been more marked than in the swine, and while there are probably half
a score of breeds in the country, a look through the markets shows
that probably 90 per cent of them are of the three following breeds:
Poland-China (formerly called Magie), Berkshire, and Duroc or Jersey
Red; although it is quite possible that the Chester White might take
the third place. With the exception of the Berkshire, these may be
called distinctively American breeds, and even the Berkshire has been
so modified and improved as to almost lay claim to American origin. A
few other breeds are kept pure in this country, particularly the Essex,
Yorkshire, and Victorias; but they are bred to but a limited extent
and then for a special purpose. One thing that makes it easy and rapid
to improve swine is the fact that they mature so early, and that a new
cross may be made every year if desired. The writer, living in that
part of Miami Valley, in Ohio, where the Poland-China swine originated,
has seen, in a quarter of a century, these hogs change in form and
color and general characteristics, and these fixed so thoroughly that
they could be depended on to reproduce them. As this breed existed in
the fifties, they were coarse in form, mongrel in color, and slow in
maturing, requiring from eighteen months to two years to be made ready
for market. But to-day they are early maturing, can be put on the
market at six months of age, weighing from 200 to 250 pounds, and are
of uniform shape and color. They are still the leading breed throughout
the great corn belt of the United States, and the herd-books have
registered breeding stock to the number of many thousand.
The Berkshire hog was first introduced into this country in 1823, and
a second importation was made in 1832, but there was no systematic
breeding and care to preserve their purity, and grades were sold
for pure-bred until the breed fell into disrepute; but in 1865 new
importations were made of the finest animals to be found in England,
and the merits of the breed became universally known. Though called a
small breed, they are but little below the Poland-China in weight, and
grades from Berkshire males on large rangey sows will give the finest
possible hogs for the block; but these grades must not be used for
breeding, or the stock will deteriorate.
The American Chester White hog originated in Chester County,
Pennsylvania; but it is believed that there was an importation of
white hogs from England in 1818. The breed, until within less than a
quarter of a century, was coarse, large of bone, and slow of maturity,
and sometimes would attain enormous weight, nearly 1000 pounds; but in
the last quarter of a century they have been improved until they are a
close rival of the best breeds we have.
The Duroc-Jersey Red seems to be a distinctly American breed, having a
history dating back to 1824, but it is less than a half century since
they came into prominence, and the improvement made in them in that
time has put them near the front rank. One thing which caused their
rapid increase was the belief that they were proof against swine-plague
and hog-cholera, and they were boomed on that idea. But this did not
prove true, and our intelligent farmers have learned that it is not in
the breed but in the food and care that immunity from disease will be
found. These hogs are of a beautiful red color, and of good form. The
mothers are prolific and good nursers, and they mature early, making
the choicest of pig pork at an early age.
No other class of animals has been subject to so much foreign
competition or has figured to such an extent as a political factor
as the sheep, and this, for more than a generation past, has kept
the sheep industry fluctuating between a depression which destroyed
all profit and a boom which placed fictitious values on them, and
both extremes have worked harm to the industry. Yet through all these
changes, those who have recognized the intrinsic value of the sheep
and stuck to the work of improvement, have not only found the business
profitable but have prevented the deterioration of the animals which
threatened.
While swine are of no value until killed, the sheep gives two coupons
in a year, one in the fleece and the other in the increase, and the
breeder always has two distinct objects before him,—the production
of wool and mutton. The breeds of sheep are almost as dissimilar
as are horses from cattle, and some are suited for hot arid lands,
while others are adapted to the rich lowlands with their abundant
and succulent herbage. The most ancient of all breeds is the Merino;
and those who have studied this question trace its descent back in
direct line, probably, to the flocks of the patriarchs. For ages they
have been the clothers of mankind, first with the skin and later
with the fleece, and still they maintain a high, if not first, place
among different breeds. They have been wonderfully improved, but the
improvement has been along the line of increasing the value of the
fleece rather than the carcass, and it has been changed from an animal
that would produce two or three pounds of wool, and one which had bare
belly and legs, to one which produces a fleece from the hoofs to very
near the nose. It is within bounds to say the weight of the fleece has
been doubled.
With the long-wool breeds the improvement has been designed to develop
the carcass and mutton qualities rather than the wool, and of these the
two typical breeds are the Shropshire and Cotswold. Probably the best
mutton lambs that are produced in this country are from the Shropshire
rams and Merino ewes. The representative Cotswold is of majestic port
and large size. The wool is curly, long, and lustrous; not dry and
harsh to the touch, and has but a slight amount of yolk; at maturity it
ought to be eight inches long. The fleece averages six or seven pounds.
IV. IMPROVEMENT IN FARMING METHODS.
[Illustration: MERINO SHEEP.]
The improvement of methods on the farm has been discussed to some
extent in speaking of implements and stock, as their use involves
better methods; but there are other points worthy of notice. One
of the most important of these is drainage. The first attempts to
remove surface water from farm-land were by the construction of open
ditches; but as these had to follow the natural water-courses which
often zigzagged through the fields, they were objectionable, not only
because of making bad shaped lands to plow and cultivate, but also
because they caused a waste of land, and usually had to be bridged to
be crossed with the wagons. Other objections to them were that they
produced crops of weeds to give trouble in the fields, and there was
a constant tendency to fill up, which soon impaired their usefulness;
or, if kept cleaned out, it had to be done at heavy expense. The first
attempt at underdrains, or “blind ditches,” as they were called, was by
making an underground water-way with stone or timber; but both these
materials were found objectionable, because such drains were easily
damaged by the action of craw-fish and rarely continued to do good work
for more than a few years. It was after the middle of the century that
drain tiles made of burnt clay were introduced, resembling good hard
brick in material; but the first drains laid were usually with tiles
of too small caliber, two-inch being largely used, which were not only
easily choked but failed to carry the water off rapidly enough in a
wet time. Large sections of many of our States were originally swampy
and so nearly level as to make it necessary to construct open ditches,
almost like canals, as an outlet for the water flowing into them from
the drains. These could not, of course, be constructed by individuals,
as no man had a right to go on his neighbor’s land to open a ditch for
this purpose; so, in many cases, this was made a matter of legislation,
and the large open ditches were built by taxation equitably levied on
the lands. By this means the farmers were enabled to thoroughly drain
large areas of country which otherwise would have been nearly worthless
for agricultural purposes. In some instances the earth taken from these
large ditches was graded up several feet high at the side, and on the
top of this levee a turnpike road was constructed, thus giving a double
benefit from a single operation. The first draining of farms was in the
wet spots where, usually, a single line of tiles, laid for a moderate
distance, would bring the parts of the field under cultivation that
otherwise would be waste; but gradually the farmers learned that there
were other valuable effects from drainage, and that most heavy clay
lands would be benefited by it sufficiently to justify the expense.
The following incidental advantages have been learned: first, drainage
deepens the soil; second, it prevents the killing out of grass and
grains during a wet season; third, it makes the land warmer; fourth,
it improves the texture of the soil and makes it possible to work and
plant it earlier in the spring; fifth, it prevents washing and waste
of manure; sixth, it often prevents failure of crops in excessively
wet seasons, and enables them to endure drought better in dry seasons.
Although drainage is expensive it is a permanent improvement, and in
many cases the increase of the wheat crop in a single year has defrayed
the expense of tilling the land.
Another improvement, which seems to be the opposite of this, is the
irrigation of arid lands in those parts of the country where the
annual rainfall is small and every summer brings a drought. In these
cases, water stored in large natural or artificial reservoirs, or that
furnished by snow melting on the mountains, is utilized to carry the
crops through the dry season and to enable the farmer to grow large
crops where nothing could be produced without this aid.
[Illustration: DOUBLE CORN PLANTER.]
Perhaps in no other line have the methods changed for the better more
than in the care of domestic animals, and this includes both shelter
and feeding. In the first half of the century, cattle and hogs were
usually exposed to the severe weather of the winter with no other
shelter than that afforded by a straw-stack, and this often was found
leveled to the ground by the first of March, leaving them entirely
without shelter at that changeable season of the year. They were
allowed at all seasons to roam over the farm and gather their own
living, and were turned into the cornfields as soon as the ears were
removed, where they lived well as long as the stalk pasture lasted,
after which they depended on straw for food until spring; and it was
common to have the cattle so poor, as spring approached, that many
died of actual starvation, while others became so feeble that they
would have to be lifted to help them on their feet. Then the stables
for horses were constructed apparently with the idea that ventilation
was the chief thing, and the horses stood and shivered in their stalls
from the drafts that blew through the sides of the barn and up through
the floors of their stalls. Gradually these things have changed, until
the larger part of farm stock is warmly sheltered, and well fed with a
variety of food. Succulent food is now largely furnished from ensilage
preserved in silos, from beets and other roots grown and stored for
winter use, and, more recently, from sorghum, which has been found to
retain its succulence and sweetness during the entire winter. Farmers
have learned what is meant by a balanced ration, which is a combination
of foods that will give the proper proportion of heat and fat producers
with those which make bone and muscle, and that it means both health
and economy to substitute to a certain extent bran and oil meal for
corn, and clover hay for hay made from the grasses, and straw.
[Illustration: HAND GARDEN PLOW.]
Another great improvement has been along the line of fencing; and, in
this respect, the most economical step of all has been in reducing the
amount of division fence on the farm, keeping only a portion of it
divided into fields for pasture, and leaving half or more of the best
parts to be cultivated in a single inclosure on which stock is never
turned. In most States, laws have been passed obliging each farmer
to fence in his own stock, and no one is compelled to fence out his
neighbor’s. The substitution of wire for wood as a fencing material has
reduced the cost of fence construction about one half, and the waste of
land occupied by fences is reduced in about the same proportion.
V. IMPROVEMENT IN AND AROUND THE HOME.
The change in this direction in a single generation has been most
marked, and is one of the surest signs of prosperity. The log cabin has
given place to a substantial and, in many cases, an elegant home. The
irregular and ill-shaped yards, fenced with rails, which surrounded
both house and barn, and in which hogs and cattle were kept, with
no shelter but a rail pen with straw roof, have disappeared, and
rectangular lots enclosed with neat fences and good barns and piggeries
have taken their place. The wood-pile has retired from the front yard,
and is now sheltered in a woodshed adjoining the kitchen; and a neat
lawn with flowers and shrubbery is no longer the exception, but the
rule. A good garden, in which the newer and improved vegetables have
taken the place of the old sorts, and a berry patch, well cared for,
afford the luxuries which they alone can give for a period of many
weeks each season. The water is no longer carried from a remote spring,
but good wells and cisterns are placed conveniently, many of them so
that the pump is in the kitchen or under a porch attached to the house.
The cellar is usually floored with cement, and the stairs leading to
it are of easy grade; while good walks of plank or cement make it a
pleasure to pass from the house to the surrounding outbuildings.
Another line in which very great improvement is shown is in maintaining
the fertility of the soil. The old method was to exhaust the fertility
of a field and then clear a new one; and it is doubtful if one farmer
in a hundred could have answered the question, “Why does land become
sterile after long cultivation?” for they had no conception of what
the chemical elements of the soil were which are necessary to its
fertility. There are two theories of fertilizing and fertility: one,
that the soil is a mine to be worked out, and which will inevitably
become unproductive in the process; the other, that it is a laboratory
in which, under the intelligent management of man, forces can be set at
work which will maintain and develop a perpetual fertility. Malthus,
more than a century ago, announced that the time would come before long
when the people of the earth would starve because they had outgrown
the fertility of the soil and its productive capacity; but after long
cultivation, we find it possible to produce on less than half the
cultivatable land enough not only to feed our own nation, but the
world at large, and there is no questioning the accurateness of the
laboratory theory as opposed to the mine theory.
The first improvement along this line was in the better saving and
utilizing of animal manures; but when it was found that these were
insufficient, science came to the help of the farmer. The chemist
analyzed both crop and soils, ascertaining what was needed, and then
the world was searched for the materials necessary. The elements which
formed our plants were found to be fifteen in number, but of these
it was found that it was necessary to furnish only three,—nitrogen,
phosphoric acid, and potash. Nitrogen was known to exist in
inexhaustible quantities in the atmosphere, forming seventy-six per
cent of its composition; but the question was long unsolved: “Can
growing plants appropriate atmospheric nitrogen?” Finally, it was
discovered that plants of the Leguminosæ family—of which clover
is the best type and of greatest value for this purpose to the
farmer—could appropriate nitrogen from the atmosphere; and after
careful research, with the aid of the microscope, it was discovered
that this appropriation came about through the agency of bacteria
in the roots. This fact connected with the clover plant is one of
immense importance to the farmer, because nitrogen is not only the most
expensive element of fertility to purchase, but is likely to be lost
both through evaporation and leaching. So it can be seen that clover is
one of the most valuable plants which can be grown on the farm, for
the reason that the crop can be utilized as food for stock, while still
great benefit inures to the soil, as the fertility is largely stored in
the roots, which cannot be used for any other purpose, and as by the
action of these roots the mechanical condition of the soil is greatly
improved. Further, the dense shade the plant affords induces chemical
action in the soil, which makes plant food available that would
otherwise remain inert. One of the most wonderful things connected with
fertility is that God has so locked it up in the earth that no greedy
generation can exhaust it, and that the greatest source of fertility is
the atmosphere, whose secrets are just being discovered.
An English scientist has recently announced that by the aid of
electricity, furnished by cheap water-power, nitrates can be
manufactured directly from the atmosphere so as to reduce their cost
to less than one fourth what it has heretofore been. Again, the
intelligent use of clover will enable the farmer to produce his own
nitrogen and reduce the cost of chemical fertilizers to one half what
it usually is when containing nitrogen. This brings us to the question
of commercial fertilizers. With the single exception of guano, they are
a product of the last third of the century. The first step toward the
use of commercial fertilizers was by analyzing our barnyard manures.
When the chemist discovered that a ton or more which the farmer drew
out laboriously with two horses to the field contained but twenty
or thirty pounds of actual plant food,—the remainder being water,
sand, and other dead matter,—the next step was to combine the three
elements essential to a perfect fertilizer in such proportions that a
single sack would hold enough manure for an acre of ground; and in tens
of thousands of cases, the application of this amount of fertilizer
has increased the wheat crop from five to fifteen bushels per acre,
doubling the grass crop which followed, which in turn, and through
the influence of the fertilizer, formed a sward which, by its decay,
fertilized a third crop when it was turned under in the rotation.
The element in fertilizers of next importance to nitrogen is phosphoric
acid, and the first source from which this was obtained was the bones
of animals. But the supply from animals slaughtered was entirely
insufficient; and so the great plains of the West were gleaned, and
tens of thousands of tons of buffalo bones were gathered and shipped
East to fertilize our farms. But soon this source began to wane; then
two other sources, practically inexhaustible, of this indispensable
element were discovered,—the phosphate rocks of the South and the
iron slag from furnaces, each of which is found to contain a large per
cent of phosphoric acid; and when the rock is dissolved by acids and
the slag ground to an impalpable powder by machinery, the fertilizing
elements in both are found to be as available and valuable as that from
bones. The supply of potash was obtained at first from wood ashes,
which the clearing of the farms and the universal use of wood as fuel
made abundant. But later, when these sources were no longer sufficient,
potash salts were found in large quantities where they could be mined
from the earth, so that now there seems to be in sight an inexhaustible
supply of the elements needed for plant food. Like almost every reform,
the use of commercial fertilizers was opposed bitterly by many farmers,
and statements were made by them that their effects on the soil were
like those of whiskey or other stimulants on the body, and that the
ultimate result of their use would be that the soil would become
barren. Many refused, to use them at all; others, after a single trial
made without intelligence, denounced them as humbugs. But as they
saw on the farms of their neighbors the wonderful results from their
use, they have been gradually led to adopt them, until now, with most
farmers, the question no longer is, “Can I afford to use commercial
fertilizers?” but rather, “Can I afford to do without them?”
VI. IMPROVEMENT IN AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION.
To one who has followed the writer to this point, it must be apparent
that the farmer of to-day has made progress in the knowledge of
his calling to at least as great an extent as he has improved in
his methods, and that the terms “farm drudge” and “clodhopper” are
misapplied and should be obsolete. There is no other industrial calling
in which one touches nature and science at so many points, or which
gives such good opportunities to develop the perfect man,—“the sound
mind in the sound body,”—as that of the farmer. Admitting that not
all farmers understand this and live up to their privileges, does not
alter the fact that the farm offers a great opportunity to develop and
broaden the mind; that the last quarter of the century has brought into
active operation forces which have touched and influenced a large per
cent of the tillers of the soil; and that the leaven of education is
working mightily. The intelligent, studious farmer becomes a practical
botanist as he studies the growth and habits of plants. As he is
dependent more than any other man upon the weather and must change
his plans frequently to correspond with climatic changes, he becomes
a meteorologist. Myriads of insects, which include both enemies and
friends, make him a student of entomology; and the wonderful alchemy
of the soil by which offensive and poisonous matters are transmuted
into golden grain, luscious fruits, vegetables, and flowers, calls for
a knowledge of chemistry. The use of modern machinery develops his
mechanical powers; and the man on the farm develops in more directions
and has an opportunity to acquire a broader education than any other
man who earns his living by his own labor. To sustain this statement,
it is only necessary to enumerate the educational opportunities and
privileges now open to the farmer and which are, to a great extent,
utilized by him. First, what the government is doing for him. No
other calling is represented in the cabinet of the President, and
time and experience have demonstrated the wisdom of a Secretary of
Agriculture. Not only are we distinctively an agricultural people,
but the prosperity of the nation depends on the intelligence and
prosperity of the farmer more than on all other classes combined. Not
only must the food supply of our people be furnished, but the foreign
demand must be met; and this gives to the farmers money to spend, so
that the industries which contribute to their wants shall share in the
general prosperity. While there are many honorable and useful callings,
agriculture seems to be the only one which touches and affects all
others. The financial importance of agriculture is shown by the fact
that, after the wants of the nation were supplied, in the year 1897 we
exported in round numbers $690,000,000 worth of agricultural products,
or nearly 67 per cent of the entire exports; and notwithstanding an
enormous increase of imports of wool and sugar, in anticipation of
increased duties, the balance of trade on agricultural products for
the year was $289,000,000, and the export of agricultural products for
the current fiscal year would show still larger figures.