Iowa County democrat. [volume] (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1877-1938, 1908-06-18
A WESTERNER ON A
NEW ENGLAND FARM
HIS FRANK AND UNBIASED STATE.
mENT OF HIS EXPERIENCES
AND ITS LESSONS.

Warden Allan CuLL45 IL ODSLOl i ian
scrlyt.-Prouu Oh the west ana plying
OF .rew ELgIaAu Lnougn Lie ", the
wegLcIuer does lot u.sparage Ne"
england agriculture 10 the exoeut US
uauy tAagIneQ. me belief Oh the su:
ces5Iul sc.euLInc farmer OF the west
Is mat the New England farmer tails
10 form scientifically and could 90
mucn more than he does now. Where
IRE Inc 1O0,UOO sheep which New
aamshire mad IN 1850? Where are
the nVe thousand cattle Of the Con
LOOcOOk valley above Concord? Ana
where are the people who lived where
are now but cellars? In 1860, IL the
three miles from town where ours IS
me only house, there were nine
others. When farmhouse burns, II
is not replaced. The last OF the nine
burned TWO years ago. The owner
mad bought the place for SOU and IN
the first winter had sold $500 worth
Of pine. His wife wanted him to re-
build, but as that cost several thou
sand dollars, he sold the old place,
which still had a thousand dollars
worth of standing pine, for $500,
bought new farm for thousand, anu
that winter sold $1,000 worth OF
spruce. What's the matter? Why
did successive owners sell that man
tor $1,000 a forty acre and a sixty
acre farm, each with a house that
would cost at least $500, each with a.
least a thousand worth Of timber of
single variety, to say nothing OF
other trees; and why did he sell forty
acres with a thousand worth Of pine
On ii, for $3.50?
What's the matter? So far as
! am concerned, l am still guessing,
though some of my hypothesis seem
plausible to me. The matter is all
sorts of things, part Of it physical, but
more Of it physiological.
Beaten by The BouIders.
OF course much Of New England IS
unsuitable Tor anything except seen
ety. IL may be as the president OF
IuI.s college says the late n. ).
Suacr couuded 10 him, that New
England soil is richer than that OF the
west-a statement which VIII give the
west q slock-Dut no one can main
tain that its average is so arabic.
Much OF it is hilIy mountainous,
rocky, stony. Many old deserted farms
ought never to have been occupied.
They help explain that New England
sadness that many remark, that gen
tie br0oding melancholy OF the land
scapG, however beautiful, that minor
hopeless note OF the New England
woman voice, even when talking OF
matters ordinarily cheerful; not d com
planning note Of despair, not so dig
uifed as gloom, but the resignation OF
a soul transIating its sense o. an in
enectuaI struggle into that ineftectuaI
voice one cannot but be melancholy
when he looks at the areas that are
now forest and were once helds, At
the hill down whose slopes stern
New England men were at last thrust
by Steiner New England nature, where
his blood, his kin have tOiIed and
retreated. The gentle, smiling mood
of the west is not here-theWest where
amenable to the plough, the we'll kept
land is cheerfully submissive to the
hand of man, a humane landscape pro-
claiming civilization and mankind in
lis sleek fields. Here, FESTIVE and I'M
tamabIe nature has beaten. Yet when
! Cook at some Old cellar in the midst
of a vegetation of arctic moss, hlgl
on some dreadful hill, the moraine
which so much of New England is,
just here more virulent, l should weep
more copiously at the thought of PEG
pie again coming there to live, to eX-
ist, than at the thought that the
sturdy, sjOue-stubbed yoemanry Of
yore had gone. Economy can be
development of this quality that the
occupation of the now abandoned
farms wSs due.
II was a race with a fierce fighting
impulse that attacked a country that
was at one. covered with an impene-
trable forest and a mask of boulders.
Talk of Western pioneers-why, 1t
was all Pic compared with New Eng
land hardships, where, when the trees
were down there remained boulders
and where not only hostile Indians
lurked, but hostile French. But in The
end, the boulders have conquered,
even after most of them have been
piled up. In the course of genera
tons we have built them into untold
miles of cyclOpean walls, only to sink
before them. For part of my guess
as 10 what is the matter with New
England agriculture is that the race
is tired, taking an enforced rest. The
New England farmer has inherited
WEAKNESS.
The Farmer Socially Disesteemed.
Another thing that is the matter
with New England agriculture, is the
social disesteem of the farmer. A
calling which is not respected and
self-resp ecting cannot have energy and
capacity for self-improvement in those
who follow it, l question whether the
New England farmer ever was free
from social disvaluation, despite Long
fellow, Whittier, Concord, Lexington.
and the Youths Companion. Our Pur-
itan forefathers were not democrats.
English caste feeling and the English
rating Of occupations existed among
them. The merchant was the proper
CapeT. We find no encomiums Of the
farmer in the literary relics Of colo
NAL times. Today, the village store
kaannr e tnrlNftr- with The far.r,na,