The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1907-02-16
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ne build monuments TO men whose calling IS
merely killing; we heap honors on those whose
only title to greatness isas the slayer Of thous-
ands. The Alexanders. the Caesars, the Napo-
Icons figure conspicuously in history. They are
heard OF on all hands, their names survive
through the ages. whose Libraries are filled with
details Of their doiDgs. Poets love to sing about
them, the painter exhausts his art on their
figures and features the sculptor works over
time to make them heroic. Man worships those
whom he fears, admiring from awe and praising
withouta proper perspective. His critical sense
Is dulled by the daring Of the dead and his eyes
diverted from the magnitude of the crime by
the dazzle of the doer. He admires the wrong
object, praises the wrong man, rewards the
wrong performance and is altogether out of
joint with the fitness of things. Thus, those
who conquer and kill, plumber and Cypress, the
very "scourges of God" and enemies of the hui
man race get the glory and the credit which is
withheld from Others far more deserving. To
those who have is given more, while from those
who have not is taken away the little that they
have. The despoiler is preferred to the giver of
good gifts, the tyrant is apotheosized, the OPP
pressor is elorifled beyond the merits of the be-
slower of bounties. The unworthy rich. the
greedy and the grating, the small men in high
places. we have with US always. Splendid marble
monuments record their deeds, their titles and
their virtues, while their victims remain undis-
tinguished by tomb or epitaph.
A greater than all the military heroes lies dead
ia Kansas. His obituary was ive-line dispatch,
his funeral purely local, his name unheralded to
the world. Few of our readers ever heard of
him; not one in fifty thousand knew his name,
yet Harrison Parkman did more TO add to the
farm wealth of this country, did more for all
our farmers than any man of the present genera
ton. If it be true, as Dean Swift alleged, that
he who makes two blades of grass grow where
only one grew before Is a public benefactor.
what could be proper measure of the benefac-
tion conferred by the man who made the West
ern desert, once as bare as a mans hand, bloom
with verdure. Harrison Parkman was the father
of alfalfa. He it was who first brought the plant
from South America and planted it in the United
States. Thus, in most modest way, he confer
red an inestimable benefit. boon which was of
greatest moment to every man, woman and
child in this country called America. Millions
now and more millions would rise up and call
his name blessed, If they knew it. But alas
the father of alfalfa lies dead in the State he so
greatly benefited, buried in an obscure grave,
unknown and uncared for.
Yet all must know that the alfalfa he brought
and taught them how to use has been the very
salvation of the West. None can estimate how
great has been the value of this plant in a mate
rial way to the farmers of Western Kansas, Ne
braska, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona-in
brief, of all the vast section of country which
was formerly described in the Biographies as
the "Great American Desert" It is the one sure
crop that saves the farmers in that region from
ruin. The brave and hardy spirits who first es-
sayed the task of converting this bare and arid
soil to mans uses encountered hardships that
tried mems souls to the utmost and these pio-
neers suffered privations beside which those of
the argonauts and the arctic explorers seem al
most trivial. But gradually they overcame OBJ
stacles that seemed insurmountable and today
all that once arid country blossoms like the rose
with rich returns for mans labor In achieving
this wonderful triumph over nature, alfalfa was
the most conspicuous factor, with its heavy
crops repeated twice and three times in a year.
The man who brought this priceless boon to aid
the Western pioneers may not have thought he
was doing anything remarkable or worthy of
fame, but judged in the light of the good he did,
he deserves a monument to his memory far
more than the worlds heroes who are known by
the thousands they slew or led to slaughter to
crafty the caprice or Crude of kings. We hear
much just now of hall of fame at Washington
which is to be the valhalla for immortalizing
| those who are thought to have done well for
their country. We suggest that niche, well up
| towards the top, be reserved for the father of
alfalfa.