Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1873-10-04
The American Farmer.

The routine of the farmer of to-day,
says BeechGr, is the routine of his faith
er or his neighbors. When o manufac-
turer finds that his goods are unstable,
he introduces a new fabric or a new
pattern. When q mechanic sees that
one branch of his tradeis over-crowded,
he turns his facile hand to another. But
the farmer complains that corn does not
pay, and straightway raises more corn.
He prophesies that the tobacco crop,
uncertain and troublesome as it is, will
shortly glut the market, and forthwith
plants more tobacco. He maintains
that the cost of labor eats up his profits,
and directly sows wider fields that shall
demand yet other reapers. Meantime,
the scarcity of different supplies, as of
hay, fine vegetables, small fruits, and
beef, keeps their price well up. And
that league of farmers which should dis
pense with middle-men might make
large profits in these and other fields.
France, for example, that thrifty house
wife who has paid almost the last cen
time of her fabulous indemnity-fund in
three years, and who utilizes every inch
of soil, makes of her cold northern pro-
vinces a beet-sug plantation. Last
year, she furnished 100000 tons. This
year the crop will be much larger. The
experiment is worth trying here. 1t is
true that the cost of labor is enormous.
And this same frugal France employs
those cunning hands of iron or steel or
wood which, once being bought, ask
neither food nor pay thereafter. A club
of dozen farmers could easily afford
steam plough, with whatever other cost
ly tools save manual labor inthe field or
house. On their use would follow lit
tie leisure for weary husbandman and
his wearier wife, and with the leisure
would come that chance of culture
which alone transfgures toll.
For, afterall it is in it's effect on their
social life that the sordid grind of the
farmers life has been most baleful. DIR.
Hall, an authority, says that it is these
men, with their wives and daughters,
who most largely recruit the melancholy
ranks of the insane. They are shorter
lived than clorgymen. A very large
proportion of them, he afiirms, have no
breadth of view, and are interested only
in the weather, the crops, the market,
and the neighborhood gossip. In short,
their talk is of bullocks. Since they do
not think, but merely grub, and since
the human machine is complicated, and
not able to compete with the metal one,
they get behindhand.
Thus, four out of five farms are mort
gagged, and the earnings of the land
must go to pay interest. And the fifth
farmer invests his returns in stocks or
bonds, and starves his fields to swell his
bank account. Almost nobody feels
that the daily life should have beauty
and interest. Almost nobody sees that
the robbing of souls is wickeder thing
than the robbing of tills.
Yet the farmer is the only man whose
calling is essential to life; the only man
for whose immediate and material ends
all the forces of nature work without
ceasing. In return, she demands of him
the services of every faculty, as of every
muscle. If he will learn, she teaches
him all the mystery and miracle of ex-
istence. If he will not, the penalty is a
vacant mind in a listless body; nay,
more, it is a state OF vassalage to men
who have learned to employ, though to
base ends, that capability and god-like
reason which, in him, rest unused.