Charlevoix county herald. (East Jordan, Mich.) 189?-1953, 1914-07-18
he Sand EarmeI $
"VaCatiOn Farm" Speech

invitation from the president of the
West Michigan Press Association to
spend a few days in pleasant recrea-
ton, and the readers of this paper
have already heard of the good time
which followed the sail down the
Grand river, and the hOspitable re-
ception at Spring Lake and Grand
Haven.
The "Sand Farmer" was supposed
TO speak to the learned gentlemen on
vacation Farms" but owing to the
lateness of the hour it seemed best to
omit any formal address, and simply
bring greetings, and a hint here and
there as to the possibilities of Michi
gan agriculture but he promised the
editors that they should have the
speech, and so Sam" and his work
on Lot No. 6 are again interrupted,
and lest the readers of this paper be-
come weary, the speech has been con
denced, and is as follows:
when the Pilgrim Fathers landed
at Plymouth Rock in 1920 this beauti
full land of ours was a wilderness,
titled only here and there by migra
tory tribes of Indians, who raised
little corn on the most fertile spots.
For the next hundred and fifty years,
or until 1776, the only ground titled
was that along the Atlantic Coast.
"The war of 1776 depleted the
treasury of the new government, al
though it gave to it the vast unknown
acres lying to the west, and the sol
diers, who could not get money, were
glad TO take grants of land in the
unknown wilderness as pay fer their
services, and about 1880 these eX-sol
diers-mostly men forty to fifty
wears old-settled Ohio, Indiana and
Illinois, but passed by Michigan be
cause of her mighty forests, which
then covered the state, and took up
the prairie lands because they were
more easily titled.
"Forty years later, in 1920, and two
hundred years after the landing of
the Pilgrims at Plymouth. there were
but few cities, and Chicago was a vii
lage no larger than Grand Haven, and
had less of the real city aspect.
'The sons of these war veterans
were now in charge of the farms, and
they began to increase their acreage
and stock The boys were sent to
school and to college. factories began
to take the place of the itinerant shoe
maker, who instead of travelling from
house TO house, and village to vii
iage, making shoes in the homes of
his customer now established himself
and began to employ apprentices.
~ he blacksmith, who had made
the Ftc2ws and the wagons, now be-
gan TO wake them in larger quanti-
ties, for the growth Of the country
demanded all he could produce
"In 1865 the country was feeling
trse effects Of the awful war which de-
pl,t,.,G the resources of both the. North
.a:,d The South. With fewer men TO
labor came the greater demand for
goods and foodstuffs. The cities be-
Gan TO grow, and the young men from
the farms moved to the cities because
% The great advantages then offered
sben, tut for the first 26O years the
grain was broadcasted, Graded by
hand, and threshed with a fail, the
grass was cut with scythe, raked by
hand, and pitched into the NOW with
hand fork. The corn was planted with
n hoe, and cut with a knife, and the
whole family, and part Of the neigh
borhood, invited to the husking-bee.
"The next fifty years saw greater
development than had been made ~
the previous $50 years, and in fact
within the previous 5000 years. Cit
les grew by thousands, hundreds OF
thousand, and millions. The cradle
was Supplanted by the modern ma
CHI cry which cuts, threshes and puts
into bags the wheat in one operation.
The moving machine, horse rake, hay
tedder, and hay fork had taken the
place Of the scythe, the Mandrake and
the pitchfork. The corn planter, the
corn harvester and husker had taken
the place of the hoe and the corn knife,
and the silo had come into being. A
Title idea Of this tremendous develop
ment in so short a time can be gained
from the following statistics, which
only cover thirty years, or those years
between 1880 and 1910, when the fol-
lowing cities had the following popu
lation, according TO the United States
census:
1880. 1910.
Chicago ....... 583 1000 2,185,0OO
Detroit ........ 10000 465,0 900
New York .....1 100000 4,766,OOO
We may well stop and consider this
tremendous growth in cities. Where
did all of these people come from ?
Partly from immigration, it is true,
but if you will study the history of
the large majority of our so-called
kings of finance and industry, you will
find that they were farmer boys who
left the farm some fifty years ago and
moved to the city. The result is that