A shock of wheat on the Ellmore farm near Floris. On this particularly successful farm the wheat was sold for seed to help improve the stock on other area farms. Photo in Annual Report of County Agent H. B. Derr, 1925, Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.
This mechanical hay loader on the Harrison Brothers' farm near Floris dates from 1935. Photo courtesy of Holden Harrison.
The fruits of the year's labor came not only from the hay fields but from garden and orchard, whose abundance had to be gathered, preserved and stored in the late summer season. Fairfax County had once been a major truck farming section but the onslaught of insects and competition from large commercial orchards (such as those in the Shenandoah Valley) had relegated this produce to the realm of home use. The A. S. Harrison farm included plum, apple, peach and cherry trees and Margaret Mary Lee recalled that cherries, pears and apples grew in her family's orchard. Sometimes pears and apples were made into cider but most of the fruit was dried or canned for winter use. Many farmers made the extra effort to keep bees under their fruit trees because they aided pollination and produced honey from the blossoms. The Lees were among those who enjoyed the soft hum of the bees among the orchard trees. Margaret Lee especially liked to recall them darting busily between the fragrant white sheets, when the washing was hung in the yard.[37]
The vegetable garden, too, had a prominent place in the farm scheme. Elizabeth Rice noted that "everyone had a good garden, growing such things as sweet corn, limas, string beans, potatoes, tomatoes, and asparagus."[38]Others mentioned lettuce, herbs and popcorn in the family vegetable patch and many farms had grape arbors.[39]Like other areas of cultivation, the garden plot required care and attention for three seasons of the year. The round of soil preparation, planting, nourishing and harvesting added additional responsibilities to the multitude of duties which already crowded the sunlight hours. Still, the rewards were great: self-sufficiency, economy, and the enjoyment of the earth's fresh bounty.
With the harvest over the farmer would fill the less hectic winter hours with the unending minutia of the farm. Fence and equipment mendings, cutting ice from ponds and rivers, chopping wood, and grubbing up trees all had a part in his busy life. Another burst of activity occurred in early winter when animals were butchered for the year's meat. Most farm families bought their beef in Herndon, but nearly everyone kept hogs for home consumption.[40]Neal Bailey, a veteran of many local butcherings, described them in this particularly detailed manner:
Two to three meat hogs per year were raised and slaughtered, all about Thanksgiving. Farmers used to do everything by the almanac. Two men would grab a hog and throw it on its back and cut the jugular vein with a butcher knife. The pig was thrown then into a scalding trough—a metal trough with water placed over a wood fire burning in a trench.... In the old days, the local farmers heated rocks red hot and threw them in a big barrel of water. It was a day's work to haul rocks for this. The hair was scalded and scraped off. Then the hog was gutted.Old folks used to take the insides and make chitlins out of them. I never ate them myself. The hogs were hung up overnight in a shed or in a tree where dogs couldn't get it, to let the carcasses cure. The skin was left on the carcass, and next day, it was cut up and salted down in a box. It was kept tight so flies and mice couldn't get in.... Anything that was left in spring was smoked to preserve it through the summer.[41]
Two to three meat hogs per year were raised and slaughtered, all about Thanksgiving. Farmers used to do everything by the almanac. Two men would grab a hog and throw it on its back and cut the jugular vein with a butcher knife. The pig was thrown then into a scalding trough—a metal trough with water placed over a wood fire burning in a trench.... In the old days, the local farmers heated rocks red hot and threw them in a big barrel of water. It was a day's work to haul rocks for this. The hair was scalded and scraped off. Then the hog was gutted.Old folks used to take the insides and make chitlins out of them. I never ate them myself. The hogs were hung up overnight in a shed or in a tree where dogs couldn't get it, to let the carcasses cure. The skin was left on the carcass, and next day, it was cut up and salted down in a box. It was kept tight so flies and mice couldn't get in.... Anything that was left in spring was smoked to preserve it through the summer.[41]
A small orchard apiary kept to provide honey and aid pollination of the fruit trees. Photo in Annual Report of County Agent H. B. Derr, 1925, Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.
Each family preserved its own meat and as Emma Ellmore related, "everybody had his own pet recipe ... for mixing the salt and the brown sugar—and some smoked the meat and some didn't." Lard had to be rendered for storage in the cellar, sausage hand-ground and canned or frozen, the heads boiled until the meat left the bones, then chopped and pressed into a pan with the pot liquor to make headcheese. Butchering time seems to have been an especially unforgettable occasion, for its details stand out sharply in the minds of many. "After butchering each year, Mother made ... buckwheat cakes to eat with fresh sausage," reminisced Margaret Peck. "Baked on a long black griddle, over a wood stove, spread with homemade butter and topped with corn syrup, they were the right beginning for a winter day."[42]For Floris residents, the smells and tastes of a time seem to whirl the memory backward with particular acuity.
Even in the hectic activity of harvest, a farmer was obliged to move through the evening routine of milking, feeding and bedding his animals. With these tasks completed, and a final check on the barns to see that all was snug, the farmer's day was nearly complete by about 6:00. He ate a hearty supper, then readThe Southern Planter, and possibly mended farm machinery or did a little work in the barn.[43]For those who arose at 4:00 a.m. "in all kinds of weather," sleep came early and the house was usually dark by 9:00 p.m.[44]
*
In all of this activity of cultivation, the rush of harvest, and regularity of day-to-day chores, the farmer worked, not alone, but in conjunction with his family. Unlike the industrial worker, whose employment was discrete and separate from his home life, the farmer's home was his workshop, and his labor directly connected to his sustenance. His family was an integral part of this scheme; far from being removed from the household's form of support, they were intimately bound up in it. Wife, husband, children and grandparents all contributed in their distinct sphere. The term "family farm" was no idle denomination, but a recognition of the importance the entire family played in the smooth operation of the farm.
The relationship of a farm husband and wife was in many ways a truer partnership than that of the urban marriage. "A farmer needs a wife like he needs the rain," is an old farm saying, expounded for decades in the farmer's almanacs. It has now been collaborated by rural sociologists to show that farm efficiency was based largely on the partners' shared duties.[45]The farmers themselves seemed to realize this. In a 1932 nationwide survey of factors which farmers regarded as most important to their success, "co-operation of wives" was ranked second.[46]
The activities of rural men and women were co-equal, not identical. Women rarely worked in the fields except in the press of harvesting when they might drive a horse to pull up the hay fork—"what we've all done, I guess," agreed one group of Floris women.[47]They only occasionally aided the men in the barn. Edith Rogers remembered working with the stock as did Margaret Mary Lee, who helped with milking and also recalled washing the milk storage tank and other equipment. This pleased the local milk inspector who told her, "When women are in the barn, I know the equipment is clean."[48]Except for such intermittent work, the outside duties were left to the men. Instead, most women's activity was to be found in the farmhouse and garden. Her responsibilities encompassed the expected areas of housekeeping, decorating and sewing, and often the less obvious work of bookkeeping or lawnmowing.
The farm woman's most demanding task probably centered around the preparation and preservation of food, a vitally important function, for to waste or misuse food was to negate the hard labor of a year. In the current era of convenience foods, the time-consuming nature of cooking is easily forgotten. Just operating a wood-burning stove was a complicated task, attested to by the directions for laying a fire in a contemporary cookbook.
To build a fire, first let down the grate, and take up the ashes and cinders carefully to avoid raising a dust, sifting the cinders to use in building the fire; brush the soot and dust out of the upper part of the stove, and from the flues which can be reached; be sure that all parts of the ovens and hot-boxes are clean; if there is a water-back attached to the stove, see that it is filled with water; if it is connected with water-pipes, be sure in winter that they are not frozen; brush up the hearth-stone. Lay the fire as follows: Put a few handfuls of dry shavings or paper in the bottom of the grate; upon them, some small sticks of pine wood laid across each other; then a few larger sticks, and some cinders free from ashes; a few small lumps of coke or coal may be mixed with the cinders. Open all the draughts of the stove, close all the covers, and light the fire; when the cinders are lighted, add fresh coke and coal gradually and repeatedly until a clear, bright fire is started; then partly close the draughts. To keep up a fire, add fuel often, a little at once, in order not to check the heat: letting the fire burn low, and then replenishing it abundantly, is a wasteful method, because the stove grows so cold that most of the fresh heat is lost in raising the temperature again to the degree necessary for cooking.[49]
To build a fire, first let down the grate, and take up the ashes and cinders carefully to avoid raising a dust, sifting the cinders to use in building the fire; brush the soot and dust out of the upper part of the stove, and from the flues which can be reached; be sure that all parts of the ovens and hot-boxes are clean; if there is a water-back attached to the stove, see that it is filled with water; if it is connected with water-pipes, be sure in winter that they are not frozen; brush up the hearth-stone. Lay the fire as follows: Put a few handfuls of dry shavings or paper in the bottom of the grate; upon them, some small sticks of pine wood laid across each other; then a few larger sticks, and some cinders free from ashes; a few small lumps of coke or coal may be mixed with the cinders. Open all the draughts of the stove, close all the covers, and light the fire; when the cinders are lighted, add fresh coke and coal gradually and repeatedly until a clear, bright fire is started; then partly close the draughts. To keep up a fire, add fuel often, a little at once, in order not to check the heat: letting the fire burn low, and then replenishing it abundantly, is a wasteful method, because the stove grows so cold that most of the fresh heat is lost in raising the temperature again to the degree necessary for cooking.[49]
INVENTORY OF THE ESTATE OF GEORGE W. KIDWELLDecember 9, 1925
This inventory, attached to the will of a small farmer, shows the diverse equipment found on the 1920's farm.
Plan of the family farm of Mason F. Smith, drawn by Mason Smith, Jr., for a 4-H Club project. The farm was bought in 1932 by Floyd Kidwell and now constitutes the nucleus of Frying Pan Farm Park. From Mason Smith, Jr. Livestock Record Books in Annual Report of County Agent H. B. Derr, 1929, Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.
Though the wood-burning stoves often imparted a special flavor to the food prepared on them (for example, one farm cooking devotee opined that no waffles could taste like those from a wood-burning stove[50]), the stoves were fearfully hot in the summer and needed constant refueling and expert attention to heat evenly. Few Fairfax County farm women had the luxury of electricity in their kitchens until well after 1935. Statistics show that only 65% of farm women cooked with electricity even in 1940.[51]
In addition to the large regular meals required by a hard-working family, the farm woman prepared the gargantuan harvest meals shared by all who worked in the fields. Cooking these meals in the late summer heat was a chore which took several days. "An ordeal" one veteran called it and enumerated some parts of the expected menu: corn bread, hot biscuits, pork shoulder, pressed chicken, fried chicken, vegetables and pie. "We'd put food enough together for them—and did they eat!"[52]Even at other times of the year, a farm wife needed to count on unexpected visitors and accommodate her activities to an unforeseen need to entertain. Her adaptability is attested to by Joseph Beard who described the open farm hospitality of the era:
When anybody came around to your farm in those days, when dinnertime came, you'd say, 'Well, it's time for dinner. Let's go eat.' It didn't seem to matter if you had somebody drop in on you on short notice. Women, ladies, mothers, wives, were accustomed to this kind of thing. It never seemed to upset them. They just took it in stride. They put on another plate and said, 'We haven't got much, but you're welcome to what we have.' They'd go on like this. They would bring out the best they could find. That was the kind of condition that prevailed.[53]
When anybody came around to your farm in those days, when dinnertime came, you'd say, 'Well, it's time for dinner. Let's go eat.' It didn't seem to matter if you had somebody drop in on you on short notice. Women, ladies, mothers, wives, were accustomed to this kind of thing. It never seemed to upset them. They just took it in stride. They put on another plate and said, 'We haven't got much, but you're welcome to what we have.' They'd go on like this. They would bring out the best they could find. That was the kind of condition that prevailed.[53]
The lady of the house in this period did not merely cook her family's food; she was instrumental in its production and processing. The family garden was generally her responsibility. It was she who planted the early radishes, herbs, flowers and all the multitude of summer vegetables in the cool, moist spring soil, weeded and nurtured them through the summer months, and finally gathered them in the lingering Indian summer days. If there were daughters in the family, they aided her in this as in her other activities. When the produce was finally all picked, peeled and cut, she combined themwith vinegar, sugar, and spices to preserve the vegetables as pickles, jelly or canned goods. It was warm and tiring, but highly rewarding work. "Never will I forget the pungent fragrances that pervaded the air when it was catsup or pickle-making season," wrote Lottie Schneider.
When our mothers made apple butter in great kettles each child took a turn at stirring the delicious mixture. The wonderful fragrance made the task easier even though the thickening ingredients sometimes sputtered and caused burns as they popped out on the hands who used the stirring paddle.[54]
When our mothers made apple butter in great kettles each child took a turn at stirring the delicious mixture. The wonderful fragrance made the task easier even though the thickening ingredients sometimes sputtered and caused burns as they popped out on the hands who used the stirring paddle.[54]
The pantry shelves filled with glass jars displaying their highly colored contents produced feelings of pride and plenty in the farm woman.
Poultry keeping also fell to the farmer's wife. There were a sizable number of commercial poultry farms in the county—it was in fact the area's second most important farm industry—but most dairy and general farms kept just enough for their own use.[55]Egg collecting, feeding and cleaning of the chicken house and yard, even killing, dressing and plucking the poultry were done by female members of the farm family. Thrifty women saved the feathers for pillows and coverlets and nearly all sold their excess eggs to the "hucksters" who travelled from farm to farm buying surplus goods. These peddlars also bought rabbits, turkeys, and other poultry, as well as home-churned butter from the farms. This was yet another area in which women utilized and processed the raw materials of the land. Twice a week the cream that had been skimmed and saved was churned (generally in round barrel churns with wooden paddles), salted, and packed in stone jars to be picked up and transported to the Alexandria and Washington markets. One of the early hucksters was Earl Robey who collected eggs and chickens once a week. "He travelled with 2 horses hitched to a covered wagon," wrote one farmer. "In later years he had a model T truck." The money made by the women was theirs to keep, for running the house and personal expenses, and the austerity or comparative comfort of a farmstead was often the direct result of the energy and efficiency of the farm woman.[56]
The rural woman's place was respected and secure on the farms of fifty years ago. The farmer might consider himself the overall manager but he recognized his spouse's vital contributions. "Mutually they both decided to make things go and they did go," wrote one 1930s farm boy of his parents. "Mother did not feel inferior to father and she never felt that he expected her to feel so."[57]If the woman's role and duties were firmly set in this rural society, then so was her status.
An additional responsibility was that of caring for children, but in the farm family this was more clearly a joint obligation of the father and mother than in families in which the male parent left home to work. Too, children were more closely tied to the family as a working unit; they felt both the necessity of aiding their parents with the running of the farm and the pride of contributing in a real sense to the family's well-being. Of course, farm children attended school, but they also shared the pattern of their parents' life. With father and mother they awoke in the early hours of the morning to help with barn or household chores: "It didn't make any difference how small they were, they got up at six o'clock."[58]Many learned to milk before the age of ten. On weekends, summer holidays and after school, they were also expected to help on the farm. Both boys and girls performed the unending job of gathering firewood for the kitchen stove. Carrying water was another constant chore which often fell to the family's children, for as late as 1940 nearly 40% of the county's homes still lacked running water.[59]Farm youngsters learned to drive a team and ride horseback at an early age, and this enabled them to take a horse to be shod, fetch a mower section from the general store, or run other unexpected errands. Margaret Lee stated that as a girl she used to hitch up a mule and buggy each Monday to take the family's laundry to be washed by a local Negro laundress, and pick it up again on Thursday.[60]Girls also helped with the dishes, fed chickens, and cooked while boys tackled plowing, threshing and animal husbandry. One woman recalled the special satisfaction she felt when, at the age of thirteen, she shocked an entire field of wheat.[61]By doing these chores and errands, farm children were not merely assisting in the farm operation. In the emulation of their parents' activity, they benefitted from a kind of on-the-job training which both sharpened their skills for a later farm career and furthered their identity with the family group and farm life in general.
The farm child's close connection to his parents' life and the necessity for performing a variety of chores also acted in some measure as a force for social control: the child who worked with his parents was expected to act in a manner acceptable to them. Furthermore, the close-knit nature of the community reinforced the parents' values when their offspring were away from home. "A farmer was always busy, and his kids didn't run the streets," noted Joseph Beard.[62]Another native of northern Virginia explained the prevalent philosophy in more detail:
Papa was a firm believer that work was a therapy that kept young people out of mischief. It was unthought of for youngsters to get into serious trouble in those days other than smoking corn silk or grapevine, and that was a punishment in itself. All were assigned specific chores and the youngest started out picking up chips and other small pieces of wood from the 'woodpile' for kindling to start the fire in the kitchen range at daylight in the morning.... As we grew a little older bringing in the firewood was added to the list of chores and when you grew big enough to chop and split cordwood, usually around the age of 10-12 years, one found the chores around the home were endless.[63]
Papa was a firm believer that work was a therapy that kept young people out of mischief. It was unthought of for youngsters to get into serious trouble in those days other than smoking corn silk or grapevine, and that was a punishment in itself. All were assigned specific chores and the youngest started out picking up chips and other small pieces of wood from the 'woodpile' for kindling to start the fire in the kitchen range at daylight in the morning.... As we grew a little older bringing in the firewood was added to the list of chores and when you grew big enough to chop and split cordwood, usually around the age of 10-12 years, one found the chores around the home were endless.[63]
Rebecca Rice, daughter of C. T. Rice, canning fruit in her home near Oakton, Virginia. Note the ice box and wood burning stove, standard features of the early 20th century kitchen. Photo in H. B. Derr Reports, Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.
Elizabeth Harrison in her room on a farm near Herndon, Virginia. She refurbished the room herself as part of a 4-H project. Photo in H. B. Derr Reports, Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.
The round of chores might seem endless, but farm kids had their fun, too. Joseph Beard and Richard Peck both recall swimming in Horse Pen Run and Peck also reminisced about fishing in the local streams.[64]Margaret Lee was sometimes treated to a baked sweet potato after school; she rode the family mule for recreation.[65]At Halloween, much secret giggling went on as plans were afoot to take an outhouse and sit it on the school porch, or sneak all of the milk cans out of the dairy and set them outside.[66]Skating on the baptismal pond of Frying Pan Baptist Church, and neighborhood events such as picnics, watermelon feasts and oyster suppers also lent excitement to the child's life. Perhaps the most pervasive enjoyment came from the ever-changing delights of the countryside itself. Wrote one resident of the Herndon area: "We could ramble through the woods, finding huckleberries, wild flowers, sassafras roots and stems, chestnuts and lovely mosses."[67]
*
Although children provided a great deal of supplemental labor on the county's small farms, the "hired hand" was also an important part of the community's work force. One local resident estimated that approximately half of the farms in the Herndon area used hired labor, and this figure is collaborated by the agricultural census of 1940. Other evidence shows that the largest single expense (about 38% of total farm expenditures) for the owner of thirty or more acres was hired help.[68]In Fairfax County, as in most of the South, this hired labor was composed almost entirely of the community's black residents, though occasionally a family would employ a white man. The Ellmore family, who often had a white man as their hired help, was such an exception.[69]
A homemade sled used for hauling manure to the fields. Note the two young boys who, by driving the sled, shared the family's responsibility for the farm. Photo in Annual Report of County Agent H. B. Derr, 1925, Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.
Extra help was engaged in several ways. Larger farms frequently kept one or two men throughout the year, sometimes supplying them with a house and their noon meal as well as a salary.[70]On most farms, however, extra help would be hired at particularly busy seasons by the day or the week. "In the summertime you'd get seasonal help, gather them up here and there, wherever you could," stated Holden Harrison. "If you could carry those men, at least the best ones, over the winter, then you'd have a good force that you could depend on for your summer work, your planting and harvesting."[71]In some cases the hired man would come with his team of horses for which he received additional wages. In another variation groups of workers would organize into crews to perform a specific function (for example, to fill a silo) and travelled from farm to farmaccomplishingthis special task.[72]
Many of the laborers in the Floris area came from Willard, a community of both whites and blacks, just over the Loudoun County line. About 85% of Fairfax County's black population owned no land in 1934 and supported themselves solely by agricultural labor.[73]Unlike this large landless majority, many of Willard's families owned three to fifteen acres of land. Most of these families grew vegetables on their land and nearly all kept a cow.[74]A few black families tried to support themselves by truck gardening, a difficult task when competing with larger more economical farms. One such farmer, Ernest E. Webb, struggled to maintain his children by selling vegetables in the city market. Biweekly he took his goods by wagon across the low, unstable Chain Bridge and along Canal Road to the markets in Washington, but for this long, exhausting trip his profits were slim: "We made enough to come back home, feed the horses, and feed ourselves a little for another trip."[75]To eke out an existence, most blacks had to supplement any farming income they might have by working as agricultural laborers.
Those laborers who did not have steady employment had to wait for work until they were needed for a specific job. When a farmer wanted extra help, he went to the black community, or sent word by someone else, and detailed the number of men needed and the job to be done. "In the spring my father would go up there [to Willard] or send me up there to see if I could get three or four fellows to help get the spring work going," remarked Holden Harrison. "Maybe you could get them and maybe you couldn't."[76]Sometimes there was a labor shortage, but frequently more men wanted work than there were jobs to go around. Several area residents remembered that if word got out that ten men were needed for a job, often fifteen or more would show up.[77]This was especially true during the agricultural depression of the 1920s and 1930s, which hit blacks far worse than the county's white population. The blacks' landholdings were of inferior quality and generally too small for efficient operation, and this, combined with their meagre operating capital and inadequate reserves, made the black agriculturalist more dependent than ever on work from the large landowner.[78]
The hired man was expected to arrive in time for the earlymorning milking and work the lengthy fifteen-hour day alongside the farmer. His chores ranged from making hay to cutting wood and building fences. Neal Bailey recalled that he spent his entire first day as a laborer driving fence posts with a 16-pound hammer. The standard salary was $1.00 to $1.50 per day plus all he could eat for lunch. Some farmers paid by the job rather than by the day though they found the latter system preferable. When the help was not so concerned with completing a task rapidly, farmers believed it produced a better quality work. Occasionally the white farmers shared or traded work with their black counterparts. More frequently, hired hands worked for a share of the fruits of their labor. At butchering time, the hired help might go home with sausage, side meat (bacon) or a pork shoulder for his pay. At berry season they picked a farmer's blackberries or wild cherries for half of the take.[79]
The women and children of the black communities in Fairfax County also worked. Black women took in laundry, picked fruit and sometimes came to the white farmer's houses to help with canning or meat preservation at butchering time. One woman worked as a midwife; according to Margaret Lee, the only one in the area. She delivered Miss Lee's younger sister around 1913.[80]Children as young as nine would thin corn or pluck potato bugs off the dark, leafy plants for 50¢a day. Girls used to pick berries and pull field cress when it was going to seed, and some children worked in the farmhouses running errands.[81]The Ellmore family often had a young boy to help do odds and ends, and another Floris resident noted that "there was some twins of about twelve years old and we needed a little help so I took one of them in the house and my brother had the other out to help him with things."[82]Neal Bailey recalled going out to help his father cut corn at a very young age and being told to "keep working—you have no back," even when it felt as if it were breaking.[83]
Within these labor relationships the white employer retained the most control since he set wages and hours, and because he worked with the knowledge that the black families were dependent on him for employment. Yet the blacks had their influence too, for the larger landowners needed their labor to keep the farms operating smoothly. The farmer's dependence was apparent in instances such as that related by Ray Harrison, who remembered one Christmas night when no help at all showed up. That night he milked fifty-two cows by hand, something he could not afford to do every day.[84]In numerous ways the hired hands exercised some control over their working conditions. For example, seasoned workmen reserved the right to "break in" a field hand new to the neighborhood, thus both initiating him into local work patterns and assuring that his expectations and treatment corresponded to that of the veteran help.[85]In times of intense activity, the labor supply would be short and the workers raised their prices accordingly. One farmer recalled that during an exceptionally busy silo-filling season the help were "jacking up the price ... ten cents an hourabout four times in one day.... They were putting pressure on because they thought they had the leverage there." In this case the farmer called their bluff and sent the workers home, but in many instances, the laborers held sway and received higher wages during peak work periods.[86]
The white attitude toward their black workers seems to have been paternalistic, as was the pattern of most racial relations in the post-bellum South. Though area farmers maintain that their hired laborers were liked and respected—"as much a part of the neighborhood as anyone else"—in conversation capable workers were referred to as "boy" or by the old plantation epithets of "Aunt" and "Uncle." A hearty noon meal was part of the hired man's pay, but the help ate outside by themselves, rather than with the family.[87]Moreover, rather than admit his need for the laborers, the white employer sometimes viewed his hiring in an altruistic light. "I remember my brother went over to these colored people that had been working for him at different times, in the middle of the winter, and told them to come over and cut some wood, and he paid them for it so that they would have something, because they were pretty bad off. So he just made work for them," stated one county woman.[88]Undoubtedly, charitable motives were truly meant, but the outcome was a paternalistic attitude which failed to recognize the mutual dependence of land and labor.
This reliable supply of labor eliminated the county's need for migratory workers, and also reduced the amount of tenancy since most farmers found labor enough to manage all of their acreage. Nevertheless, during the period between 1918-1940, about 10-12% of the white farm population and 2% of the black were tenants.[89]Statistical evidence shows over half of the tenants to be cash croppers in 1925 and 40% in 1940. Many historians believe this to be the least beneficial system for the tenant as his obligation was to pay the landlord a fixed rent on the land regardless of the success of his crop.[90]However, Joseph Beard stated that most of the tenants with whom he had contact when he was county agent in the late 1930s were sharecroppers. By this system, the renting farmer supplied his tools and labor, the landlord furnished the land, and the crop was split.
Fairfax County never harbored the kind of perpetual tenancy described by James Agee'sLet Us Now Praise Famous Men, in which families lived in squalor and humiliation with little hope of pulling their way out of debt. This occurred more frequently in the one-crop areas of the deep South where exhausted soil and crop dependency made for a high debt risk each year. Beard maintained that the sharecroppers of the late 1930s were respectable people, merely renting land until they could afford to purchase their own. In several instances, they were young local couples who went on to buy their tenured land and to become established members of the community.[91]Still, at best, any tenure system was a demoralizing one for the renter because his profits were consistently skimmed off to the landlord.
PART I—NOTES
Continuity
[5]Interview with Joseph Beard by Elizabeth Pryor, Fairfax, Virginia, January 23, 1979; notes from interview with Margaret Mary Lee by Nan Netherton, Herndon, Virginia, March 28, 1978. All transcripts and notes from interviews used in this paper are deposited in the Fairfax County Library Virginiana Collection (hereafter cited "Virginiana").
[6]Notes on interview with Elizabeth and Emma Ellmore by Nan Netherton, Herndon, Virginia, March 2, 1978.
[7]Interview with Holden Harrison, Ray Harrison and Virginia Presgraves Harrison by Elizabeth Pryor, Chantilly, Virginia, February 5, 1979.
[8]Notes on interview with John and Edna Middleton by Nan Netherton, Herndon, Virginia, February 24, 1978.
[9]Interview with Joseph Beard and Holden Harrison by Elizabeth Pryor, Floris, Virginia, March 6, 1979; Wilson Day McNair, "What I Remember," unpublished manuscript, n.d., copy courtesy of Louise McNair Ryder; author's conversation with Rebecca Middleton, Floris, Virginia, April 4, 1979.
[10]John Middleton/Netherton, February 24, 1978; and interview with Joseph Beard by Nan Netherton and Patrick Reed, Fairfax, Virginia, November, 1974.
[11]Ellmore/Middleton/Pryor, March 8, 1979.
[12]"Floris Producers Active,"Herndon News-Observer, January 22, 1925.
[13]Lottie Dyer Schneider,Memoirs of Herndon, Virginia(Marion, Virginia, 1962), 10 and 30.
[14]Notes on interview with Richard Peck by Nan Netherton, Herndon, Virginia, February 23, 1978; notes on interview with Virginia McFarland Greear by Nan Netherton, Herndon, Virginia, March 2, 1978; and Schneider,Memoirs of Herndon, Virginia, 10.
[15]Elizabeth Rice to author, Wilmington, Delaware, January 30, 1979.
[16]Beard/Netherton/Reed, November, 1974; Peck/Netherton, February 23, 1978; Ellmore/Netherton, March 2, 1978; and Harrison/Pryor, February 5, 1979.
[17]Agricultural Census, 1925; and Federal Crop Reporting Service,Virginia Farm Statistics, 1935-1936(Richmond, 1936).
[18]Ibid.; and Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979.
[19]Lehman Nickell and Cary J. Randolph,An Economic and Social Survey of Fairfax County(Charlottesville, 1924), 29-40; notes on interview with Neal Bailey by Nan Netherton, Herndon, Virginia, December 12, 1978; "Fairfax Farmer Threw Away His Plow in 1928 and Amazing Results Have Been Revolutionary,"Richmond Times-Dispatch, September 17, 1951; and Annual Reports of County Agricultural Extension Agent H. B. Derr, 1928, 1929 and 1932, in Virginiana.
[20]Bailey/Netherton, December 19, 1978.
[21]Ibid.; and McNair, "What I Remember."
[22]Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979.
[23]Derr Reports, 1928, 1932; McNair, "What I Remember"; and Joseph Beard quoted in Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979.
[24]Ibid.
[25]Notes on interview with Edith Rogers by Nan Netherton, Herndon, Virginia, n.d. (c. spring, 1978).
[26]Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979.
[27]Bailey/Netherton, December 19, 1978; Rogers/Netherton; Derr Report, 1926, 9.
[28]Derr Report, 1925, 2.
[29]Agricultural Census, 1925; and Derr Reports, 1921 and 1924.
[30]"Fairfax Farmer Threw Away Plow."
[31]Bailey/Netherton, December 19, 1978; and McNair, "What I Remember."
[32]Harrison/Pryor, February 5, 1979.
[33]Ibid.
[34]Bailey/Netherton, December 19, 1978; notes on interview with Joseph Beard by Elizabeth Pryor, Fairfax, Virginia, February 27, 1979; and Harrison/Pryor, February 5, 1979.
[35]Bailey/Netherton, December 19, 1978; McNair, "What I Remember."
[36]Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 8, 1979.
[37]Harrison/Pryor, February 5, 1979; Lee/Netherton, March 28, 1978; Elizabeth Rice to Mary Scott, n.d. (c. fall, 1978), copy courtesy of Mary Scott.
[38]Elizabeth Rice to author, January 30, 1979.
[39]4-H Record Books, copy in Annual Report of County Agricultural Extension Agent; Derr Report, 1927; Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979; and McNair, "What I Remember."
[40]Rogers/Netherton; Greear/Netherton, March 23, 1978.
[41]Bailey/Netherton, December 19, 1978.
[42]Margaret Peck quoted inOut of the Frying Pan(Herndon, Virginia, 1964), 4.
[43]J. Middleton/Netherton, February 24, 1978.
[44]Ellmore/Netherton, March 2, 1978; and Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979.
[45]SeeHills Southern Almanac, (Virginia Fire and Marine Insurance Company, 1929); J. H. Kolb and Edmund S. de Brunner,A Study of Rural Society(Boston, 1935), 36-37.
[46]Ibid., 37.
[47]Ellmore/Middleton/Pryor, March 8, 1979.
[48]Rogers/Netherton; Lee/Netherton, March 28, 1978.
[49]Juliet Corson,Miss Corson's Practical American Cookery(New York, 1886), 4; and Adeline Goessling,The Farm and Home Cook Book(Chicago, 1919).
[50]Frances Darlington Simpson,Virginia Country Life and Cooking(Washington, D.C., 1963).
[51]Virginia Polytechnical Institute,The Housing of Virginia's Rural Folk(Blacksburg, 1940), 26.
[52]Rebecca Middleton quoted in Ellmore/Middleton/Pryor, March 8, 1979.
[53]Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979.
[54]Schneider,Memoirs of Herndon, Virginia, 30.
[55]Derr Reports, 1926, 1927; nearly all interviews collaborated this information, see especially Peck/Netherton, February 23, 1978.
[56]Greear/Netherton, March 23, 1978; McNair, "What I Remember."
[57]Unidentified 1930s farmer quoted in Kolb and Brunner,A Study of Rural Society, 33.
[58]Ibid.; Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979.
[59]VPI,Housing, 26.
[60]Lee/Netherton, March 28, 1978.
[61]Ibid.; Ellmore/Netherton, March 2, 1978; Peck/Netherton, February 23, 1978.
[62]Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979.
[63]Edwin W. Beitzell,Life on the Potomac River(Abell, Maryland, 1968), 130.
[64]Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979; Peck/Netherton, February 23, 1978.
[65]Lee/Netherton, March 28, 1978.
[66]Ibid.
[67]Schneider,Memoirs of Herndon, Virginia, 31.
[68]Lee/Netherton, March 28, 1978; and W. C. Funk, "An Economic Study of Small Farms Near Washington, D.C.,"United States Department of Agriculture Bulletin 848, June 22, 1920. This study concludes that the farmer with thirty or more acres spent 38% of his revenue for labor, as compared with 10% for feed, 11% for marketing and 3% for insurance and taxes. See Table IV of this study for a complete breakdown.
[69]Ellmore/Netherton, March 2, 1978.
[70]Harrison/Pryor, February 5, 1979.
[71]Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979.
[72]Ibid.
[73]Ibid.; and William Edward Garnett and John W. Ellison, "Negro Life in Rural Virginia, 1865-1934,"Virginia Polytechnical Institute Bulletin 295, June, 1934.
[74]Beard/Pryor, February 27, 1979; and Bailey/Netherton, December 19, 1978.
[75]Dana Gumb, "Pioneer Recalls McLean,"Echoes of History, (March and May, 1972), 28.
[76]Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979.
[77]Beard/Pryor, February 27, 1979; and Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979.
[78]Garnett and Ellison, "Negro Life in Rural Virginia," 13.
[79]Beard/Pryor, February 27, 1979; Bailey/Netherton, December 19, 1978; Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979.
[80]Lee/Netherton, March 28, 1978.
[81]Bailey/Netherton, December 19, 1978.
[82]Ellmore/Netherton, March 2, 1978; interview with Edith Rogers by Patty Corbat, Craig Smith and Phyllis Hirshman, June 12, 1970.
[83]Bailey/Netherton, December 19, 1978.
[84]Harrison/Pryor, February 5, 1979.
[85]Bailey/Netherton, December 19, 1978; Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979.
[86]Beard/Harrison/Pryor, March 6, 1979; Beard/Pryor, February 27, 1979.
[87]Greear/Netherton, March 23, 1978; Peck/Netherton, February 23, 1978.
[88]Rogers/Corbat, et al., June 12, 1970.
[89]Nickell and Randolph,An Economic and Social Survey of Fairfax County, 75-76; andAgricultural Census, 1925. Nickell gives a 13% tenancy and lists 175 out of 304 tenants to be working on a cash-tenant basis. The Agricultural Census for 1940 also shows a 10% tenancy figure.
[90]Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979. For a grim but revealing view of what tenancy could mean during this period, see James Agee and Walker Evans,Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, (New York, 1960).
[91]Harold Barger and Hans M. Lansburg,American Agriculture 1899-1939(New York, 1975), 212; and Beard/Pryor, January 23, 1979.
In its seasonal cycle of activity, the close and interdependent family relationships, and the singular self-motivation of the farmer, the early 20th century farm carried on many of the traditions of the past. Except for the change from slave to free labor and the marginal use of mechanical equipment, these elements made up a world in which the farmer of 1890, 1870, or even 1850 would have felt comfortable. But running concurrently with these expected qualities of rural life were major changes which jarred and fractured the constant trends of farming. Change in attitude, technology or society occurs during all periods, but the 1920s and 1930s were a particularly dynamic time in the field of agriculture. Advances in the understanding of plant biology, animal husbandry and soil conservation, together with higher living standards through rural electrification and improved communications, were a cause for optimism about the future of the family farm. Yet these advances irrevocably altered the familiar rural life patterns. To maintain his own station within this changing world, the farmer's outlook and methods would also have to change.
*
Perhaps the most obvious modification of the traditional methods of farming was the increased mechanization of many farm functions during the early part of the 20th century. Not only were plows improved (by the addition of a vertical disk which made for deeper cutting and more thorough turning of the soil) and heavier harrows developed, but gasoline-powered machinery began to be widely used.[92]The diesel tractor had actually been available as early as 1905, but was not generally adopted until World War I at which time military experimentation improved the engine's construction and worker shortages made the labor-efficient machinery especially valuable. The introduction in 1924 of an all-purpose tractor, which could cultivate as well as prepare the soil, increased the machinery's usefulness and gave an additional thrust to its popularity.[93]The tractor was meant to replace the work of draft horses, the large, gentle creatures who, along with oxen and mules, had supplied the farm's power for centuries. The saving the new machinery incurred was chiefly in time, an intangible element of economics which farmers were just beginning to consider in their appraisal of income and farm value. Often the use of a tractor cut work time by half or more. Ray Harrison recalled that it took five horses and three men several days work to clean out the trees and brush for a potential field; his brother could do it with only one helper in a single day.[94]