FARMER OR PROFESSOR
AFTER leaving Rhode Island, Percy spent two days in and about
Boston, and then returned to Connecticut for a day. The weather had
turned cold; the ground had frozen and the falling snow reminded him
that it was the day before Thanksgiving.
From New London he took a night boat to New York, and then took
passage on a Coast Line vessel from New York to Norfolk.
The weather had cleared and the wind decreased until it was scarcely
greater than the speed of the ship.
Whether or not the dining room service was extraordinary because of
the day, Percy was soon convinced that the only way to travel was by
boat. He regretted only that his mother was not with him to enjoy
that day. For hours they coasted southward within easy view of the
New Jersey shore, dotted here and there with cities, towns, and
villages. Light houses marked the rocky points where danger once
lurked for the men of the sea.
The sea itself was of constant interest; and hundreds of craft were
passed or met. Here a full-rigged sailing vessel lazily drifting
with the wind; there a giant little tug puffing in the opposite
direction with a string of barges in tow loaded almost to the
water's edge.
Norfolk was reached early the next morning, and before noon Percy
passed through Petersburg on his way to Montplain. He changed cars
at Lynchburg and arrived at Montplain before dark. In accordance
with a promise to Mr. West he had notified him of his plans.
Would Adelaide met him, and if so would she have the family carriage
and again insist upon his riding in the rear seat? He had found
these questions in his mind repeatedly since he left New London,
with no very definite purpose before him except to arrive at
Montplain at the appointed time.
Yes, it was the family carriage. He saw the farm team tied across
the street from the depot. As he left the train he caught a glimpse
of Adelaide standing with the group of people who were waiting to
board the train. She extended her hand as he reached her side.
"Mr. Johnston, meet my cousin, Professor Barstow."
"I am glad to meet you, Professor," said Percy, as he shook hands
with a tall young man about his own age. Percy noted his handsome
face and gentlemanly bearing.
"Miss Adelaide calls me cousin," said Barstow, "because my aunt
married her uncle."
"Well, Sir, if we're not cousins, then I'm Miss West and not Miss
Adelaide. Is that too much for an absent-minded professor to
remember?"
"I am afraid it is," said Barstow, "and I am sure I would rather be
cousins."
"Professor Barstow leaves on this train," Adelaide explained to
Percy; "excuse me, please."
Percy raised his hat as he stepped back from the crowd and waited
for the parting of the two. He was sure that Barstow held her hand
longer than was necessary, and he also noticed that her face flushed
as she rejoined him after the train started.
"Will you take the rear seat?" she asked. as they reached the
carriage.
"If you so prefer."
"That seat is for our guests, so I don't prefer," came her reply,
which left Percy wholly in the dark as to her wishes.
"Then let me be your coachman rather than your guest."
"If you so prefer," she repeated, and without waiting for assistance
quickly mounted to the front seat, leaving him to occupy the
driver's seat beside her.
"Captain and Mrs. Stone of Montplain were with us for Thanksgiving
and I came with the carriage to take them home. Professor Barstow
has also been spending his Thanksgiving vacation visiting with
papa."
"Thank you," said Percy, as he took the lines and turned the horses
toward Westover.
"You are certainly welcome to drive this team if you enjoy it."
"I thank you for that also," said Percy. Adelaide noted the word
_also, _but she only remarked that she hoped he had enjoyed his
travels, though she could not understand what pleasure he could find
in visiting old worn-out farms.
"Of all things," she continued, "it seems to me that farming is the
last that anyone would want to undertake."
"It is both the first and the last," said Percy. "As you know, when
our ancestors came to America, agriculture was the first great
industry they were able to develop. Other industries and professions
follow agriculture and must be supported in large measure by the
agricultural industry. Merchants, lawyers, doctors and teachers are
in a sense agricultural parasites."
An hour before he would not have included teachers in this class;
for, next to the mother in the home, he felt that the teacher in the
school is the greatest necessity for the highest development of the
agricultural classes.
"Without agriculture," he continued, "America could never have been
developed, and, unless the prosperity of American agriculture can be
maintained, poverty is the only future for this great nation. The
soil is the greatest source of wealth, and it is the most permanent
form of wealth. The Secretary of Agriculture at Washington told me a
few days ago that eighty-six per cent. of the raw materials used in
all our manufacturing industry are produced from the soil.
"Yes, agriculture is certainly the first industry in this country;
and I am fully convinced that to restore the fertility of the
depleted soils of the East and South, and even to maintain the
productive power of the great agricultural regions of the West,
deserves and will require the best thought of the most influential
people of America.
"Throughout the length and breadth of this land, the almost
universal purpose of the farmers is to work the land for all they
can get with practically no thought of permanency. The most common
remark of the corn belt farmer is that his land doesn't show much
wear yet; and it is holding up pretty well, or as well as could be
expected; or that he thinks it will last as long as he does. All
recognize that the land cannot hold up under the systems of farming
that are being practiced, and these systems are essentially the same
as have been followed in America since 1607. What the Southern
farmer did with slave labor, the Western farmer is now doing with
the gang plow, the two-row cultivator, and the four-horse disks and
harrows. In addition he tile-drains his land which helps to insure
larger crops and more rapid soil depletion. He even uses clover as a
soil stimulant, and spreads the farm fertilizer as thinly as
possible with a machine made for the purpose in order to secure both
its plant food value and its stimulating effect. Positive soil
enrichment is practically unknown in the great corn belt.
"Robbery is a harsh word; and yet the farmers and landowners of
America are and always have been soil robbers; and they not only rob
the nation of the possibility of permanent prosperity, but they even
rob themselves of the very comforts of life in their old age and
their children and grandchildren of a rightful inheritance.
"Worse than all this, or at least more lamentable, is the fact that
it need not be. The soils of Virginia need not have become worn out
and abandoned; because the earth and the air are filled with the
elements of plant food that are essential to the restoration and
permanent maintenance of the high productive capacity of these
soils. Moreover there is more profit and greater prosperity for the
present landowner in a possible practicable system of positive soil
improvement than under any system which leads to ultimate depletion
and abandonment of the land.
"The profit in farming lies first of all in securing large crop
yields. It costs forty bushels of corn per acre in Illinois to raise
the crop and pay the rent for the land or interest and taxes on the
investment. With land worth $150 an acre, it will require $8 to pay
the interest and taxes. Another $8 will be required to raise the
crop and harvest and market it, even with very inadequate provision
made for maintaining the productive power of the soil, such as a
catch crop of clover, or a very light dressing of farm fertilizer. A
forty-bushel crop of corn at forty cents a bushel, which is about
the ten year average price for Illinois, would bring only $16 an
acre, and this would leave no profit whatever.
"A crop of fifty bushels would leave only ten bushels as profit;
but, if we could double the yield and thus produce a hundred bushels
per acre, the profit would not be doubled only, but it would be six
times as great as from the fifty bushel crop. In other words, 100
bushels of corn from one acre would yield practically the same
profit as fifty bushels per acre from six acres, simply because it
requires the first forty bushels from each acre to pay for the fixed
charges or regular expense.
"It is not the amount of crop the farmer handles, but the amount of
actual profit that determines his prosperity. It requires profit to
build the new home or repair the old one, to provide the home with
the comforts and conveniences that are now to be had in the country
as well as in the city; to send the boys and girls to college; to
provide for the expense of travel and the luxuries of the home."
Percy stopped himself with an apology.
"I hope you will pardon me, Miss West. I forget that this subject
may be of no interest to you, and I have completely monopolized the
conversation."
"I am glad you have told me so much," she replied. "I am deeply
interested in what you have been saying. I never realized that
agriculture could involve such very important questions in regard to
our national prosperity. I only know that our farm has furnished us
with a living but there has been very little of what you call
profit. We children could never have gone away to school except that
we were enabled to take advantage of some unusual opportunities. My
brother almost earned his expenses as commissary in a boarding club
at college. He felt that he could not come home for Thanksgiving
because he had a chance to earn something and I have missed him so
much. Most farmers get barely enough from their farms in these parts
to furnish them a modest living and pay their taxes."
"That reminds me of your statement that farming is the last thing
that you would expect anyone to undertake. In a large sense that is
in accordance with the history of all great agricultural countries.
After the great wave of easy spoilation of the land has passed, and
the farmers reach a condition under which they need most of what
they produce for their own consumption, the parasites are themselves
forced to produce their own food. The lands become divided into
smaller holdings and the agricultural inhabitants increase rapidly
in proportion to the urban population which must depend upon the
profits from secondary pursuits for a living. Thus ninety-five per
cent. of the three hundred million people of India belong
principally to the agricultural classes, and the farms of India
average about two to three acres in size. Farming there is in no
sense a profit-yielding business, but it is only a means of
existence. The people live upon what they raise, so far as they can,
although, as you must know, India is almost never free from famine.
In Russia, the situation is but little better, for famine follows if
the yield of wheat falls two bushels below the average. Special
agents of the Bureau of Statistics of the United States Department
of Agriculture report that at least one famine year occurs in each
five year period, and sometimes even two; that the famine years are
so frequent they are recognized as a permanent feature of Russian
agriculture."
"But couldn't those poor starving people do some other kind of work
and thus earn a better living?" asked Adelaide.
"No. Agriculture is the only hope," said Percy. "The soil is the
breast of Mother Earth, from which her children must always draw
their nourishment, or perish. It is the 'last thing,' as you truly
said. Aside from hunting and fishing, there is no source of food
except the soil, and, when this is insufficient for the people who
produce it in the country, God pity the poor people who live in the
cities. But let us not talk of this more. I ought not to have taken
up the time of our ride through this beautiful scenery with a
subject which tends always toward the serious. The leaves are all
gone in New England, but here they have only taken on their most
beautiful colors. 'What is so rare as a day in June?' could now well
be answered, 'a day in November in Piedmont, Virginia.'"
"Do you know if your father received a letter for me from the
chemist to whom I sent the soil samples?"
"Yes, it came in Wednesday's mail, and there is a letter from the
University of Illinois and two others that Grandma says must be from
a lady. Papa says he is anxious to know what results would be found
in the chemist's report. May I listen while you tell papa about it?
Indeed, I am extremely interested to know if anything can be done to
make our farm produce such crops as it used to when grandmother was
a little girl."
"Still I fear you will find it a very tiresome subject," said Percy.
"It is, as a rule, not an easy matter to adopt a system of permanent
improvement on land that has been depleted by a century or more of
exhaustive husbandry. but you will be very welcome not only to
listen but to counsel also. My mother can measure difficulties in
advance better than most men; and I believe it is true that women
will deliberately plan and follow a course involving greater
hardship and privation than men would undertake. I cannot conceive
of any man doing what my mother has done for me."
Adelaide glanced at Percy as he spoke of his mother. Something in
his words or voice seemed to reveal to her a depth of feeling, a
wealth of affection akin to reverence, such as she had never
recognized before.