FORTY ACRES IN THE CORN BELT
PERCY JOHNSTON'S grandfather had gone west from "York State" and
secured from the federal government a 160-acre "Claim" of the rich
corn belt land. His father had received through inheritance only 40
acres of this; and, marrying his choice from the choir of the local
Lutheran congregation, he had farmed his forty and an adjoining
eighty acres, "rented on shares," for only three years, when he was
taken with pneumonia from exposure and overwork, and died within a
week.
Percy was scarcely a year old when his father was laid in the grave;
but to the sorrowing mother he was all that life held dear.
Existence seemed possible to her only because she could bestow upon
him her double affection, and because the double duties which she
took upon herself completely occupied her time.
She was not in immediate financial need, for her husband had been
able to put some money in the bank during the last year, after
having paid for his "outfit;" the forty-acre farm was free from
debt, but under the law it must remain the joint property of mother
and child for twenty years.
Wisely or unwisely she rejected every opportunity presented that
would have given Percy a stepfather. As daughter and wife she had
learned much of the art of agriculture, and, after some consultation
with a neighbor who seemed to be successful, she made her own plans.
In her make up, sentiment was balanced with sense. Even as a young
wife she had sometimes driven the mower or the self-binder to
"help-out," and she had found pleasure and health in such hours of
out-door life. "I can work and not overwork," she said to her
friends; and in any case the crops seemed to grow better under the
eye of the mistress.
Some years she employed a neighbor boy or girl, and always hired
such other help as she needed. Prices were sometimes low and crops
were not always good; and only widowed mothers can know the full
story of her labor, love and sacrifice. With Percy's help he was
sent to school and finally to the university, choosing for himself
the agricultural college, much to the surprise and disappointment of
his devoted mother.
"Why," she asked, "why should my son go to college to study
agriculture? Have you not studied farming in the practical school of
experience all your life? Surely we have done as much as could be
done on our own little farm; and you have also had the benefit of
the longer experience of our best farmers hereabout, and of the
accumulated wisdom of our ancestors. Oh, I had hoped and truly
believed that you would become interested in engineering, or in
medicine, or may be in the law. I cannot understand why you should
think of going to college to study farming. Surely you already know
more than the college professors do about agriculture."
Percy's mother had too much good sense to have raised a spoiled boy.
He had been taught to work and to think for himself. She loved her
boy far better than her own life,--loved as only a widowed mother
can who has risked her life for him, and who has given to him all
her thought and all her energy from the best twenty years of her own
life; but she had never let herself enjoy that kind of selfishness
which prompts a mother to do for her child what he should be taught
to do for himself. Despite his natural love of sport and the severe
trials he had often brought to her patience and perseverance during
his boyhood days, he had reached a development with the advance of
youth that satisfied her high ideal. His love and appreciation and
tender care for her repaid her every day, she told herself, for all
the years of watching, working, waiting. Never before had he
withstood her positive wish and final judgment.
And yet it was she who had told him that he alone must choose his
life work and his college course in preparation for that work; but,
after the years of toil, she had not dreamed that he would choose
the farm life.
"My darling boy," she continued, "it leads to nothing. This little
farm is poorer to-day than it was when your dear father and I came
here to live and labor. To be sure, the lower field still grows as
good or better crops than ever; but I can remember when that field
was so wet and swampy that it could not be cultivated, and it was in
the work of ditching and tiling that field," she sobbed, "that your
father took the sickness that caused his death."
Tears were in Percy's eyes as he put his arm about his mother and
wiped her tears away.
"But I must tell you what I know to be the truth," she went on
quickly. "The older fields that your grandfather cultivated are less
productive now than when he received them from our generous
government. Indeed, it was your father's plan to continue to farm
here only for a few years longer until he could save enough to
enable him, with what we could have gotten from the sale of our own
forty, to go farther west and purchase a large farm of virgin soil.
He realized, my Son, that even that part of his father's farm that
was first put under cultivation was becoming distinctly reduced in
productiveness. He remembered, too, the stories often repeated by
your grandfather of the run-down condition of the once exceedingly
fertile soils of the Mohawk Valley and other parts of New York
State.
"And you know, Percy, there were many Dutch farmers settled in New
York. They were probably the best farmers among all who came to
America from the Old World. I have heard your grandfather explain
their use of crop rotation, and they understood well the value of
clover and farm fertilizers. But with all of their skill and
knowledge, the land grew poor, and now the very farm upon which
Grandpa was born is not worth as much as the actual cost of the farm
buildings. I hope you will consider all of this. The farm life is so
unpromising for you, and there are such great opportunities for
success in other lines. Still I feel that you must decide this
question for yourself my Son, but tell me why you would choose the
life and work of a farmer?"