Evening star., 1936-07-19
BY MARK SULLIVAN.
I WAS struck one day by q news
paper dispatch reading:
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BY MARK SULLIVAN.
7 WAS struck one day by q news
paper dispatch reading:
ALBANY, July THE New
4 York State Agricultural Society
pursued q search today for farms in
the State which have been in one
family for 100 years or more. Mark
ers will be placed on premises Of the
century farms. DR.. A. r. Mann.
president Of the society. said. The
society has received proof from sew
eral farmers that their property mad
been In the family 200 years or more"
My quick suspicion-unworthy and
unjustifed, I am sure-was that the
New York State Agricultural Society
must be a New Deal institution, and
that it must be engaged in running
down those economic royalists" who,
President Roosevelt says, must be ex-
terminated. Persons who have owned
farms a hundred years or more, and
q small number of owners of busi-
nesses which have been IN the same
hands for more than a century, are
about the only persons In America
who would conform with any literal
ness to what Mr.. Roosevelt describes
as economic royalists" and "dynss-
ties" Those words imply power ac-
quired by heredity-especially heredi-
tary ownership of land. However. the
President chooses his words less for
their exact sense than for the music
Of them and their emotion provoking
qualities. Probably he meant not ex-
clusively persons with inherited eco
nomic power but all who possess any
economic power whatever.
To me the persons possessing farms
or houses or businesses that have
been in the same family a hundred
years or more are not dangerous
element in American life. On the
contrary. they inspire romantic senti-
ment, and they seem uniquely use
full, for such hereditary attachments
to soil or hearthstone or family busi-
ness compose little islands of perma-
nence IN an America Of which an out
standing characteristic is change. One
wishes there were more of them.
Temptations Resisted.
AS nearly as there Is any best In
America-best in the sense of char
acter. stability. substantial qualities
of personality-it should be found on
those farms and in the businesses
which for over 100 years have passed
from father to son. In generation
after generation one son at least must
have resisted the lure of the city. In
a former generation they must have
resisted the lure of free land in the
West They must have resisted. too,
the temptation of high prices for land.
the temptation either to sell the home
farm during some period Of high
prices or the temptation to mortgage
it in order to buy more land.
Many farmers who In the past dec
ade or two have encountered financial
trouble and have blamed 1t on some
thing the Government did or did not
do would be more accurate If they
blamed it on their own poor judgment.
Much of the rural grief that has
ululated down to Washington from the
Midwest and West has been justified.
But some of it had its original cause
in the temptation either to buy land
or sell it, at the time. during the war
and after. when prices were fantas-
tically high. In the Midwest men
bought farms at 5000. $500 or even
S40O an acre-prices entailing interest
LiNL 20 nnir1d
when conditions became normal. Or
men sold farms at the same prices.
Tempted by fantastic figures, they
parted with farms which they had
inherited or bought as young men.
They must often wish they had re-
mained on the farm. So must good
many of the others during the de-
preston. younger men who left the
farm for what seemed like better
careers in the cities. We can safely
doubt that during the depression or
any time there has been any grief on
those farms that have been in the
same families for 100 years. Those
farms. it is safe to say. were never
mortgaged And it has been my ex-
perience, wherever I have made in
uuiry. to be told that q farmer who
had no mortgage on his place was able
somehow to get along and survive the
depression.
INQUIRY Should Be Extended.
The inquiry being made by the
New York State Agricultural Society
ought to be duplicated by similar in
stitutions in other States I imagine
that in all the Atlantic seaboard States,
from Maine down to and including
North Carolina. many century" farms
can be found. probably not in South
Carolina. for that State was originally
laid out in very large plantations).
The New England States, and New
York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Della
ware, Maryland. Virginia and North
Caroline probably all contain farms
with q continuous family ownership
of more than hundred years-prob-
ably some 200 years. Most OF the
century" farms, should guess, would
be found in New York.
One wonders if there are any such
14fmS 1aTlH6E WcSJ. 1HCiC hAAShA1 VIC
a few in Ohio, West Virginia, Ken
lucky and Tennessee. West of that
belt such farms must be very rare,
for most of the farther West ter
ritory did not begin to be we'll settled
until less than a hundred years ago.
Anyhow, some one ought to search
them all out-possibly some farm peri
odical could do it. These sturdy fam
lilies which have preserved their vital
ity for three generations or more. and
clung with affectionate tenacity to
their home acres should be made into
an honor roll. Their qualities OF per-
formance, of roots sunk deep into
local soil, would be a useful example
to America just now. Their sense OF
obligation, both to tradition and to
their posterity, is something America
ought to honor. ! can imagine no
human qualities more admirable. no
personalities more to be respected.
Some day America Is going to give
recognition to those qualities Of dura-
bility which have high worth in our