CONSERVING THE SOIL
The Revolution rudely interrupted Washington's farming experiments, and
for eight long years he was so actively engaged in the grim business of
checkmating Howe and Clinton and Cornwallis that he could give little
time or thought to agriculture. For more than six years, in fact, he did
not once set foot upon his beloved fields and heard of his crops, his
servants and his live stock only from family visitors to his camps or
through the pages of his manager's letters.
Peace at last brought him release. He had left Mount Vernon a simple
country gentleman; he came back to it one of the most famous men in the
world. He wasted no time in contemplating his laurels, but at once threw
himself with renewed enthusiasm into his old occupation. His observation
of northern agriculture and conversations with other farmers had
broadened his views and he was more than ever progressive. He was now
thoroughly convinced of the great desirability of grass and stock for
conserving the soil and he was also wide awake to the need of better
tools and methods and wished to make his estate beautiful as well
as useful.
Much of his energy in 1784-85 was devoted to rebuilding his house and
improving his grounds, and to his trip to his Ohio lands--all of which
are described elsewhere. No diary exists for 1784 except that of the
trip to the Ohio, but from the diary of 1785 we learn that he found time
to experiment with plaster of Paris and powdered stone as fertilizers,
to sow clover, orchard grass, guinea grass and peas and to borrow a scow
with which to raise rich mud from the bed of the Potomac.
The growing poverty of his soil, in fact, was a subject to which he gave
much attention. He made use of manure when possible, but the supply of
this was limited and commercial fertilizers were unknown. As already
indicated, he was beginning the use of clover and other grasses, but he
was anxious to build up the soil more rapidly and the Potomac muck
seemed to him a possible answer to the problem. There was, as he said,
"an inexhaustible fund" of it, but the task of getting it on the land
was a heavy one. Having heard of a horse-power dredge called the
_Hippopotamus_ that was in use on the Delaware River, he made inquiries
concerning it but feared that it would not serve his purpose, as he
would have to go from one hundred to eight hundred or a thousand yards
from high water-mark for the mud--too far out for a horse to be
available. Mechanical difficulties and the cost of getting up the mud
proved too great for him--as they have proved too great even down to the
present--but he never gave up the idea and from time to time tried
experiments with small plots of ground that had been covered with the
mud. His enthusiasm on the subject was so great that Noah Webster, of
dictionary fame, who visited him in this period, says that the standing
toast at Mount Vernon was "Success to the mud!"
Every scientific agriculturist knows that erosion is one of the chief
causes of loss in soil fertility and that in the basins and deltas of
streams and rivers there is going to waste enough muck to make all of
our land rich. But the cost of getting this fertility back to the soil
has thus far proved too great for us to undertake the task of
restoration. It is conceivable, however, that the time may come when we
shall undertake the work in earnest and then the dream of Washington
will be realized.
The spring and summer of 1785 proved excessively dry, and the crops
suffered, as they always do in times of drought. The wheat yield was
poor and chinch bugs attacked the corn in such myriads that our Farmer
found "hundreds of them & their young under the blades and at the lower
joints of the Stock." By the middle of August "Nature had put on a
melancholy look." The corn was "_fired_ in most places to the Ear, with
little appearance of yielding if Rain should now come & a certainty of
making nothing if it did not."
Like millions of anxious farmers before and after him, he watched
eagerly for the rain that came not. He records in his diary that on
August 17th a good deal of rain fell far up the river, but as for his
fields--it tantalizingly passed by on the other side, and "not enough
fell here to wet a handkerchief." On the eighteenth, nineteenth and
twenty-second clouds and thunder and lightning again awakened hopes but
only slight sprinkles resulted. On the twenty-seventh nature at last
relented and, to his great satisfaction, there was a generous downpour.
The rain was beneficial to about a thousand grains of Cape of Good Hope
wheat that Washington had just sown and by the thirty-first he was able
to note that it was coming up. For several years thereafter he
experimented with this wheat. He found that it grew up very rank and
tried cutting some of it back. But the variety was not well adapted to
Virginia and ultimately he gave it up.
In this period he also tried Siberian wheat, put marl on sixteen square
rods of meadow[4], plowed under rye, and experimented with oats,
carrots, Eastern Shore peas, supposed to be strengthening to land, also
rib grass, burnet and various other things. He planted potatoes both
with and without manure and noted carefully the difference in yields. At
this time he favored planting corn in rows about ten feet apart, with
rows of potatoes, carrots, or peas between. He noted down that his
experience showed that corn ought to be planted not later than May
15th, preferably by the tenth or perhaps even as early as the first, in
which his practice would not differ much from that of to-day. But he
came to an erroneous conclusion when he decided that wheat ought to be
sown in August or at the latter end of July, for this was playing into
the hands of his enemy, the Hessian fly, which is particularly
destructive to early sown wheat. Later he seems to have changed his mind
on that point, for near the end of his life he instructed his manager to
get the wheat in by September 10th. Another custom which he was
advocating was that of fall and winter plowing and he had as much of it
done as time and weather would permit. All of his experiments in this
period were painstakingly set down and he even took the trouble in 1786
to index his agricultural notes and observations for that year.
[4] "On sixteen square rod of ground in my lower pasture, I put 140
Bushels of what we call Marle viz on 4 of these, No. Wt. corner were
placed 50 bushels--on 4 others So. Wt. corner 30 bushels--on 4 others
So. Et. corner 40 bushels--and on the remaining 4-20 bushels. This Marle
was spread on the rods in these proportions--to try first whether what
we have denominated to be Marie possesses any virtue as manure--and
secondly--if it does, the quantity proper for an acre." His ultimate
conclusion was that marl was of little benefit to land such as he owned
at Mount Vernon.
Many of his experiments were made in what he called his "Botanical
Garden," a plot of ground lying between the flower garden and the
spinner's house. But he had experimental plots on most or all of his
plantations, and each day as he made the rounds of his estate on
horseback he would examine how his plants were growing or would start
new experiments.
The record of failures is, of course, much greater than of successes,
but that is the experience of every scientific farmer or horticulturist
who ventures out of the beaten path. Even Burbank, the wizard, has his
failures--and many of them.
One of Washington's successes was what he called a "barrel plough." At
that time all seed, such as corn, wheat and oats had to be sown or
dropped by hand and then covered with a harrow or a hoe or something of
the kind. Washington tried to make a machine that would do the work more
expeditiously and succeeded, though it should be said that his plans
were not altogether original with him, as there was a plan for such a
machine in Duhamel and another was published by Arthur Young about this
time in the _Annals of Agriculture_, which Washington was now perusing
with much attention. Richard Peters also sent yet another plan.
Washington's drill, as we should call it to-day, consisted of a barrel
or hollow cylinder of wood mounted upon a wheeled plow and so arranged
that as the plow moved forward the barrel turned. In the barrel, holes
were cut or burnt through which the corn or other seed could drop into
tubes that ran down to the ground. By decreasing or increasing the
number of holes the grain could be planted thicker or thinner as
desired. To prevent the holes from choking up he found it expedient to
make them larger on the outside than on the inside, and he also found
that the machine worked better if the barrel was not kept too full of
seed. Behind the drills ran a light harrow or drag which covered the
seed, though in rough ground it was necessary to have a man follow after
with a hoe to assist the process. A string was fastened to this harrow
by which it could be lifted around when turning at the ends of the rows,
the drill itself being managed by a pair of handles.
Washington wrote to a friend that the drill would not "work to good
effect in land that is very full either of stumps, stones, or large
clods; but, where the ground is tolerably free from these and in good
tilth, and particularly in light land, I am certain you will find it
equal to your most sanguine expectation, for Indian corn, wheat, barley,
pease, or any other tolerably round grain, that you may wish to sow or
plant in this manner. I have sown oats very well with it, which is among
the most inconvenient and unfit grains for this machine.... A small bag,
containing about a peck of the seed you are sowing, is hung to the nails
on the right handle, and with a small tin cup the barrel is replenished
with convenience, whenever it is necessary, without loss of time, or
waiting to come up with the seed-bag at the end of the row."
As Washington says, the drill would probably work well under ideal
conditions, but there were features of it that would incline, I have no
doubt, to make its operator swear at times. There was a leather band
that ran about the barrel with holes corresponding to those in the
barrel, the purpose of the band being to prevent the seeds issuing out
of more than one hole at the same time. This band had to be "slackened
or braced" according to the influence of the atmosphere upon the
leather, and sometimes the holes in the band tended to gape and admit
seed between the band and the barrel, in which case Washington found it
expedient to rivet "a piece of sheet tin, copper, or brass, the width of
the band, and about four inches long, with a hole through it, the size
of the one in the leather."
Washington was, however, very proud of the drill, and it must have
worked fairly well, for he was not the man to continue to use a
worthless implement simply because he had made it. He even used it to
sow very small seed. In the summer of 1786 he records: "Having fixed a
Roller to the tale of my drill plow, & a brush between it and the
barrel, I sent it to Muddy Hole & sowed turnips in the intervals
of corn[5]."
[5] Another passage from his papers in which he mentions using his drill
plow is also illustrative of the emphasis he placed upon having the seed
bed for a crop properly prepared. The passage describes his sowing some
spring wheat and is as follows: "12th [of April, 1785].--Sowed sixteen
acres of Siberian wheat, with eighteen quarts, in rows between corn,
eight feet apart. This ground had been prepared in the following manner:
1. A single furrow; 2. another in the same to deepen it; 3. four furrows
to throw the earth back into the two first, which made ridges of five
furrows. These, being done some time ago, and the sowing retarded by
frequent rains, had got hard; therefore, 4. before the seed was sown,
these ridges were split again by running twice in the middle of them,
both times in the same furrow; 5. after which the ridges were harrowed;
and, 6. where the ground was lumpy, run a spiked roller with a harrow at
the tail of it, which was found very efficacious in breaking the clods
and pulverizing the earth, and would have done it perfectly, if there
had not been too much moisture remaining from the late rains. After
this, harrowing and rolling were necessary, the wheat was sown with the
drill plough on the reduced ridges eight feet apart, as above mentioned,
and harrowed in with the small harrow belonging to the plough. But it
should have been observed, that, after the ridges were split by the
middle double furrows, and before they were closed again by the harrow,
a little manure was sprinkled in."
No man better understood the value of good clean seed than did he, but
he had much trouble in satisfying his desires in this respect. Often the
seed he bought was foul with weed seeds, and at other times it would not
grow at all. Once he mentions having set the women and "weak hands" to
work picking wild onions out of some Eastern Shore oats that he
had bought.
He advocated planting the largest and finest potatoes instead of the
little ones, as some farmers out of false ideas of economy still make
the mistake of doing, and he followed the same principle that "the best
will produce the best" in selecting all seed.
He also appreciated the importance of getting just the right stand of
grain--not too many plants and not too few--upon his fields and
conducted investigations along this line. He laboriously calculated the
number of seed in a pound Troy of various seeds and ascertained, for
example, that the number of red clover was 71,000, of timothy 298,000,
of "New River Grass" 844,800 and of barley 8,925. Knowing these facts,
he was able to calculate how much ought to be sowed of a given seed
to the acre.
The spectacle of the former Commander of the Armies of a Continent
engaging in such minute labor is ridiculous or sublime, according to the
viewpoint!
In the spring of the year that he helped to frame the Federal
Constitution he "Sowed the squares No. 2 & 4 at this place [Dogue Run]
with oats in the following manner--viz--the East half of No. 2 with
half a Bushel of Oats from George Town--and the west half with a Bushel
of Poland Oats--The east half of No. 4 with half a bushel of the Poland
Oats and the west half with a bushel of the George Town Oats. The
objects, and design of this experiment, was to ascertn. 3 things--1st.
which of these two kinds of Oats were best the George Town (which was a
good kind of the common Oats)--2d. whether two or four bushels to the
Acre was best--and 3d. the difference between ground dunged at the Rate
of 5 load or 200 bushels to the Acre and ground undunged."
This experiment is typical of a great many others and it resulted, of
course, in better yields on the manured ground and showed that two
bushels of seed were preferable to four. But if he ever set down the
result of the experiment as regards the varieties, the passage has
escaped me.
While at Fredericksburg this year visiting his mother and his sister
Betty Lewis he learned of an interesting method of raising potatoes
under straw and wrote down the details in his diary. A little later when
attending the Federal Convention he kept his eyes and ears open for
agricultural information. He learned how the Pennsylvanians cultivated
buckwheat and visited the farm of a certain Jones, who was getting good
results from the use of plaster of Paris. With his usual interest in
labor-saving machinery he inspected at Benjamin Franklin's a sort of
ironing machine called a mangle, "well calculated," he thought, "for
Table cloths & such articles as have not pleats & irregular foldings &
would be very useful in large families."
This year he had in wheat seven hundred acres, in grass five hundred
eighty acres, in oats four hundred acres, in corn seven hundred acres,
with several hundred more in buckwheat, barley, potatoes, peas, beans
and turnips.
In 1788 he raised one thousand eighty-eight bushels of potatoes on one
plantation, but they were not dug till December and in consequence some
were badly injured by the frost. An experiment that year was one of
transplanting carrots between rows of corn and it was not successful.
He worked hard in these years, but, as many another industrious farmer
has discovered, he found that he could do little unless nature smiled
and fickle nature persisted in frowning. In 1785 the rain seemed to
forget how to fall, and in 1786 how to stop falling. Some crops failed
or were very short and soon he was so hard up that he was anxious to
sell some lands or negroes to meet debts coming due. In February, 1786,
in sending fifteen guineas to his mother, he wrote:
"I have now demands upon me for more than £500, three hundred and forty
odd of which is due for the tax of 1786; and I know not where or when I
shall receive one shilling with which to pay it. In the last two years I
made no crops. In the first I was obliged to buy corn, and this year
have none to sell, and my wheat is so bad I can neither eat it myself
nor sell it to others, and tobacco I make none. Those who owe me money
cannot or will not pay it without suits, and to sue is to do nothing;
whilst my expenses, not from any extravagance, or an inclination on my
part to live splendidly, but for the absolute support of my family and
the visitors who are constantly here, are exceedingly high."
To bad crops were joined bad conditions throughout the country
generally. The government of the Confederation was dying of inanition,
America was flooded with depreciated currency, both state and
Continental. In western Massachusetts a rebellion broke out, the rebels
being largely discouraged debtors. A state of chaos seemed imminent and
would have resulted had not the Federal Convention, of which Washington
was a member, created a new government. Ultimately this government
brought order and financial stability, but all this took time and
Washington was so financially embarrassed in 1789 when he traveled to
New York to be inaugurated President that he had to borrow money to pay
the expenses of the journey.
After having set the wheels of government in motion he made an extended
trip through New England and whenever public festivities would permit he
examined into New England farm methods and took copious notes. On the
first day up from New York he saw good crops of corn mixed with pumpkins
and met four droves of beef cattle, "some of which were very fine--also
a Flock of Sheep.... We scarcely passed a farm house that did not abd.
in Geese." His judgment of New England stock was that the cattle were
"of a good quality and their hogs large, but rather long legged." The
shingle roofs, stone and brick chimneys, stone fences and cider making
all attracted his attention. The fact that wheat in that section
produced an average of fifteen bushels per acre and often twenty or
twenty-five was duly noted. On the whole he seems to have considered
the tour enjoyable and profitable in spite of the fact that on his
return through Connecticut the law against Sabbath traveling compelled
him to remain over Sunday at Perkins' Tavern and to attend church twice,
where he "heard very lame discourses from a Mr. Pond."
About 1785 Washington had begun a correspondence with Arthur Young and
also began to read his periodical called the _Annals of Agriculture_.
The _Annals_ convinced him more than ever of the superiority of the
English system of husbandry and not only gave him the idea for some of
the experiments that have been mentioned, but also made him very
desirous of adopting a regular and systematic course of cropping in
order to conserve his soil. Taking advantage of an offer made by Young,
he ordered (August 6, 1786) through him English plows, cabbage, turnip,
sainfoin, rye-grass and hop clover seed and eight bushels of winter
vetches; also some months later, velvet wheat, field beans, spring
barley, oats and more sainfoin seed. He furthermore expressed a wish for
"a plan of the most complete and useful farmyard, for farms of about 500
acres. In this I mean to comprehend the barn, and every appurtenance
which ought to be annexed to the yard."
Young was as good as his word. Although English law forbade the
exportation of some of these things--a fact of which Washington was not
aware--he and Sir John Sinclair prevailed upon Lord Grenville to issue a
special permit and in due course everything reached Mount Vernon. Part
of the seeds were somewhat injured by being put into the hold of the
vessel that brought them over, with the result that they overheated--a
thing that troubled Washington whenever he imported seeds--but on the
whole the consignment was in fair order, and our Farmer was
duly grateful.
The plows appeared excessively heavy to the Virginians who looked them
over, but a trial showed that they worked "exceedingly well."
To Young's plan for a barn and barnyard Washington made some additions
and constructed the barn upon Union Farm, building it of bricks that
were made on the estate. He later expressed a belief that it was "the
largest and most convenient one in this country." It has now disappeared
almost utterly, but Young's plan was subsequently engraved in
the _Annals_.
In return for the exertions of Young and Sinclair in his behalf
Washington sent over some American products and also took pains to
collect information for them as to the state of American agriculture.
His letters show an almost pathetic eagerness to please these good
friends and it is evident that in his farming operations he regarded
himself as one of Young's disciples. He was no egotist who believed that
because he had been a successful soldier and was now President of the
United States he could not learn anything from a specialist. The trait
was most commendable and one that is sadly lacking in many of his
countrymen, some of whom take pride in declaring that "these here
scientific fellers caint tell me nothin' about raisin' corn!"
Young and Sir John Sinclair were by no means his only agricultural
correspondents. Even Noah Webster dropped his legal and philological
work long enough in 1790 to propound a theory so startlingly modern in
its viewpoint that it is worthy of reproduction. Said he:
"While therefore I allow, in its full extent, the value of stable
manure, marl, plaster of Paris, lime, ashes, sea-weed, sea-shells &
salt, in enriching land, I believe none of them are absolutely
necessary, but that nature has provided an inexhaustible store of
manure, which is equally accessible to the rich and the poor, & which
may be collected & applied to land with very little labor and expense.
This store is the _atmosphere_, & the process by which the fertilizing
substance may be obtained is vegetation."
He added that such crops as oats, peas, beans and buckwheat should be
raised and plowed under to rot and that land should never be left bare.
As one peruses the letter he recalls that scientists of to-day tell us
that the air is largely made up of nitrogen, that plants are able to
"fix it," and he half expects to find Webster advocating "soil
innoculation" and speaking of "nodules" and "bacteria."
Throughout the period after the Revolution our Farmer's one greatest
concern was to conserve and restore his land. When looking for a new
manager he once wrote that the man must be, "above all, Midas like, one
who can convert everything he touches into manure, as the first
transmutation toward gold; in a word, one who can bring worn-out and
gullied lands into good tilth in the shortest time." He saved manure as
if it were already so much gold and hoped with its use and with
judicious rotation of crops to accomplish his object. "Unless some such
practice as this prevails," he wrote in 1794, "my fields will be growing
worse and worse every year, until the Crops will not defray the expense
of the culture of them."
He drew up elaborate plans for the rotation of crops on his different
farms. Not content with one plan, he often drew up several alternatives;
calculated the probable financial returns from each, allowing for the
cost of seed, cultivation and other expenses, and commented upon the
respective advantages from every point of view of the various plans. The
labor involved in such work was very great, but Washington was no
shirker. He was always up before sunrise, both in winter and summer, and
seems to have been so constituted that he was most contented when he had
something to do. Perhaps if he had had to engage in hard manual toil
every day he would have had less inclination for such employment, but he
worked with his own hands only intermittently, devoting his time mostly
to planning and oversight.
One such plan for Dogue Run Farm is given on the next page. To
understand it the reader should bear in mind that the farm contained
five hundred twenty-five arable acres divided into seven fields, each of
which contained about seventy-five acres.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
No. of | | | | | | | |
Fields | 1793 | 1794 | 1795 | 1796 | 1797 | 1798 | 1799 |
------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Corn | |Buckwheat | Clover | Clover | Clover |
3 | and | Wheat | for | Wheat | or | or | or |
|Potatoes| | Manure | | Grass | Grass | Grass |
------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Clover | Corn | |Buckwheat | Clover | Clover |
4 | or | and | Wheat | for | Wheat | or | or |
| Grass |Potatoes| | Manure | | Grass | Grass |
------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Clover | Clover | Corn | |Buckwheat | Clover |
5 | or | or | and | Wheat | for | Wheat | or |
| Grass | Grass |Potatoes| | Manure | | Grass |
------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Clover | Clover | Clover | Corn | |Buckwheat |
6 | or | or | or | and | Wheat | for | Wheat |
| Grass | Grass | Grass |Potatoes| | Manure | |
------------------------------------------------------------------------
| | Clover | Clover | Clover | Corn | |Buckwheat
7 | Wheat | or | or | or | and | Wheat | for |
| | Grass | Grass | Grass |Potatoes| | Manure |
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|Buckwheat | Clover | Clover | Clover | Corn | |
1 | for | Wheat | or | or | or | and | Wheat |
| Manure | | Grass | Grass | Grass |Potatoes| |
------------------------------------------------------------------------
| |Buckwheat | Clover | Clover | Clover | Cornr |
2 | Wheat | for | Wheat | or | or | or | and |
| | Manure | | Grass | Grass | Grass |Potatoes|
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Of this rotation he noted that it "favors the land
very much; inasmuch as there are but three corn
crops [i.e. grain crops] taken in seven years from
any field, & the first of the wheat crops is followed
by a Buck Wheat manure for the second Wheat
Crop, wch. is to succeed it; & which by being laid
to Clover or Grass & continued therein three years
will a ford much Mowing or Grassing, according as
the Seasons happen to be, besides being a restoration
to the Soil--But the produce of the sale of the
Crops is small, unless encreased by the improving
state of the fields. Nor will the Grain for the use of
the Farm be adequate to the consumption of it in
this Course, and this is an essential object to attend to."
In a second table he estimated the amount of work that would be required
each year to carry out this plan of rotation, assuming that one plow
would break up three-fourths of an acre per day. This amount is hardly
half what an energetic farmer with a good team of horses will now turn
over in a day with an ordinary walking plow, but the negro farmer
lacked ambition, the plows were cumbersome, and much of the work was
done with plodding oxen. The table follows:
[ILLUSTRATION (TABLE): PLANTING CHART]
He estimated that seventy-five acres of corn would yield, at twelve and
a half bushels per acre, 937-1/2 bushels, worth at two shillings and
sixpence per bushel £117.3.9. In this field potatoes would be planted
between the rows of corn and would produce, at twelve and a half bushels
per acre, 937-1/2 bushels, worth at one shilling per bushel £46.17.6.
Two fields in wheat, a total of one hundred fifty acres, at ten bushels
per acre, would yield one thousand five hundred bushels, worth at five
shillings per bushel three hundred seventy-five pounds. Three fields in
clover and grass and the field of buckwheat to be turned under for
manure would yield no money return. In other words the whole farm would
produce three thousand three hundred seventy-five bushels of grain and
potatoes worth a total of £539.1.3.
A second alternative plan would yield crops worth £614.1.3; a third,
about the same; a fourth, £689.1.3; a fifth, providing for two hundred
twenty-five acres of wheat, £801.11.0; a sixth, £764. Number five would
be most productive, but he noted that it would seriously reduce the
land. Number six would be "the 2d. most productive Rotation, but the
fields receive no rest," as it provided for neither grass nor pasture,
while the plowing required would exceed that of any of the other plans
by two hundred eighty days.
On a small scale he tried growing cotton, Botany Bay grass, hemp, white
nankeen grass and various other products. He experimented with deep soil
plowing by running twice in the same furrow and also cultivated some
wheat that had been drilled in rows instead of broadcasted.
In 1793 he built a new sixteen-sided barn on the
[ILLUSTRATION: Part of Washington's Plan for His Sixteen-Sided Barn]
Dogue Run Farm. The plan of this barn, drawn by Washington himself, is
still preserved and is reproduced herewith. He calculated that one
hundred and forty thousand bricks would be required for it and these
were made and burnt upon the estate. The barn was particularly notable
for a threshing floor thirty feet square, with interstices one and a
half inches wide left between the floor boards so that the grain when
trodden out by horses or beat out with flails would fall through to the
floor below, leaving the straw above.
This floor was to furnish an illustration of what Washington called "the
almost impossibility of putting the overseers of this country out of the
track they have been accustomed to walk in. I have one of the most
convenient barns in this or perhaps any other country, where thirty
hands may with great ease be employed in threshing. Half the wheat of
the farm was actually stowed in this barn in the straw by my order, for
threshing; notwithstanding, when I came home about the middle of
September, I found a treading yard not thirty feet from the barn-door,
the wheat again brought out of the barn, and horses treading it out in
an open exposure, liable to the vicissitudes of the weather."
I think we may safely conclude that this was one of those rare
occasions when George lost his temper and "went up in the air!"
Under any conditions treading or flailing out wheat was a slow and
unsatisfactory process and, as Washington grew great quantities of this
grain, he was alert for a better method. We know that he made inquiries
of Arthur Young concerning a threshing machine invented by a certain
Winlaw and pictured and described in volume six of the _Annals_, and in
1790 he watched the operation of Baron Poelnitz's mill on the Winlaw
model near New York City. This mill was operated by two men and was
capable of threshing about two bushels of wheat per hour--pretty slow
work as compared with that of a modern thresher. And the grain had to be
winnowed, or passed through a fan afterward to separate it from
the chaff.
Finally in 1797 he erected a machine on plans evolved by William Booker,
who came to Mount Vernon and oversaw the construction. Next April he
wrote to Booker that the machine "has by no means answered your
expectations or mine," At first it threshed not quite fifty bushels per
day, then fell to less than twenty-five, and ultimately got out of
order before five hundred bushels had been threshed, though it had used
up two bands costing between eight and ten pounds. Booker replied that
he had now greatly improved his invention and would come to Mount Vernon
and make these additions, but whether or not he ever did so I have
failed to discover.
By 1793 the burden of the estate had become so heavy that Washington
decided to rent all of it except the Mansion House Farm and accordingly
he wrote to Arthur Young telling his desire in the hope that Englishmen
might be found to take it over. One man, Parkinson, of whom more
hereafter, came to America and looked at one of the farms, but decided
not to rent it. Washington's elaborate description of his land in his
letter to Young, with an accompanying map, forms one of our best sources
of information regarding Mount Vernon, so that we may be grateful that
he had the intention even though nothing came of it. The whole of Mount
Vernon continued to be cultivated as before until the last year of his
life when he rented Dogue Run Farm to his nephew, Lawrence Lewis.
As a public man he was anxious to improve the general state of American
agriculture and in his last annual message to Congress recommended the
establishment of a board of agriculture to collect and diffuse
information and "by premiums and small pecuniary aids to encourage and
assist a spirit of discovery and improvement." In this recommendation
the example of the English Board of Agriculture and the influence of his
friend Arthur Young are discernible. It would have been well for the
country if Congress had heeded the advice, but public opinion was not
then educated to the need of such a step and almost a century passed
before anything of much importance was done by the national government
to improve the state of American agriculture.
In farming as in politics Washington was no standpatter. Notwithstanding
many discouragements, he could not be kept from trying new things, and
he furnished his farms with every kind of improved tool and implement
calculated to do better work. At his death he owned not only threshing
machines and a Dutch fan, but a wheat drill, a corn drill, a machine for
gathering clover seed and another for raking up wheat. Yet most of his
countrymen remained content to drop corn by hand, to broadcast their
wheat, to tread out their grain and otherwise to follow methods as old
as the days of Abel for at least another half century.
He was the first American conservationist. He realized that man owes a
duty to the future just as he owes a debt to the past. He deplored the
already developing policy of robber exploitation by which our soil and
forests have been despoiled, for he foresaw the bitter fruits which such
a policy must produce, and indeed was already producing on the fields of
Virginia. He was no misanthropic cynic to exclaim, "What has posterity
ever done for us that we should concern ourselves for posterity?" His
care for the lands of Mount Vernon was evidence of the God-given trait
imbedded in the best of men to transmit unimpaired to future generations
what has been handed down to them.
His agricultural career has its lessons for us, even though we should
not do well to follow some of his methods. The lessons lie rather in his
conception of farming as an honorable occupation capable of being put on
a better and more scientific basis by the application of brains and
intelligence; in his open-minded and progressive seeking after better
ways. Many of his experiments failed, it is true, but for his time he
was a great Farmer, just as he was a great Patriot, Soldier and
Statesman. Patient, hard-working, methodical, willing to sacrifice his
own interests to those of the general good, he was one of those men who
have helped raise mankind from the level of the brute and his whole
career reflects credit upon human nature.
Peace hath its victories no less renowned than war, and the picture of
the American Cincinnatus striving as earnestly on the green fields of
Mount Vernon as he did upon the scarlet ones of Monmouth and Brandywine,
is one that the world can not afford to forget.