Rutland weekly herald. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1859-1877, 1872-09-19

i
| perilous ordeal so that home sickness
| has killed many loving wife and moth
| er who bravely consented, for her child
| ren's sake, to be torn up by the roots
and transplanted to Illinois or Iowa,
whose attractions, great as they are,
could never wean her from her feryent
| absorbing love of the green hills amid
| which her childhood was Graded. | do
believe in going West but | cannot
recommend it to any who have passed
the meridian of their days, and | deem
| its undeniable privations more lightly re-
garded, more easily borne, by young
| couples lust setting out to traverse arm
in-arm alike the fiowery and the thorny
| byways of life, than by almost any
| others.
have not meant to deny that the last
half century has witnessed progress in
the agriculture of this State and | do
not cite the fact that, whereas she form
erly grew her own bread-grain and
somewhat more, she now buys the great
er part of it. as discreditable, If she
can make her bread cheaper by grazing
than by blowing by selling wool and
butter than by growing wheat and rye
so be it. But when | recall to mind
the interminable procession of wagons
laden with wheat of your northwestern
counties that used to pass on their way
to market at Troy or Albany, down the
| turnpike in West Haven beside which
was cutting brush and burning logs fifty
years ago, and consider that the very
fields on which that wheat grew luXuri-
antly would now yield but half a crop,
and that precariOusly, halt, and ask
whether that can be good farming which
disqualifies land for producing the very
staff of life.
But ''the insect the weevil, nudge,
or fiy-I hear it said, has stopped the
growth of wheat in New England. [ do
not admit the apology. regard the al
legged cause of failure as itself an effect
of bad husbandry. [ may not be able
nay, ! am not able-to trace the evil to
its ultimate source but | find a clue to
that source in fact related to me from
his personal observation by the late Gov.
VIM. T. Packer of Pennsylvania. Said
he, Il am familiar with the narrow val
ley of one of the petty tributaries of the
SusQuehanna, up the middle of which
highway ran for forty years, with mar
row field in cultivation on either side.
AT length, the road was thrown up, and
the entire width of the valley, roadway
included, became one field, which was
sown to wheat. At harvest time there
was good, sound grain, for the full width
of the roadway, while the strip on either
side was mere straw and chaff-the grain
having been devoured or destroyed by
an insect" 1t was something lacking III
the soil which weakened the plant and
invited the ravages of the insect.
It-is quite currently assumed in our
cause they hate work This assumption
is one of,those partial, imperfect truths
which have the effect of falsehOOd Our
boys do not choose to lift, and tug, and
strain, when the ends of such eXertiOn
can be attained without such eXpendi-
ture of vital fOrce-whO ever did AS
we come to think and reflect more, we
learn to moderate our physical eXertiOn
vnd be sparing of sOur muscular force.
The untaught, unthinlling slave raises
his wheelbarrow to the top of his head
and carries it there the schOOl-taught
freeman prefers to trundle it before him
along the ground. The hay crop Of to-
day is saved with less than half the tax
on human muscle freely paid by our
grandfathers. Admit that our boys do
not choose to bend their bacllbOnes into
hoops and indurate their muscles into
whip-cord if they can achieve COM
Portable livelihood otherwise. / see
nothing in this to provoke invective or
Justify reproach. An intellectual age
and people naturally prefers to substitute
animal or mechanical power for that Of
human sincws, wherever it can do so
with facility and manifest advantage.
} Now, it is the simple manifest truth
that far greater progress in this substitu-
ton has been made in other industries
than in agriculture. Commerce. which
once employed wagons. and caravans.
and row boats, has nearly dispensed
with these by the aid of wind and steam
of sailing vessels, steamships, railroads
and locomotives Steam takes our cot
ton, corn and other staples, from q
station near the grower, puts it on ship
board by an elevator, speeds it across an
ocean, hOists it into the merchants loft,
and lowers it down again wherever it is
wanted. Mind directs and guides, while
steam supplies all the physical force
that is needed. So in almost every de-
partment of manufacture. The BRAIN
; power required is of human origin this
; commands, impels, and regulates, all the
other power required. In agriculture,
this is but partially, imperfeCtly paral-
leled and agriculture loses in COnse-
: quence the service of the brighter, ADLER
portion of our youth. We must remedy
this, not by fruitless, senseless railing at
l the boys for doing what seems to them
fittest and most inviting, but by extend
ing the conquests, by charging the do
main, of mechanical power.
Let me barely hint-for I can only
take time to hint-at some of the direc-
tons in which this enlargement is to be
, sought and realized
? I. Wind. For at least five thousand
: years, Wind has played leading part in
navigation; why not also in cultivatiOn !?
2 Does Nature afford any reason for re-
2 garding wind as inherently tractabe and
serviceable on water but not on land
$ Men have ground grain by wind-power
s for at least a hundred generations; why
F. not thresh it as well? Nay, why should
+ it not press cheese, and turn grindstOne,
and saw wood, and pump water, and
= even, ultimately, pillow fields? Who
| dreams that the inventions of the past
5 bear any proportion to those Of the inn
1 mnent future? We have at length learn
S ed that such is the elasticity of air that a
= windmill running throughout the night
= may thereby accumulate power to be
l expended during the ensuing day or
: days. Can you suppose that we shall
: much longer allow this enormous aggre-
q gate of power, which has hitherto thrust
itself into our very faces unregarded or
at least uncomprehended, to expend its
4 energies in topping over our chimneys
a and blowing the apples from our trees
t | tell you that this is not possible.
: have nothing to say of AS or BIS or Cs
e continuance for utilizing the power of
r wind in the service of agriculture If
s you insist that all these are fantastic and
0 absurd, | shall not contradict you;
n shall only insist in my turn that the
e power is there-that it sweeps over every
field on almost every day, and that the
e means of utilizing it, if not yet discover
: ! cd soon will and must he