The New York herald. [volume], October 15, 1922, SECTION EIGHT, Page 38, Image 126

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38 * THE
Why the F;
I SAY sometimes that unless conditions
changes I'm gonta quit farmin' an'
move away, but down in the inside o'
me I know I don't mean it, becus farrain's
in the blood an' ye can't git it out. The
hil!?> an' the hollers that ye've knowed
man an' boy ever senst ye was old enough
to walk, they mean somethin' to ye, an'
it ye're right minded ye never git over
feelin' pride in stein" 'em do their best. I
know perfec'ly well that if I was compelled
to go 'way an' end my day s in some place
besides Bascoms Bridge, the sooner I did
end em the gladder I'd be. That ol* farm
wouldn't look like much to most folks, but
it's raised a lot of honest men an' women,
an' it's home to me.
* Every tree an' every dumb stone wall
is a friend an" a brother. We've growed
old together. An' the brook that waters
our east medder an' crosses the road below
th' ol' haybarn talks the same language
to me that it did when I was a kid
an' used to lay on the bridge in the b'ilin'
sun an' watch the minners fannin' their
tails down on the gravel in the shaddcrs
try in' to keep cool.
An' if ye ask me what makes farmers I
fctii*!/ t rv farntin' an I''" K .1^1
a plow, whether they make a fifty cent
piece or not, I'll say it's lore for the
land. Lots of 'em couldn't express it if
they tried. It's just the joy of seein'
thirgs grow up green an' fresh outa the
good ground, jest by the n.agic of tillage,
and tain an' sun. Some folks can't understand
it, but the scent of the plowed ground
in the spring is incense to me. I drink it
m like a drunkard laps up licker or a
Chinaman breathes into his body and his
soul the dream stuff of his opium pill.
If ye got them things in >er blood ye
can't git 'em out, any more'n a HoLstein
calf kin be born green. They's hundred.*
o" thousands o' folks, even in the cities,
chained to the treadmill of city life, that
grows old trompin' the pavements an' lookin'
at the heartless big buildin's, that heai*
the country always callin" to 'em till the
last?an unceasw' volte amidst all the
roar an" tumult of the streets. It's a heritage,
this love of the land, an' they never
come into it. I honestly don't believe
they's but mighty few folks that's farmin'
just as a business. They'd be fools if they
did, an' without any love fer the land
they'd be apt to be mighty poor farmers.
t ome folks say the farmers is lazy. What
I think is that they got tired out, a good
many of 'em, about two generations ago.
If ye go through the hill country, where
the women used to have families of ten
to fifteen children or better, an' worked
right along stiddy till the Lord in mercy
called 'em home; an' if ye look at the stone
wails an* study how they was buiit, the
architecture of >m, an' the scientific figgtrin'
of the strain that made 'em stand
up a hundred years without a speck o'
mortar?then think that they was put together
by hand, pickin' an' grubbin' the
Utile an* the big. an' handlin' the bowlders
as big as a pianna with a crowbar, single
haa i d: if ye stop to think that all the
grain land an' hay land in Xew York
State. which after all has produced more
wheat than any of "tern?was cleared by
main strength an' perseverance out of the
virgin timber with an ax an' a crosscut
saw. an' the roots dug out with a pick,
niebbe ye kin understand why the late
generations ain't got any pep.
An" it wan't on'y the endless work. It
was work without much else. It was
lonely work in a solitude where one
threadbare joke had to keep a hull community
good natured fer hfty years. The
farmer got tuned to loneliness so's he
didn't trust strangers, an' the few folks he
seen all the time he got mortal tired of.
He got to thinkin' his own thoughts an'
mindin' his own business. It narrered hie
mind an' it's stayed narrer. He had to depend
on his own resources an' it made
him an individualist. Ho ain t never got
o\er it.
Tint's one thing ye've got to rtgger on
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NEW YORK HERALD,
armer Sticks
when ye talk about organizin' the farmer.
In the West, wnere they didn't have no
traditions, they could start fresh, an' they
did. The result is they're al?out a hundred
years ahead of us. They're modern.
They've got into step with the changes
that's come over the world. But they've
got land robbers and narrer gauge minds
out there, too. The land on the prairies
lias been worth $300 an acre on a basis
of production, an' it was easy to till, but a
lot's gone out of it. When I went out to
Illinois to see my daughter I seem the hull
station platform in Peori' one mornin'
piled up with furniture.
"Immygrants?" I says to the station
master.
"No, mister." he says; "emigrants," an'
he grinned.
"Wha'd'ye mean emigrants?" says I.
"Farmers," says he. "They's twentyseven
families leavin' here this mornin'.
They've cropped the land till it won't
grow no more wheat an' now they're movin'
on to Canady an' the Dakotys to spile
some more?take everythin* out 'n' put
nothin' back."
I went a trip to North Dakoty too an'
there in the great checkerboard wheat
country I rode down a township road. On
one side was a piece o' land that had be'n
cropped to wheat for twenty-three years
a-runnin' without any fertilizer bein' put
on it an' nothin' being plowed back into
it, an' the crop that year was Jest eight
bushels to the acre. On th' other side ot
the road was a new break outa the buffler
grass, never plowed before, an' it yielded
thirty-eight bushel. After twenty-three
years of fool farmin' ye see the production
was reduced about eighty per cent.
"Well," I says to myself, "all the ignoramuses
ain't in Bascoms Bridge anyhow."
Betwixt diminishin' production an' inert-asm*
food graft a family o' childern
'11 be some liability twenty-live years from
now. The farm bureaus kin cure one,
mebbe, but it. looks as if it'ti take a earthquake
to do away with the other. Ye
can't exhaust the good ol' earth so's hut
what it'll come back if ye treat it right.
The hill piece I got troni the ol' Daggett
farm adjoin in' me was wore out so's it
wouldn't even grow weeds, but Hiram kcp'
on runnin' a mowin' machine over it every
year thinkin' he was hay in'. The third
year after I took it I took just twentynine
an' a half bushels o' wheat off'n it to
the acre by treatin' it half way decent, but
a lot of the troglodytes around Bascom's
Bridge said I oughta be in the crazy house
fer piowin' down a perfecly good crop o'
buckwheat.
What ye sot to do to organize the
iarrntT is. nrsi. 10 organize some sense
into him. The farm bureaus has done a
lot. Even them mummies around I!ascom's
Bridge has learnt that spray in* apple
trees ain't foolishness. But they had to
lose five years crops to make 'em sense It.
'n' the only thing that spurred 'em to it
was seein" some other feller gittin' a little
money fer his apples just because he kep'
the scale an' scab an' codlin' in>>t'n off of
'em. A round dollar's the only argument
that kind o' farmers?or that kind o'
folks in any business?kin understand.
An' yet a lot o' them same birds '11 go
away from home an' really amount to
somethin'. On the farm they never think
anythin's worth doin' or worth learnin'.
An* the only ambition they've got is to see
how much petty larceny they kin put over
on their neighbors so's to leave a few hund
ere Is or a few tbousan's when they die.
On the farm they seem to think they're
buried, an' I guess they !<e. It's beeus
the returns don't look like nothin'. The
fftm fellers, like everybody else, is hipped
with the mania fer hig money an' fer
spendin'. It ain't much wonder. If they
i mm i?iv ?? llH'.v
Kit it preached to Vm all the time, an'
they've always got the city man before 'em
with his big income an' his automobiles.
The hull worlii is thinkiu' in billions an'
livin' beyot.d its means.
When I was a young man anybody that
had a hundred thousan' dollars was bigger'n
the Woolworth ltuildin', hut now
there's "country residence" deestricts up
the State where the N< w York hankers
an" brokers an' corporation law\ers hires ,
Knglishmen an' Scotchmen to keep $."..000
cows fer 'em at four or five thousan' a
year an' piekin's, an' where a feller with j
leas'n IJ5.O00.U00 ain't recognized on the I
road When them city farmers sets
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 15,
to
His Job
around the Country Club an' talks farmin
they don't say, "Wha'd yer hay fetch?"
They light up a; dollar cigar 'n say, "Wha'd
yer farm cost ye last year?" They run a
farm jest like tney do a yacht. It's what
the book** calls a visible symptom of
wealth. But it ain't any good fer the farm i
business, an* it ain't any good fer the
people that lives around sech localities.
It Jest makes a lot of butlers an' footmen
out of "em. an' they spend their hull eter
nal time figgerin' how they can git some |
more o' their boss's money away from him |
without givin' nothin' back. Before the i
city millionaires took to farmin' two or j
three thousan' acres over week-ends with !
golf sticks an' a corkscrew ye could git a ,
country feller in them sections to do a !
day's work at a price a farmer could afford i
to pay. But not any more. To git any
help to git yer crops in ye've got to compete
with Wall Street in the labor market
So it's both enus ag'in the middle. What's
left is the rummies from the crossroads*!
store or the rummies that comes from |
somewhere's else, driftin' along the road
tryin' to keep outa work. So yet see the
new ideas of easy money has upset the
home life an' the neighborhood life that
Used to keep the country folks content an'
happy. The city keeps singin" the song
of money to Vm an' young folks won't set
around an' shovel manure year in an' year
out watchin' the hills an' wishin' they was
on the otlier side of em. They jest git up
'n' go to the cities, where they kin see en'
hear money bein spent an' git the sound
of people.
It all runs down the country an' makes
farmin* harder an' more costly, an' cuts
down the acreage that's put to the growin'
of food. The hull thing seems to me like
a disease that's spreadin' farther an' farther
..? I
?~. i. ? j jMM, ?u CIPIJI IUIC atic an
every rusty plow spells higher prices on
the vittles the city man has to buy. It
ain't good, an' if there don't rise up a
Moses pretty soon that kin manhandle this
proposition without thinkin' of his own
pocket an* the pockets of his political party
somebody's goin' to go hungry.
Ye can't expect the uneducated poor in
the big cities to have any idee about the
raisin' of the food or the marketin" of it.
an' what it means to them an' their
fam'liee, when the most of the educated
class is ignorant as cigar store Injuns
about the hull business. I know a man in
New York?a business man who does a
couple o' million dollars in his line. He's
a furriner. but he was educated in England
an' Prance, an' he was in a bank in Europe.
Altogether he's a high grade feller
most every way. I was in his store one
day. an' he says: "I always be'n interested
in farmin'. If I kin git this business whert
I want it, an' where I kin leave it, I'm
gonta git myself a farm for my old age.
The trouble is," he says, "I don't know
anything about it. I'd have to git some- j
body to run it."
?mere's vrnere your troubles'll begin,"
I says; "you git one o" these here 'farm
managers' an' you'll wish you was back
here sellin' > arpets an' furniture, with business
at a stan'stiil an' yer credit shut off
ct the bank."
But, good Lord, the ignorance that fogs
up the hull business ain't all in the city and
its slums. A lot o' farmers ain't more'n
two jumps ahead of a jellyfish when it
comes to reasonin'. There's Dane Kinnick.'
that lives back on the crik. He's accounted
quite a feller over there. Ker two years
before the war we had drought till the
medders was all burned to a cinder, an
we had to drag water from the lake to
water the hosses. Dane come down over
the lull one day, drivin' a bunch o' calves
he couldn't find pasture fer, an' stopped
to water 'em at our spring, that never runs
dry. He was good 'n' ugly, 'n' ranted on
about the weather, damnin' everythin' an
inch high. "Yes, Dane." I says, "it's pretty I
bad."
Til say it's bad." says he; "but what !
else kin ye expect with a damn Democratic
Administration?"
I'd Jest about as soon try to teach a !
Poiock woman on the Kast Side to run a
liabeock test on the milk in the city bottles .
as to sit it into Dane Kin nick's belfry that
the dry spell wan't manufactured for revenge
on honest Republican voters. He's
ben readin' the Clarion fer forty years,
an' I jjtiess lie says his prayers to the Kepublhan
National Committee.
[This is the third article of a series
on The Farmers' Side of It.J
1922.
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