CHAPTER I
MAKING A LIVING--WHERE AND HOW
By thought and courage, we can help ourselves to own a home,
surrounded by acres of fruit and vegetables, flowers and poultry, and learn the best
methods so as to insure success.
In olden times any one could "farm," but it is
necessary to-day to teach people to obtain a livelihood directly from the earth.
Scientific methods of agriculture have revealed possibilities in the soil that make
farming the most fascinating occupation known to man. People in every city are longing
for the freedom of country life, yet hesitate to enter into its liberty because no
one points the way.
Most sociologists are agreed that the great problem of our
day is to stop the drift of population toward the cities. Seeing the overcrowding,
the want and misery of our great towns, the philanthropist chimes in with "Get
the people to the country, that is the need."
But there is no such need. Man is a social animal, he naturally
goes in flocks, he earns more and learns more in crowds. To transport him to the
country, even if he would stay, which happily he won't, would be to doctor a symptom.
As in typhoid, what is needed is not to suppress the fever, that is easy, but to
remove the cause of it.
It is not the growth of the cities that we want to check,
but the needless want and misery in the cities, and this can be done by restoring
the natural condition of living, and among other things, by showing that it is easier
and making it more attractive to live in comfort on the outskirts of the city as
producers, than in the slums as paupers.
We know already that the natural and healthy life is, that
in the sweat of our faces we should eat bread. We observe that everything we eat
or use or make comes from the earth by labor; but no one knows how abundantly the
Mother can supply her children. It is well said that no man yet knows the capacity
of a square yard of earth.
The farmer thinks that he has done well if he gets a hundred
and fifty or two hundred bushels of potatoes from an acre; he does not know that
others have gotten 1284 bushels.
("Mr. Knight, whose name is well known to every horticulturist in England, Once dug out of his fields no less than 1284 bushels of potatoes, or thirty-four tons and nine hundreds weight (about 34 bushels to the ton), on a single acre; and at a recent competition in Minnesota, 1120 bushels, or thirty tons, could be ascertained as having been grown on one acre." P. Kropotkin's "Fields, Factories and Workshops," page 114.)
Let us realize what an acre means. An acre is a square
about 209 feet each way, 4840 square yards of land. A New York City avenue block
is about 200 feet long from house corner to house corner. It has eight city lots
25 X 100 in its front; about double that space (17-2/5 lots) makes an acre.
An ordinary one-horse cart holds twenty bushels, so then
a full crop of potatoes from that space would fill 56 carts.
To raise potatoes as an ordinary farmer raises them, requires
him to go over the ground not less than a dozen times, plowing, harrowing, marking,
planting, cultivating, three times weeding, three times for bugs, and digging; it
would pay him to go over it much oftener.
If he plants his rows of potatoes three feet apart, to allow
for horse cultivation, he has 69 rows of 200 feet each; which makes him walk at least
thirty-three miles over each acre. If he has a twenty-acre lot in potatoes, he walks
each year more than 650 miles over the field and gets, let us say, 150 bushels of
poor potatoes per acre, or 3000 bushels off his twenty-acre field.
Now suppose he cultivates the soil, instead of just "raising
a crop," and gets 600 bushels of fine potatoes to the acre, he need plant only
five acres, walk only 200 miles, and, because his potatoes are choice and early,
get many times the price that his pedestrian neighbor gets. It is much easier to
grow 200,000 lb. of feed on one acre than to grow them on ten acres.
To cultivate is to watch the soil as you would watch your
cooking and to tend the crop as you would tend your animals. The crop is as alive
as the stock and as easily gets sick.
If an ordinary farmer rents 60 acres at $5.00 per acre, a
moderate rent for good land, he pays out in cash $300, besides farm wages. If he
buys it, his interest and taxes will amount to nearly as much; but if he tills but
five acres intelligently, he can get as much out of it as out of an ordinary farm,
and even if his rent be as high as $30 per acre for well situated land, he is $150
to the good; besides, doing the work himself, he has no drain of capital for wages.
Large barns and shelter for help being unnecessary, he can
live in a cheap shack till he accumulates enough for proper buildings. Many of the
successful vacant lot farmers live in a tent or in shanties made of old boxes and
such like.
Of course, if we have the knowledge and ability and the capital
and can give it the attention, it is more profitable to cultivate on a large scale
than on a small one, because in that case each worker necessarily produces more than
he gets as wages--and we pocket the difference.
Most American farmers are holding land that somebody ought
to pay them a bonus for working, else they must come out of the little end of the
horn. They get poor or poorly situated land, because it costs less, and then put
three or four hundred dollars' worth of labor and money a year into the land and
take out four or five hundred dollars' worth of crops.
The farmer thinks he must have big fields to feed his cattle,
and that he must have cattle to keep the big fields fertilized, so he raises hay.
In that he makes two mistakes; hay, like most other low-priced
crops, is risky--the cost of harvesting is high and the margin of profit small. A
week of wet weather at cutting time or the impossibility of getting enough men and
machines in the week when it should be cut, may make a loss.
But the scientific dairy man does not take that risk, nor
let his cattle use up this fodder by wandering over the fields in search of tid-bits
of grass or clover, or, goaded by the flies, trampling more grass than they eat and
wasting their manure.
He keeps the cows in cool sheds, feeds them on cut fodder,
and saves every ounce of the manure.
The modern cow is a ruminating machine for producing milk
and cares little for exercise and needs little. To exploit the cattle as employers
exploit the factory hands, he gives the cows a cool, shady place and food, and they
stand there all day long to their profit and his.
(United States Agricultural Bulletin No. 22 says: "The New Jersey Experiment Station has been conducting a practical trial in soiling dairy cows for a number of years past, and finds that complete soiling is entirely practicable, i.e. that green foliage crops may serve as the sole food of the dewy herd, aside from the grain ration, without injury to the animals and with a considerable saving in the cost of milk.
"Under the soiling system a large number of animals can be kept upon a given acreage and by allowing open-air exercises in a large yard or pasture the practice has been demonstrated as entirely feasible for dairy animals.
" One acre of soiling crops produced sufficient fodder for an equivalent of 3 cows for six months. Rye, corn, crimson clover, alfalfa, oats and peas, and millets have been found to furnish food more economically than any other green crops in that locality. A grain rotation was always fed in addition to the soiling crops.")
Although we can feed a cow on less than an acre by raising
forage crops, she needs to be milked every day at regular hours, and the milk, as
well as the cans and the cow, need to be cared for--and she cannot wait.
The stock-raiser has a different proposition; he needs fields
and grass; but if time and available labor is limited, we had better specialize on
the garden--unlike the farmers.
The farmers are not to blame that they do not usually cultivate
the land intelligently. They are mostly cut off from the educational advantages of
the cities by distance and by bad roads.
Usually, that is because, desirable land being held at speculative
prices, they are forced to places where the farm itself is worth less than the good
improvements on it cost. Sometimes it is because, also, the land is poor or worn
out; more often because it is thoughtlessly managed, nearly always because the land-hungry
farmer has taken ten times as much land as he needs for farming. In the hope of a
rise that often does not come, nearly all have bought more land than they can take
good care of with limited capital and scarcity of help.
In addition, the farms have held out such poor prospects
of fortune that the smarter and more enterprising boys and girls have left them for
the towns, leaving behind the duller and more conservative to the mercy of the railroads
and other monopolies. What wonder, then, that the overworked and struggling farmer
finds little chance to study, or to investigate and invest in fertilizers or even
in modern methods of agriculture.
No wonder farming does not pay if a "farmer" means
a stupid man with neither training for, nor knowledge of, his business. Those who
have the knowledge seldom have the experience and those who have the experience seldom
have the knowledge.
The bonanza farms of the West are other samples of great
areas of the most productive land in the United States being used most unscientifically.
By the methods used, the land produces less per acre than land in the East which
is not so good. Accordingly, we find that the bonanza farm plan, where great areas
of wheat are worked by machines with labor employed only in the seed time and harvest,
is rapidly breaking up. As the land becomes valuable and is taxed, such wasteful,
wholesale methods do not pay as well as it pays to rent or sell the land to farmers,
who each for themselves attend to details of the business. Consequently, most of
those farms are being sold off. The whole amount of wheat ever raised on them, however,
is small compared to the rice, millet, and wheat raised in China, India, and Russia,
and is insignificant compared to the amount of produce grown on the myriad little
farm plots.
A comparison of productions as taken from the 12th and 13th
United States Censuses in the bonanza farm states shows that the yield of wheat was
| In 1899 | In 1909 | |
| Minnesota | 14.5 bu. per acre | 17.4 |
| North Dakota | 13.5 bu. per acre | 14.3 |
| SouthDakota | 10.5 bu. per acre | 14.6 |
("The successes accomplished lately in Jersey are entirely due to the amount of labor which a dense population is putting on the land; to a system of land-tenure, land-transference, and inheritance very different from those which prevail elsewhere; to freedom from State taxation; and to the fact that communal institutions have been maintained down to quite a recent period, while a number of communal habits and customs of mutual support, derived there- from, are alive to the present time." (Fields, Factories and Workshops.")
"It will suffice to say that on the whole the inhabitants of Jersey obtain agricultural products to the value of $250 to each acre of the aggregate surface of land." (Same, page 113.))
In a small plot the character of the soil is of little
consequence. We hear of one garden in New York City on the roof of a big building
where the janitor smuggled up the needed soil in baskets.
The school gardens in New York City, some in a space as small
as a hearth rug, one yard by two, show how to use a very small patch of land to the
best advantage. Nor need it take more time than you can afford.
"Some of the cultivators of city lots on Long Island
who kept count of the number of days they worked, show the surprising conclusion
that they earned, not farm wages (seventy-five cents a day with board and lodging
for the worker), but mechanics' wages (four dollars per day) for every working day;
as, for instance, a stone-cutter, assisted by his two boys, worked fifty hours and
made $120.23." ("Cultivation of Vacant Lots, New York," page 12);
and four city lots is a very little farm.
But though one may not own even a little farm, almost any
one who wants to can have a home garden--it needs but a small plot of land. Nor need
we be discouraged because acquaintances who play at gardening tell us that their
vegetables cost them more than if they bought them.
They naturally would, with thoughtless methods of cultivation,
with the selection of crops and the purchase of seeds left to an uneducated man who
does all his work the way he saw his grandfather do it.
Nor are we to be discouraged even by the "gentleman
farmer,, who runs a model farm, a model of how not to do it, for, notwithstanding
its large capital, it seldom pays.
I am passing such a farm now as I write in the train--it
is surrounded by a cut stone wall. Do you suppose the owner business would pay if
it were run in the same way that his farm is run? We know the story of the white
sparrow to find which would bring luck to the farm--but it was out only at daybreak;
the farmer got up each morning to find the sparrow and found a lot of other things
to attend to, which did bring luck to the farm. I don't think the owner of that wall
worked at it, at daybreak.
The time is not far distant when the builders of homes in
our American cities will be compelled to leave room for a garden, in order to meet
the requirements of the people In the mad rush for wealth we have overlooked the
natural state, but we see a healthy reaction setting in. With the improvements in
steam and electricity, the revolutionizing of transportation, the cutting of the
arbitrary telephone charges, it is becoming possible to live at a distance from our
business. May we not expect in the near future to see one portion of our cities devoted
entirely to business, with the homes of the people so separated as to give light,
sunshine, and air to all, besides a piece of ground for a garden sufficient to supply
the table with vegetables ?
You raise more than vegetables in your garden: you raise
your expectation of life.
Life belongs in the garden. Do you remember--the first chapters
of Genesis show us our babyhood in a garden--the garden that all babyhood remembers,
and the last chapter of the Apocalypse leaves us with the vision of the garden in
the Holy City, on either side of the river, where the trees yield their fruits every
month and bear leaves of universal healing. Just so will it be in our holy cities
of the future--the garden will be right there "in the midst."
CHAPTER II
PRESENT CONDITIONS
Up to the Civil War and for some years after, our people
were almost wholly agricultural. National activity contented itself with settling
and developing the vast areas of the public lands, whose virgin richness cried aloud
in the wilderness for men.
The policy of the government, framed to stimulate rapid occupation
of the public lands, had attracted hordes of settlers over the mountains from the
older states, and immigration flowed in a steady stream into the valleys of the Ohio
and the Mississippi.
A system had grown up in the South almost patriarchal, based
upon cultivation by slave labor of enormous areas devoted exclusively to cotton.
In the North, New England had developed some few centers of industry, drawing their
support from the manufacture of the great Southern staple. New York, Boston, and
Philadelphia were growing as outlets for foreign commerce, but as yet manufacturing
flourished but feebly and in few localities.
Such manufacturing and commercial enterprises as existed
had been laboriously built up by long years of honest working. The free lands of
the government, by giving laborers an alternative, kept up wages, forcing employers
to bid against each other for labor; and monopoly thus being checked, individual
equality was possible.
The mineral resources of Pennsylvania and Ohio were all but
unsuspected, and the calm of a people devoted to the peaceful pursuits of agriculture
rested over the country.
Railroads were few and inefficient: telegraph lines but in
their infancy. Intercourse among the people, outside of a narrow fringe on the Atlantic
coast, was cumbersome, and impeded by many obstacles. Primitive conditions everywhere
prevailed, and communities brooded in silence, growing stragglingly in sluggish indifference,
content with coarse food and coarser living.
Such, in general, were the conditions up to 1861. Then came
the storm of shot and shell, the rain of blood, the elemental rage of passion called
the Civil War. There was a total upset of business. Such periods of hard times as
had occurred prior to that time had been caused by the tinkering of untrained minds
with the money system or by land speculation, and not by lack of access to the riches
of nature. After four years our people awoke, as from a nightmare, to find the old
life swept away forever. In the South, the Confederates, bitter and sullen, groping
amid the ruins of their institutions, sought to find some substitute for the agricultural
despotism exercised for generations by their slaveholding families. In the East,
the first families of the Revolution, secure in their preeminence, assumed again
the manufacturing-banking-social prestige. The far West was still almost unknown,
and remained in possession of the buffalo and the Indian. Settlers poured, in increasing
numbers on to the unappropriated lands still left in the states of the central West,
and the center of political power shifted rapidly to this fertile region.
Already men of keen insight foresaw a time when oil, timber,
coal, and iron must become the stay of a vastly expanding industrial system, and
bent their energies to secure the chief sources of supply. From the nature of their
work the men who built railways first became aware of the riches of nature, and aided
by an enormous public sympathy with their efforts,, monopolized all the natural opportunities
of value. Coupled with industrial development was the gradual appropriation of the
land. The time soon arrived when the late comers either stayed in the manufacturing
centers at the railways terminals or were pushed farther and farther away from the
centers. As the landowning families multiplied, the young men were confined to the
same choice. Forced off the land, the tendency has been to crowd the brainiest blood
of America into the cities. In addition, the competition of the new Western lands,
brought into use by railway development, has exiled the youth of New England, who
found in their rocky acres no incentive to toil. They, too, joined the ever-increasing
flow to the cities, and entered into the savage competition of our great towns.
In our time the pendulum has swung to its extreme. At every
depression of business, armies of the unemployed perish in sight of the land they
abandoned in the hope of a brighter future. Their children have forgotten the traditions
of the soil, and the energies of our people must now be concentrated to reverse the
aimless tide of human sufferers, which under stress continues to flow city-ward,
and to send it to repeople the silent places whence it came. The fight will not be
easily won. Changes in the national land policy are imperative. To give one generation
privileges which enslave all who succeed it, is intolerable and will not be permanently
endured.
It is easy to determine upon a policy in the quiet of the
study; different is the problem of applying a comprehensive scheme to repeople the
idle land. In the first place, where is the idle land? In all parts of our country
it exists in abundance. Almost every state in the Union has lands which either have
never been alienated, or which have reverted to the state through nonpayment of taxes.
In the East, particularly, the competition of Western lands, aided by discriminating
freight rates, now so notorious, has resulted in the abandonment to the mortgagee
of vast areas in New York, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, and to some extent
in New Jersey. These are now largely resold.
Declining fertility and exorbitant and oppressive transportation
charges have helped to keep these lands out of use, and some still lie idle and neglected,
to excite the wonder of the social and economic student. To use the abandoned lands
of the East, equal rates on agricultural products is a basic necessity.
The first step, now well under way, is railroad control by
the Government. Equal access to transportation is as essential as equal access to
land, for transportation is indeed an attribute of land.
Extending the inquiry westward, the coal and oil areas of
Pennsylvania and Ohio are all controlled by a few hands. The original fertility of
the farming areas of these states, together with the fact that they have been producing
for only about a century, has enabled them to hold their own until recently, but
now only the best located tracts are in maximum production, and this can he maintained
only by the most advanced agricultural science. In spite of greater advantages, the
crowded cities and deserted country districts are beginning to repeat in the fertile
alluvial valleys of the interior, the tragic story of the East.
In the Mississippi valley, conditions seem better. Values
of farming lands are increasing rapidly; the farms are rich and growing richer; food
products are cheap and abundant; certain staples are produced in enormous quantities
and sent to feed the cities of the East and the industrial population of Europe.
The railroads transport these products nearly one thousand miles for the same prices
as they charge in the East for transporting them one hundred miles. Wealth, activity,
and political power concentrate at the inlet and outlet of the railway funnel, leaving
vast areas of unused and unusable land between the terminals. Access to markets determines
value. That is why the favored lands of Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, and Wisconsin,
one to two thousand miles from market, have risen in value to as high as three hundred
dollars per acre, and the lands of New England, New York, and New Jersey go begging
at twenty to sixty dollars per acre, unless they lie within the artificial prosperity
of the cities.
Farther west in the irrigated regions of Colorado and Utah,
restricted areas are held for special fruit crops, at prices ranging from three hundred
to two thousand dollars and up, per acre. But here, again, monopoly, now a monopoly
of natural opportunity, is a factor in creating prices; on this, however, the vast
irrigation projects of the government, bringing into use larger and larger areas
of these favored lands, were expected to exercise a check. Up to 1918 little has
been sold. Their reclamation cost too much.
The willingness of the Southern planters to sell their lands,
and so to release them for intensive cultivation, has partly turned the tide of immigration
from the Eastern ports to the South, and the market garden system is reaching increasing
areas. The development of factories to make cotton fabrics and to utilize the formerly
wasted cotton seed by turning it into meal for cattle and other animals, as well
as into the various food products, such as cotton-seed oil, cottolene, etc., has
stimulated the use of the waste land around these budding factory centers, thus tending
to encourage intensive use of small, well-located tracts.
With a climate much milder and more equable than that of
the Northern states, with a potential fertility of soil, equally great under proper
management, the South is making greater strides than any other part of the country.
The foregoing shows that in every section opportunities of
getting the people to the land exist. Where a man should go is determined by a variety
of things. If he be a newly arrived immigrant used to land work in Southern Europe,
he would find his best chance in the South; if a German or Russian, or from any of
the Northern European countries, he would find the beet-sugar sections of Michigan
Colorado, or California more to his liking; if American born, without much knowledge
of out-door work, and feeling the need of social life, the cheap farms of New York,
New Jersey, and New England would probably be most attractive.
Many persons write me that I say it is necessary to get good
land near population or with cheap and assured transportation facilities--and that
it must not cost more than it is worth for gardening. " I find," they say,
" that such acres are held as 'lots' at wildly speculative prices" and
they ask " Where can I find such land ? " But this is a book on agricultural
use of land. Why land costs too much and where the remedy lies are other questions,
dealt with in my "Things as They Are."
However, probably the best chances now for intensive cultivation
are in New Jersey, in the backwoods of the Middle states now made accessible by cheap
autos--and in the South.
What can be undertaken with good prospects of success will
be outlined in the following chapters.
CHAPTER III
HOW TO BUY THE FARM
Before the purchase of the land for a home in the country,
some consideration ought to be given to probable increase in land values. Even if
you are primarily interested in your early sales of produce, you will not object
to reaping an additional profit from the presence of other people.
Inasmuch as density of population determines land values,
it follows that vacant land near a large city at $100 per acre may be cheaper than
similar land at a distance would be at $10 per acre. If you buy real estate, you
become a silent partner who does nothing, but takes most of the profits of the business
of others.
Some persons see so clearly that money is often easily gotten
by investing in land, that sometimes they make mistakes, in trying to get in. It
is as easy to be a lamb in the real estate market as it is in the stock market.
Foresight, judgment, and experience or luck are essential
to success in real estate dealing, but help, at least in keeping out of danger, may
be had by following a few simple rules, if one can command a little capital, borrowed
or owned.
The following points, suggested by a professional land shark,
will certainly be of interest and possibly of profit to the intending buyer. I believe
myself that they contain the whole philosophy of land speculation.
For a sure profit buy low-priced land, keeping as near the
''raw material" as possible; high-priced property is risky and expensive to
carry. An acre which costs one or two hundred dollars, or ten dollars per lot, will
cost but six to twelve dollars per year to carry and half a dollar for taxes, and
if a stable does come next you, why, you can sell your land for a blacksmith shop.
Besides this, a ten-dollar lot, if restricted for residence
or available for business, often advances to $100 in a year; one good house which
some one else built near it may raise its value that much.
If the land is high priced, see that there is some
kind of a building on it; even a shanty will usually bring in enough or save you
enough by its use to pay the taxes; so you will have that working for you whilst
you are away.
If possible, buy at auction and of reputable people who are
not boomers, or at least buy at forced sale; that is how real estate is sold when
it must be sold. Choose lots level with the curb and on high ground, lest the expense
of grading and sewering eat up your profit.
Keep in mind that in buying land for speculation one really
buys the opportunity to tax other people, by taking part of their earnings in the
shape of rent or price. Do not then be deluded by boom schemes in inaccessible or
desolate places; choose rather that land which in the natural course of events others
must have in order to work or to live.
Home buying in small communities is safer than in the outskirts
of a large city, because public improvements are much less costly. If you put $500
in a $5000 home and carry the balance on mortgage, an assessment of $1000 for streets
or sewers, which helps the vacant lots, will probably put you out of business. Whether
for use or speculation, buy in an established neighborhood or where the circumstances
and neighbors are such that restrictions or expenditures will make its character
sure. The increase in your land value depends first upon the presence, then upon
the efforts, of others; it is by their labor you hope to profit.
Therefore, buy property on leading thoroughfares; except
in a very small section devoted to the residence of millionaires, the price of residence
property has a limit; even there the merest accident or the whim of fashion may destroy
the value, but there is no telling what figure business property may reach.
Do not build unless you have to. It is rare that a building
pays five per cent net on the value of the land and the cost of the house. "Who
buys a house already wrought, gets many a brick and nail for naught." If, however,
you can get a piece of ground in a growing neighborhood and live on it till you can
sell at an advance, that is the safest, and surest of investments. It delivers you
from the power of the landlord.
Lastly--in real estate--don't bite off more than you can
chew.
Most of these rules apply to the purchase of suburban land.
In farm buying, keep as close to your market as you can. See that railway facilities
are all right; get land likely to be needed for other purposes. The best way to begin
is by securing all information possible from state agricultural departments. Write
to the industrial agents of important railroads traversing the section in which you
want to locate. They have detailed information regarding land, markets, social conditions,
etc.; get from the United States Agricultural Department a map showing the soil survey
of the section of your choice. It must be borne in mind that personal aid is not
to be expected from State Agricultural Departments, Bureaus of Immigration, railway
companies, or any public agency.
From the big farm agencies run for profit you can get lists
of thousands of properties for sale. Some State Agricultural Departments cooperate
with real estate men in their own states, by referring inquiries for farms to them.
Some states issue from time to time lists of " abandoned farms," but these
change so constantly that they help but little except in the way of suggestion.
When you start farm-hunting take along a good map. Then you
will know a few things on your own account. Verify railroad maps and "facts,"
as they are often biased. Don't waste your time wandering around a strange locality
by yourself. The local real estate man knows more about his community than you can
learn in five years. In trying to find out things for yourself you will waste in
aimless journeys, undertaken in ignorance of real conditions, more time and money
than a real estate man's commission amounts to.
The only way to form a correct idea of the production of
any given section is to examine a particular farm in detail. Within well-recognized
limits, all tile farms thereabouts will be found of similar character. Before spending
money to look at land, learn all you can by correspondence. Whether it is more profitable
in the long run to buy that good plot of land in a high state of cultivation with
good buildings on it, at a high price, than to buy this exhausted piece of land with
poor buildings or none at all, is a question for the individual to decide. It depends
on your energy, grit, age, and how much money you have. It is much easier to take
advantage of what the other fellow has done, than it is to build from the stump.
You must bear in mind, however, that well kept land in a high state of cultivation
seldom goes begging in the market. On the whole, if you have the capital to do it,
you can make the biggest wages by buying rough or neglected land, and hewing it into
shape.
If you have a knowledge of soils, you may be able to find
land that will grow something that no one supposes it will grow. This will be particularly
useful in the case of land thought to be valueless. The lands about Miles, Michigan,
were considered sterile until some one found out that they would grow mint, a valuable
crop, which made the land salable at high prices.
Get hold of a desirable bit of the earth. All that men wear
or eat or use; everything--shelter, food, tools, and toys comes from the land by
labor. Even the capital used to make more of those things is taken from the land.
The employer and the capitalist are, at bottom, only men who control the land or
its products, who own rights of way, mining rights, or the fee of valuable lands.
Thousands have " made " money by finding unexpected products in their land
or of their lands, oil, coal, mineral, plants; thousands more because their land
was needed by some one else, and they were paid to get out of the way.
To speculate on these chances is risky business; to keep
land that enables you to make good pay while you wait, is profitable.
CHAPTER IV
VACANT CITY LOT CULTIVATION
In this book, necessarily, we have to take much upon the
reports of others, checking them by our own judgment and experience. The startling
accounts of what has been done and is being done on plots of about a quarter acre
to each family, however, can be easily re-verified by any one who will go or write
to Philadelphia, or examine any present experiment or model gardens. These show what
can be done even by unskilled labor, with hardly any capital, on small plots where
the soil was poor, but which are well situated.
The directors say: "The first Vacant Lot Cultivation
Associations were organized when relief agencies were vainly striving to provide
adequate assistance for the host of unemployed. The cultivation of vacant city lots
by the unemployed had already been tried successfully in other cities. The first
year we provided gardens, seeds, tools, and instruction only, for about one hundred
families on twenty- seven acres of ground. At a total cost to contributors of about
$1800, our gardeners produced $46,000 worth of crops."
The applicant is allowed a garden on the sole condition that
he cultivate it well through the season, and that he do not trespass upon his neighbors.
He must respect their right to what their labor produces. A failure to observe these
rules forfeits his privilege.
During twenty years, more than eight thousand families have
been assisted, many old people who could no longer keep up the rapid pace of our
industrial life, cripples whose physical condition held them back in the race for
work, persons who on account of sickness or other misfortunes have been thrown out
of the competition in modern business, and unfortunate beings who, though clear in
mind and strong in muscle, have been forced to the ranks of the unemployed-- these
have all had an opportunity opened to them: opportunity to enjoy all of the fruits
from nature's great storehouse which their own labor and skill might secure.
The war has forced France, Italy, and England similarly to
utilize natural opportunities for subsistence in their enormous tracts of unproductive
lands. In Mexico all proprietors will be required to designate what they propose
to cultivate and the remainder will either be allotted temporarily for agricultural
purposes to those desiring them or it will be cultivated under government management.
There is no remedy like that for poverty.
The first man who applied for a vacant lot garden came to
the Philadelphia office after the announcement in the papers, so weak and emaciated
that the doctor was afraid the poor fellow would be unable to get out of his office
without assistance. He was a widower with three girls and a boy, the oldest girl
about seventeen.
He received a garden which contained only about one fifth
of an acre. Later he observed that a part of another little farm was left untouched
on account of being very rough, full of holes, and covered with stone and bricks.
Part of this farm was below the street grade and subject to overflow, but it was
larger than the others--nine tenths of an acre. He offered to exchange, saying he
did not mind the extra work.
His offer was accepted. In a few days the stones and bricks
had been thrown into the holes and covered with dirt. The low places had been filled
in. It was a work in which the whole family joined. A small house was rented in the
immediate neighborhood in lieu of their one room near the foul alleys of the city
slum.
Every inch of the soil was utilized. A rosy hue took the
place of the pale, wan cheek of a few months before. And now the harvest has come,
and the winter's store can be enumerated. Thirty bushels of potatoes, four bushels
of turnips, one bushel of carrots, thirty gallons of sauerkraut, fifteen gallons
of catsup, five gallons of pickled beans, one hundred quarts of canned tomatoes,
fifty quarts of canned corn, twenty quarts of beans, one thousand or more fine celery
stalks, and many other things. Warm clothing has replaced the badly worn garments
of nine months ago. A few pieces of furniture have been added. The boy has been provided
with a small capital for his little business. ("Vacant Lot Cultivation,"
Reprint from N. Y. Charities Review. Better labor would of course get even
better results.
The personal benefits that have come to a few individual
cases, are largely the same that all the gardeners enjoyed in New York and elsewhere.
An old colored woman--a grandmother--who had just been released
from one of the hospitals where she had been treated for a long time for pleurisy,
asked for a garden. It was more than a mile to the nearest plot, but she was quite
willing to go even that distance if she could get a garden. At first, owing to her
weakened condition, she was forced to work slowly and for short periods only, but
a little assistance enabled her to get a garden started. The work proceeded so well
that more land was added to her small holding, and most of her waking hours were
now spent either in or near the garden, working among the tender plants or watching
them grow. Before the season was half spent she had developed one of the best gardens
in the whole plot. Her surplus produce became so large that she had to devote most
of her time to gathering and selling it. Finally she rented a small shed on a prominent
street and passers-by often stopped, and regular customers came to buy the freshly
gathered produce, the supply being not only abundant, but of great variety.
One of the best gardens, from the standpoint of value of
produce as well as for the varieties of products it contained and the artistic arrangement,
was worked by a man who had but one arm. Many other successful and profitable gardens
were cultivated by men and women of an age when we generally expect them to depend
entirely upon others for support.
Many incidents were found where such habits as drinking and
loafing around saloons and clubs and abusing the family have been checked on account
of the gardener's time and attention being occupied in the little farm.
One of the workers came for work in a condition of mind and
body which rendered his services almost worthless. He was scarcely able to carry
on his work for a minute beyond what he was shown. Each new move had to be explained
constantly, and even then he was often found doing the work in the wrong way only
a few minutes afterwards. Before long, however, he began to see that his place had
its responsibilities and that the work of Mother Nature depended on his doing his
part and doing it well. By the time the crops were ready to gather and market he
came to realize that the cost of production must come under the amount received from
the sale of the produce so as to prevent loss. By the end of the season he had learned
so to utilize his time and to organize his work and execute our plans that we were
able to recommend him to a farmer who was looking for a handy man about the place.
In twenty years our Associations have made demonstrations
of the following facts, each demonstration proving more clearly than the former ones:
First. That many people out of employment must have help
of some kind.
Second. That a great majority of them prefer self-help, and
many will take no other. Nearly all are able and willing to improve any opportunities
open to them.
Third. That to open opportunities to them does not pauperize
or degrade, but has the opposite effect of elevating and ennobling. It quickly establishes
self-respect and self-confidence. The best and most effective way of helping people
in need is to open a way whereby they may help themselves. The most effective charity
is opportunity accompanied with kindly advice and a personal interest in those less
fortunate than ourselves.
Fourth. That the offering of gardens to the unemployed with
proper supervision and some assistance by providing seeds, fertilizers, and plowing
accompanied with instruction, is the cheapest and easiest way of opening opportunities
yet devised.
Fifth. That it possesses many advantages in addition to providing
profitable employment; among others, that the worker must come out into the open
air and sunshine; must exercise, and put forth exertion,--all of which are conducive
to health, and, most important of all, he knows that all he raises is to be his own.
This is the greatest incentive to industry.
The Vacant Lot Cultivation system is a school wherein gardeners
are taught a trade (to most of them a new trade), farming, which offers employment
for more people than all the other trades and professions combined: a trade susceptible
of wide diversification and offering many fields for specializing. But little capital
is required; any other field would require large outlay. Its greatest advantage,
however, is that the idle men and the idle land are already close to each other--the
men can reach their gardens without changing their domiciles or being separated from
their families.
It was not until after several years that the full effect
of the work was realized. A few gardeners each year from the beginning have, after
one or two years' experience, taken small farms or plots of land to cultivate on
their own account, or have sought employment on farms near the city; but the number
is quite small compared to the whole number helped. Now more than ten per cent of
those that had gardens previously have for the last two years been working on their
own account. Out of nearly eight hundred gardeners, more than eighty-five either
rented or secured the loan of gardens that season and cultivated them wholly at their
own expense, and many others would have done so had suitable land been available.
The number of gardens forfeited on account of poor cultivation or trespassing was
only two out of 800 plots given out.
The first important advance was early in the spring of 1904,
when it became known that a large tract of land that had been in gardens for several
years would be withdrawn from use. A number of the gardeners came together to talk
over the situation. One proposed that they form a club to lease a tract of land and
divide it up among themselves. The plan was readily agreed to, and a nine-acre tract
on Lansdowne Avenue was rented at $15 per acre per annum. Some sixteen families became
interested' and Mr. D. F. Rowe, who had been one of the most successful gardeners,
became manager They had the land thoroughly fertilized and plowed, and then subdivided.
Some took separate allotments, as under the Vacant Lot Association's plan, and others
worked for the manager at an agreed rate of wages per hour. The whole nine acres
were thoroughly well cultivated, and a magnificent crop harvested.
As soon as there was produce for sale, a market was established
on the ground and a regular delivery system organized which later attracted much
attention. It was carried on by the children, of nine to twelve years of age, from
the various families. Each child was provided with a pushcart. There were many and
various styles, made from little express wagons, baby coaches, and produce boxes
The children built up their own routes, and went regularly
to their customers for orders. They made up the orders, loaded them into their little
pushcarts, charged themselves up with the separate amounts in a small book, and at
the end of each day's sales each child settled with the manager and was paid his
commission (twenty per cent of the receipts) in cash. These little salesmen and salesgirls
often took home four to five dollars per week and yet never worked more than three
to five hours per day. The work was done under such circumstances that to them it
was not work but play. You can get the full report from the Philadelphia " Vacant
Lot Cultivation Associations." It's interesting.
"The greatest value that our little garden has brought
us," said a French woman, mother of a goodly number of rather small children,
"has not been in the fine vegetables it has yielded all summer, or the good
times that I and the children have had in the open air, but in the glasses of beer
and absinthe that my husband hasn't taken." " Quite right, mother, quite
right," came from a man near by. "The world can never know the evil we
men don't do while we are busy in our little gardens."
Further, pillage of crops, which was always urged as an objection
to raising fruits or truck on open grounds, has proved to be a baseless fear. Where
any of the gardeners are allowed to camp or put up shacks on the patches, theft does
not occur and various superintendents repeat that "the few and trivial cases
of stealing from vacant lot plots or school gardens were almost all at the places
that were fenced."
Perhaps our locks and bolts tend to suggest breaking in.
The Garden Primer issued by the New York City Food Supply
Committee gives simple but incomplete directions for planting and tending a vegetable
garden. For those who need that sort of thing, these are just the sort of thing they
need. They will be useful if you do not follow them. The Primer tells you how to
get some kind of parsnips, chard, spinach, common onions, radishes, cabbage, lettuce,
beets, tomatoes, beans, turnips, peas, peppers, egg plants, cucumbers, corn, and
potatoes.
Don't grow these things, unless it be for your own immediate
use. Every one grows them and ripens them all at the same time. In many places these
are given away or thrown away this year. Grow anything that every one wants and has
not got, like okra, small fruits, etc.; you can get a much better return in cash
or in trade than by spending your time "like other folks" who do not think.
So I refer to these directions for their instruction, and
for your warning However, they give the following admirable injunctions.
"Help Your Country and Yourself by Raising Your Own
Vegetables."
As we will likely have to send to Europe in coming years
as much or even more food than we did last year, there is only one way to avoid a
shortage among our own people, that is by raising a great deal more than usual. To
do this we must plant every bit of available land. (Of course, we can't; the owners
won't let us. Ed.)
If you have a back yard, you can do your part and help the
world and yourself by raising some of the food you eat. The more you raise the less
you will have to buy, and the more there will be left for some of your fellow countrymen
who have not an inch of ground on which to raise anything.
If there is a vacant lot in your neighborhood, see if you
cannot get the use of it for yourself and your neighbors, and raise your own vegetables.
An hour a day spent in this way will not only increase wealth and help your family,
but will help you personally by adding to your strength and well-being and making
you appreciate the Eden joy of gardening. An hour in the open air is worth more than
a dozen expensive prescriptions by an expensive doctor.
The only tools necessary for a small garden are a spade or
spading fork, a hoe, a rake, and a line or piece of cord.
First of all, clear the ground of all rubbish, sticks, stones,
bottles, etc. (especially whisky bottles).
Choose the sunniest spot in the yard for your garden.
Dig up the soil to a depth of 6 to 10 inches, using a spade
or spading fork. (Deeper for parsnips and some other roots. Ed.) Break up all the
lumps with the spade or fork.
If you live in a section where your neighbors have gardens,;',
you might club together to hire a teamster for a day to do the plowing and harrowing
for you all, thus saving a large amount of labor.
After your garden has been well dug, it must be fertilized
before any planting is done. In order to produce large and well-grown crops it is
often necessary to fertilize before each planting. Very good prepared fertilizers
can be bought at seed stores, but horse or cow manure is much better, as it lightens
the soil in addition to supplying plant food. Use street sweepings if you can get
them.
The manure should be well dug into the ground, at least to
the full depth of the top soil. The ground should then be thoroughly raked, as seeds
must be sown in soil which has been finely powdered.
Lay out the garden, keeping the rows straight with a line.
Straight rows are practically a necessity, not only for easier culture but for economy
in space.
After you have marked all of your rows, the next step is
opening the furrow. (A furrow is a shallow trench.) That is done with the hoe. (Best
and quickest with a wheel hoe. Ed.) After the furrow is opened, it is necessary that
the seed be sown and immediately covered before the soil has dried In covering the
seeds the soil must be firmly pressed down with the foot. This is important.
In buying seed it is best to go to some well-established
seed house, or, if that can't be done, to order by mail rather than to take needless
chances. With most kinds of seeds a package is sufficient for a twenty-foot row.
Begin to break up the hard surface of the soil between the
plants soon after they appear, using a hand cultivator or hoe, and keep it loose
throughout the season. This kills weeds; it lets in air to the plant roots and keeps
the moisture in the ground.
By constantly stirring the top soil after your plants appear,
the necessity of watering can be largely avoided except in very dry weather. An occasional
soaking of the soil is better than frequent sprinkling. Water your garden either
very early in the morning or after sundown. It is better not to water when the sun
is shining hot.
The planting scheme can be altered to suit your individual
taste. For instance, peas and cabbage are included because almost everybody likes
to have them fresh from their garden; but they occupy more space in proportion to
their value than beets and carrots. Therefore a small garden could be made more profitable
by omitting them altogether, or cutting them down in amount and increasing the amount
of carrots, beets, and turnips planted; or any of the vegetables mentioned which
may not be in favor with the family can be left out.
The kind of season we have would change the date of planting.
In raising vegetables, as in everything else, one should use one's common (or garden
variety of) sense. A good rule is to wait until the ground has warmed up a bit. Never
try to work in soil wet enough to be sticky, or muddy; wait until it dries enough
to crumble readily.
Gardening is not a rule of thumb business. Each gardener
must bring his plants up in his own way in the light of his own experience and in
accordance with the conditions of his own garden. A garden lover who has a bit of
land will speedily learn if his eyes and his mind, as well as his hands, are always
busy, no matter how meager his knowledge at the beginning.
There is plenty of land--if you can only get it.
Says Carl Vrooman, Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, in
regard to the food problem:
"Millions of acres of farm land are being held out of use and other millions of acres are being cultivated on a wasteful and inefficient basis. Land values have risen at an unprecedented rate. They are based not upon what the farm will earn at the present time, but on an expectancy of what it will be worth in the future. The farmer's son or the tenant farmer, with little or no capital, cannot hope to acquire possession of a farm w hen the price of land is SO high that his earnings would not pay the interest on the investment. The result is that land remains idle or in the hands of tenants, and thousands of farmers' boys desert the country for the city.
". . . . What we need, and need badly, is a program of taxation which, without throwing additional burdens on the bona fide farmer, will place land now idle within the reach of men of limited means who possess the ambition and the ability to cultivate it."
You can see that poor ignorant people, women, boys, cripples,
old men, often on less than 100 X 150 feet each, not only in Philadelphia, but as
war gardeners in New York, and most other towns, have been able to support themselves
by their work on the land. You can do much better.
To be sure, they had valuable land and often seeds free,
but for such little pieces of land these are small items, and many of them had no
certainty of having the land even for a second year, consequently they could not
have hotbeds or any permanent improvement. You can make all these things.
Then what can you do? Only remember they had intelligent
instruction and did the work themselves, and got the whole product; often the children
helped--they thought it fun. It does not pay to farm a small piece of land where
all the workers have to be hired. Nor does it pay if one calculates merely to stick
in seeds with one hand and pull out profits with the other.
CHAPTER V
RESULTS TO BE EXPECTED.
"If we get every one out on the farms, then there will
be an over-production of farm products and a fall in prices."
True, but there are farmers who could do better in towns;
what we want to do is to make it easy for people to get on the land about the cities,
then it would be equally easy for those farmers who are better adapted for city life
to get near the cities.
Under present conditions, where the worker is forced out
fifteen or twenty miles from the town by the high price of land and the large amount
of land required, the farmer is as much cut off from the city as the city dweller
is cut off from rural life.
We need not be afraid to teach men better ways; there will
always be plenty too stupid or too old or too isolated to learn; these will remain
a bulwark against too sudden change.
Dr. Engel, former head of the Prussian Statistical Bureau,
informs us that "Scientific farming succeeds because a given amount of effort,
when more intelligently directed, produces greater results. Inasmuch, then, as the
amount of food which the world can consume is limited, the smaller will be the number
of farmers required to produce the needed supply, and the larger will be the number
driven from the country to the city. It has already been observed that if 34 scientific
methods were universally adopted in the United States, doubtless one half of those
now engaged in agriculture could produce the present crops, which would compel the
other half to abandon the farm." This is "Engel's Law."
This "argument" assumes that we are now utilizing
all the land possible and that every one is fully supplied with food. But when we
consider the great masses of people in the slums of all cities who are always underfed
and whose constant thought is about their next meal; when we see hundreds of able-bodied
men waiting in line until midnight for half a loaf of stale bread, surely it seems
that there is a possibility of keeping all of the present farmers at work, if not
of finding new fields for others, if we make our conditions such that there will
be opportunities for every able-bodied worker to labor at remunerative employment.
Professor L. H. Bailey, a most industrious and accurate observer,
says: " Dr. Engel's argument rests on the assumption that agriculture produces
only or chiefly food; but probably more than half of the agricultural products of
the United States is not food. It is cotton, flax, hemp, wool, hides, timber, tobacco,
dyes, drugs, flowers, ornamental trees and plants, horses, pets, and fancy stock,
and hundreds of other non-edible commodities. The total food produce of the United
States, according to the twelfth census, was $1,837,000. The cost of material used
in the three industries of textile, lumber and leather manufactories alone was $1,851,000,000.
"Dr. Engel thinks that the outlay for subsistence diminishes
as income increases; but comforts and luxuries increase in intimate ratio with the
income, and the larger part of these come from the farm and forest. Dr. Engel, in
fact, allows this, for he says that 'sundries become greater as income increases."'
We have already abundance of information about almost every
county in the Union, published by Boards of Trade and land boomers, like the following
about "Oxnard, Ventura County, the center of the famous lima bean district in
California. For a year the returns from farm products alone, in this vicinity, are
estimated at over $2,000,000. The sugar factory, which uses 2000 tons of beets every
twenty-four hours, requires the yield of about 1900 acres every season. The beet
crop is rotated with beans, and the factory's supply is kept good by systematic methods.
Two thousand head of cattle are being fattened at the present time in the company's
yard on the beet pulp. Much of the pulp is also sold to local stockmen, who value
it highly for feed. The factory turns out 5000 bags of sugar every day." And
again:
"Eastern farm lands steadily declined in price up to
about 1902, so that Eastern land sold for less than Western land of the same quality
and of like situation; but the tide seems at last to have turned, and much money
is now being made in buying up cheap farms and especially in sub-dividing them for
small cultivators."
That sort of thing is interesting; but it is not what a man
wants to know--he is anxious to learn how much he can make and where and how to do
it.
The man who seeks a comfortable living will do better to
rent on long lease or buy a few acres convenient to trolley or railroad communication
with a city; besides the returns which will come to the farmer from the use of a
few acres, if he is the owner he will get a constant increase in the value of the
land, due to the growth of the city. If the city grows out so that the land becomes
too valuable to farm, he will be well paid for leaving.
(Although progress is continually forcing laborers back upon less desirable land, their loss, unless they are the owners, is the landowner's gain.)
The amount of product to be grown for one's own use depends
on the size of the family and its fondness for vegetables.
"An area of 150X100 feet [about two fifths of an acre]
is generally sufficient to supply a family of five persons with vegetables, not considering
the winter supply of potatoes; but the acres must be well tilled and handled."
(Bailey, "Principles of Vegetable Gardening.")
"The produce that could thus be obtained from an acre
of land well situated would abundantly supply with nearly all the vegetables named,
nineteen families, comprising in all 114 individuals."
In our garden we must know what we want and know how to get
it.
(It is impossible to treat exhaustively of the various crops in a book of this kind. On onion culture alone there are four standard books, besides seven or eight recent experimental station bulletins.
"In a family garden 100 X 150 feet (which equals six New York City lots), the rows running the long way of the area, eight or ten feet may be reserved along one side for asparagus, rhubarb, sweet herbs, flowers, and possibly a few berry bushes. A strip twenty feet wide may be reserved for vines, as melons, cucumbers and squashes. There remains a strip seventy feet wide, or space for twenty rows three and one half feat apart. This area is large enough to allow of appreciable results in rotation of crops; and i! it is judiciously managed, it should maintain high productiveness for a lifetime." (Bailey, "Principles of Vegetable Gardening."))
"The things to be considered in the home garden are:
(1) a sufficient product to supply the family; (2) continuous succession of crops;
(3) ease and cheapness of cultivation; (4) maintenance of the productivity of the
land year after year.
"The ease and efficiency of cultivation are much enhanced
if
all crops are in long rows, to allow of wheel-tool tillage either by horse or wheel-hoe."
The experience of the Vacant Lot Gardeners (Chapter IV) shows
that if the land be near a large market where the product can be peddled or sold
by the producers or by those (as in Mr. Rowe's case), with whom he directly deals,
more than twenty-five dollars capital is not necessary, but Peter Henderson ("Gardening
for Profit") estimates that to get the best results, $300 capital per acre is
required for anything less than ten acres.
Where the land is favorably situated a fortune may be made
in cultivation of a few acres--with brains.
Quinn says ("Money in the Garden") that he knows
a large number of market gardeners worth from ten to forty thousand dollars each,
none of whom had five hundred dollars to begin with.
If one has not enough money to get all that can be gotten
out of his plot, it is best to put part of the land into clover to fit it for later
use or to use it for raising grass.
Results undoubtedly come from hard work; but it is not necessary,
in order to cultivate a little land successfully, that you should work all day on
your hands and knees; if you can raise fruit or nuts, this is not needed at all.
But for vegetables a certain amount of it is necessary--
when there is a large job of that kind of weeding to be done, you can hire Italians
or other foreigners to do it better and cheaper than you can do it yourself. Those
who will read this book can earn more with their heads than their hands; but when
weeding is needed after a sudden shower and there is no one else, you must do some
of it yourself; the weather will not wait for you to "get a man," and if
you are not willing to do such things, your chances of success are greatly lessened.
Here is the experience of one who "got a man":
"My garden, to begin with, was in the most rudimentary
condition, having been allowed to run to grass. After digging up a spot about ten
feet square in the turf, taking the early morning for the work, I decided that it
would require all summer to get the garden fairly spaded up, so I hired a stalwart
Irishman to do the work for me, which he did in a week, charging me nine dollars
for the job. As he professed to be also an expert in planting vegetables, I bought
a supply of seeds in the city and intrusted them to him, assuring myself that once
in the ground the rest of the work would fall to me; if I could not keep a garden
patch fifty feet square clear of weeds, I had better abandon the business at once,
and all hopes of making a living out of scientific gardening. The beginning was an
unfortunate one. The weather happened to be first very wet, and then so dry and hot
that my vegetables were unable to break their way through the baked earth. When my
peas and beans still gave no signs after being in the ground for two weeks, I discovered
that the whole work would have to be done over again. A Presidential campaign was
beginning, which kept me in town often late at night, so that the chief labor of
the garden fell to my faithful Irishman, who got far more satisfaction out of it
than I did. The vegetables finally did come up above the surface, and many an evening
I finished a hard day's work by pumping and carrying hundreds of gallons of water
to pour upon potato plants, tomatoes, beans, and other things which a friend of mine,
an expert in such matters, assured me were curiosities of malformation and backwardness.
My Irishman told me that it was all for want of manure, and by his advice I bought
six dollars' worth of manure from a neighboring stable, and had it spread over the
ground. The bills for my garden were meanwhile mounting up. I had begun the spring
with a garden ledger, keeping an accurate account of every penny spent, and hoping
to put on the other side of the page a tremendous list of fine vegetables. The accounts
are before me now, and I presume that every one who has been through the same experience
has preserved some such record." (Naturally, if he began that way.) ("Liberty
and a Living," by P. G. Hubert.)
If your idea of farming is to bury "some seeds"
in untilled ground, regardless of suitability, and "wait till they come up,"
you will wait in vain for a decent crop.
Says Professor Roberts in the "Farmstead" (Macmillan),
"Mushrooms sell at fifty cents per pound; maize for one half cent per pound.
Why ? Because anybody, even a squaw, can raise maize, but only a specially skilled
gardener can succeed in mushroom culture."
But enough has been said to show that you must cultivate
with brains. The Germans say, "What your head won't do, your legs have to."
"We'll have a little farm,
A pig, a horse and cow
And you will drive the wagon
While I drive the plow,"
is very pretty. The horse and the pigs are practical, if you can take care of
them yourself; pigs are good farm catch-alls. If you have to pay a man to do it,
you had better hire your horses and buy your pork.
Two well-groomed, healthy cows, one calving in the spring
and one in the autumn, can be made a source of profit, and of valuable manure, if
you have land enough in a neighborhood where up-to-date parents are willing to pay
ten to twenty cents a quart for pure milk for their infants or even for family use.
But your land and your own baby's care and milk will probably be enough for you to
attend to promptly and thoroughly every day--and night.
It is an age-old experience that if we take care of a little
land, the land will take care of us. In Ferrero's " Grandezza e Decadenza di
Roma" is an interesting account of Marcus Terentius Varro's "De Re Rustica."
Varro wrote in the year 37 B.C., and as he was then eighty years old, he had seen
the transformation of Italy from an agricultural to a manufacturing, trading community
and the accompanying wreck of the old agricultural system, which, of course, he laments.
The growth of vast landed estates largely held by imperial
favorites, as Pliny said, destroyed Italy. So fearful has the destruction been that
it is only in our generation that the Campagna at Rome, which was once an intensely
fruitful quilt of garden patches, has been reclaimed from the fever-smitten swamp
to which vast landlordism had reduced it.
In the third book of "De Re Rustica," Varro recommends
as his remedy, intensive cultivation close to the cities, and the breeding of "
fancy stock," including pigeons' snails, peacocks, deer, and wild boars.
He tells how an aunt of his made 60,000 sesterces ($3000)
in one year by raising thrushes for the Roman market, at a time when an excellent
farm of about 200 acres only yielded 30,000 sesterces per annum. He quotes another
case of one who made 40,000 sesterces per annum from a flock of one hundred peacocks,
by selling the eggs and the young. Those old Roman women weren't so slow.
Ferraro calls Varro's work one of the most important for
the history of ancient Italy and says historians have made a mistake in not reading
it.
At the time of the migration of the barbarians (350 to 750
A.D.), the lot of each able-bodied man was about thirty morgen (equal to twenty acres)
on average lands, on very good ground only ten to fifteen morgen (equal to seven
or ten acres), four morgen being equal to one hectare. Of this land, at least a third,
and sometimes a half, was left uncultivated each year. The remainder of the fifteen
to twenty morgen sufficed to feed and fatten into giants the immense families of
these child-producing Germans, and this in spite of the primitive technique, whereby
at least half the productive capacity of a day was lost. (From " The State,"
by Franz Oppenheimer, p. 11.)
In the Orange Judd prize contest, merely for the clearest
account of a garden, not for results at all, a number of the contestants raised produce
at the rate of $150 to $400 per acre and over, even in semi-arid regions; for instance,
L. E. Burnham says that he raised on his first garden of about one third of an acre
in eastern Massachusetts, garden stuff which he sold to summer cottagers for $61.69.
This took about eight days' work, nearly all with a wheel
hoe.
Remember about the present increased and changing prices
and costs? At the present writing, 1917, the advances in costs and prices would probably
average about three quarters, and those of common labor perhaps one third over those
given in the text. In other respects, the instances and authorities, still pertinent,
have been retained in this revision.
It would have been waste, not thrift, to get a new authority
to tell us that straw makes the cleanest mulch for strawberries; that's the reason
they were called strawberries) and they grew just the same way ten years ago.
L. E. Dimosh of Connecticut raised on one quarter of an acre
$146.21, of which over $85 was profit.
In other cases the profits were $142 (Gianque, Nebraska)
per acre; and over $295 (Dora Dietrich, Pennsylvania); with the rather exceptional
profit at the rate of $570 (Mrs. Hall, Connecticut). Some showed a loss.
Some of the town or city lots yielded very high profits;
one of a third of an acre gave a profit of $224.33 (Edge Darlington, Md.).
The summary "based upon the reports of five hundred
and fifteen gardens in nearly every state and territory and in Canada and the provinces,
may be considered accurate and reliable. Covering such a vast territory local conditions
are avoided." It shows that "the average size of farm gardens was 24,372
square feet, or about half an acre, the average labor cost $26.34, the average value
of product was at the rate of $170 per acre, and the net profit over $80 per acre."
To get results we must first learn and then teach what we
know. The finest game in the world is to teach. No one ever knows anything thoroughly
till he tries to teach it.
When you tell a person how to do a thing, he doesn't know
how to do it himself. When you show him how to do it, still he doesn't know that
he could do it himself. But when you get him to do it himself, then he knows.
Country boys will believe that early tomatoes can be raised
by starting them in the house; but like the rest of us they don't know how to do
it, and when spring comes and it is time to do such things, they are busy on the
farm. There are several schools trying the experience of allowing the children to
plant in window boxes in early April and are showing them how to do it. But as there
is not room for all the children to plant in these window boxes, there is a new idea
which originated in the country, where the children are engaged in the fall and the
spring assisting their parents at agricultural work.
It was hard to get up any interest in school gardens, but
it was all the more important that they should have agricultural instruction in the
winter time.
At Berkeley Heights, N. J., we devised this simple plan,
and it works. We made a number of wooden boxes, one foot wide, two feet long, so
they will just fit on the ledge of a school desk. They are only three inches deep,
with a bottom of tin, turned up at the edges, or of well painted pine, white-leaded
at the joints. There is no drainage, since we discovered that if they are not watered
too much, they do better without drainage. The holes usually made in the bottoms
of flower boxes carry off a lot of plant food with the water that runs through.
Now, how to store these boxes when they are not in the sunny
places near the windows? Why, we set up four posts of one-inch stuff at the four
corners, so that the box looks like a kitchen table turned upside down (see illustration).
Now the boxes filled with earth and with the young plants growing can be stored at
night, one on top of the other, by the wall of the schoolroom.
If it is going to be cold, and over Sundays, the pile of
them can be covered with newspapers, which keep them from getting chilled and from
drying up, or the boxes can be covered and carried home by the children. We found
that for most plants nine inches is high enough for the posts, and that well-seasoned
one-inch lumber is heavy enough not to warp if it is painted inside and out, and
it is not too heavy to lift.
By the way, better paint the joints before the sides are
nailed together. It makes them more water-tight. Four screws at the corners will
make them still tighter.
The scholars raise lettuce, parsley, onions, and strawberries,
and all kinds of small plants, as well as flowers, in the winter; and when the plants
get too big or two crowded for the boxes, they are separated and transplanted into
other boxes to be taken home.
This was so successful that we devised a big window box which
is suited for home use also; it is just as wide as the window and half as long again
as it is wide. But this box does not stand outside on the window sill; if it did,
the plants would freeze. One end only rests on the inside window sill where it gets
the sun; the end is supported by two legs of the same height that the window sill
is from the floor.
When a nice warm day comes, the other end of the box is pushed
out of the window and the sash closed down on it to keep it from falling out. A couple
of cleats or nails in the window jamb help to hold it in place.
Of course, the box has to be watched and taken in if it turns
cold, but it's astonishing how much can be raised and how much more can be learned
out of season by the school desk boxes and the home window sliding boxes.
Try it and see for yourself.
The children can learn as much about some things from a box
2X1 ft. as they can from a children's garden. Here are a couple of samples of what
the kids themselves in a city school think of it.
"DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
"Office of the Principal of Public School No. 7
"VAN ALST AVE., ASTORIA, QUEENS
"I inclose a few compositions that were written by some
of our boys and girls of the Fourth Year. You will recognize the descriptions of
your Garden Trays for classroom use Unfortunately the free space in the classroom
is limited, so we have found it necessary to allow each pupil only part of a box.
"The children themselves are delighted, as you can see
by their compositions.
"Very sincerely yours,
(Signed) " AGNES A. CORDING
"Asst. Principal."
P. S. No. 7
Grade 4 A--April 2l, 1915.
Arthur Miller, Age 10
OUR GARDEN
At first we planted radishes then onions and lettuce and
beans and sunflowers. Each one of us have 1/4 of a box. When we had finished that
we brought them up to the front of the room and then watered them and went home.
Anna Duerr, Aye 8
MY GARDEN
I have a garden. It is a box. I have a quarter of a box for
my very own. My garden has five rows. In the first there are radishes, in the second
lettuce, in the third onions, in the fourth beans, in the fifth sunflowers. I hope
my garden grows up.
Of course these are only preparatory for profitable work.
We have cases in which $2000 has been recorded from sales in one year from one acre,
and many cases in which at least $1000 worth of produce has been sold from an acre.
These are sales, not profits.
Such results are not due to the boundless and fertile soil
of the new world nor to small farming alone--they are due to intelligence.
Professor Ronna gives the following figures of crops per
acre at Romford (Breton's Farm): 28 tons of potatoes (say 952 bushels), 16 tons of
marigold, 105 tons of beets, 110 tons of carrots, 9 to 20 tons of various cabbages,
and so on.
It was suggested to the Agricultural Department that it might
fix standards of what is a good attainable crop.
On every golf links we have what is called a Bogie score
posted up. That is a score that a certain mythical Captain Bogie, supposed to be
an average good player, could make on those links. On one typical club-course, for
instance, the Bogie score is 42. Though it has been done in 37, the ordinary player
congratulates himself when he gets down to the Bogie score.
Now, if there were standards attainable to ordinary intelligent
and good cultivation set in each section, it would enormously encourage farmers to
reach them, which may be of great importance.
One of the heads of the Department replied as follows:
'"In regard to fixing a standard for each farmer to
strive to attain, I think that a very good idea; but the standard for each crop in
each particular locality would necessarily be somewhat different from that in every
other locality. Persons who have had experience in experimental work keenly appreciate
these points. The work which is done upon one soil formation under different climatic
conditions in one season, does not necessarily find a duplicate in any other locality,
and the experience is that what is accomplished in one year would not be duplicated
on the same soil and under the same management again in several years, for the conditions
under which agriculture is carried on are so many of them outside of the control
of the operator that it is very difficult to predict results or to attain any fixed
standard. This is necessarily so with an operation which has so many uncertain factors
to deal with as agriculture. Humidity of the atmosphere and of the soil, the available
plant food in the soil, methods of tillage, fertilizers used, recurrence of frosts,
amount of sunlight, the altitude and latitude of different localities, all have a
bearing upon crop production. It is, therefore, very difficult to fix any approximate
standard or average production for any particular locality without basing it upon
a long series of years. I think, however, that it is a subject worthy of agitation,
and it might inspire agriculturists to better work were such an ideal fixed upon."
This indicates that each experiment station or progressive
farmer or teacher of agriculture might advantageously establish the local "Bogie
score" of what might fairly be expected.
We know how misleading averages are. The man who tried to
wade across a stream whose average depth was two feet, was drowned. "The writer
used to go to a fishing club of which Cornelius Vanderbilt was a member. One of the
standard jokes there was that the thirty members are worth on an average over two
million apiece, that is, Cornelius sixty millions, and the rest of us (comparatively)
nothing. Which are you to be ? A Vanderbilt among cultivators, or the other fellow
who makes the 'average'?" ("Money Making in Free America," by the
Author.)
But even making all allowances we see that we must cultivate
much better than the "average," to make anything more than the farmer's
hard living off the land. Peter Dunne tells us what kind of a grind that is.
"This pa-aper says th' farmer niver sthrikes. He hasn't
got th' time to. He's too happy. A farmer is continted with his farm lot. There's
nawthin' to take his mind off his wurruk. He sleeps at night with his nose against
th' shingled roof iv his little frame home an' dhreams iv cinch bugs. While th' stars
are still alight he walks in his sleep to wake th' cows that left th' call f'r four
o'clock. Thin it's ho! f'r feedin' th' pigs an' mendin' th' reaper. Th' sun arises
as usual in th' east, an' bein' a keen student iv nature he picks a cabbage leaf
to put in his hat. Breakfast follows, a gay meal beginnin' at nine an' endin' at
nine-three. Thin it's off f'r th' fields where all day he sets on a bicycle seat
an' reaps the bearded grain an' th' Hessian fly, with nawthin' but his own thoughts
an' a couple iv horses to commune with. An' so he goes an' he's happy th' livelong
day if ye don't get in ear-shot iv him. In winter he is employed keeping th' cattle
fr'm sufferin' his own fate an' writin' testymonyals iv dyspepsia cures." ("Mr.
Dooley Says.")