Poor farm

“ In the first, a widow with eight children is supported by the cow, etc.; in the second, a very aged man, with an insane daughter, and a person to take care of them." If dismissed from their "little bargain," they must immediately be "supported at great expense by the parish to which they belong. ... It is absurd to talk of turning commons into cornfields, that the poor may reap and thrash corn, and so remain wretchedly poor. No ... let them build, or allow poor labourers, young farm-servants, when they marry, to run up an hut on the common, and enclose as much as they can cultivate. ”

“ I always felt that mind should control events in agriculture as in commercial life; that listlessness, carelessness, lack of thrift and energy, and waste, were the factors most potent in keeping the farmer poor and unreasonably harassed by the obligations of life. The men who cultivate the soil create incalculable wealth ”

“ Suffice it to say that the farmer without an abundance of fruits in their season is like the lad with empty pockets outside the circus tent: lots of fruit and fun, ready to be enjoyed by those who have made thoughtful provision for the gratification of desires which always come, sooner or later. Every farmer should grow most of the fruits suited to his soil and climate,—enough to eat and to sell and to give to the worthy poor. ”

“ Yet this is the constant system; and the poor ryots who cultivate farms of from six to twenty-four acres, but generally of the smaller kind, requiring only one plough, which, with other implements and a team of oxen, costs about 6l., are compelled to farm not such as they chose, but such as are allotted to them; to pay from one-half to two-thirds of their gross produce. If they attempt to run away from it, they are brought back and flogged, and forced to work. ”

“ But these changes are so slow, and there is so much to be done before even a small percentage of our six millions of farmers begin to realize their opportunities, that even the weakest effort in this direction may be of use. This is my only excuse for going minutely into the details of my experiment in the cultivation of land. The plain and circumstantial narrative of how Four Oaks grew, in seven years, from a poor, ill-paying, sadly neglected farm, into a beautiful home and a profitable investment, must simply stand for what it is worth. ”

“ In many instances, the low condition of farm property is due to unthrifty neglect of farmers in whole neighborhoods. Bad roads, short schools, weak fences and poor stock are as often a cause as an effect of low prices of land. Whole regions in our country suffer in this way from unthrift, whatever the price of farm products or of lands. ”

“ The carpenter also was but a poor farmer, and his crop failed. So he gave up farming, and worked away at building houses, and making tables, and chairs, and bedsteads, receiving payment in potatoes, corn, wild-fowls, eggs, or sometimes in money. In the course of two or three years, some were bakers only, some poulterers, some potato merchants, and only about half of the company were farmers; of which the consequence was the land was better tilled, the corn better ground and baked, the fowls better fed, eggs more easily to be had, the potatoes better, and the huts kept in better repair. ”

“ Except in special cases, as in truck farming, it is cheaper to purchase natural plant-food in the soil than artificial fertility. One acre of land may have potential plant-food sufficient under superior tillage for one hundred crops, while another unaided will yield but half as many, and yet the two pieces of land are often priced at the same figure. In other words, land [63] of high productive power is usually cheaper than land of low productive power. A good farm may be cheaper at $50 per acre than a poor one as a gift. ”

“ It is usually not wise to purchase a farm, however well it may fulfil the requirements of healthfulness, desirable environment and productivity, if the lands by which it is surrounded are poor, since man, in one respect, is like the tree toad, which partakes largely of the color of the thing to which it adheres. ”

“ There were ten men in the shredding gang. I furnished six more, and Bill Jackson came with two others to change work with me; that is, my men were to help him when the machine reached his farm. We worked nineteen men and four teams three and a half days on the forty-three acres of corn, and as a result, had a tremendous mow of shredded corn fodder and an immense pile of half-husked ears. For the use of the machine and the wages of the ten men I paid $105. Poor economy! ”

“ In this sense, and this alone, the poor man grows poorer with advancing civilization. This may easily be seen by comparing a thrifty farming community of today and all the accumulated stock, machinery and tools of the farms, with the same community sixty years earlier, when all was practically wilderness. A strong man with an ax and a hoe could enter the wilderness anywhere and live nearly as well as any of his neighbors. Such a man in the higher country life of our times must work for some one else at wages, or must be supported at public expense. ”

“ All honor and credit to that farmer's boy who early realizes the handicap placed upon him by the impairment, and oftentimes utter destruction, of the only safe capital investment of the farmer—fertile and productive soil. Should we complain because he goes to the city to seek more inviting and attractive fields of existence after having been robbed of his only means of livelihood on the farm? ”

“ If there is one business above all others that requires constant attention, it is farming—and especially stock-farming. But my friend is right in saying that he cannot afford to wait to enrich his land by clover and summer-fallowing. His land costs too much; he has a large barn and everything requisite to keep a large stock of cattle and sheep. The interest on farm and buildings, and the money expended in labor, would run on while the dormant matter in the soil was slowly becoming available under the influence of good tillage. ”

“ It is the problem of the man behind the plow. It is he that is the center of interest. His business, his success, his manhood, his family, his environment, his education, his future—these constitute the problem of the farm. Half our people make their living from the brown soil. In virtue, in intelligence, in real worth, this half compare favorably with the other half who saw wood, and shovel sand, and pull throttles, and prepare briefs, and write sermons. The business of agriculture provides directly for the material welfare of nearly forty millions of our people. ”

“ The life of the peasant or small farmer is one of hardship that leaves no moment for leisure, and of monotony that populates our lunatic asylums. [179] Not only is the life of the farmer one of the hardest, but it is also one of the least secure. The failure of a single crop, the loss of a single horse, disease in a chicken yard, a violent hail-storm—any of these may oblige a farmer to put that first small mortgage on his farm which is the beginning of his ruin. ”

“ The wealthy few of the cities give voice to the thought that the farming classes in the United States are always on the verge of poverty, yet in the last century they have rescued from barbarism and solitude nearly all of the arable land of the two billion acres of which the United States are composed. More than four million five hundred thousand farm homes have been planted, valued at more than thirteen billion dollars. ”

“ Our arid lands will be made fertile by irrigation, but they will add only a small percentage to the amount already in quasi-cultivation. Our future food supplies must be drawn largely from the six million farms now under fences. These farms must be made to yield fourfold their present product, or they will fall short, not only of the demands made upon them, but also of their possibilities. That is why I preach the gospel of intensive farming, for grain, hay, market, and factory farm alike. ”

“ When the farmer raises crops for sale, and removes his grain and grasses from the land, he sells a portion of his soil; and if he does not renew in some way the saline matters taken away in his crops, he invariably impoverishes his farm. This work of exhaustion is now going on to an alarming extent, and the prolific wheat lands are to be searched for farther and farther westward as the operation proceeds. ”

“ He finds the land covered with trees, which he has first to fell and sell as timber; then he must dig or burn out the stumps; clear the plot of boulders and large stones; drain it, fence it, plough it, and harrow it; build barns for the produce and sheds for the cows; in short, MAKE his farm, instead of merely TAKING it. This is labour from which many strong men shrink in dismay, especially those who have come out fresh from a civilized and fully occupied land. ”

“ Then as to soil, it will be found that where the soil is rich, the farms large, and the farmers men of capital, the position of the agricultural labourer will be better on the whole than where with small farms and struggling tenants, as in the south-west of England, the labourer is only employed for a few months in the year, and cast adrift to his own resources or the cold comfort of the Poor Law in winter. ”

“ Without homesteads, with no prospect of anything but unsatisfying labor, with scarce the surety of earning a scanty subsistence,—there is, among the common people, a lack of interest in agricultural efforts. Thousands of laborers leave this land, the fairest on which God's impartial sun shines; few are left to care for the soil; and so, as the shortest cut across this field of deliberately created difficulty, nearly all the land is laid down to grass. In our ride of more than one hundred miles, hardly one fruit-tree was seen, or one nice garden. ”

“ Instead of improving, the tenant’s condition becomes worse each year until he finds it impossible to support his family on the farm. Farm after farm is being abandoned or given up to the care of the old men and women. Already, most of these are too old and feeble to do effective work.
Now, the chief cause of these farms becoming less productive, is the failure on the part of the farmers to add something to the land after they have gathered their crops. They seem to think that the land contains an inexhaustible supply of plant food. ”

“ If there were no other reason for practicing a somewhat diversified agriculture, the welfare of the [34] workman and his family should form a sufficient one. Happily, many large and demoralizing wheat ranches are being divided into small farms, upon which are being reared the roof-tree, children, fruits and flowers.
To secure a competence, no more activities should be entered into than can be prosecuted with vigor and at a profit. On the other hand, too few activities tend to stagnation and degeneration. ”

“ Such a farm must be hand-tilled, and, if skilfully hand-tilled, would certainly produce as much food as a market-garden. It would employ an enormous amount of labour, and would at least pay its labour bill. I am not advocating that such [87] a farm should be used as a playground for the semi-criminal, semi-imbecile, and generally incompetent class who go to form the 'unemployed'; for the trade of agriculture, to be successful, demands both skill and energy. ”

“ The operations of the farm are carried on more expensively than if the ability to work constantly allowed a smaller force to be employed. The crops which give such doubtful promise, require the same cultivation as though they were certain to be remunerative, and the work can be done only with increased labor, because of the bad condition of the soil. ”

“ The fertility of the soil is not exhausted; and more labour is to be had. All cultivable land is not under tillage; neither have the hills and marshes reached their limit of production; neither has every available idler put his hand to the plough.
Crime begins in poverty; poverty in insufficiency of food; insufficiency of food in neglect of agriculture. ”

“ The yeomen and small tenant-farmers, men of little capital, have almost disappeared, and the process of improving them off the face of the agricultural world is still progressing to its bitter end; homestead after homestead has been deserted, and farm has been added to farm—a very unpleasing result of the inexorable principle—the survival of the fittest—by means of which even the cultivators of the soil are selected;—but a result which, not the laws of nature, but the bungling arrangements of human legislators, have rendered inevitable. ”

“ True, but the man has but twenty or thirty acres of land, or an indifferent trade—his family grows faster than his income—he is not able to finish his house—the covering soon decays and admits water—the house falls to pieces—the man is forced poor into the wilderness, or he and his children loiter about, dependant on the neighbours for subsistence by day labour.
I know one of these do-for-the-present-farmers, who never effectually repairs his fences ”

“ Thus does the greed of land grow upon one. But in truth, I saw that I must have more land. My factory would require more than ten thousand bushels of grain, with forage and green foods in proportion, to meet its full capacity, and I could not hope to get so much from the land then under cultivation. Again, in a few years—a very few—the fifty acres of orchard would be no longer available for crops, and this would still further reduce my tillable land. With the orchards out of use, I should have but 124 acres for all crops other than hay. ”

“ How many a poor immortal soul have I met well nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture, and wood-lot! The portionless, who struggle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh.
But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for compost. ”