The morning after Christmas broke clear, with a wind from the south that promised to make quick work of the snow. The young people were engaged for the evening, as indeed for most evenings, in the hospitable village, and they spent the day on the farm as pleased them best.
There were many things to interest city-bred folk on a place like Four Oaks. Everything was new to them, and they wanted to see the workings of the factory farm in all its detail. They made friends with the men who had charge of the stock, and spent much time in the stables. Polly and I saw them occasionally, but they did not need much attention from us. We have never found it necessary to entertain our friends on the farm. They seem to do that for themselves. We simply live our lives with them, and they live theirs with us. This works well both for the guests and for the hosts.
The great event of the holiday week was a New Year Eve dance at the Country Club. Every member was expected to appear in person or by proxy, as this was the greatest of many functions of the year.
Sunday was warm and sloppy, and little could be done out of doors. Part of the household were for church, and the rest lounged until luncheon; then Polly read "Sonny" until twilight, and Laura played strange music in the half-dark.
The next day the men went into town to look about, and to lunch with some college chums. As they would not return until five, the ladies had the day to themselves. They read a little, slept a little, and talked much, and were glad when five o'clock and the men came. Tea was so hot and fragrant, the house so cosey, and the girls so pretty, that Jack said:—
"What chumps we men were to waste the whole day in town!"
"And what do you expect of men, Mr. Jack?" said Jessie.
"Yes, I know, the old story of pearls and swine, but there are pearls and pearls."
"Do you mean that there are more pearls than swine, Mr. Jack? For, if you do, I will take issue with you."
"If I am a swine, I will be an æsthetic one and wear the pearl that comes my way," said Jack, looking steadily into the eyes of the high-headed girl.
"Will you have one lump or two?"
"One," said Jack, as he took his cup.
The last day of the year came all too quickly for both young and old at Four Oaks. Polly and I went into hiding in the office in the afternoon to make up the accounts for the year. As Polly had spent the larger lump sum, I could face her with greater boldness than on the previous occasion. Here is an excerpt from the farm ledger:—
Expended in 1896$43,309Interest on previous account2,200_______Total$45,509Receipts5,105_______Net expense$40,404Previous account44,000_______$84,404
The farm owes me a little more than $84,000. "Not so good as I hoped, and not so bad as I feared," said Polly. "We will win out all right, Mr. Headman, though it does seem a lot of money."
"Like the Irishman's pig," quoth I. "Pat said, 'It didn't weigh nearly as much as I expected, but I never thought it would.'"
There was little to depress us in the past, and nothing in the present, so we joined the young people for the dance at the Club.
After our guests had departed, to college or school or home, the house was left almost deserted. We did not shut it up, however. Fires were bright on all hearths, and lamps were kept burning. We did not mean to lose the cheeriness of the house, though much of the family had departed. For a wonder, the days did not seem lonesome. After the fist break was over, we did not find time to think of our solitude, and as the weeks passed we wondered what new wings had caused them to fly so swiftly. Each day had its interests of work or study or social function. Stormy days and unbroken evenings were given to reading. We consumed many books, both old and new, and we were not forgotten by our friends. The dull days of winter did not drag; indeed, they were accepted with real pleasure. Our lives had hitherto been too much filled with the hurry and bustle inseparable from the fashionable existence-struggle of a large city to permit us to settle down with quiet nerves to the real happiness of home. So much of enjoyment accompanies and depends upon tranquillity of mind, that we are apt to miss half of it in the turmoil of work-strife and social-strife that fill the best years of most men and women.
It is a pity that all overwrought people cannot have a chance to relax their nerves, and to learn the possibilities of happiness that are within them. Most of the jars and bickerings of domestic life, most of the mental and moral obliquities, depend upon threadbare nerves, either inherited or uncovered by friction incident to getting on in the world. I never understood the comforts that follow in the wake of a quiet, unambitious life, until such a life was forced upon me. When you discover these comforts for the first time, you marvel that you have foregone them so long, and are fain to recommend them to all the world.
Polly and I had gotten on reasonably well up to this time; but before we became conscious of any change, we found ourselves drawn closer together by a multitude of small interests common to both. After twenty-five years of married life it will compensate any man to take a little time from business and worry that he may become acquainted with his wife. A few fortunate men do this early in life, and they draw compound interest on the investment; but most of us feel the cares of life so keenly that we take them home with us to show in our faces and to sit at our tables and to blight the growth of that cheerful intercourse which perpetuates love and cements friendship in the home as well as in the world.
There were no serious cares nowadays, and time passed so smoothly at Four Oaks that we wondered at the picnic life that had fallen to us. The village of Exeter was alive in all things social. The city families who had farms or country places near the village were so fond of them that they rarely closed them for more than two or three months, and these months were as likely to come in summer as in winter.
Our friends the Gordons made Homestead Farm their permanent residence, though they kept open house in town. Beyond the Gordons' was the modest home of an Irish baronet, Sir Thomas O'Hara. Sir Tom was a bachelor of sixty. He had run through two fortunes (as became an Irish baronet) in the racing field and at Homburg, and as a young man he had lived ten years at Limmer's tavern in London. When not in training to ride his own steeple-chasers, he was putting up his hands against any man in England who would face him for a few friendly rounds. He was not always victorious, either in the field, before the green cloth, or in the ring; but he was always a kind-hearted gentleman who would divide his last crown with friend or foe, and who could accept a beating with grace and unruffled spirit.
He could never ride below the welter weight, and after a few years he outgrew this weight and was forced to give up the least expensive of his diversions. The green cloth now received more of his attention, and, as a matter of course, of his money. Things went badly with him, and he began to see the end of his second fortune before he called a halt. Bad times in Ireland seriously reduced his rents, and he was forced to dispose of his salable estates. Then he came to this country in the hope of recouping himself, and to get away from the fast set that surrounded him.
"I can resist anything but temptation," this warm-hearted Irishman would say; and that was the keynote of his character.
Though Sir Tom was only sixty years old, he looked seventy. He was much broken in health by gout and the fast pace of his early manhood. But his spirit was untouched by misfortune, disease, or hardship. His courage was as good as when he served as a subaltern of the Guards in the trenches before Sebastopol, or presented his body as a mark for the sledge-hammer blows of Tom Sayers, just for diversion. His constitution must have been superb, for even in his decrepitude he was good to look upon: five feet ten, fine body, slightly given to rotundity, legs a little shrunken in the shanks, but giving unmistakable signs of what they had been ("not lost, but gone before," as he would say of them), hands and feet aristocratic in form and well cared for, and a fine head set on broad shoulders. His hair was thin, and he parted it with great exactness in the middle. His eyes were brown, large, and of exceeding softness. His nose was straight in spite of many a contusion, and his whole expression was that of a high-bred gentleman somewhat the worse for wear. Sir Tom was perfectly groomed when he came forth from his chamber, which was usually about ten in the morning.
Those of us who had access to his rooms often wondered how he ever got out of them looking so immaculate, for they were a perfectly impassable jungle to the stranger. Such a tangle of trunks, hand-bags, rug bundles, clothes, boots, pajamas, newspapers, scrap-books, B. & S. bottles, could hardly be found anywhere else in the world. He had a fondness for newspaper clippings, and had trunks of them, sorted into bundles or pasted in scrap-books. Old volumes of Bell'sLifefilled more than one trunk, and on one occasion when he and I were spending a long evening together, in celebration of his recent recovery from an attack of gout, and when he had done more than usual justice to the B. & S. bottles and less than usual justice to his gout, he showed me the record of a long-gone year in which this same Bell'sLifecalled him the "first among the gentlemen riders in the United Kingdom," and proved this assertion by showing how he had won most of the great steeple-chases in England and Ireland, riding his own horses. This was the nearest approach to boasting that ever came to my knowledge in the years of our close friendship, and I would never have thought of it as such had I not seen that he regarded it as unwarrantable self-praise.
I have never known a more simple, kind-hearted, agreeable, and lovable gentleman than this broken-down sporting man and gambler. I loved him as a brother; and though he has passed out of my life, I still love the memory of his genial face, his courtesy, his unselfish friendship, more than words can express. A tender heart and a gentle spirit found strange housing in a body given over to reckless prodigality. The combination, tempered by time and exhaustion, showed nothing that was not lovable; and it is scant praise to say that Sir Thomas was much to me.
He was just as acceptable to Polly. No woman could fail to appreciate the homage which he never failed to show to the wife and mother. Many winter evenings at Four Oaks were made brighter by his presence, and we grew to expect him at least three nights each week. His plate was placed on our round table these nights, and he rarely failed to use it; and the B. & S. bottles were near at hand, and his favorite brand of cigars within easy reach.
"I light a 'baccy' by your permission, Mrs. Williams," and a courtly bow accompanied the words.
At 9.30 William came to bring Sir Tom home. The leave-taking was always formal with Polly, but with me it was, "Ta-ta, Williams—see you later," and our guest would hobble out on his poor crippled feet, waving his hand gallantly, with a voice as cheery as a boy's.
Another family whom I wish the reader to know well is the Kyrles. For more than twenty-five years we have known no joys or sorrows which they did not feel, and no interests that touched them have failed to leave a mark on us. We could not have been more intimate or better friends had the closest blood tie united us. The acquaintance of young married couples had grown into a friendship that was bearing its best fruit at a time when best fruit was most appreciated. We do not consider a pleasure more than half complete until we have told it to Will and Frances Kyrle, for their delight doubles our happiness.
They were among the earliest of my patients, and they are easily first among our friends. I have watched more than a half-dozen of their children from infancy to adult life, and this alone would be a strong bond; but in addition to this is the fact that the whole family, from father to youngest child, possess in a wonderful degree that subtle sense of true camaraderie which is as rare as it is charming.
The Kyrles lived in the city, but they were foot-free, and we could count on having them often. Four Oaks was to be, if we had our way, a country home for them almost as much as for us. Indeed, one of the rooms was called the Kyrles' room, and they came to it at will. Enough about our friends. We must go back to the farm interests, which are, indeed, the only excuse for this history.
Our life at Four Oaks began in earnest in January, 1897. Even during the winter months there was no lack of employment and interest for the Headman. I breakfasted at seven, and from that time until noon I was as busy as if I were working for $20 a month. The master's eye is worth more than his hand in a factory like mine. My men were, and are, an unusual lot,—intelligent, sober, and willing,—but they, like others, are apt to fall into routine ways, and thereby to miss points which an observing proprietor would not overlook.
The cows, for instance, were all fed the same ration. Fifteen pounds of mixed grains was none too much for the big Holstein milk-makers, who were yielding well and looking in perfect health; but the common cows were taking on too much flesh and falling off in milk. I at once changed the ration for these six cows by leaving out the corn entirely and substituting oat straw for alfalfa in the cut feed. The change brought good results in five of the cows; the other one did not pick up in her milk, and after a reasonable trial I sold her.
The herd was doing excellently for mid-winter,—the yield amounted to a daily average of 840 pounds throughout the month, and I was able to make good my contract with the middleman. I could see breakers ahead, however, and it behooved me to make ready for them. I decided to buy ten more thoroughbreds in new milk, if I could find them. I wrote to the people from whom I had purchased the first herd, and after a little delay secured nine cows in fresh milk and about four years old. This addition came in February, and kept my milk supply above the danger point. Since then I have bought no cows. Thirty-four of these thoroughbreds are still at Four Oaks—two of them have died, and three have been sold for not keeping up to the standard—and are doing grand service. Their numbers have been reënforced by twenty of their best daughters, so there are at this writing fifty-four milch cows and five yearling heifers in the herd. Most of the calves have been disposed of as soon as weaned. I have no room for more stock on my place, and it doesn't pay to keep them to sell as cows. Four Oaks is not a breeding farm, but a factory farm, and everything has to be subordinated to the factory idea.
My thoroughbred calves have brought me an average price of $12 each at four to six weeks, sold to dairymen, and I am satisfied to do business in that way. The nine milch cows which I bought to complete the herd cost, delivered at Four Oaks, $1012.
All the grain fed to cows, horses, and hogs, and a portion of that fed to chickens, is ground fine before feeding. The grinding is done in the granary by a mill with a capacity of forty bushels an hour. We make corn meal, corn and cob meal, and oatmeal enough for a week's supply in a few hours. All hay and straw is cut fine, before being fed, by a power cutter in the forage barn, and from thence is taken by teams in box racks to the feeding rooms, where it is wetted with hot water and mixed with the ground feed for the cows and horses, and steamed or cooked with the ground feed for the hogs and hens.
Alfalfa is the only hay used for the hens, and wonderfully good it is for them. Besides feed for the hogs, we have to provide ashes, salt, and charcoal for them. These three things are kept constantly before them in narrow troughs set so near the wall that they cannot get their feet into them.
We carefully save all wood ashes for the hogs and hens, and we burn our own charcoal in a pit in the wood lot. Five cords of sound wood make an abundant supply for a year. I think this side dish constantly before swine goes a long way toward keeping them healthy. Clean pens, well-balanced and well-cooked food, pure water, and this medicine can be counted on to keep a growing and fattening herd healthy during its nine months of life.
It is claimed that it is unnatural and artificial to confine these young things within such narrow limits, and so it is; but the whole scheme is unnatural, if you please. The pig is born to die, and to die quickly, for the profit and maintenance of man. What could be more unnatural? Would he be better reconciled to his fate after spending his nine months between field and sty? I wot not. The Chester White is an indolent fellow, and I suspect he loves his comfortable house, his cool stone porch, his back yard to dig in, his neighbors across the wire fence to gossip with, and his well-balanced, well-cooked food served under his own nose three times a day. At least he looks content in his piggery, and grows faster and puts on more flesh in his 250 days than does his neighbor of the field. If the hog's profitable life were twice or thrice as long, I would advocate a wider liberty for the early part of it; but as it doesn't pay to keep the animal after he is nine months old, the quickest way to bring him to perfection is the best. One cannot afford to graze animals of any kind when one is trying to do intensive farming. It is indirect, it is wasteful of space and energy, and it doesn't force the highest product. Grazing, as compared with soiling, may be economical of labor, but as I understand economics that is the one thing in which we do not wish to economize. The multiplication of well-paid and well-paying labor is a thing to be specially desired. If the soiling farm will keep two or three more men employed at good wages, and at the same time pay better interest than the grazing farm, it should be looked upon as much the better method. The question of furnishing landscape for hogs is one that borders too closely on the æsthetic or the sentimental to gain the approval of the factory-farm man. What is true of hogs is also true of cows. They are better off under the constant care of intelligent and interested human beings than when they follow the rippling brook or wind slowly o'er the lea at their own sweet pleasure.
The truth is, the rippling brook doesn't always furnish the best water, and the lea furnishes very imperfect forage during nine months of the year. A twenty-acre lot in good grass, in which to take the air, is all that a well-regulated herd of fifty cows needs. The clean, cool, calm stable is much to their liking, and the regular diet of a first-class cow-kitchen insures a uniform flow of milk.
What is true of hogs and cows is true also of hens. The common opinion that the farm-raised hen that has free range is healthier or happier than her sister in a well-ordered hennery is not based on facts. Freedom to forage for one's self and pick up a precarious living does not always mean health, happiness, or comfort. The strenuous life on the farm cannot compare in comfort with the quiet house and the freedom from anxiety of the well-tended hen. The vicissitudes of life are terrible for the uncooped chicken. The occupants of air, earth, and water lie in wait for it. It is fair game for the hawk and the owl; the fox, the weasel, the rat, the wood pussy, the cat, and the dog are its sworn enemies. The horse steps on it, the wheel crushes it; it falls into the cistern or the swill barrel; it is drenched by showers or stiffened by frosts, and, as the English say, it has a "rather indifferent time of it." If it survive the summer, and some chickens do, it will roost and shiver on the limb of an apple tree. Its nest will be accessible only to the mink and the rat; and, like Rachel, it will mourn for its children, which are not.
No, the well-yarded hen has by all odds the best of it. The wonder is that, with three-fourths of the poultry at large and making its own living, hens still furnish a product, in this country alone, $100,000,000 greater in value than the whole world's output of gold. Our annual production of eggs and poultry foots up to $280,000,000,—$4 apiece for every man, woman, and child,—and yet people say that hens do not pay!
Each flock of forty hens at Four Oaks has a house sixteen feet by twenty, and a run twenty feet by one hundred. I hear no complaints of close quarters or lack of freedom, but I do hear continually the song of contentment, and I see results daily that are more satisfactory than those of any oil well or mine in which I have ever been interested.
Sam began to make up his breeding pens in January. He selected 150 of his favorites, divided them into 10 flocks of 15, added a fine cockerel to each pen (we do not allow cocks or cockerels to run with the laying hens), and then began to set the incubator house in order.
He filled the first incubator on Saturday, January 30, and from that day until late in April he was able to start a fresh machine about every six days. Sam reports the total hatch for the year as 1917 chicks, out of which number he had, when he separated them in the early autumn, 678 pullets to put in the runs for laying hens, and 653 cockerels to go to the fattening pens. These figures show that Sam was a first-class chicken man.
We secured 300 tons of ice at the side of the lake for $98, having to pay a little more that year than the last, on account of the heavy fall of snow.
The wood-house was replenished, although there was still a good deal of last year's cut on hand. We did not fell any trees, for there was still a considerable quantity of dead wood on the ground which should be used first. I wanted to clear out much of the useless underbrush, but we had only time to make a beginning in this effort at forestry. We went over perhaps ten acres across the north line, removing briers and brush. Everything that looked like a possible future tree was left. Around oak and hickory stumps we found clumps of bushes springing from living roots. These we cut away, except one or possibly two of the most thrifty. We trimmed off the lower branches of those we saved, and left them to make such trees as they could. I have been amazed to see what a growth an oak-root sprout will make after its neighbors have been cut away. There are some hundreds of these trees in the forest at Four Oaks, from five to six inches in diameter, which did not measure more than one or two inches five years ago.
As the underbrush was cleared from the wood lot, I planned to set young trees to fill vacant spaces. The European larch was used in the first experiment. In the spring of 1897 I bought four thousand seedling larches for $80, planted them in nursery rows in the orchard, cultivated them for two years, and then transplanted them to the forest. The larch is hardy and grows rapidly; and as it is a valuable tree for many purposes, it is one of the best for forest planting. I have planted no others thus far at Four Oaks, as the four thousand from my little nursery seem to fill all unoccupied spaces.
Fresh mulching was piled near all the young fruit trees, to be applied as soon as the frost was out of the ground. Several hundreds of loads of manure were hauled to the fields, to be spread as soon as the snow disappeared. I always return manure to the land as soon as it can be done conveniently. The manure from the hen-house was saved this year to use on the alfalfa fields, to see how well it would take the place of commercial fertilizer. I may as well give the result of the experiment now.
It was mixed with sand and applied at the rate of eight hundred pounds an acre for the spring dressing over a portion of the alfalfa, against four hundred pounds an acre of the fertilizer 3:8:8. After two years I was convinced that, when used alone, it is not of more than half the value of the fertilizer.
My present practice is to use five hundred pounds of hen manure and two hundred pounds of fertilizer on each acre for the spring dressing, and two hundred pounds an acre of the fertilizer alone after each cutting except the last. We have ten or twelve tons of hen manure each year, and it is nearly all used on the alfalfa or the timothy as spring dressing. It costs nothing, and it takes off a considerable sum from the fertilizer account. I am not at all sure that the scientists would approve this method of using it; I can only give my experience, and say that it brings me satisfactory crops.
There was much snow in January and February, and in March much rain. When the spring opened, therefore, the ground was full of water. This was fortunate, for April and May were unusually dry months,—only 1.16 inches of water.
The dry April brought the ploughs out early; but before we put our hands to the plough we should make a note of what the first quarter of 1897 brought into our strong box.
Sold:Butter$842.00Eggs401.00Cow35.00Two sows19.00------Total$1297.00
Fifteen of the young sows farrowed in March, and the other 9 in April, as also did 18 old ones. The young sows gave us 147 pigs, and the old ones 161, so that the spring opened with an addition to our stock of 300 head of young swine.
Between March 1 and May 10 were born 25 calves, which were all sold before July 1. The population of our factory farm was increasing so rapidly that it became necessary to have more help. We already had eight men and three women, besides the help in the big house. One would think that eight men could do the work on a farm of 320 acres, and so they can, most of the time; but in seed-time and harvest they are not sufficient at Four Oaks. We could not work the teams.
Up to March, 1897, Sam had full charge of the chickens, and also looked after the hogs, with the help of Anderson. Judson and French had their hands full in the cow stables, and Lars was more than busy with the carriage horses and the driving. Thompson was working foreman, and his son Zeb and Johnson looked after the farm horses during the winter and did the general work. From that time on Sam gave his entire time to the chickens, Anderson his entire time to the hogs, and Johnson began gardening in real earnest. This left only Thompson and Zeb for general farm work.
Again I advertised for two farm hands. I selected two of the most promising applicants and brought them out to the farm. Thompson discharged one of them at the end of the first day for persistently jerking his team, and the other discharged himself at the week's end, to continue his tramp. Once more I resorted to the city papers. This time I was more fortunate, for I found a young Swede, square-built and blond-headed, who said he had worked on his father's farm in the old country, and had left it because it was too small for the five boys. Otto was slow of speech and of motion, but he said he could work, and I hired him. The other man whom I sent to the farm at the same time proved of no use whatever. He stayed four days, and was dismissed for innocuous desuetude. Still another man whom I tried did well for five weeks, and then broke out in a most profound spree, from which he could not be weaned. He ended up by an assault on Otto in the stable yard. The Swede was taken by surprise, and was handsomely bowled over by the first onslaught of his half-drunk, half-crazed antagonist. As soon, however, as his slow mind took in the fact that he was being pounded, he gathered his forces, and, with a grunt for a war-cry, rolled his enemy under him, sat upon his stomach, and, flat-handed, slapped his face until he shouted for aid. The man left the farm at once, and I commended the Swede for having used the flat of his hand.
In spite of bad luck with the new men we were able to plough and seed 144 acres by May 10. Lots Nos. 8, 12, 13, and 14 were planted to corn, and No. 15 sowed to oats, and the 10 acres on the home lot were divided between sweet fodder corn, potatoes, and cabbage. The abundant water in the soil gave the crops a fair start, and June proved an excellent growing month, a rainfall of nearly four inches putting them beyond danger from the short water supply of July and August. Indeed, had it not been for the generosity of June we should have been in a bad way, for the next three months gave a scant four inches of rain.
The oats made a good growth, though the straw was rather short, and the corn did very well indeed,—due largely to thorough cultivation. Twelve acres of oats were cut for forage, and the rest yielded 33 bushels to the acre,—a little over 1300 bushels.
The alfalfa and timothy made a good start. From the former we cut, late in June, 2¼ tons to the acre, and from the timothy, in July, 2½ tons,—50 tons of timothy and 45 of alfalfa. Each of these fields received the usual top-dressing after the crop was cut; but the timothy did not respond,—the late season was too dry. We cut two more crops from the alfalfa field, which together made a yield of a little more than 2 tons. The alfalfa in that dry summer gave me 95 tons of good hay, proving its superiority as a dry-weather crop.
Johnson started the one-and-one-half-acre vegetable and fruit garden in April, and devoted much of his time to it. His primitive hotbeds gradually emptied themselves into the garden, and we now began to taste the fruit of our own soil, much to the pleasure of the whole colony. It is surprising what a real gardener can do with a garden of this size. By feeding soil and plants liberally, he is able to keep the ground producing successive crops of vegetables, from the day the frost leaves it in the spring until it again takes possession in the fall, without doing any wrong to the land. Indeed, our garden grows better and more prolific each year in spite of the immense crops that are taken from it. This can be done only by a person who knows his business, and Johnson is such a person. He gave much of his time to this practical patch, but he also worked with Polly among the shrubs on the lawn, and in her sunken flower garden, which is the pride of her life. We shall hear more about this flower garden later on.
The accounts for the second quarter of the year show these items on the income side:—
Butter$1052.00Eggs379.00Twenty-five calves275.00--------Total$1706.00
One of the most enjoyable occupations of a farmer's life is the care of young trees. Until your experience in this work is of a personal and proprietary nature, you will not realize the pleasure it can afford. The intimate study of plant life, especially if that plant life is yours, is a never failing source of pleasurable speculation, and a thing upon which to hang dreams. You grow to know each tree, not only by its shape and its habit of growth, but also by peculiarities that belong to it as an individual. The erect, sturdy bearing of one bespeaks a frank, bold nature, which makes it willing to accept its surroundings and make the most of them; while the crooked, dwarfish nature of another requires the utmost care of the husbandman to keep it within the bounds of good behavior. And yet we often find that the slow-growing, ill-conditioned young tree, if properly cared for, will bring forth the finest fruit at maturity.
To study the character and to watch the development of young trees is a pleasing and useful occupation for the man who thinks of them as living things with an inheritance that cannot be ignored. That seeds in all appearance exactly alike should send forth shoots so unlike, is a wonder of Nature; and that young shoots in the same soil and with the same care should show such dissimilarity in development, is a riddle whose answer is to be found only in the binding laws of heredity. That a tiny bud inserted under the bark of a well-grown tree can change a sour root to a sweet bough, ought to make one careful of the buds which one grafts on the living trunk of one's tree of life. The young orchard can teach many lessons to him who is willing to be taught; in the hands of him who is not, the schoolmaster has a very sorry time of it, no matter how he sets his lessons.
The side pockets of my jacket are usually weighted down with pruning-shears, a sharp knife, and a handled copper wire,—always, indeed, in June, when I walk in my orchard. June is the month of all months for the prudent orchardist to go thus armed, for the apple-tree borer is abroad in the land. When the quick eye of the master sees a little pile of sawdust at the base of a tree, he knows that it is time for him to sit right down by that tree and kill its enemy. The sharp knife enlarges the hole, which is the trail of the serpent, and the sharp-pointed, flexible wire follows the route until it has reached and transfixed the borer.
This is the only way. It is the nature of the borer to maim or kill the tree; it is for the interest of the owner that the tree should live. The conflict is irrepressible, and the weakest must go to the wall. The borer evil can be reduced to a minimum by keeping the young trees banked three or four inches high with firm dirt or ashes; but borers must be followed with the wire, once they enter the bark.
The sharp knife and the pruning-shears have other uses in the June orchard. Limbs and sprouts will come in irregular and improper places, and they should be nipped out early and thus save labor and mutilation later on. Sprouts that start from the eyes on the trunk can be removed by a downward stroke of the gloved hand. All intersecting or crossing boughs are removed by knife or scissors, and branches which are too luxuriant in growth are cut or pinched back. Careful guidance of the tree in June will avoid the necessity of severe correction later on.
A man ought to plant an orchard, if for no other reason, that he may have the pleasure of caring for it, and for the companionship of the trees. This was the second year of growth for my orchard, and I was gratified by the evidences of thrift and vigor. Fine, spreading heads adorned the tops of the stubs of trees that had received such (apparently) cruel treatment eighteen months before. The growth of these two seasons convinced me that the four-year-old root and the three-year-old stem, if properly managed, have greater possibilities of rapid development than roots or stems of more tender age. I think I made no mistake in planting three-year-old trees.
As I worked in my orchard I could not help looking forward to the time when the trees would return a hundred-fold for the care bestowed upon them. They would begin to bring returns, in a small way, from the fourth year, and after that the returns would increase rapidly. It is safe to predict that from the tenth to the fortieth year a well-managed orchard will give an average yearly income of $100 an acre above all expenses, including interest on the original cost. A fifty-acre orchard of well-selected apple trees, near a first-class market and in intelligent hands, means a net income of $5000, taking one year with another, for thirty or forty years. What kind of investment will pay better? What sort of business will give larger returns in health and pleasure?
I do not mean to convey the idea that forty years is the life of an orchard; hundreds of years would be more correct. As trees die from accident or decrepitude, others should take their places. Thus the lease of life becomes perpetual in hands that are willing to keep adding to the soil more than the trees and the fruit take from it. Comparatively few owners of orchards do this, and those who belong to the majority will find fault with my figures; but the thinking few, who do not expect to enjoy the fat of the land without making a reasonable return, will say that I am too conservative,—that a well-placed, well-cared-for, well-selected, and well-marketed orchard will do much better than my prophecy. Nature is a good husbandman so far as she goes, but her scheme contemplates only the perpetuation of the tree, by seeds or by other means. Nature's plan is to give to each specimen a nutritive ration. Anything beyond this is thrown away on the individual, and had better be used for the multiplying of specimens. When man comes to ask something more than germinating seeds from a plant, he must remove it from the crowded clump, give it more light and air,and feed it for product. In other words, he must give it more nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and potash than it can use for simple growth and maintenance, and thus make it burst forth into flower-or fruit-product. Nature produces the apple tree, but man must cultivate it and feed it if he would be fed and comforted by it. People who neglect their orchards can get neither pleasure nor profit from them, and such persons are not competent to sit in judgment upon the value of an apple tree. Only those who love, nourish, and profit by their orchards may come into the apple court and speak with authority.
On Friday, the 25th, the children came home from their schools, and with them came Jim Jarvis to spend the summer holidays. Our invitation to Jarvis had been unanimous when he bade us good-by in the winter. Jack was his chum, Polly had adopted him, I took to him from the first, and Jane, in her shy way, admired him greatly. The boys took to farm life like ducks to water. They were hot for any kind of work, and hot, too, from all kinds. I could not offer anything congenial until the timothy harvest in July. When this was on, they were happy and useful at the same time,—a rare combination for boys.
The timothy harvest is attractive to all, and it would be hard to find a form of labor which contributes more to the æsthetic sense than does the gathering of this fragrant grass. At four o'clock on a fine morning, with the barometer "set fair," Thompson started the mower, and kept it humming until 6.30, when Zeb, with a fresh team, relieved him. Zeb tried to cut a little faster than his father, but he was allowed no more time. Promptly at nine he was called in, and there was to be no more cutting that day. At eleven o'clock the tedder was started, and in two hours the cut grass had been turned. At three o'clock the rake gathered it into windrows, from which it was rolled and piled into heaps, or cocks, of six hundred or eight hundred pounds each. The cutting of the morning was in safe bunches before the dew fell, there to go through the process of sweating until ten o'clock the next day. It was then opened and fluffed out for four hours, after which all hands and all teams turned to and hauled it into the forage barn.
The grass that was cut one morning was safely housed as hay by the second night, if the weather was favorable; if not, it took little harm in the haycocks, even from foul weather. It is the sun-bleach that takes the life out of hay.
This year we had no trouble in getting fifty tons of as fine timothy hay as horses could wish to eat or man could wish to see. We began to cut on Tuesday, the 6th of July, and by Saturday evening the twenty-acre crop was under cover. The boys blistered their hands with the fork handles, and their faces, necks, and arms with the sun's rays, and claimed to like the work and the blisters. Indeed, tossing clean, fragrant hay is work fit for a prince; and a man never looks to better advantage or more picturesque than when, redolent with its perfume, he slings a jug over the crook in his elbow and listens to the gurgle of the home-made ginger ale as it changes from jug to throat. There may be joys in other drinks, but for solid comfort and refreshment give me a July hay-field at 3 P.M., a jug of water at forty-eight degrees, with just the amount of molasses, vinegar, and ginger that is Polly's secret, and I will give cards and spades to the broadest goblet of bubbles that was ever poured, and beat it to a standstill. Add to this a blond head under a broad hat, a thin white gown, such as grasshoppers love, and you can see why the emptying of the jug was a satisfying function in our field; for Jane was the one who presided at these afternoon teas. Often Jane was not alone; Florence or Jessie, or both, or others, made hay while the sun shone in those July days, and many a load went to the barn capped with white and laughter. The young people decided that a hay farm would be ideal—no end better than a factory farm—and advised me to put all the land into timothy and clover. I was not too old to see the beauties of haying-time, with such voluntary labor; but I was too old and too much interested with my experiment to be cajoled by a lot of youngsters. I promised them a week of haying in each fifty-two, but that was all the concession I would make. Laura said:—
"We are commanded to make hay while the sun shines; and the sun always shines at Four Oaks, for me."
It was pretty of her to say that; but what else would one expect from Laura?
The twelve acres from which the fodder oats had been cut were ploughed and fitted for sugar beets and turnips. I was not at all certain that the beets would do anything if sown so late, but I was going to try. Of the turnips I could feel more certain, for doth not the poet say:—
"The 25th day of July,Sow your turnips, wet or dry"?
"The 25th day of July,Sow your turnips, wet or dry"?
As the 25th fell on Sunday, I tried to placate the agricultural poet by sowing half on the 24th and the other half on the 26th, but it was no use. Whether the turnip god was offended by the fractured rule and refused his blessing, or whether the dry August and September prevented full returns, is more than I can say. Certain it is that I had but a half crop of turnips and a beggarly batch of beets to comfort me and the hogs.
Some little consolation, however, was found in Polly's joy over a small crop of currants which her yearling bushes produced. I also heard rumors of a few cherries which turned their red cheeks to the sun for one happy day, and then disappeared. Cock Robin's breast was red the next morning, and on this circumstantial evidence Polly accused him. He pleaded "not guilty," and strutted on the lawn with his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat and his suspected breast as much in evidence as a pouter pigeon's. A jury, mostly of blackbirds, found the charge "not proven," and the case was dismissed. I was convinced by the result of this trial that the only safe way would be to provide enough cherries for the birds and for the people too, and ordered fifty more trees for fall planting. I found by experience, that if one would have bird neighbors (and who would not?), he must provide liberally for their wants and also for their luxuries. I have stolen a march as to the cherries by planting scores of mulberry trees, both native and Russian. Birds love mulberries even better than they do cherries, and we now eat our pies in peace. To make amends for this ruse, I have established a number of drinking fountains and free baths; all of which have helped to make us friends.
In August I sold, near the top of a low market, 156 young hogs. At $4.50 per hundred, the bunch netted me $1807. They did not weigh quite as much as those sold the previous autumn, and I found two ways of accounting for this. The first and most probable was that fall pigs do not grow so fast as those farrowed in the spring. This is sufficient to account for the fact that the herd average was twenty pounds lighter than that of its predecessor. I could not, however, get over the notion that Anderson's nervousness had in some way taken possession of the swine (we have Holy Writ for a similar case), and that they were wasted in growth by his spirit of unrest. He was uniformly kind to them and faithful with their food, but there was lacking that sense of cordial sympathy which should exist between hog and man if both would appear at their best. Even when Anderson came to their pens reeking with the rich savor of the food they loved, their ears would prick up (as much as a Chester White's ears can), and with a "woof!" they would shoot out the door, only to return in a moment with the greatest confidence. I never heard that "woof" and saw the stampede without looking around for the "steep place" and the "sea," feeling sure that the incident lacked only these accessories to make it a catastrophe.
Anderson was good and faithful, and he would work his arms and legs off for the pigs; but the spirit of unrest entered every herd which he kept, though neither he nor I saw it clearly enough to go and "tell it in the city." With other swineherds my hogs averaged from fifteen to eighteen pounds better than with faithful Anderson, and I am, therefore, competent to speak of the gross weight of the spirit of contentment.
Frank Gordon owned a coal mine about six miles west of the village of Exeter, and four miles from Four Oaks. A village called Gordonville had sprung up at the mouth of the mine. It was the home of the three hundred miners and their families,—mostly Huns, but with a sprinkling of Cornishmen.
The houses were built by the owner of the mine, and were leased to the miners at a small yearly rental. They were modest in structure, but they could be made inviting and neat if the occupants were thrifty. No one was allowed to sell liquor on the property owned by the Gordons, but outside of this limit was a fringe of low saloons which did a thriving business off the improvident miners.
There had never been a strike at Gordonville, and such a thing seemed improbable, for Gordon was a kind master, who paid his men promptly and looked after their interests more than is usual for a capitalist.
It was, therefore, a distinct surprise when the foreman of the mine telephoned to Gordon one July morning that the men had struck work. Gordon did not understand the reason of it, but he expressed himself as being heartily glad, for financial reasons, that the men had gone out. He had more than enough coal on the surface and in cars to supply the demand for the next three months, and it would be money in his pocket to dispose of his coal without having to pay for the labor of replacing it.
During the day the reason for the strike was announced. From the establishment of the mine it had been the custom for the miners to have their tools sharpened at a shop built and run by the property. This was done for the accommodation of the men, and the charge for keeping the tools sharp was ten cents a week for each man, or $5 a year. For twenty years no fault had been found with the arrangement; it had been looked upon as satisfactory, especially by the men. A walking delegate, mousing around the mine, and finding no other cause for complaint, had lighted upon this practice, and he told the men it was a shame that they should have to pay ten cents a week out of their hard-earned wages for keeping their tools sharp. He said that it was the business of the property to keep the tools sharp, and that the men should not be called upon to pay for that service; that they ought, in justice to themselves and for the dignity of associated labor, to demand that this onerous tax be removed; and, to insure its removal, he declared a strike on. This was the reason, and the only reason, for the strike at Gordon's mine. Three hundred men quit work, and three hundred families suffered, many of them for the necessities of life, simply because a loud-mouthed delegate assured them that they were being imposed upon.
Things went on quietly at the mine. There was no riot, no disturbance. Gordon did not go over, but simply telephoned to the superintendent to close the shaft houses, shut down the engines, put out the fires, and let things rest, at the same time saying that he would hold the superintendent and the bosses responsible for the safety of the plant.
The men were disappointed, as the days went by, that the owner made no effort to induce them to resume work. They had believed that he would at once accede to their demand, and that they would go back to work with the tax removed. This, however, was not his plan. Weeks passed and the men became restless. They frequented the saloons more generally, spent their remaining money for liquor, and went into debt as much as they were permitted for more liquor. They became noisy and quarrelsome. The few men who were opposed to the strike could make no headway against public opinion. These men held aloof from the saloons, husbanded their money, and confined themselves as much as possible to their own houses.
Things had gone on in this way for six weeks. The men grew more and more restless and more dissipated. Again the walking delegate came to encourage them to hold out. Mounted on an empty coal car, he made an inflammatory speech to the men, advising them not only to hold out against the owner, but also to prevent the employment of any other help. If this should not prove sufficient, he advised them to wreck the mining property and to fire the mine,—anything to bring the owner to terms.
Jack and Jarvis went for a long walk one day, and their route took them near Gordonville. Seeing the men collected in such numbers around a coal car, they approached, and heard the last half of this inflammatory speech. As the walking delegate finished, Jack jumped up on the car, and said:—
"McGinnis has had his say; now, men, let me have mine. There are always two sides to a question. You have heard one, let me give you the other. I am a delegate, self-appointed, from the amalgamated Order of Thinkers, and I want you to listen to our view of this strike,—and of all strikes. I want you also to think a little as well as to listen.
"You have been led into this position by a man whose sole business is to foment discords between working-men and their employers. The moment these discords cease, that moment this man loses his job and must work or starve like the rest of you. He is, therefore, an interested party, and he is more than likely to be biassed by what seems to be his interest. He has made no argument; he has simply asserted things which are not true, and played upon your sympathies, emotions, and passions, by the use of the stale war-cries—'oppression,' 'down-trodden working-man,' 'bloated bond-holders,' and, most foolish of all, 'the conflict between Capital and Labor.' You have not thought this matter out for yourselves at all. That is why I ask you to join hands for a little while with the Order of Thinkers and see if there is not some good way out of this dilemma. McGinnis said that the Company has no right to charge you for keeping your tools sharp. In one sense this is true. You have a perfect right to work with dull tools, if you wish to; you have the right to sharpen your own tools; and you also have the right to hire any one else to do it for you. You work 'by the ton,' you own your pickaxes and shovels from handle to blade, and you have the right to do with them as you please.
"There are three hundred of you who use tools; you each pay ten cents a week to the Company for keeping them sharp,—that is, in round numbers, $1500 a year. There are two smiths at work at $50 a month (that is $1200), and a helper at $25 a month ($300 more), making just $1500 paid by the Company in wages. If you will think this matter out, you will see that there is a dead loss to the Company of the coal used, the wear and tear of the instruments, and the interest, taxes, insurance, and degeneration of the plant. Is the Company under obligation to lose this money for you? Not at all! The Company does this as an accommodation and a gratuity to you, but not as a duty. Just as much coal would be taken from the Gordon mine if your tools were never sharpened, only it would require more men, and you would earn less money apiece. You could not get this sharpening done at private shops so cheaply, and you cannot do it yourselves. You have no more right to ask the Company to do this work for nothing than you have to ask it to buy your tools for you. It would be just as sensible for you to strike because the Company did not send each of you ten cents' worth of ice-cream every Sunday morning, as it is for you to go out on this matter of sharpening tools.
"But, suppose the Company were in duty bound to do this thing for you, and suppose it should refuse; would that be a good reason for quitting work? Not by any means! You are earning an average of $2 a day,—nearly $16,000 a month. You've 'been out' six weeks. If you gain your point, it will take you fifteen years to make up what you've already lost. If you have the sense which God gives geese, you will see that you can't afford this sort of thing.
"But the end is not yet. You are likely to stay out six weeks longer, and each six weeks adds another fifteen years to your struggle to catch up with your losses. Is this a load which thinking people would impose upon themselves? Not much! You will lose your battle, for your strike is badly timed. It seems to be the fate of strikes to be badly timed; they usually occur when, on account of hard times or over-supply, the employers would rather stop paying wages than not. That's the case now. Four months of coal is in yards or on cars, and it's an absolute benefit to the Company to turn seventy or eighty thousand dollars of dead product into live money. Don't deceive yourselves with the hope that you are distressing the owner by your foolish strike; you are putting money into his pockets while your families suffer for food. There is no great principle at stake to make your conduct seem noble and to call forth sympathy for your suffering,—only foolishness and the blind following of a demagogue whose living depends upon your folly.
"McGinnis talked to you about the conflict between capital and labor. That is all rot. There is not and there cannot be such a conflict. Labor makes capital, and without capital there would be no object in labor. They are mutually dependent upon each other, and there can be no quarrel between them, for neither could exist after the death of the other. The capitalist is only a laborer who has saved a part of his wages, —either in his generation or in some preceding one. Any man with a sound mind and a sound body can become a capitalist. When the laborer has saved one dollar he is a capitalist,—he has money to lend at interest or to invest in something that will bring a return. The second dollar is easier saved than the first, and every dollar saved is earning something on its own account. All persons who have money to invest or to lend are capitalists. Of course, some are great and some are small, but all are independent, for they have more than they need for immediate personal use.
"I am going to tell you how you may all become capitalists; but first I want to point out your real enemies. The employer is not your enemy, capital is not your enemy, but the saloonkeeper is,—and the most deadly enemy you can possibly have. In that fringe of shanties over yonder live the powers that keep you down; there are the foes that degrade you and your families, forcing you to live little better than wild beasts. Your food is poor, your clothing is in rags, your children are without shoes, your homes are desolate, there are no schools and no social life. Year follows year in dreary monotone, and you finally die, and your neighbors thrust you underground and have an end of you. Misery and wretchedness fill the measure of your days, and you are forgotten.
"This dull, brutish condition is self-imposed, and to what end? That some dozen harpies may fatten on your flesh; that your labor may give them leisure; that your suffering may give them pleasure; that your sweat may cool their brows, and your money fill their tills!
"What do you get in return? Whiskey, to poison your bodies and pervert your minds; whiskey, to make you fierce beasts or dull brutes; whiskey, to make your eyes red and your hands unsteady; whiskey, to make your homes sties and yourselves fit occupants for them; whiskey, to make you beat your wives and children; whiskey, to cast you into the gutter, the most loathsome animal in all the world. This is cheap whiskey, but it costs you dear. All that makes life worth living, all that raises man above the brute, and all the hope of a future life, are freely given for this poor whiskey. The man who sells it to you robs you of your money and also of your manhood. You pay him ten times (often twenty times) as much as it cost him, and yet he poses as your friend.
"I'm not going to say anything against beer, for I don't think good beer is very likely to hurt a man. I will say this, however,—you pay more than twice what it is worth. This is the point I would make: beer is a food of some value, and it should be put on a food basis in price. It isn't more than half as valuable as milk, and it shouldn't cost more than half as much. You can have good beer at three or four cents a quart, if you will let whiskey alone.
"I promised to tell you how to become capitalists, each and every one of you, and I'll keep my word if you'll listen to me a little longer."
While Jack had been speaking, some of the men had shown considerable interest and had gradually crowded their way nearer to the boy. Thirty or forty Cornishmen and perhaps as many others of the better sort were close to the car, and seemed anxious to hear what he had to say. Back of these, however, were the large majority of the miners and the hangers-on at the saloons, who did not wish to hear, and did not mean that others should hear, what the boy had to say. Led by McGinnis and the saloon-keepers, they had kept up such a row that it had been impossible for any one, except those quite near the car, to hear at all. Now they determined to stop the talk and to bounce the boy. They made a vigorous rush for the car with shouts and uplifted hands.
A gigantic Cornishman mounted the car, and said, in a voice that could easily be heard above the shouting of the crowd:—
"Wait—wait a bit, men! The lad is a brave one, and ye maun own to that! There be small 'urt in words, and mebbe 'e 'ave tole a bit truth. Me and me mates 'ere are minded to give un a chance. If ye men don't want to 'ear 'im, you don't 'ave to stay; but don't 'e dare touchen with a finger, or, by God! Tom Carkeek will kick the stuffin' out en 'e!"
This was enough to prevent any overt act, for Tom Carkeek was the champion wrestler in all that county; he was fiercer than fire when roused, and he would be backed by every Cornishman on the job.
Jack went on with his talk. "The 'Order of Thinkers' claim that you men and all of your class spend one-third of your entire wages for whiskey and beer. There are exceptions, but the figures will hold good. I am going to call the amount of your wages spent in this way, one-fourth. The yearly pay-roll of this mine is, in round numbers, $200,000. Fifty thousand of this goes into the hands of those harpies, who grow rich as you grow poor. You are surprised at these figures, and yet they are too small. I counted the saloons over there, and I find there are eleven of them. Divide $50,000 into eleven parts, and you would give each saloon less than $5000 a year as a gross business. Not one of those places can run on the legitimate percentage of a business which does not amount to more than that. Do you suppose these men are here from charitable motives or for their health? Not at all. They are here to make money, and they do it. Five or six hundred dollars is all they pay for the vile stuff for which they charge you $5000. They rob you of manhood and money alike.
"Now, what would be the result if you struck on these robbers? I will tell you. In the first place, you would save $50,000 each year, and you would be better men in every way for so doing. You would earn more money, and your children would wear shoes and go to school. That would be much, and well worth while; but that is not the best of it. I will make a proposition to you, and I will promise that it shall be carried out on my side exactly as I state it.
"This is a noble property. In ten years it has paid its owner $500,000,—$50,000 a year. It is sure to go on in this way under good management. I offer, in the name of the owner, to bond this property to you for $300,000 for five years at six per cent. Of course this is an unusual opportunity. The owner has grown rich out of it, and he is now willing to retire and give others a chance. His offer to you is to sell the mine for half its value, and, at the same time, to give you five years in which to pay for it. I will add something to this proposition, for I feel certain that he will agree to it. It is this: Mr. Gordon will build and equip a small brewery on this property, in which good, wholesome beer can be made for you at one cent a glass. You are to pay for the brewery in the same way that you pay for the other property; it will cost $25,000. This will make $325,000 which you are to pay during the next five years. How? Let me tell you.
"The property will give you a net income of $40,000 or $50,000, and you will save $50,000 more when you give up whiskey and get your beer for less than one-fourth of what it now costs you. The general store at which you have always traded will be run in your interests, and all that you buy will be cheaper. The market will be a cooperative one, which will furnish you meat, fattened on your own land, at the lowest price. Your fruit and vegetables will come from these broad acres, which will be yours and will cost you but little. You will earn more money because you will be sober and industrious, and your money will purchase more because you will deal without a middleman. You will be better clothed, better fed, and better men. Your wives will take new interest in life, and there will be carpets on your floors, curtains at your windows, vegetables behind your cottages, and flowers in front of them.
"All these things you will have with the money you are now earning, and at the same time you will be changing from the laborer to the capitalist. The mine gives you a profit of $40,000, and you save one-fourth of your wages, which makes $50,000 more,—$90,000 in all. What are you to do with this? Less than $20,000 will cover the interest. You will have $70,000 to pay on the principal. This will reduce the interest for the next year more than $3000. Each year you can do as well, and by the time the five years have passed you will own the mine, the land, the brewery, the store, the market, and this blessed blacksmith shop about which you have had so much fuss, and also a bank with a paid-up capital of $50,000. You are capitalists, every one of you, at the end of five years, if you wish to be, and if you are willing to give up the single item,—whiskey.
"Do you like the plan? Do you like the prospect? Turn it over and see what objections you can find. If you are willing to go into it, come over to Four Oaks some day and we will go more into details. McGinnis gave you one side of the picture: I have given you the other. You are at liberty to follow whichever you please."
Jack and Jarvis jumped off the car and struck out for home. Carkeek and his Cornishmen followed the lads until they were well clear of the village, to protect them, and then Carkeek said:—"Me and the others like for to hear 'e talk, mister, and we like for to 'ear 'e talk more."
"All right, Goliath," said Jack. "Come over any time and we'll make plans."