Wheatland

“ Mountain or river or shining star, There's never a sight can beat— Away to the sky-line stretching far— A sea of the ripening Wheat. When the burning harvest sun sinks low, And the shadows stretch on the plain, The roaring strippers come and go Like ships on a sea of grain; Till the lurching, groaning waggons bear Their tale of the load complete. Of the world's great work he has done his share Who has gathered a crop of wheat. Princes and Potentates and Czars, They travel in regal state, But old King Wheat has a thousand cars For his trip to the water-gate ”

“ The land is well cultivated, and the more the culture the more the food for them. Frost and snow are their greatest enemies, but even these do not often last a great while. It is a land of woods, and above all of hedges, which are much more favourable to birds than forests, so that they are better off in England than in other countries. From the sowing to the reaping, the wheat-field gives a constant dole like the monasteries of old, only here it is no crust, but a free and bountiful largess. Then the stubble must be broken up by the plough, and again there is a fresh helping for them. ”

“ The best blood of America pioneered this country of the Willamette, making the first really permanent settlements something more than sixty years ago. Wheat-growing was the chief concern of those pioneer farmers, and wheat-growing held first place for a long time, to the exclusion of almost everything else. The land holdings were large in those days, and the production of wheat was carried on according to the old methods of extensive farming—wheat, wheat, wheat, year after year. Wheat was just about the only farm product that figured then in shipments out of the valley. ”

“ These simple homes of farmers seemed lost on an immensity of soft gray and golden billows of land, insignificant dots here and there on distant hills, so far apart that nature only seemed accountable for those broad squares of alternate gold and brown, extending on and on to the waving horizon-line. A lonely, hard, heroic country, where flowers and fruit were not, nor birds and brooks, nor green pastures. Whirling strings of dust looped up over fallow ground, the short, dry wheat lay back from the wind, the haze in the distance was drab and smoky, heavy with substance. ”

“ America, the new county, became in 1918 the salvation of starving Belgium, the mainstay of England, the hope of France! Wheat for the world! Wheat—that was to say food, strength, fighting life for the armies opposed to the black, hideous, medieval horde of Huns! America to succor and to save, to sacrifice and to sow, rising out of its peaceful slumber to a mighty wrath, magnificent and unquenchable, throwing its vast resources of soil, its endless streams of wheat, into the gulf of war! ”

“ The newcomers spread over the prairie—spread so fast and so far, in fact, that they had to endure long isolation before any railway could reach them. “I had to haul my wheat 80 miles,” one old settler says, “and Live Cattle and Dead Buffalo then got forty cents a bushel for it.” But he was “a sticker,” and is now one of the most prosperous farmers in the country. Not owing to wheat, however; he was a stockman, long before live stock became popular. Wheat became King of the Plains, and few there were who would not bow down to him. ”

“ But the wheat-midge, or weevil, is the great enemy, rendering the cultivation of wheat in some localities useless. One precaution is, to get the wheat forward so early and fast as to have it out of the way before they destroy it. This is often done by early sowing, high fertilization, and warm land. Sometimes wheat is too late for them, and then a good crop is secured. But this can only be relied on in cool, moist climates. Our hot, dry seasons are not suitable for wheat, late enough to be out of the way of the weevil. The great remedy for this enemy is his destruction. ”

“ Has not the measure of bringing together all kinds, both of wheat and tares, been best for the people? It has. The tares must be gathered as well as the wheat, for it is the time of the harvest and of separation. Perhaps the measures that have been introduced have served as a screen or a fanning-mill to cause the tares to fly away. There may be some wheat among them when they go; but it seems to me that they are shrunken kernels. Shrunken wheat may grow by putting it in good soil, and it may not: however, it is necessary that this work of division go on. ”

“ Men and women work together, and almost equally, in the fields; and here, where the necessity is so palpably of Nature's creation, not Man's, the spectacle is far less revolting than on the fertile plains of Piedmont or Lombardy. The little patch of Wheat is so carefully reaped that scarcely a grain is left, and children bear the sheaves on their backs to the allotted shelter, while mothers and maidens are digging up the soil with the spade, and often pulling up the stubble with their hands, preparatory to another crop. ”

“ These people seemed to think that there would always be a ton an acre, however barren the land—or several tons an acre, if ‘Science’ were invoked. And they also seemed to think that wheat alone is ‘food,’ although our forefathers ate barley, oats and rye. These can be grown on land that is not good enough for wheat; and our island might perhaps grow food enough for the whole population—as these people said it should—but the population would have to be content with something less luxurious than wheaten bread. ”

“ The agricultural methods of Eastern Washington will strike most visitors as somewhat peculiar. It is not in every State of the Union, nor in every Territory, that the farmer can plow and sow “just when he gets ready.” But here plowing and seeding may be seen in progress ten months out of every twelve, and instances have even been known of winter wheat being sown every month in the year, and all coming to harvest in its proper turn. And such crops! Thirty, forty and fifty bushels to the acre are raised so easily, that, had the farmer a nearer market, he would soon get rich. ”

“ If the ground whereon you meane to sowe your Wheat be a rich, blacke, clay, stiffe and full of fertillitie, you shall then (as neare as you can) chuse your séede from the barrainest mixt earth you can finde (so the Wheate be whole-straw or Pollard) as from a clay and grauell, or a clay and white sand, that your séede comming from a much more barraine earth then that wherein you put it, the strength may be as it were redoubled, and the encrease consequently amount to a higher quantitie, as we finde it proueth in our daylie experience ”

“ But with the spreading of wheat came the dawn of a higher civilization; and the story of wheat down to modern times showed the development of man. Wheat-fields of many lands, surrounding homes of prosperous farmers; fruitful toil of happy peoples; the miller and his humming mill!
When wheat crossed the ocean to America it came to strange and wonderful fulfilment of its destiny. America, fresh, vast, and free, with its sturdy pioneers ever spreading the golden grain westward; with the advancing years when railroad lines kept pace with the indomitable wheat-sowers ”

“ Under the edge of the footpath through the wheat a wild pansy blooms.
Standing in the gateway beneath the shelter of the elms as the clouds come over, it is pleasant to hear the cool refreshing rain come softly down; the green wheat drinks it as it falls, so that hardly a drop reaches the ground, and to-morrow it will be as dry as ever. Wood-pigeons call from the hedges, and blackbirds whistle in the trees; the sweet delicious rain refreshes them as it does the corn. ”

“ Gladstone's high standing. In my opinion, however, nothing can be more absurd than estimating a crop by a yard in any field, or by a single acre. We hear now a great deal of the land being more productive, by draining and other improvements; and it was to be expected that, when a good wheat season occurred, we should have more wheat than in previous years; but, from all the confirmation we have yet obtained, I am by no means disposed to believe that the last crop is a great one, far less that it is greater than ever known. ”

“ That old American advance of the wheat farmer from the Connecticut to the Mohawk, and the Genesee, from the great valley of Pennsylvania to the Ohio Valley and the prairies of the Middle West, is now by its own momentum and under the stimulus of Canadian homesteads and the high price of wheat, carried across the national border to the once lone and vast plains where the Hudson Bay dog trains crossed the desolate snows of the wild North Land. ”

“ Nothing conveys so strong an impression of substantial wealth as the view of wheat-fields. A diamond ornament in a window may be ticketed as worth so many hundreds of pounds; but the glittering gem, and the sum it represents, seem rather abstract than real. But the wheat, the golden wheat, is a great fact that seizes hold of the mind; the idea comes of itself that it represents solid wealth.
The tiles of the vicarage roof—all of the house visible above the shrubbery—look so hot and dry in the glaring sunshine that it does not seem possible for vegetation to exist upon them ”

“ I may remark here that the wheat in the northwest ripens earlier now than it did twenty years ago, and many people believe that it is the climate that has changed, whereas it is only that the wheat has adapted itself to its environment.’ I think that any gentleman who has been following the trend of affairs in the northwest will agree with me that the conditions are better with respect to possible injury by summer frosts than they were twenty years ago. ”

“ To Presley's mind, the scene in the room he had just left dwindled to paltry insignificance before this sight. Ah, yes, the Wheat—it was over this that the Railroad, the ranchers, the traitor false to his trust, all the members of an obscure conspiracy, were wrangling. As if human agency could affect this colossal power! What were these heated, tiny squabbles, this feverish, small bustle of mankind, this minute swarming of the human insect, to the great, majestic, silent ocean of the Wheat itself! Indifferent, gigantic, resistless, it moved in its appointed grooves. ”

“ Down tumbled Wheat, the sleigh and two horses; and only that good luck that ever seems to attend an intoxicated man could have saved him from a violent and speedy death. While the sleigh was dashed to splinters, and both the horses precipitated into Wheeling creek and killed, Mr. Wheat lodged among some stunted trees, about half-way down—badly bruised and “stove up,” it is true, but still alive and in moderate spirits. He is still living, but has been a cripple ever since his mad and daring sleigh-ride. ”

“ Whether in sunshine or storm there is no shelter—no medium; the wind rushes over with its utmost fury, or the heat rests on it undisturbed by the faintest current. Yet, sultry as it is, the footpath is a pleasant one to follow.
The wheat ears, all but ripe—to the ordinary eye they are ripe, but the farmer is not quite satisfied—rise to the waist or higher, and tempt the hand to pluck them. ”

“ A huge pall of dust, chaff, and smoke hung over the vast wheat-field, and the air seemed charged with a roar. The glaring gold of the wheat-field appeared to be crisscrossed everywhere with bobbing black streaks of horses—bays, blacks, whites, and reds; by big, moving painted machines, lifting arms and puffing straw; by immense wagons piled high with sheaves of wheat, lumbering down to the smoking engines and the threshers that sent long streams of dust and chaff over the lifting straw-stacks; by wagons following the combines to pick up the plump brown sacks of wheat ”

“ We now know that man was sufficiently civilized to cultivate the ground at an immensely remote period; so that wheat might have been improved long ago up to that standard of excellence which was possible under the then existing state of agriculture. One small class of facts supports this view of the slow and gradual improvement of our cereals. In the most ancient lake-habitations of Switzerland, when men employed only flint-tools, the most extensively cultivated wheat was a peculiar kind, with remarkably small ears and grains. ”

“ The truth of the matter respecting soils for wheat, is, that any soil good for corn, potatoes, or a garden, may, with proper tillage, produce the best of wheat. Experience in England, and in all the old countries on the continent of Europe, shows us that old land may be made to yield as large crops of wheat as the virgin soil of the New World. The production of wheat at suitable intervals, for a century, on the same land, need not lessen its power to produce good wheat in large quantities. ”

“ Wheat is much easier thrashed here than in England, owing to the dryness of the {284} climate. I saw some thrashed without untying the sheaves, and the straw was quite clean. I was informed a man could thrash fifteen bushels of that wheat a-day; it appeared to yield well. Wheat and other grain damage much sooner, in wet weather, in this country, than in England, from the greater heat of the climate. Indian corn, on the contrary, will remain out the greater part of the winter, and sustain but little damage from the weather. ”

“ America is a great country, Marcia, when a single one of her citizens can bankrupt a whole kingdom.’
‘You don’t mean, Uncle Howard,’ she cried, aghast, ‘that my father has caused the wheat famine?’
‘There may be one or two minor causes, but I think he is deserving of most of the credit. The name of Copley, I assure you, is not beloved in Italy just now.’
‘And that is what the boys meant when they shouted “Grano”?’
‘Oh, it’s no secret. We’re celebrities in our small way. Two continents are ringing with the name of the American Wheat King, and we come in for a share of his fame. ”