

crossed the river to Plymouth, I took the advice of a gate-keeper at

a railway crossing and started down the track on a long trestle as a

short cut to the ferry. All went well until I was half way over, and

then two coal trains passed simultaneously in opposite directions, and

I hung by my hands from the framework at one side, while the engineer

and fireman on the locomotive nearest me laughed heartily at the figure

that I cut, with the side of each car grazing my pack, and my hold on

the railing growing visibly slacker.

It was a little after nightfall when I reached the tavern at Pleasant

Hill. Of my wages I had fifty cents left. I questioned the proprietor

as to the demand for work in his community. He was quite encouraging.

Only that afternoon, he said, one of the best farmers of the

neighborhood had been inquiring in the village for a possible man, and

to the best of his knowledge he had not found one. I said that I should

apply at his farm in the morning, and then I broached the subject of

entertainment. We soon struck a bargain for a supper and breakfast, and

the privilege of a bed on the hay; but when, after supper, I asked to

be directed to the barn, the landlord silently led the way to a little

room upstairs, and there wished me good-night.

In the early morning he pointed out to me the road to his neighbor's

farm, which I followed with ready success. I was penniless now, and

had only an uncertain chance of work. And then, if the farmer should

ask me, I should be obliged to own to inexperience, and the demand

for farm-hands I thought must be limited, at a date so far into the

autumn. But the morning was exquisite, and the buoyancy that it bred

was an easy match for misgivings, so that it was with a light heart

that I turned from the road into a lane which leads to the house of the

farmer, whom I shall call Mr. Hill.

All about me were the marks of thrift. The fences stood straight and

stout, with an air of lasting security. On a rising ledge above the

lane was the farm-house, a small, unpainted wooden cottage, bleached to

the rich, deep brown of a well-colored meerschaum pipe, and as snug and

tight as a pilot's schooner. Near it was a summer-kitchen that seemed

fairly to glow with conscious pride in its cleanness, and the very

foot-path from the gate to the cottage-door was swept like a threshing

floor.

On the door-step sat a girl in a calico dress of delicate pink, with a

dark gingham apron concealing all its front. She was shelling peas into

a milk-pan which rested on her lap, and the morning sunlight was in her

flaxen hair, and showed you the delicate freshness of a pink-and-white

complexion. Sober hazel eyes were fixed on me as I walked up the

foot-path, and of us two I was the embarrassed one. I have not got over

a certain timidity in asking for work, and each request is a sturdy

effort of the will, with the rest of me in cowardly revolt, and a timid

shrinking much in evidence I fear.

"Is this Mr. Hill's farm?" I ask, and I know that I am blushing deeply.

"Yes," says the young woman, with grave dignity and the most natural

self-possession in the world.

"Is he at home?" I am sweating freely now, as I stand with my hat

crushed between my hands, and the pack feeling like a mountain on my

back.

"He is down at the pond on the edge of the farm." And her serious eyes

follow the line of the long lane which sinks from the house with the

downward slope of the land.

With her permission I leave the pack behind, and then follow the

indicated way. The barn is on my right, a large, unpainted structure,

stained by weather to as dark a hue as the house, but there are no

loose boards about it, nor any rifts among the shingles, and the

doors hang true on their hinges, and meet in well-adjusted touch. The

cowyard and the pigsty flank the lane, and the neatness of the yard

and the tightness of the troughs make clear that there is no waste of

fodder there. Farther down and on my left is the wagon-house, as good

a building almost as the cottage, and with much the same clean, strong

compactness. There are no ploughs nor other farming tools lying exposed

to the weather, no signs of idle capital wasting with the wear of

rust, but everywhere the active, thrifty strength of wise economy.

Two men are at work at the pond, and I pick my man at once. They are

plainly brothers, but the Mr. Hill of whom I am in search is the

stronger-looking man, and is clearly in command of the job. I am

reminded of a certain type which one comes to know on "the street,"

a clean-cut, vigorous man, who keeps his youth till sixty, and who,

for many years, has had a masterful, compelling hand upon the conduct

of affairs, has put railways through the West, and opened up mining

regions, and knows the inner workings of legislatures and of much else

besides.

I wait for a pause in the work, and try to screw my courage to the

sticking-point; and then I tell Mr. Hill that the landlord at the

tavern has sent me to him in the belief that he needs a man, and I add

that I shall be glad of a job. Without preliminary questions Mr. Hill

engages me on the spot, and makes me an offer of board and lodging,

and seventy-five cents a day, which, he says, is the usual rate on

the farms at that season. I close with the bargain, and ask to be set

to work immediately. A minute later I am walking up the lane with a

message for Mrs. Hill, to the effect that I am the new "hired man," and

that she will please give me, to take to the pond, a certain "broad

hoe" from the wagon-house.

Mrs. Hill understands the situation at once; she makes no comment, but

goes with me to the wagon-house, where she points out the hoe among

other tools in a corner. She has said nothing so far, and I feel a

little uncomfortable, but now she turns to me with a frank directness

of manner that is very reassuring.

"I ain't got no room for you in the house, but I guess you'll be

comfortable sleeping out here. You can fetch your grip, and I'll show

you your bed."

Pack in hand, I follow her up the steps to the loft of the wagon-house,

and she points to a cot near the farther window and a wooden chair

beside it. "Some time to-day I'll make up your bed, and if there's

anything you want you can tell me." This is her final word as she

leaves me to return to the house. I slip on my overalls and take note

of my new quarters. Windows at both ends of the loft provide ample

ventilation. The cot is covered with a corn-husk mattress, as clean

and fresh as a cock of new hay. The very floor is free from dust.

The rafters hang thick with bunches of seed-corn on the cob, with

their outer husks removed and the inner husks drawn back and neatly

interwoven, the whole effect suggesting stalactites in a cave. The air

is fragrant with the perfume from slices of apples, that are closely

threaded and hung up to dry in graceful festoons from rafter to rafter.

Five minutes later I am at work at the pond. The pond is an artificial

one, created by a wooden dam. The water has been allowed to flow out,

and the old woodwork is to be renewed.

My immediate task is to dig a ditch along the outer side of the rotting

planks, so that they can be removed and replaced by new ones. I am

soon alone on the job, for the farmers' work calls them elsewhere.

The experience in the sewer-ditch at Middletown is all to my credit,

and my spirits rise with the discovery that I can handle my pick and

shovel more effectively, and with less sense of exhaustion. And then

the stint is my own, and no boss stands guard over me as a dishonest

workman. At least I am conscious of none, and I am working on merrily,

when suddenly I become aware of my employer bending over the ditch and

watching me intently.

It is a face very red with the heat and much bespattered with mud,

into which my tools sink gurglingly, that I turn up to him.

"How are you getting on?"

"Pretty well, thank you."

"You mustn't work too hard. All that I ask of a man is to work steady.

Have an apple?"

He is gone in a moment, and I stand in the ditch eating the apple with

immense relish, and thinking what a good sort that farmer is, and how

thoroughly he understands the principle of getting his best work out

of a man! He has appealed to my sense of honor by intrusting the job

to me, and now he has won me completely to his interests by showing

concern in mine.

The work is hard, and the morning hours are very long, but the

labor achieves its own satisfaction as the task grows under one's

self-directed effort, and there is no torture of body and soul in the

surveillance of a slave-driving boss.

But I am thoroughly tired and very hungry when Mr. Hill calls to me

from across the pond that it is time to go to dinner. I join him in

haste, and we walk up the lane together, while he drives his team

before him, and points out with evident pride the young colts and other

stock in the pasture.

On a bench near the door of the summer-kitchen are two tin basins

full of water, and there we wash ourselves, drawing by means of a

gourd-dipper from a brimming bucket near by any fresh supply of water

that we want. A coarse, clean towel hangs over a roller above the

bench, and at this we take our turns.

The dinner is a quiet meal, and tends to solemnity. Mrs. Hill and her

daughter sit opposite the farmer and me. Little is said, but for me

there is absorbing interest in the meal itself. It is worthy of the

best traditions of country life, clean in all its appointments to a

degree of spotlessness, really elegant in its quiet simplicity, and

appetizing?--how was I ever to stop eating those potatoes that spread

under the pressure of my fork into a mass of flaky deliciousness, or

the ears of sweet-corn fresh from a late field, or the green peas that

swim in a sweet stew of their own brewing, or, best of all, the little

pond pickerel that are grilled to a crisp brown turn?

In our more artificial forms of living we habitually eat when we are

not hungry, and drink when we are not thirsty, and we know little of

the sheer physical delight in meat and drink when our natures seize

joyously upon the means of life, and organs work in glad adaptation

to function, and the organism, in full revival, responds to its

environment!

The work moves uninterruptedly in the afternoon; and at six o'clock,

as I wearily drag my feet along the lane by the farmer's side, I can

see his daughter driving the cattle through the pasture to the cowyard,

and I wonder how I shall fare at the evening milking. But I am not

put to that test; for the farmer declines my offer of help, with the

explanation that, under our arrangement, my day's work is done at six

o'clock, and that he is not entitled to further help, nor does he need

it, he adds, for his wife and daughter always lend a hand at the chores.

Supper is almost a repetition of dinner, with a pitcher of rich milk

kindly pressed upon me when I decline the tea, and with apple-sauce and

cake in the place of pumpkin-pie. Soon after, I am lighting my way with

a lantern through the dark to my cot in the loft, and for ten hours

I sleep the sleep of a child, and awake at six in the morning to the

farmer's call of "John, hey John!" from under the window.

All of that day, which was Wednesday, was given to completing the work

on the dam. The necessary excavation was soon finished, and then we

laid the timbers, and nailed the new planks into place, and filled in

and packed the earth behind them. Over the completed job the farmer

expressed such a depth of satisfaction that I felt a glow of pride

in the work, and a sense of proprietorship, which was splendidly

compensating for the effort which it had cost.

The remaining three days of the week we spent in picking apples.

Behind the wagon-house was an orchard. Mr. Hill first selected a tree,

and then we placed under it the number of empty barrels, which, in

his judgment, corresponded to its yield, a judgment which was always

singularly accurate. Then, each supplied with a half-bushel basket

with a wooden hook attached to the handle, we next climbed among the

branches, and suspending our baskets, we carefully picked the apples

with a quick upward turn of the fruit, which detached them at the point

at which the stem was fast to the twig. Both baskets were usually full

at about the same moment, and then we took turns in climbing down and

receiving the baskets from the tree, and emptying the apples into the

barrels with great caution against possible bruising.

All this was Arcadian in its joyous simplicity. All day we moved among

the boughs, breathing the fragrance of ripened fruit and the mellow

odor of apple-trees turning at the touch of frost; picking ceaselessly

the full-juiced apples "sweetened with the summer light," while above

us white clouds fled briskly before the northwest wind across the

clear blue of the autumn sky; and below us lay the pasture, where the

patient cattle grazed, and beyond stretched open country of field and

forest, which, in that crystal air, met the horizon in a clean, sharp

line.

Mr. Hill and I were growing very chummy. A faint uncomfortable distrust

of me, which I suspected through the first two days, had wholly

disappeared. We talked with perfect freedom now and with a growing

liking for each other, which, for me, added vastly to the charm of

those six days on the farm.

I tried at first to lead the talk, and to draw Mr. Hill into

expressions of his views of life, that I might learn his attitude

toward modern progress, and catch glimpses of the growth of things from

his point of view. But Mr. Hill was proof against such promptings. He

was a shrewd, practical farmer, with a masterful hold upon all the

details of his enterprise, and with a mind quickened by thrifty conduct

of his own affairs to a catholic taste for information. His schooling

had been limited, he said, but he must have meant his actual school

training; for life itself had been his school, and admirably had he

improved its advantages. He was a trained observer and a close student

of actual events. Instead of my getting him to talk, he made me talk,

but with so natural a force as to rob it of all thought of compulsion.

The talk drifted early into politics, and I soon found that my

light-hearted generalizations would not pass muster. Back and back he

would press me upon the data of each induction, until I was forced to

tell what I knew, or was confronted with my ignorance.

And then he delighted in talk of other people than our own, and his

knowledge of a somewhat general contemporaneous history was curiously

varied and accurate. Stories of succeeding English ministries, and

even of the short-lived French cabinets, were ready to his use, and

he tactfully righted me in my errors. But he held me closest to my

memories of things among the common people, the agricultural laborers

in England, and their relation to the farmers, and theirs in turn to

the landed proprietors, and the promise which the land could give of

continued support to three classes, under the changed conditions of

modern life. All that I could remember of a typical laborer's home,

and of its manner of life, and of the general aspect of an English

farm, seemed only to whet his appetite, and to strengthen his demand

for what I knew of the continental peasantry. His interest centred

strongly in the French, and there was plainly a peculiar charm for

him in every detail which I could give of the French farmers, with

their small holdings, and their inherited habits of thrift, and of the

close culture of their lands. But he would even lead me on to speak

of great cities, and of the life in them of the rich and poor, and of

any signs, of which I knew, of growing social discontent. And with an

interest that never flagged, he questioned me on works of art; and

followed patiently, and with a zest that warmed one's own enthusiasm,

through endless churches, and long dim galleries, and by narrow,

crooked streets of a modern city to the ruins of its distant past. And

there we restored the crumbling piles, until there stood clear to his

imagination a vision of Imperial Rome, and his eyes kindled to some

great general's triumph moving through the _Via Sacra_, and the people

swarming to the very chimney-tops, their infants in their arms, and on

the air the deep, rich moving roar of high acclaim!

Sunday was the last day of my stay on the farm. When, in the middle

of the week, I found that Mr. Hill was likely to keep me, I was

conscience-stricken, because I had not told him that my stay would

be short. He said nothing at first in reply to my announcement, but

presently remarked that it was very hard to get men in that part of the

country.

"But, surely," I said, "more men apply to you for work than you can

possibly employ."

He looked at me with some wonder, at my ignorance.

"For a long time I have been looking for a man to help me," he said.

"I'm growing old, and I can't do the work that I once did. If I could

find the right man, I'd keep him the year round, and pay him good

wages. But the best young fellows go to the cities, and the rest are

mostly a worthless lot. There's hardly a day in the year when I haven't

a job for any decent man who'll ask for it. I have to go looking for

men, and then I generally can't find one that's any account."

This was much the longest speech that he had made to me so far, and a

very interesting one I thought it, and I am only sorry that I cannot

reproduce the exact phraseology, with its Anglo-Saxon words set, by an

instinctive choice, into rugged sentences which admirably expressed the

man. I waited hopefully for further speech from him, and at last it

came, quite of its own accord; for I had given up trying to draw him

out.

We were sitting together on Sunday evening on the platform of the

pump in front of the farm-house. It had been a very restful Sunday. In

the morning I went to the village church, where two services followed

each other in quick succession. The first was a prayer-meeting,

attended by a little company of farming people and village folk, who

conscientiously parted company at the door on the basis of sex, and sat

on opposite sides of a central aisle.

The service was a simple one. The leader read a passage from the

Bible, and offered prayer, and then gave out a hymn. When the singing

ceased, one after another, the older men, with nervous pauses between,

rose to "testify" or sank to their knees, and prayed aloud. I chiefly

remember one as a typical figure--an old man, whose thick white hair

mingled with a bushy beard that covered his face. I noticed him first

in comfortable possession of a bench along which he stretched his legs.

On his feet were loose carpet-slippers; and with his shoulders braced

against the wall, and his head thrown back, and his eyes closed, he

looked the vision of physical ease, which matched the expression of

deep contentment that he wore. There was no suspicion of sleep about

him. Most evidently he followed with liveliest sympathy every word that

was said or sung. I looked up presently at the sound of a new voice,

and found the old man on his feet. He was adding his "testimony" to

what had gone before, and was speaking rapidly in a deep, gruff voice

with blunt articulation. There was a strong reminder in the performance

of a school-boy's "speaking his piece;" the monotonous, unnatural tone;

the rapid flow of conventional, committed phrase; and the nervous

tension, which communicated itself to his hearers in a fear that he

might forget.

But there came at length, without calamity, the final "Pray for me

that I may be kept faithful," and then he knelt in prayer. Invocations

from the Prophets, and supplications from the Psalms, and glowing

exhortations from the Epistles, were interwoven with strangest

interpolations of his own, while his voice rose and fell in regular

cadences and he audibly caught his breath between. But he was losing

himself in his devotion, and presently his voice fell to a natural

tone, and his words grew plain and direct, as he held converse with

the Almighty about our common life--of sin and its awful guilt, of

temptation and its fateful trial, of suffering and its terrible

reality, of sorrow and its cruel mystery. Then, as though quickened

by the touch of truth, his faith rose on surer wings, and his prayer

breathed the sense of sin forgiven, and of life made strong by a power

not our own, and of hope exultant in the knowledge "of that new life

when sin shall be no more!"

A solemn stillness held us when he rose, and made us feel the presence

in our common lot of things divine and that deep sacredness of life

which awes us most.

A short preaching service followed. The preacher drove up on the hour

from another parish, and started off, at the meeting's end, for yet a

third appointment.

This is a long digression from Mr. Hill's talk of the evening, and

I have said nothing yet of the afternoon. We took chairs out on the

grass in front of the cottage, after dinner, and sat in the shade.

We soon had visitors. Mr. Hill's brother and his wife walked up from

the lower farm, and a little later there came Mr. Hill's son and his

young bride. The son is a physician, whose practice covers much of

that country-side; and it was interesting to me to learn that his

professional training was got at the College of Physicians and Surgeons

in New York.

Fearful of disturbing the family gathering, I drew off a little, and

gave my attention to a book. Late in the afternoon I was roused by

the coming of another guest. He was an old neighboring farmer out

in search of a heifer which had broken through the pasture-fence. As

he joined us he was speaking so swiftly and incoherently about the

heifer's escape that I felt some doubt of his sanity, but he quieted

down in a moment, and threw himself on the grass with the evident

purpose of resting before resuming the search. He was lying flat upon

his back, and his long bony fingers were clasped under his head. He

wore no hat, nor coat, nor waistcoat, and a dark gingham shirt lay

close to the sharp outlines of his almost fleshless body. Braces that

were patched with strings passed over his lean shoulders, and were

made fast to faded blue jeans, whose extremities were tucked into an

old pair of cowhide boots. A long white beard rested on his breast,

reaching almost to his waist. Only a thin fringe of hair remained above

his ears; and over the skull the bare skin was so tightly drawn that

you could almost trace the zigzagging junctures of the frontal and the

cranium bones.

But skeleton as he was, he was marvellously alive. His eyes were

aflame, and prone as he lay and resting, he impressed you as a man so

vitalized, that with a single movement he could be upon his feet and

in intense activity. He was talking on about the heifer, nervously

repeating to us, again and again, the details of where he had seen her

last, and the rift which he had found in the fence, and how he had sent

his hired man in one direction, and had gone in another himself.

He was a rich farmer, Mr. Hill told me afterward, and he lived alone,

except for an occasional hired man whom he could induce to stay with

him for a season. But even in his old age he worked on his farm

with the strength and endurance of three men, laying aside, year by

year, his store of gain. Without a single human tie he worked on as

though spurred by every claim of affection and the highest sense of

responsibility to provide for those whom he loved; and all the while a

vast misanthropy grew upon him, and he would see less and less of his

fellow-men, and an almost life-long scepticism hardened into downright

unbelief.

So far he had not noticed me; but now he turned my way, lifting himself

upon his elbow, and fixing his sunken, burning eyes on mine, while the

white hairs of his beard mingled with the blades of grass.

"You're hired out to Jim, ain't ye?"

Jim was his designation of Mr. Hill.

"Yes," I said.

"What's he payin' you?"

I told him.

Mr. Hill was squirming in nervous discomfort.

"What's your name?"

I gave it him.

"Where are you come from?"

"Connecticut."

"Connecticut? That's down South, ain't it?"

"No, that's down East."

"Was you raised there?"

I do not know into what particulars of my history and of my antecedents

this process might have forced me had not the heifer come to my relief.

She was a beautiful creature, with a clean sorrel coat, and wide,

liquid, mischievous eyes; and as she ran daintily over the turf at

the side of the lane, saucily tossing her head, you knew that she was

closely calculating every chance of dodging the gawky country boy who,

breathing hard, lunged after her.

Without a word of parting, and as abruptly as he came, the old man was

gone to head her off in the right direction at the mouth of the lane.

And so he disappeared, as strange a human being as the world holds,

living tremendously a life of strenuous endeavor, yet Godless and

hopeless and loveless in it all, except for the greedy love of gain,

which holds him in miserable bondage, as he works his life away.

It was soon after supper that Mr. Hill and I sat down together on the

platform of the pump. There was little movement in the air, and it was

very mild for the twenty-seventh of September. As the stars appeared,

they shone upon us through a mellow warmth, like that of summer, in

which they seem magically near, and one feels their calm companionship

in human things.

"And you've made up your mind to go in the morning?" Mr. Hill began.

"Yes," I said, "I must be off. I am truly sorry to go. But you surprise

me by what you tell me of the difficulty in the country of getting men

to work. One hears so much about 'the unemployed,' that any demand for

labor, which remains unsupplied, seems to me an anomalous condition."[A]

"That's a big question," he said, with a deep sigh, as he leant back

against the pump and looked at me out of blue eyes that were gray and

keen in the starlight. "It reminds me of what we used to call a hard

example in arithmetic in the district school when I was a boy. There's

a good many things you've got to take account of, if you work it out

right, and there's a good many chances of mistake, and a mistake goes

hard with your answer. I haven't worked this sum and I haven't seen it

worked, but I've studied it a good while, and I think I know how to do

parts of it."

He paused for a moment and then went on: "In the last hundred and

fifty years there have been great changes in the world in the ways of

producing things--'improved methods of production' the books call it.

Some say it ain't really 'improved,' only faster and cheaper, but I'm

not arguing that point. The power of people to produce the necessaries

of life is a big sight greater than it was a hundred and fifty years

ago--that's my point. It's what the books call 'increased power of

production.' And among civilized people there's been this increase of

producing power in about all the forms of production. In some forms

it's been very great, and in others not so great; but I guess there

ain't many kinds of business that haven't been changed by it.

"Now, I think that the farming business has lagged behind the

rest. Not that there ain't been improvement, for there's been

great improvement. There's the steam-ploughs, and the reapers, and

harvesters, and mowers, and the threshing-machines; and then there's

the science of agricultural chemistry. But I'm judging of what I know

of the farming business as it's carried on.

"Now, here's my farm: it's part of a tract that my great-grandfather

settled on and cleared. I've heard my grandfather tell many a time of

the Indians that were all about here when he was a boy, and even my

father often went hunting deer down on the lake this side of the woods.

"Well, I know this country pretty well, and I find that a farmer now

don't work any bigger farm than my grandfather did, nor the work isn't

much lighter, nor he doesn't get much more for it. There's been a

good many changes, but as the farming business goes, there ain't any

increased production that's kept up with other kinds of business when

you calculate how many farmers there are and how much they do.

"I read in a book the other day that twenty-five men, with modern

machinery, can produce as much cotton cloth as the whole population

of Lancashire could produce in the old way; but there ain't any

twenty-five men who could work the farms of this township with all the

modern farming machinery.

"Take it day in and day out the whole year round on the farms, and a

man's work or a team's work is pretty much what it was a hundred years

ago.

"And here's another thing that makes a great difference between

farming and other kinds of business. When I go to the city I most

generally visit some factory and go through it as carefully as I can.

The machinery is interesting and wonderful, and if it's something

useful they're making, I like to compare the productive power of the

factory hands with what it would be if they were all working separately

by the old methods. But besides this, there's the wonderful economy

that I see. The factory is built so as to save all the carting that's

possible, and there's men always studying how they can make it more

convenient, and can improve the machinery and cut down the costs.

And then I don't find any leakage anywhere that can be helped; and

it's most wonderful what they do in some kinds of manufacturing

with what you'd think was the very refuse, working it up into some

by-product that makes the difference between profit and loss in the

whole business. It's close culture of the closest kind applied to

manufacture.

"Sometimes I've had a chance to talk to a superintendent of a factory,

and he's told me about the business from the inside--how carefully

he must study the market and how closely he must calculate a hundred

things; and how exactly his books must be kept, and how easy it is for

a little thing that's been miscalculated or overlooked to ruin the

business.

"I tell you that I've come to see pretty clearly that the business

that pays in these times of competition is a powerful lucky one and

powerful well managed. When the year's work is done and the wages have

been paid, and the rent and the interest on the capital paid up, and

the salaries paid to the brains that run the thing, it's a remarkable

business that's got anything over in the way of profit.

"Now, the farming business, as I look at it, is a long way behind all

that. We don't know much about close culture in farming in America, and

I don't believe there's one farmer in five hundred that keeps books

and can tell you exactly where he stands; and these things we've got

to learn. It's terrible easy to let things go their own way pretty

much--until the fences are falling down and your buildings are out of

repair, and your tools are going to ruin with rust, and your children

are not having good advantages. You may think that you're too poor to

afford anything different and that it's economy to live so. But it

ain't; it's the worst kind of waste. It takes a sight of hard work,

brainwork, and handwork, too, to get good, substantial buildings and

fences, and tools and stock, and to keep them good and to raise your

children well. You've got to make a close calculation on every penny,

but it's the only true economy. The difference between the economy of

shabbiness and the economy of thrift is the difference between waste

and saving.

"My father could not give me much school learning, but he learnt me to

farm it thoroughly. I've been at it a good many years now, and I know

by experience the truth of what he taught me. If there's ever been

anything more than our living at the end of the year, it's only because

we all worked hard, my wife and daughter as hard in the house as me

and my son on the farm; and because we studied to raise the best of

everything we could, and to get the best prices we could, and we saved

every penny that could be saved.

"My son wanted to study to be a doctor when he was growing up, and so

I gave him the best schooling that he could get around here; and when

he was old enough, and I saw his mind was made up, I sent him to the

best medical college I could find. And I've given my daughter all the

schooling she's had the strength for. It's the best economy to get the

best, whether it's buildings, or tools, or stock, or education; and

there's a great deal more satisfaction in it besides. I tell you this

because it's my experience, and I know it, but I owe it mainly to the

raising my father gave me. It's hard work, and it's hard study, and

it's awful careful economy in little things as well as big, that makes

a man succeed in any business.

"You've heard the saying that 'the luxuries of one generation are the

necessities of the next.' That's certainly true in the country. I've

heard my grandfather say that when he was a boy it didn't take more

than ten dollars a year to pay for everything that the family bought.

All that they wore and ate and drank they raised on the farm, and they

built their own buildings, and made their own tools, mostly, and worked

out most of their taxes.

"I'm not saying that farmers must go back to that. It ain't possible.

It's every way better now to buy your cloth than to make it, and so

with your tools, and many other things; but when I see a farmer's

family spend in a year for clothes and feathers and finery as much as

ten families did for all they bought in the old days, and at the same

time their fences are falling and their stock suffering from neglect,

I see that these people don't know their business. And when I see a

farmer mortgage a piece of land to give his daughter a fashionable

wedding, and then complain that there ain't a living to be made any