Vernon County censor. [volume] (Viroqua, Wis.) 1865-1955, 1908-06-24
A WESTERNER ON A
NEW ENGLAND FARM
HIS FRANK AND UNBIASED STATE
MENT OF HIS EXPERIENCES
AND ITS LESSONS.

script.-Proud of the west and plying
of New England though he be, the
Westerner does not disparage New
England agriculture to the extent us
ually imagined. The belief OF the SUE
cessfuI scientific farmer of the west
is that the New England farmer fails
to form scientifically and could do
much more than he does now. Where
are the 5000 sheep which New
Hamshire had in 1850? Where are
the FIVE thousand cattle of the Con-
toocook valley above Concord? And
where are the people who lived where
are now but cellars? In 1860, in the
three miles from town where ours Is
the only house, there were nine
others. When a farmhouse burns, it
is not replaced. The last Of the nine
burned two years ago. The owner
had bought the place for $500 and in
the first winter had sold 5000 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. and
that winter sold $1,000 worth OF
spruce. What's the matter? Why
did successive owners sell that man
for $1,000 a forty acre and sixty
acre farm, each with house that
would cost at least $500. each with a.
least a thousand worth of timber Of
a single variety, to say nothing OF
other trees; and why did he sell forty
acres with a thousand worth of pine
on it, for $3.50?
What's the matter2 So far as
Y am concerned, 1 am still guessing,
though some of my HYPOTHESIS seem
plausible to me- The matter is all
sorts of things, part of il physical, bur
more of it physiological.
Beaten by The Boulders.
OF course much OF New England Is
unsuitable for anything except seen
cry. 1t may be as the president OF
TUFTS college says the late \. ,.
Shaler connded TO him, thai New
England soil is richer than that OF the
West-a statement which will give the
west shock-but no one can main
tain that its average is so arabic.
Much of it is hilly, mountainous,
rocky, stony Many old deserted farms
ought never to have been occupied.
They help explain that New England
sadness that many remark, that gem
tie brooding melancholy of the land
scape, however beautiful, that minor
hopeless note of the New England
woman's voice, even when talking OF
matters ordinarily cheerful; not COM
planning note Of despair, not SO dig
nified as gloom, but the resignation or
a soul translating its sense OF an in
effectual struggle into that ineftectuar
voice. One cannot but be melancholy
when he looks at the areas that are
now forest and y re once tields. At
the Hill dowr lose slopes stern
New England mlI were at last thrust
by sterner New England nature, where
his blood, his kin have toiled and
retreated. The gentle. smiling mood
of the west is not here-thewest where
amenable to the plough, the well kept
land is cheerfully submissive to the
hand of man, humane landscape pro-
claiming civilization and mankind in
its sleek fields. Here, FESTIVE and I'M
tamable nature has beaten. Yet when
I .ook at some old cellar in the midst
of a vegetation of arctic moss, hign
on some dreadful hill, the moraine
which so much of New England is,
chn.4lA pyn
more copiously at the thought of peo-
pie again coming there to live, to ex-
ist, than at the thought that the
sturdy, stone-stubbed yoemanry of
yore had gone. Economy can be a
vice, and 1T was to the morbid over.
development of this quality that the
occupation of the now abandoned
farms was due.
1t was race with a fierce fighting
impulse that attacked country that
was at once covered with an impene-
trable forest and mask of boulders.
Talk of Western pioneers-why, 1t
was all pie compared with New Eng
land hardships, where, when the trees
were down there remained boulders
and where not only hostile Indians
iurked. 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
lions we have built them into untold
miles of cyclopean walls, only to sink
before them. For part Of my guess
as to 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 Dsesteer.oS
Another thing that is the matter
with New England agriculture, is the
social disesteem of the farmer A
calling which is no. respected and
selfrespecting canpot have energy and
capacity for selfirnprovement in those
who follow it. question whether the
New Erg'ar& farmer ever was free
from social disvaluation, despite Long
fellow, Whittier, Concord, Lexington.
aid the Youths Companion. Our Pur-
tan forefathers were not democrats.
English caste feeling and the English
radng Of occupations existed among