Delaware tribune. [volume] (Wilmington, Del.) 1867-1877, 1868-10-15


are not actually obliged 10 journey that way,
like Jordan, hard road to travel.
While this is true Of the farmer, how is il
with the farmers wife, for the position aud
Of woman is always The measure
of civilization In the Oldest English book
upon farming Judge Fitz Herbert says: cit
is the wifc's occupation to win now all man
ner of corn, 10 make malt, to wash and
wiring, to make hay, to shear corn, and in
time of need to help her husband fill the
muck-wain Tor dung carts,) to drive the
plough, to load corn, hay and such other;
and TO go or ride to the market 10 sell butter,
cheese, milk, eggs, chickens, capons hens,
pigs, geese and all manner of corn" The |
good Judge forgets to mention one other |
most important occupation of the wife, which |
she Ia expected to add to all these, and that |
is to bear and rear children duty which |
In New England she faithfully performs
But as read these words of more than |
three hundred years ago, think of many |
and many sad-eyed woman have known |
in solitary country homes, who seemed new
er to have smiled, who struggled with hard
hands through melting heat and pinching
cold, to hold back poverty and want that
lowered like wolves about an ever increas-
ing flock of children. How it was scour in
the morning and scrub at night, and scold
all day long! How care blurred the win
dow like cloud. hiding the lovely land
scapel How anxiety snarled at her heels,
logging her like a cur! How little she
knew or cared that bobolinks drunk with
blithe idleness, tumbled and sang in the
meadows below, that the earth was telling
the time Of year with flowers in the woods
above. AS think of these things, of this
solitary incessant drudgery-of the taciturn
husband coming In heavy with sleep-too
| xyp rr I'm rnu1 In iu1l IN fl,ipE II III mi
| wonder that the mad houses are so richly
recruited from the farm houses ms tke sta
tistics shOw,-that the farmers daughter
hangs enchanted over stories in the weekly
paper of the handsome Edward Augustus,
with white hands and black eyes,-nor that
the farmers son hears the city bells that long
ago rang 10 Wilmington. "Turn again,
Wilmington, lord mayor of London" ring
ing to him as he pauses in the furrow.-
"Turn again, plowboy, millionaire and
merchant"
Now what is the reason that agriculture,
the most necessary work in the world, and
which employs, as we saw, two-thiids of
its inhabitants without which the race per
ishes and the world ends; which, in its very
character, should be the nurse of robust
health and sterling virtues, and by its con-
ditions decorated with all the glory and
grace of nature-has advanced so slowly Z
Ignorance and consequent negligence are
the reasons usually oflered and undoubted-
ly there is more jealousy Of what is called
book-farming in this country than there
should be among an intelligent people. But
man who has inherited mortgaged farm
and almost a mortgag9d life-who must
support his family and pay his debts out of
his reluctant acres cannot afford TO try ex
periments, for the loss Of crop may en-
tangle him beyond recovery. The books
that tempt him are therefore objects of sus-
piciOn and jealousy, and ut last he settles
down deflantly into the sullen assertion that
his fathers way is good enough for him,
and SO struggles and stagnates in his fathers
way, and at last bequeaths the same destiny
to his son, who, on his fathers starving
land, has been dreaming of fat prairies and
western river bottoms, as the old Spaniards
dreamed Of the golden Indies, until bound
by no love to a spot where he has only
warded off starvation, he emigrates 10 fields
which waste and ignorance cannot soon
destroy.
But while there is undoubtedly this jeal-
ousy of what is contemptuously called book
farming, by its better name of science and
experience, is becoming more and more es-
sential to the American farmer and to the
common prosperity. For with our rapidly
increasing population, and the probability
stated with great force by Col. Gilpin, that
our western movement has now reached the
, limit of our strictly agricultural territory
J the great plains of the Missouri being, from
their natural and inevitable dryness, rather
3 pastoral than arabic regions-our agricul-
D ture can no longer depend wholly upon the
[ depth of the soil of the prairies, but must
look to deepening its own knowledge
a To the farmer of few acres, knowledge is
h capital. Science makes ten acres a hundred;
0 and more science makes them a thousand
Q When twenty farmers, owning together two
thousand acres, know the value OF machin,
d which could do the work for ALL and non,
= could individually buy, then they know ant
o can do and Will do all that the single propri
: etor of two thousand acres can do and in
stead OF one great proprietor, that country
@ has twenty small proprietors with direc
G interest in its character and prosperity sucl
as nothing else confers. The farmer ma,
say that he has no time to do what he be-
lieves must be done. Let the farmer under
stand that Ignorance is the bulwark of dies
potsm. and that despotsm DEGREES the sla
! very OF the farmer, and he will find time Il
defend himself.
But beneath all other reasons of the his
5 torical condition of the farmer is the funda
!, mental reason, and that is the feudal ol
y aristocratic principle, which has Away.
!. prevailed in various forms in every country
and which Expresses the farmer most of all
: 1t is theory that God made little Of hi,
human clay into porcelain vases to hold til,
! dizzy wine of exclusive power, but the mos
OF it into common crockcry for base uses;
= theory that the many are made for the few
u or, as Noltaire defined it in government, Il
. is the art of making two thirds Of nation
!, pay all it possible can pay for the benefit o
u the other third.
: This system is the fourfold enemy of til,
farmer First, it distributes all the land to
I. few proprietors. Second, to those few pro
prietofs it gives exclusive political power
q Third, it degrades labor by making the la
borer wholly dependent upon those few
, and fourth, it fosters their ignorance tia
! they may be willing slaves. In word, til,
aristocratic system gives political power Il
the land and the land to Il few The popu
s lar system divides the land and derives no
litical power from manhood. What is tn,
u result of this aristocratic system upon TN
: general welfare, and especially upon TIN
farmer? Look at England The uni,et
c kingdom is composed of s,0O0C0O acres O
!, land, and has nearly 10000, 900 Of inhabi
II itants. Thirty thousand persons own al
n the land, and the English school system /
the worst of any civilized country. Wha
follows? MIR. Olmstead, in his most yalua
BILE and delightful book, ''The Walks an,
iaihs Ol an American FARMER IN England,
says: 81 did not see in Ireland, or in Ger
many, or in France nor did / ever Sc
among our negroes or Indians, or among tn
Chinese or Malays, men whose tastes wer
such mere instincts, and whose mode of lf
was so low, so like domestic animals alto
gether-as these farm laborers" He spok
ofthem to an intelligent radical, who replied
!. "We are not used to regard that class il
forming ajudgmcnt of national character
and yet it is probably the largest class in En-
gland"
n The wsest English statesmen agree tina
: the root of the Irish difficulty is the lam
: tenure. They will presently see that it /
), the root of the English difficulty, and tina
i England is in constant danger so long as 30,
600 proprietors own the soil OF the country
They will soon question the right of til
4, Marquis of Bredalbane to turn sheep walk
a into game preserves and unless some meth
cd OF increasing the ownership of land i
e adopted, perhaps by redistributing taxation
: so that the land will be sold to escape til