THE STUDENT OF AGRICULTURE
Washington took great pains to inform himself concerning any subject in
which he was interested and hardly was he settled down to serious
farming before he was ordering from England "the best System now extant
of Agriculture," Shortly afterward he expressed a desire for a book
"lately published, done by various hands, but chiefly collected from the
papers of Mr. Hale. If this is known to be the best, pray send it, but
not if any other is in high esteem." Another time he inquires for a
small piece in octavo, "a new system of Agriculture, or a speedy way to
grow rich."
Among his papers are preserved long and detailed notes laboriously taken
from such works as Tull's _Horse-Hoeing Husbandry_, Duhamel's _A
Practical Treatise of Husbandry, The Farmer's Compleat Guide,_ Home's
_The Gentleman Farmer_, and volumes of Young's _Annals of Agriculture_.
The abstracts from the _Annals_ were taken after the Revolution and
probably before he became President, for the first volume did not appear
until 1784. From the handwriting it is evident that the digests of
Tull's and Duhamel's books were made before the Revolution and probably
about 1760. In the midst of the notes on chapter eight of the _Compleat
Guide_ there are evidences of a long hiatus in time--Mr. Fitzpatrick of
the manuscript division of the Library of Congress thinks perhaps as
much as eight or ten years. A vivid imagination can readily conceive
Washington's laying aside the task for the more important one of
vindicating the liberties of his countrymen and taking it up again only
when he had sheathed the sword. But all we can say is that for some
reason he dropped the work for a considerable time, the evidence being
that the later handwriting differs perceptibly from that which
precedes it.
As most of Washington's agricultural ideas were drawn from these books,
it is worth while for us to examine them. I have not been able to put my
hands on Washington's own copies, but in the library of the Department
of Agriculture I have examined the works of Tull, Duhamel and Young.
Tull's _Horse-Hoeing Husbandry_ was an epoch-making book in the history
of English agriculture. It was first published in 1731 and the third
edition, the one I have seen and probably the one that Washington
possessed, appeared in 1751. Possibly it was the small piece in octavo,
"a new system of Agriculture, or a speedy way to grow rich" concerning
which he wrote to his agent. It deals with a great variety of subjects,
such as of roots and leaves, of food of plants, of pasture, of plants,
of weeds, of turnips, of wheat, of smut, of blight, of St. Foin, of
lucerne, of ridges, of plows, of drill boxes, but its one great thesis
was the careful cultivation by plowing of such annuals as potatoes,
turnips, and wheat, crops which hitherto had been tended by hand or left
to fight their battle unaided after having once been planted.
Duhamel's book was the work of a Frenchman whose last name was Monceau.
It was based in part upon Tull's book, but contained many reflections
suggested by French experience as well as some additions made by the
English translator. The English translation appeared in 1759, the year
of Washington's marriage. It dealt with almost every aspect of
agriculture and stock raising, advocated horse-hoeing, had much to say
in favor of turnips, lucerne, clover and such crops, and contained
plates and descriptions of various plows, drills and other kinds of
implements. It also contained a detailed table of weather observations
for a considerable time, which may have given Washington the idea of
keeping his meteorological records.
Young's _Annals_ was an elaborate agricultural periodical not unlike in
some respects publications of this sort to-day except for its lack of
advertising. It contains records of a great variety of experiments in
both agriculture and stock raising, pictures and descriptions of plows,
machines for rooting up trees, and other implements and machines, plans
for the rotation of crops, and articles and essays by experimental
farmers of the day. Among its contributors were men of much eminence,
and we come upon articles by Mr. William Pitt on storing turnips, Mr.
William Pitt on deep plowing; George III himself contributed under the
pen name of "Ralph Robinson." The man who should follow its directions
even to-day would not in most matters go far wrong.
As one looks over these publications he realizes that the scientific
farmers of that day were discussing many problems and subjects that
still interest those of the present. The language is occasionally
quaint, but the principles set down are less often wrong than might be
supposed. To be sure, Tull denied that different plants require
different sorts of food and, notes Washington, "gives many unanswerable
Reasons to prove it," but he combats the notion that the soil ever
causes wheat to degenerate into rye. This he declares "as ridiculous as
it would be to say that an horse by feeding in a certain pasture will
degenerate into a Bull." And yet it is not difficult to discover farmers
to-day who will stubbornly argue that "wheat makes cheat." Tull also
advocated the idea that manure should be put on green and plowed under
in order to obtain anything like its full benefit, as well as many other
sound ideas that are still disregarded by many American farmers.
Washington eagerly studied the works that have been mentioned, and much
of his time when at Mount Vernon was devoted to experiments designed to
ascertain to what extent the principles that were sound in England could
be successfully applied in an American environment.