The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-09-18
PLAIN TALKS TO FARMERS.
attendants at the Camp Roache Summer
School will recognize my obligation to Profess
sor L. A. Ross for much of what tolloWs.l

attendants at the Camp Roache Summer
School will recognize my obligation to Profess
sor E. A. Ross for much of what tollows.]
The American farmer was once a jack of
all trades. remember that in the then new
country OF Northeastern Ohio each farmer
sought to raise two or three acres of wheat,
OF which he took what he needed to the
neighboring mill, paying toll for the grind
ing at the rate, if I remember rightly two
quarts to the bushel and taking home his
flour, middlings and bran. His surplus
wheat he sold usually in my time at 81 a
bushel. He had from five to ten acres of
corn, which he mostly fed out on the place
to hogs, OF which, after filling his pork
barrels, he would have one or two to turn
of. A steer Or ''farrow cow" also fat
tened on the corn, was usually killed in the
fall, half sold among the neighbors and
half corned or dried for family use. Incl
dentally furnishing the tallow for the
dipped candles. From three to dozen
sheep supplied the wool, which was taken
to the "carding-machine" and made into
trolls" paying for the work with certain
number of pounds of wool. Before my
time the women of the house used to do
this work with nd-cards, and I have
seen this done, but generally in my boy
hood women had emanoipated themselves
from this work; but they spun the yarn
and knit the stockings, and in most houses
was loom constructed by the men,
where ON every year was woven by the
women one or two pieces of stout wooden
cloth to be made up, in the house, into
garments for both sexes. The bad-smell-
Ing dye pots sat about the fire all winter.
Every year or two an acre of flax was
raised which the men "broke" and 'hetch.
eled," and the women spun and wove and
made up into clothing. The hide of the
beef killed for family consumption, with
those of calf or two killed during the
year, were taken to the tannery, and after
SIX months brought home and made up
into boots and Shoes sometimes by the
men OF the house. but more often by the
neighborlng or travelling shoemaker. A
half acre of potatoes and good garden
supplied the vegetables fol, the year: A
few COWS furnished surplus of butter,
which, with the eggs not consumed
on the farm, was traded at
the store for the calicoes, white
shifting, an occasional ribbon, and the
necessary crockery and small groceries.
The orchard supplied the fruit, cider and
vinegar. The sugar bush" furnished the
maple sugar, which was sometimes used
for sweetening, but more usually traded
Tor "muscovado," or brown sugar. The
elder males of the family had Sunday suits
OF store cloth made up by the village tailor;
this was before the days of ''ready made";
these suits, after some years wear, were
turned and made up by the women for the
boys, and were worn out by them, one
after another, as they grew into them.
The elder women had each sober dark
dress for Sundays, but the girls mostly
went to church in fresh calico, and very
trim indeed they looked as / remember
them. Corsets and similar feminine GIN
cracks were unknown-at least to me; but
1T is likely the town girls had them, and if
they did our girls knew all about them.
Bonnets and hats were worn, with an oc-
casional change of ribbon, until they wore
out. A cast-iron pillow, with the necessary
hoes, rakes and scythes, constituted the
'boughten" farm machinery. The grain
was threshed with hand fail on the barn
floor in the winter, while the women spun
and wove in the house. Many continued
this practice long after threshing machines
came in.
The boys got their spending money by
picking up nuts in the woods and from the
sale of the fur of an occasional mink or
Our social gatherings were
husking bees and house-raisings for the
men, quilting parties for the women, and
bees, and, above all things,
the winter singing-school, for the young
men and women. The centers of influence
were the churches, of which two or three
enominations-not too sure of each
others full hold upon salvation-were al
ways represented, the ministers receiving
9O00 70 GQO0 no in
and partly in provisions, with the neces-
sary wood and an annual donation party.
The reading matter was the New York
Weekly Tribune q do not remember what
standard paper the Democrats took; there
were very few Democrats where 1 lived),
Godey's Ladies' Book, the New York
Ledger in families of doubtful piety, the
chronological Journal by those of ad-
vanced thought, the religious paper of the
denomination and the county paper.
Each family had a few books, which were
exchanged until all had read them, and
there was always the Bible, the Sunday
school library and Dicks or Josephus'
works to fall back on. The education was
in the district school.
The above outline comprises or suggests
the essential features of the life of the
thrifty 100-acre farmer on the Western
Reserve in Ohio fifty years ago. Further
east there was little more of ready money
and luxuries; further west there was less
and more dependence on wild game for
meat and for furs to get money with. The
great prairies had hardly been touched.
was slow and expensive
and the products of each district were
mostly consumed therein, the small sur
plus which accumulated painfully finding
its way to the seaboard in exchange for
such necessaries as we could not ourselves
produce. The farmers interest in markets
outside his general vicinity was very small;
his average trade with the outside world
would not probably exceed $50 or $75 a
year. He received very little money and
kept it almost no time at all; his currency
was the notes of banks that he knew moth
ing about and smooth Mexican silver that
would not circulate elsewhere. The young
man got his start by being permitted to
raise pair Of steers or colt or two
on the family farm, and by working
out at odd jobs. If by the time he was rs
he had saved couple of hundred dollars,
or his father coulo help him make up that
sum, he would buy piece of timber land,
cut the logs for his house, which the neigh
bors would help him raise, marry and