Cut over woodlands which we have learned to make produce incomes of about five dollars each year per acre by intelligent forestry, as well as swamp lands which we now know how to make healthful by drainage and by the extinction of mosquitoes, can still be had at low prices in New York and other states. Numerous others are in the market from five dollars per acre up, and so it goes through the state, from Wyoming County in the extreme western end, where farms ranging from thirty to three hundred acres are in the market at from thirty to forty dollars per acre, to St. Lawrence County in the north, where land can be bought as low as fifteen dollars per acre.

When it is considered that these lands are within easy access to established markets with transportation and mail facilities, rural delivery, and telephone a proper idea may be formed of their value in opportunity. The authority quoted further states that "probably fifty thousand agricultural laborers can find employment on the farms of New York at good wages. Families particularly are wanted to rent houses and work farms on shares." Wages for new hands run from twenty to thirty dollars and upwards per month with board. Men who know how to milk are especially in demand throughout the dairy regions. These conditions make it possible for experienced farmers, although entirely without money, to get to the soil.

Over three hundred thousand aliens annually settled in the cities of New York State during some years in the last decade. These people could be got out of the cities, where in normal times they are little needed, into adjacent country districts where they are much needed.

In the Real Estate Record and Guide, Mr. A. L. Langdon says: "It is most remarkable that there are on Long Island, within from thirty-five to seventy miles of New York, thousands of acres of land which have never been cultivated, which have for years produced nothing but cordwood, and which the owners allow to be overrun with fire almost every year. A large part of this land has soil two or three feet deep underlaid with gravel. The best water in the world is abundant and the climate is more equable than on the mainland, and in each locality where any reasonable effort has been made to cultivate the soil, it has produced plentifully of all fruits and vegetables which can be grown in this latitude."

Long Island should produce all the fruit, vegetables, poultry, eggs, and milk needed by its own residents, with a large surplus for the city markets, instead of getting, as it does, a large part of its supply of these things from the city.

When it is considered that about a quarter of a million acres of this land so close to the city is now scrub oak and uncultivated waste, and that there are about a million adult workers in the city, the importance of the experiment is obvious; especially as we learn from the United States census that over ten thousand of these workers are already in agricultural pursuits within the city limits.

"Here midway on Long Island, and just beyond the limits for a man to locate who expects to earn his living by daily work in the city, is a territory about forty miles long and ten miles wide which by intensive farming would yield a good living for more than two hundred thousand inhabitants. In this agricultural section, a man of small means who expects to live on the land the year round, should purchase a plot not too small to produce enough to support himself and family and a surplus to sell, not less than six acres. Probably all men have more or less land hunger a desire to own land and it is a worthy object to encourage to the extent of inducing a man to purchase what he can pay for and be satisfied with, but it is a shameful thing to induce a poor man, who has to earn his living in New York, to buy on the installment plan a small lot so far from his place of employment that he cannot live on it and travel to and from his work every day, and where there is the strongest probability that he will never make more than two or three payments, and will consequently lose what he does pay." The writer hears of one plot which was sold nineteen times and the contracts defaulted on after payments, before any one took title.

If the seeker is not satisfied with the opportunities which the state of New York offers, he may turn to New Jersey, equally accessible and equally rich in chances.

New Jersey Year-Book: "There are in the southern part of the State large tracts of land which are still uncleared, or covered with brushwood, and which are adapted to tillage and capable of producing large crops of small fruits and market garden vegetables. The wood on them is mainly scrub oak, with some dwarfed pitch pine and yellow pine, and hence they are called oak lands to distinguish them from the more sandy lands and tracts on which the pitch pine grows almost exclusively. The latter are known as pine lands. The total area of cleared (farm) lands in the southern division of the State, southeast of the marl belt, is about 450,000 acres. The pineland belts have an aggregate area of 486,000 acres, making at least 800,000 acres accessible by railways from the large cities and also near to tidewater navigation. The maps of the Geological Survey show the location and the extent of these lands, their railway lines, and their relation to the settlements already made and to the cities.

"The soils of these tracts are sandy and not naturally so rich and fertile as the more heavy clay soils of the limestone, the red shale, and the marl districts of the State, but they are not so sandy and so coarse-grained as to be non-productive, like some of the pineland areas. The latter are often deficient in plant food and are deservedly characterized as pine barrens, being too poor for farm purposes. The growth of oak and pine, as well as chemical analyses, shows that the oak-land soils contain the elements of plant production. They are not so well suited to pasturage or to continuous cropping as naturally rich virgin soils; they are better fitted for raising vegetables, melons, sweet potatoes, small fruits, peaches, and pears than wheat, Indian corn, hay, and other staples. The eminent superiority of this kind of farming in New Jersey over the old routine of wheat, corn, hay, and potatoes is well known. These South Jersey soils are easily cleared of brushwood or standing timber, and of stumps, with a hand or horse-power puller which is a cheap affair, and the wood is salable in all this part of the State at remunerative prices, often bringing more than the original cost of the land. The long working season and the short and mild winter favor the arrangement of work, so that all is done with the least outlay for help. They also favor the mosquitoes.

"The success of Hammonton, Egg Harbor City, Vineland, and other places is notable, and equally good results are to be had at a hundred or more places as well situated as they are. These lands are sold at low figures, and the settler saves in capital and interest account. Only the difficulty of getting money to help in building interferes with rapid settlement.

"The West Jersey Railway, the Pennsylvania, and the Philadelphia and Reading's Atlantic City Railroad, the Philadelphia and Seashore Railway, the New Jersey Southern Railroad, and other branch roads afford excellent facilities for access to New York, Philadelphia, and the cities of the State. The Cohansey, Maurice, and Mullica rivers head well up near the northwest limits of these lands, and their navigable reaches run for miles across them. The waters of the Delaware Bay and the ocean are within a few miles of a large part of this oak-land domain.

"The advantages of an old settled and Eastern State, within easy reach of these large markets, of land which is easily tilled and generous and quick in its response to feeding, and at low prices, make them equal to, if not better than, the rich prairie soils of a new West, or the low prices and cheap lands of the abandoned hillsides of New England."

Wages for unskilled farm labor are about the same as for New York—twenty to twenty-five dollars per month. The canning and fruit industries make room for a large number of people in the late summer and fall, who may thus, by taking a temporary place, kind some permanent location where they may improve their health and fortunes.

"Delaware also offers unequalled opportunities to immigrants. It is ideally situated on the Atlantic Ocean and the Delaware Bay, and is penetrated by numerous creeks and rivers.

"The railroad, steam, and electric facilities of the State are developing steadily year by year, while every section of the State possesses easily navigable streams, with vessels for carrying freight and passengers.

"Over fifteen millions of people live within a radius of three hundred miles; the large majority reside in cities and towns and furnish the finest markets in the world. Within five hundred miles are more than one third of the people of all North America.

"Wilmington is a city of seventy-five thousand people, is growing rapidly, and is becoming a great manufacturing place.

"These people may be reached in one day by the luscious fruits that grow in Delaware, and every one of them is perfectly happy when he gets a Delaware peach. Many other Delaware products are as good as the peaches.

"As cattle and wheat raising developed in the great West, Delaware people thought that they were ruined. They did not change at once, but slowly discovered that the light lands are wonderfully productive of fruits and vegetables, and that they pay much better than cattle and grain ever could. But these new methods have not been adopted in all parts of the State, so that land neglected and unprofitable is for sale. The tides of immigration have swept westward and left Delaware untouched. Men, money, and enterprise are needed.

"There are few unoccupied or 'abandoned' farms in Delaware." The land is mostly held by descendants of the early settlers, who form a species of landed aristocracy. Lately, owing to the younger members of these families having become established in the newer states and on account of the death or incapacity of the older members left in possession, there has been a marked tendency to sell off these farms. However, "a large proportion of the farms in Delaware are not for sale at any price. Some of them have been in the same family for generations, and if put on the market would sell for from one to two hundred dollars per acre."

The soil is all the way from a heavy white oak clay, which is too stiff and too sticky for most crops, to very light sand.

The heaviest clay is made lighter and more porous, and the lightest sand is readily made retentive of moisture and extremely productive, by plowing in different kinds of crops as green manure, such as cow peas, soy beans, the vetches, etc.; crimson clover, winter oats, rye, turnips, and numerous other crops may be sown in August or later, and produce a fine crop for turning under early in the spring. Crimson clover grows nearly all winter. Pure cold water is reached at from twenty to fifty feet by dug or driven wells.

The climate is good; there are no cyclones. There is some damp weather in winter, but there are no malignant fevers, and there is little or no malaria, except in a few marshy places. There are some mosquitoes and flies, but they are not especially troublesome, and there are no poisonous reptiles.

The population is mostly native, five sixths white, one sixth colored. The white population is almost entirely of Anglo Saxon descent.

"Perfect titles may be secured, but all titles everywhere should always be searched by a competent lawyer, the usual fee for which is ten to twenty dollars.

"Farm hands receive from twenty to twenty-five dollars per month and board, for a season of nine or ten months, sometimes for the whole year. Day hands receive from seventy-five cents to two dollars per day and board themselves."

Those who are tempted by the advertisements for fruitpickers should beware. Delaware, like some other states, allows fees to constables and to the "squires"—Justices of the Peace they would be elsewhere—for arrests, and it is a common practice to advertise for fruit pickers, then arrest them as tramps when they come, and the next day release them on condition that they will leave the county at once—and leave the trap open for the next comer.

Delaware peaches have made fortunes for many, but will make still greater fortunes in the future for the owners of the land.

Pears, plums, grapes, watermelons, and cantaloupes thrive, and find an ideal home, and small fruits all flourish. Sweet potatoes yield bountifully and are of the finest quality. Asparagus and early white potatoes pay handsome profits. Tomatoes, the great canning crop, are grown by the thousands of acres.

"The grasses and clovers grow in luxuriance, and hence dairying and beef production are profitable. Poultry pays as well as anywhere else; chickens often run on green clover all through the open winter.

"The game consists of various species of ducks, quails, reed birds, hares, marsh rabbits, and other small creatures. Shad, trout, herring, crocus, black bass, pike, white fish, rock fish, oysters, clams, crabs, and terrapin are abundant in Delaware waters."

The tax in the rural counties is generally sixty cents on the hundred dollars. Besides this there are taxes on business and a very light school tax. There is no state tax, yet the state makes large appropriations for the support of the public schools, which are free to everybody.

Maryland has established a State Bureau of Immigration in Baltimore to give information to home seekers, and advise them as to choice of location, opportunities for getting started in agricultural production, and aid them in any way consistent with a State Bureau. Most of these facts are taken from such reports.

Southern Maryland and the eastern shore are especially adapted to gardening and trucking, as well as fruit growing. Land is cheap and can be purchased in tracts of any size from an acre upwards, at from ten to fifty dollars per acre. Farms from twenty acres to seven hundred acres and up are for sale in nearly every county in the state. The removal of a large part of the negro population from the country to the cities has resulted in the partition of the large estates into smaller farms, thus affording an opportunity for home seekers who are seeking cheap land amid congenial surroundings. Nearly all of these farms have buildings, some in need of repair, others in very good condition.

For those who wish to avoid the hard work of breaking woodlands, the eastern and western shores offer abundant well-cultivated lands with buildings, orchards, and woods, in the immediate vicinity of navigable rivers and railways, on good roads at from twenty dollars per acre upwards. That seems cheap.

For settlers who are accustomed to mountainous regions, western Maryland has land for sale at even cheaper rates.

"There are many large tidal marshes in Maryland, as might be expected in a territory watered like this state. They are of the richest soil to be found, because the Chesapeake Bay is a great river valley, receiving the drainage of a vast area of fertile land, comprising nearly one third of New York and nearly all of the great agricultural states of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. Every year this drainage brings down a black sediment, called oyster mud, which is deposited on the marshlands and enriches the soil, making it, with proper cultivation, of productivity like that of the rice and wheat fields of Egypt. These unreclaimed lands are used chiefly for grain."

Proper drainage of small tracts of this land would bring unsurpassed and absolutely untouched fertility.

The Chesapeake River valley is not so large as that of the Nile or Ganges, but is of enough consequence to play an important part in human affairs and to support in comfort and prosperity a population as large as that of many famous states.

"The eastern shore is uniformly level, with good roads. The proximity of the ocean and the bay greatly modifies the temperature. It has a great trunk railway, with connections along its entire length, called the Delaware Division of the Pennsylvania railroad, which furnishes direct transportation to Philadelphia, New York, and other northern cities."

"On the eastern shore there are many thousand acres of land devoted to garden truck, and the strawberry crop has of late years become of importance. Over one hundred carloads of strawberries are shipped daily during the season to the Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston markets."

Land properly cultivated will yield four thousand quarts of strawberries to an acre.

The canning of various fruits and vegetables has grown to be larger than that of any other state and is one of the most profitable of the industries of Maryland. The principal articles canned are peaches, peas, and tomatoes.

The tomato crop is also profitable to the grower. The young plants are set out in the spring; many do this with a machine, but two persons can easily plant seven acres in a day by hand.

An acre will produce from six to eighteen tons of tomatoes, according to the quality of the soil. All such products bring better prices now in Maryland markets than they did before canning was resorted to. The Maryland tin can is known wherever civilization reaches.

Tobacco is extensively produced only in southern Maryland, although it can be raised in any section of the state.

In the neighborhood of the larger cities trucking and fruit growing are profitable, combined with poultry raising, often on farms of not more than five or ten acres.

Many farmers devote part of their time successfully to bees, and there is nowhere a better climate for flowers than that of Maryland. Two English florists who have settled in Baltimore County, ten and thirteen miles northeast of the city, daily send to all parts of the United States and even to Canada many large boxes of beautiful roses, carnations, violets, and other choice flowers. Both of these men began on a small scale and have prospered.

The farmer who has a couple of thousand dollars to pay cash for a small farm in Maryland is assured of a good living. But also a less favored settler, if he has only from four to eight hundred dollars, can have a good start in Maryland, and probably as good a chance for independence and prosperity as anywhere.

Families of immigrants when traveling to the Western, Northwestern, and Southern states of America have to spend from one hundred and fifty to two hundred dollars for railroad tickets from New York to their destination; by going to these adjoining states they can save all that money, and invest it in land.

The Virginia Department of Agriculture and Immigration also publishes information for the home seeker.

To most people the name Virginia carries with it limitless vistas of tobacco fields covered with darkies plying the hoe, or picking off the ubiquitous worm. Before the War this picture would have been a true one; but since the awakening of the younger generation to a better understanding of her resources, together with the withdrawal of large numbers of the colored people into industrial occupations, no state offers more attractive inducements to the homecrofter than Virginia. In climate, diversity of soils, fruits, forests, water supply, mineral deposits, including mountain and valley, she offers unsurpassed advantages. Truly did Captain John Smith, the adventurous father of Virginia, suggest that "Heaven and earth never agreed better to frame a place for man's habitation."

Virginia lies between the extremes of heat and cold, removed alike from the sultry, protracted summers of the more southern states, and the longer winters and devastating storm and cyclones of the North and Northwest. Its limits north and south correspond to California and southern Europe.

The climate is mild and healthful. The winters are less severe than in the Northern and Northwestern states, or even the western localities of the same latitude, while the occasional periods of extreme heat in the summer are not more oppressive than in many portions of the North.

Tidewater Virginia, or the Coastal Plain, as it is sometimes called, receives the name from the fact that the streams that penetrate it feel the ebb and flow of the tides from the ocean up to the head of navigation. It consists chiefly of broad and level plains, while a considerable portion, nearest to the bay, has shallow bays and estuaries, and marshes that are in most instances reached only by the ocean tides. These marshes abound with wild duck and sora. Tidewater is mainly an alluvial country. The soil is chiefly light, sandy loam, underlaid with clay. Its principal productions are fruits and early vegetables, which are raised in extensive "market gardens," and shipped in large quantities to Northern cities. The fertilizing minerals—gypsum, marl, and greensand—abound, and their judicious use readily restores the lands when exhausted by improvident cultivation.

Middle Virginia is a wide, undulating plain, crossed by many rivers that have cut their channels to a considerable depth and are bordered by alluvial bottom lands that are very productive. The soil consists of clays with a subsoil of disintegrated sandstone rocks, and varies according to the nature of the rock from which it is formed.

The principal productions of middle Virginia are corn, wheat, oats, and tobacco. The tobacco raised in this section and in Piedmont, known as the "Virginia Leaf," is the best grown and the best known in the United States. In this section, as in Tidewater, the low bottom lands formed by the sediment of the waters are exceptionally productive.

The Piedmont section is diversified and surpassingly picturesque. The soil is heavier than that of middle Virginia, the subsoil being of stiff and dark red clay. On the slopes of the Blue Ridge grapes of delicious flavor grow luxuriantly. These produce excellent wines, and the clarets have a wide fame. The pippin apples of this section are of unrivaled excellence.

The "Great Valley," as it is descriptively called, is in the general configuration one continuous valley, included between the two mountain chains that extend throughout the state; it is one of the most abundantly watered regions on the face of the globe. Deep limestone beds form the floor of the Great Valley, and from these beds the soil derives an exceeding fertility, peculiarly adapted to the growth of grasses and grain, and it bears the name of the "garden spot" of the state.

Five trunk lines of railroads penetrate and intersect the state. The lines of steamboats that ply the navigable streams of eastern Virginia afford commercial communication for large sections of the state with the markets of this country and of Europe. Norfolk and Newport News maintain communication with the European markets by steamers and vessels, while from these ports is also kept up an extensive commerce along the Atlantic seaboard. The seaports are nearer than is New York to the great centers of population, and areas of production, of the West and Northwest.

Market garden crops of every description can be grown. The following result was obtained on a four-acre patch near Norfolk:

"The owner stated that in September he sowed spinach on four acres. Between Christmas and the first of March following he cut and sold the spinach at the rate of one hundred barrels to the acre, at a price ranging from two to seven dollars per barrel—an average of $4.50 per barrel. Early in March the four acres were set out to lettuce, setting the plants in the open air with no protection whatever, 175,000 plants on the four acres. He shipped 450 half-barrel baskets of lettuce to the acre, at a price ranging from $2 to $2.75 per basket.

"Early in April, just before the lettuce was ready to ship, he planted snap beans between the lettuce rows; and today, June 2d, these are the finest beans we have seen this season.

"The last week in May he planted cantaloupes between the bean rows, which, when marketed in July, will make four crops from the same land in one year's time. The cantaloupes will be good for 250 crates to the acre, and the price will run from $1 to $1.50 per crate. A careful investigation of these 'facts, figures, and features' will show that his gross sales will easily reach $2000 per acre; his net profits depend largely upon the man and the management; but they surely should not be less than $1000 clear, clean profit to the acre."

"This is for farming done all out of doors. No hothouse or hotbed work—not a bit of it, with no extra expense for hotbeds, cold frames, or hothouses."

"Intensive," thorough tillage and care of the soil will probably pay as well here as at any point in the United States.

Apples are the principal fruit crop of the state. There is a yearly increasing number of trees. In one of the valley counties a seventeen-year-old orchard of 1150 trees produced an apple crop as far back as 1905 which brought the owner $10,000, another of fifty twenty-year-old trees brought $700. Mr. H. E. Vandeman, one of the best-known horticulturists in the country, says that there is not in all North America a better place to plant orchards than in Virginia; on account of its "rich apple soil, good flavor and keeping qualities of the fruit, and nearness to the great markets of the East and Europe."

The trees attain a fine size and live to a good old age, and produce abundantly. In Patrick County there is a tree nine feet five inches around which has borne 110 bushels of apples at a single crop; other trees have borne even more. One farmer in Albemarle County has received more than $15,000 for a single crop of Albemarle Pippins grown on twenty acres of land. This pippin is considered the most delicious apple in the world.

The fig, pomegranate, and other delicate fruits flourish in the Tidewater region.

New England, from Maine to Rhode Island, is suffering from one disease—lack of intelligent labor. Thirty years ago the sons and daughters who, in the natural course of events, would have stayed to cultivate the home acres, left to form a part of the westward throng making for the level, untouched prairies of Illinois and Iowa.

The old folks have died or become incapacitated. New interests chain their children to adopted homes. Result,—unoccupied lands by the hundred thousand acres, awaiting energy, skill, and faith.

Ten dollars an acre is a common price for the rocky hills of New England. The choice river bottoms, and land near the larger cities is as high priced as similar land anywhere else. Intending settlers can buy small areas for little money; usually the smallest farms have good buildings worth in many cases more than the price asked for the whole farm. Climatic conditions are not favorable to single cropping. In the old days general farming, grain, beef, sheep, and hogs were the rule; nowadays, special crops, dairying, fruit growing, etc.

Tobacco is the great staple in the rich Connecticut River bottoms, and even on the uplands, if properly manured, it pays from one to three hundred dollars per acre. Tobacco can be raised on small areas far from the railroad, as, when properly cured and packed for shipment, it is not perishable. To many the worst feature of New England is the climate—long, cold winters and short summers. Maine being farthest north suffers most in this respect, but that does not prevent her producing hundreds of thousands of tons of sweet corn for canning and vast quantities of eggs and butter. Fruit does well on the lower coast; a small orchard of peaches or plums will in three or four years from planting make a comfortable living. Bush fruits grow in abundance and give never-failing crops.

Poultry is peculiarly successful on the rocky hills, because they are nearly always dry or well drained. Dairying can be made to pay if near a creamery, or where milk can be sold at retail. The prospective settler here should bear in mind that wherever he goes, the first year will produce little more than a kitchen garden; the second enable him barely to pull through, and the third give him a start at a permanent income. In farming, as in all other businesses, only those will succeed who know what they want and how to get it; who have selected with care the locality best suited to the special crops they intend to raise; and after having once made a selection, stick until they have compelled success.

The lure of the vast West and of the new South is not forgotten; but the time has passed when the young man could go West to take a farm of Uncle Sam's. Desirable land is too expensive for the pioneer, and the constant toil and comparative isolation of the prairie farm offers but a poor sort of liberty, though it still affords a living.

But close to the growing towns in those states small plots of land can still be had to work with the same bright prospects that are offered near the great metropolis.

In nearly all the sections within the area of intensive cultivation, timber is still plentiful enough to make it the cheapest building material; and persons who really want to get to the land can contrive a sufficient shelter, like a pioneer's, for from two to five hundred dollars.



CHAPTER XVIII

CLEARING THE LAND

It is pretty good fun to hack at bushes and to chop trees down and then to chop them up. If there is only a small part of the land to be cleared, a man can easily learn skill with the ax and do it at odd times, but he was a wise old man of whom his little girl said, "When grandpa wants anything, that moment he wants it." It is now that we need the land; but even if it is covered with trees, there is no cause for discouragement. Lumber is so high that the local or portable sawmill men will buy the timber by the acre. They will cut the trees and haul the logs.

If you decide to cut a tree yourself, a little inquiry will show for what purpose it will bring the highest price. Locust sticks, for example, four to six inches thick, will bring in New York ten or fifteen cents a running foot for insulator pinions. If a maple proves to be either "curly" or "bird'seye" (this depending not on the variety, but on the accidental undulations of the fiber), it will be in demand for the manufacture of furniture.

Sugar maples ten or fifteen feet high can be transplanted or sold. Nut and fruit trees will nearly always be worth keeping.

Cedar sticks fourteen feet long will bring twenty cents in most places for hop and bean poles. See what can be sold instead of burned, and don't cut down recklessly; an unsalable tree may be valuable as a windbreak or as shade for your house. The wrong tree for shade is the dense foliaged, low-branched tree which forms a solid dome from the ground up. The right tree, in the opinion of Henry Hicks (in Country Life in America), is the American elm, which ought to be called the umbrella tree. Pliny speaks of the plane tree, our sycamore or buttonwood, as excellent, because of the horizontal branches which, like window blinds, allow free passage of the breezes while intercepting the heat of the sun.

The ideal shade tree is a canopy like a parasol over the house, with high, leafy branches that do not shut off light and air from the windows. This cools a house by keeping the sun off and cools the air by the rapid evaporation from its leaves, and will make it ten to fifteen degrees cooler in summer. It will be cheaper and more effective than a combination of awnings, piazza, and eaves. Woodman, spare that tree.

Stumps may be burned out To get a good draught, bore a hole in a slanting direction far down among the roots. The smoke goes through the hole first and then the flame, boring the body to the roots deep enough to plow. Land can also be cleared by dynamite. We condense from Edith Loring Fullerton in Farming, on what has been done.

To go into the desolate, uncultivated, burned over "waste lands" near a great city and put ten acres under cultivation in the shortest possible space of time was our problem. We undertook it at short notice in an uncertain season—the autumn—with the determination to get at least a portion of the land seeded down to winter rye before cold weather prohibited further work.

United to this problem was that of working a small farm to its utmost capacity rather than half cultivation of a large one, which is difficult to handle from lack of time and labor and an unwise proposition for the East under the most favorable circumstances.

Ten acres of scraggy-looking woodland was purchased, sixty-eight miles from New York City on the north shore of Long Island. The plot had a few second and third growth oak and chestnut trees and "sprouts" along the borders. All else had been burned, and the center of the acreage exhibited the mangled and blackened remains of a once thrifty woodland.

We proceeded to choose as our helpers native Long Islanders whom we were desirous of allowing to work. We succeeded by strenuous efforts in getting together a "gang" of both colored and white men to the stupendous number of eight. They fell to work with a right good will, at first cutting down here and trimming up there as directed. However, after giving them a fair trial, we decided that they must be replaced by Italians. The question of housing the eighteen Italians soon came up. Tents might be adopted or even the unsanitary "dugout" be allowed to mar the landscape. A shanty was entirely too ugly to suit our tastes, and also expensive, and useless when the men were through with it. Tents were too airy, as we knew the work would continue until freezing weather, and perhaps well into the winter. We "passed" on the "dugout." The ideal was something that would be of use after the work of clearing was completed, and for that purpose we decided upon "condemned freight cars." They cost but ten dollars each, the railroad being glad to get rid of them. We bought two, ultimately using one for a chicken house and the other as a barn. In the meantime it was decided to remove the stumps by dynamite, as trying to yank them out by stump pullers or by mattock and plow was both slow and brutal. The ordinary custom of allowing nature to work six years at the stumps and gradually eliminate them by decay was not to be thought of.

Dynamiter Kissam, a Long Island expert, arrived and set to work, using fuses for small stumps up to two feet in diameter.

With the advent of the Italians work began in earnest; they cleared out every useless tree, cutting cord wood where any could be obtained and burning the branches and charred trees as they went. They also cleared out all underbrush thoroughly.

The dynamiter with his helper followed them up. This is the most exciting and interesting part of clearing land by modern methods.

The dynamite is put up in half-pound sticks. They are a little larger than an ordinary candle and are wrapped in heavy yellow paraffined paper. One folded end of this paper is opened up and a hole made by a wooden skewer into the dynamite stick, which is plastic and resembles graham bread in color and consistency.

For magneto-battery work where several charges are required, a copper cap in which is a minute quantity of fulminate of mercury, and which is exploded by a spark, is attached to fine electric wires and sealed by sulphur. This cap is placed in holes in the sticks of dynamite, and then securely tied by drawing string tightly around the paper which is raised to admit the cap.

In preparing a charge for fuse ignition, the cap is crimped to the end of a piece of mining fuse and this is inserted in the dynamite stick and securely fastened as previously described.

These prepared charges are placed in a basket and carried very tenderly to the stumps which have been prepared by the dynamiter's assistant. All the work is handled very carefully, for while there is not much danger of an accident unless fire is placed near the explosive, nevertheless extreme caution is used at all times. It requires a nature serene, calm, and deliberate.

Deep oblique holes were then made with a round crowbar under the stump singled out for execution. This hole should be as nearly horizontal as possible and directly under the stump so that all the explosive force may be expended on the wood and not on the earth between the dynamite and the stump. The earth acts as a cushion and the natural tendency of dynamite to exert force downward is counteracted.

As soon as a small strip was blown, the Italians, gathering up all the stumps, roots, and fragments, removing any pieces that were loosened but not completely torn out, and piling them at intervals, immediately burned them. This cannot be done when stumps are removed by any other method, for by the digging process the earth must be picked and scraped from them and ultimately the stump hacked in pieces before it will burn.

By our method the stump is burned and the finest kind of unleached wood ashes—containing lime to "sweeten" and potash and phosphoric acid to furnish plant food—are spread upon the ground a few hours after the stumps are blown out. These ashes would under other circumstances have to be purchased at a cost of perhaps two dollars a barrel, and as five barrels at least to the acre are required for good fertilization, these ashes gave us the first credit upon the books.

Following the burners came the manure spreaders; five carloads of manure had been purchased and was delivered before it was needed. When the manure was spread upon the land (one half carload to the acre), the plow started its work smoothly and with none of the strain and jerk on man and beast usual in new land. The soil was turned over with the greatest ease, for the explosions had shivered and torn out even the smallest roots, so the plow ran through the ground much more easily than in sod land.

Our friable, sandy loam, with a light admixture of clay, pulverized and aerated by the explosions, was in market garden condition at once and without the year's loss of crops assured by old methods.

A tooth harrow was next run over the plowed section, and gleaners followed the harrow, picking up the fine roots as they were brought to the surface. As piles of these fine roots grew, they were burned and the ashes immediately spread upon the land. The tooth harrow was run again across the rows, the disk harrow following chopped and pulverized the earth into the finest possible condition. Thirty five and one half working days after Larry and his gang arrived, rye was drilled into three and one half acres.

The condemned freight cars were placed upon skids and drawn to the desired position over soaped planks. They were raised from the ground to give good under ventilation. The north and east sides are filled or banked up with sand which came out of the well. This keeps out the cold winds, and, in the case of the chicken-house car, allows the fowls a shaded shelter on hot summer days.

The chicken-house car was placed facing the southeast. The western end has a large glazed sash placed on it, and two in the southern side. One half the car was partitioned off for roosting quarters, while the other half serves as a laying and scratching house. This farm keeps only a few chickens for family use.

The artesian well was started in October. The well was, naturally, a necessity, but there was much to be considered in regard to the method of pumping. Under ordinary circumstances a windmill would do, and is generally a good auxiliary; a ten-foot iron tower and a ten-foot fan wheel cost about fifty dollars, but our farm is not to be allowed to be a failure for lack of water in a dry season. In case of drought (and every summer brings one of greater or less duration) water must be on hand, and as a drought usually is accompanied by windless weather, the windmill could not be depended upon. An engine was obviously necessary. Both gasoline and kerosene engines were closely investigated, with the result that a kerosene oil engine was decided upon. (The new style of heavy oil engine is better and cheaper to run. Ed.) An advantage of the engine over a windmill is that it will furnish power for cutting wood, grinding grain, or lighting the buildings, a two and one half horsepower engine running twenty-five 16 c.p. lights easily.

The rye was turned under green in the spring to furnish humus, the greatest and only vital need of this particular spot of virgin soil.

Since that was written an excellent and cheap stump puller has been introduced, but the account of work is still typical. Dynamiting is still the modern way to clear land as well as to break up a stiff subsoil or hardpan, so as to loosen the earth to let deep roots like trees or alfalfa go down and to secure drainage.

Primitive American man regarded trees as "lumber" instead of as timber and still destroys countless millions in valuable wood as he "clears the ground."

After it is cleared, it is vital to keep it cleared of weeds, which worse garroters of crops than trees. To do that we don't need to bow to the Earth, nor to hammer her with a hand hoe.

"The Man with the Hoe" began to be a back number when Arkwright invented the ark or the mule or whatever he did invent. The man with the wheel hoe is the man that is "It." A wheel hoe costs from $6 to $12, and will do the work of several men without breaking the heart or even the back of one of them. It has as many attachments as a summer girl and is equally versatile. It must be run between the rows as soon as the ground is dry after every rain, so as to slay the weeds before they are born. If you don't they will slay your profits, if not yourself.

Crops grown on that experimental farm are: Asparagus, berries, beans, beets, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, carrots, cucumbers, corn, eggplant, endive, fruit trees, kale, kohlrabi, lettuce, limes, melons, martynias, onions, okra, parsley, parsnips, peas, potatoes (sweet and white), pumpkins, radishes, rhubarb, salsify, squash, tomatoes, etc. Marketed strictly choice radishes May 18, peas June 10, lettuce June 21, beans June 29, beets July 8, carrots July 10, cabbage July 11. Surely a rapid result.

Hemp is hardly worth your growing for itself under ordinary circumstances; the returns per acre are not sufficient. But Charles Richard Dodge, in one of the United States Yearbooks of the Department of Agriculture, says that as a weed killer it has practically no equal.

In proof of this, a North River farmer stated that thistles heretofore had mastered him in a certain field, but after sowing it with hemp not a thistle survived; and while ridding the land of this pest, the hemp yielded him nearly sixty dollars an acre, where previously nothing valuable could be produced.

As it grows from Minnesota to the Mississippi Delta, its value for this purpose is considerable.

But there is a way easier and cheaper of clearing land than by blasting, if we can afford to wait a little; and Mr. George Fayette Thompson, in Bulletin No. 27, Bureau of Animal Industry, tells us how, giving some interesting facts about Angora goats, of which the following is a condensation:

To people taking up raw land, particularly where there is a heavy undergrowth to be cleared away, goats of some kind are an invaluable aid. In its browsing qualities the common goat is as good as any, but, aside from the clearing of the land, the profit in his keep is very little, though some demand is growing up for goat's milk for infants and for some fancy cheeses. A much better animal from the standpoint of profit, while in use as a scavenger, is the Angora goat. Their long, silky hair has been used for centuries in making blankets, lap robes, rugs, carpets, and particularly the "cashmere" shawls, formerly a great luxury in this country. Much of the camel's hair dress goods is in reality made from the hair of the Angora goat, or mohair, as it is called. Angora goats thrive best in high altitudes with dry climates. They exist in greatest number in the United States in California, New Mexico, and Texas. They have been used successfully in the Willamette Valley of Oregon to eat the underbrush off the land, doing for nothing that for which the farmers pay Chinese laborers twenty-five to forty dollars per acre. The cost of Angora goats is about ten to thirty dollars each for does, with bucks at fifty to two hundred dollars, so that even with a small area of land to clear it would pay to buy a little flock for that purpose. Dr. Shandley, of Iowa, says that two to three goats to the acre is sufficient for cleaning up land, and that in two years the goats will eat all of the underbrush from woodland, such as briers, thistles, scrub oak, sumac, and, in fact, any shrub undergrowth. They need no other food than what they can secure from the woods themselves. Consequently, the income from the sale of mohair is nearly net.

The more nearly thoroughbred the goats are, the better the mohair and the higher the price. The meat of the Angora goat is superior to mutton, although if sold in the market under the name of goat meat, it commands only half the price of mutton.

As an example of the Angora's utility in cleaning up land, the Country Gentleman says: "Mr. Landrum exhibited ten head at the Oregon State Fair. In order to demonstrate their effectiveness as substitutes for grubbing, he left them on three acres of brush. At the end of the second year the land was mellow and ready for the plow."

It might be possible to build up a business in clearing lands for others by means of a herd of Angoras.



CHAPTER XIX

HOW TO BUILD

If you find an "abandoned farm" on which the buildings are worth more than the whole price asked, as frequently happens, you are all right. Even if the buildings are somewhat dilapidated, you can fix them up for a few dollars. But in buying small plots of ground, larger farms have to be broken up. If you buy from the resident owner, he may sell you five acres off his larger tract, and keep his house to live in. Certain it is that if a farm of 100 acres is subdivided into twenty five-acre farms, at least nineteen new houses must be built, although sometimes an old barn can be made into a fair residence.

If you can do no better, it is possible to start by tenting. An outfit large enough for a family of six would be about as follows:

1 wall tent with fly, 10 X 14, for sleeping 1 wall tent with fly, 10 X 14, for dining

1 old cook stove (to be erected outdoors), 2 floors, 10 X 14, at $5 each

Brown tents, at least for the sleeping rooms, are best; they last longer, are cooler, and do not attract the flies; though indeed we need not have house flies if we keep the horse manure covered up—they are all bred in that. If the tents are in the shade, the cost of the cover or fly can be saved in the dining tent; but it is necessary in the living tent, because wet canvas will leak when touched on the inside. To make the tent warm for the winter, we must bank up to the edges of the platform with earth and cover the whole with another tent of the same shape, but a foot larger in every dimension. These are commonly used in Montana.

It is to be presumed that no one would attempt moving in without household utensils, which may be as simple or elaborate as you please. If there is a sawmill in the vicinity, a temporary shack for winter, say 22 X 30 feet, could be built for from $400 to $600, depending on the interior finish. Partitions can be made very cheap by erecting panels covered with canvas, burlap, old carpet, etc. Such a building does not need to be plastered, but can be made warm enough by an inside covering of burlap, heavy builders' paper, or composition board. Tar paper laid over solid sheeting makes a roof that will last for two or three years. For such a shack draw the plans yourself. All you really need is a living room, bedroom, and kitchen.

A cheap and effective water supply can be gotten from a driven well, which in most places costs about one dollar per foot. Have it where the kitchen is to be, so that the water can be pumped into a barrel or other tank over the stove. With a good range you can have as good a supply of hot and cold water as you had in the city.

If so fortunate as to find a piece of land with a good spring on it, you can lay pipes and draw the water from that. If you can get twelve or fifteen feet fall from the spring to the kitchen, you don't need a pump at all.

For a toilet closet, build a shed four feet wide, six feet long, and eight feet high. Use a movable pail or box. Lime slaked or unslaked or dry dust or ashes must be scattered every time the closet is used. Always clean before it shows signs of becoming offensive: keep it covered fly tight and mix the contents with earth or litter, and scatter on the garden.

A shack can be built of logs which will do for comfort and will look dignified.

Horace L. Pike, in Country Life in America, says: "The lot on which we meant to build our log house stood thirty-five feet above the lake. The problem was how to build a cabin roomy, picturesque, inexpensive, and all on the ground.

"The ground dimensions are thirty-two by thirty feet outside. This gives a living room sixteen by fourteen; bedrooms twelve by twelve, twelve by ten, and nine by seven; kitchen eleven by nine; a five-by four-foot corner for a pantry and refrigerator; closet four by six, front porch sixteen by six feet six inches, and rear porch five by five—705 square feet of inside floor space and 130 square feet of porch.

"A dozen pine trees stand on the lot, and maneuvering was required to set a cottage among them without the crime of cutting one. The front received the salutes of a leaning oak, the life of which was saved by the sacrifice of six inches from the porch eaves, the trunk forming a newel post for the step railing.

"We closed the contract immediately for 120 Norway or red pine logs, thirty feet long and eight by ten inches diameter at butts. The price was low—one or two dollars their like should have brought. We used, however, only eighty-one logs; forty thirty-foot, fourteen eighteen-foot, thirteen sixteen-foot, and fourteen fourteen-foot.

"Work was begun on April 22. Two days sufficed for the owner and one man to clear and level the ground, dig post holes, set posts, and square the foundation. The soil was light sand with a clay hardpan three feet down.

"Twenty-seven days each were put in by two men from start to finish, with assistance rendered by the owner. There were seven days by the mason, eight by carpenters, and four teen and one half by other labor. On June 4 the cabin was ready for occupancy, and the family moved in. The prices, as in most cases cited, are higher to-day. Cheaper transportation or lower tariff may reduce them again.

"Making allowances for increased cost of logs and differences in any of the material cost, this cabin can be duplicated for less than $700 by any one who has the ground, a few tools, and some building ability. It is compact, convenient, and more roomy than a superficial glance reveals, and it can be occupied (slight care is required) from April to November with only the kitchen stove and the fireplace supplying the heat. The same plan can be used for an all-frame structure, perhaps at less cost. It could be sheathed and slab covered in a locality where slabs, edged to six or eight inches wide, could be had; or slabs could be used perpendicularly in the gable ends and on the outside of the rear extension."

We must not overlook the differences in cost of lumber and labor in different places, sometimes more than doubling nor the fact that different contractors will vary often twenty-five per cent in their bids.

A mere cabin, like a wooden tent, 12 X 10 with a platform adjoining, will accommodate one or even two persons and can be built by a contractor even at war prices for about fifty to one hundred dollars. This will serve for tool house or storeroom when a more convenient residence can be afforded. A number of such can be seen at "Free Acres," New Jersey, an hour from New York City on the D. L. & W. Railroad.

Thoughtful provision and planning will go far to reduce costs. A stove pipe which should run up inside the house, not outside, so as to conserve heat and fuel, serves as chimney and fireplace. A Franklin stove, practically an open fireplace set out entirely inside the house, is a practical device, though it costs from $18 to $30. It gives a cheerful open fire to burn wood or coal and has a flat top to keep things hot, a clutch oven of sheet iron, and a bob can be attached to the front of the grate.

But remember that though you may have trees or fallen wood for the cutting it takes a lot of time to cut it. A cylindrical self-feeding coal burner is most economical for heating and a lined sheet iron cooking stove for the kitchen.

A fireless cooker, which retains the heat all day by means of soapstone or insulation and slowly cooks the food without losing the juices, is an economical device. It can be made at home by copying what you see in the stores or by getting directions from the U. S. Department of Agriculture.

Don't forget double windows at least toward the north; and on all windows have heavy holland shades which make an air space between the cold windowpanes and the atmosphere of the room.

Portable houses sound attractive, but they do not pay unless you will need to move them. Manifestly it costs more to make a house like a trunk than like a shed. The houses shipped ready made of the "Aladdin" type, with all the parts ready marked to be nailed together by unskilled labor are a much better investment and are not shaky.

It is true that living is expensive in the train suburbs, when almost all that is eaten comes from the city, with freight and monopoly rates added. But one can raise most of what the family eats, and save besides in car fares and doctor's bills.

The rent, perhaps a quarter of the income, that was paid for a place so small that the cat had to jump on a chair when the baby sat down, will be a clear gain.

Mrs. Warrington's cottage at Rose Valley, Pennsylvania, forms a very interesting subject, and is built from designs of well-known architects of Philadelphia, who have taken up building small, inexpensive modern houses in a practical manner. The house is built with a stone foundation and a wooden superstructure with exterior walls covered with metal lath and cement stucco which is stained a cream color. The trimmings are stained a soft brown and the sashes are painted white. The roof is covered with shingles, and is left to weather finish. The front porch, from which a vestibule leads into the house, has a hooded cover formed by the main roof sweeping down sufficiently to form a protection. The vestibule forms an entrance to both the living room and the kitchen; the kitchen is at the front of the house, allowing the main rooms and a private porch to be at the south side. The interior throughout is trimmed with cypress and stained a soft brown. The second floor joists are exposed to view and are stained in a similar manner, while the ceiling space between the joists is plastered. A broad archway separates the living and the dining rooms, and while it forms a separation, it does not preclude the possibility, when desired, of throwing the two rooms into one large apartment. The large, open fireplace is built of clinker brick, and its facings extend from the floor to the ceiling; it has a wooden shelf supported on corbeled brackets. A semi-boxed stairway rises out of the living room to the second floor. There are three bedrooms with good-sized closets, and a bathroom on the second floor. A cellar, under the entire house, has a cemented bottom, and contains a laundry. This house costs about $2000 complete.

Houses built of cement blocks are growing in favor. Cement blocks can be made anywhere by unskilled labor. All that is needed is a competent foreman to direct the making and seasoning of the blocks and laying them in the walls.

The cost of concrete compared to frame or brick structures is, if anything, all things considered, in favor of concrete. Houses built of wood are likely to become increasingly expensive because of the deforesting which is going on in all parts of the United States.

There are abundant books of plans and costs published, showing what may be built, and several responsible publishers recklessly offer to refund the cost of the plans if the expense of building the house exceeds their estimates.

There are also a number of manufacturers of ready-made portable houses, running in cost from about three hundred dollars for four rooms, upward. Some of these are adapted to all-the-year-round use and may be used where land is taken experimentally.



CHAPTER XX

BACK TO THE LAND

"Life, to the average man, means hard, anxious work, with disappointment at the end, whereas it ought to mean plenty of time for books and talk. There is something wrong about a system which condemns ninety-nine hundredths of the race to an existence as bare of intellectual activity and enjoyment as that of a horse, and with the added anxiety concerning the next month's rent. Is there no escape? Through years of hard toil I suspected that there might be such an escape. Now, having escaped, I am sure of it, so long as oatmeal is less expensive than Hour, so long as the fish and the cabbage grows, I shall keep out of the slavery of modern city existence, and live in God's sunshine." (Hubert, "Liberty and a Living.")

The wealthy class are taking up farming as a healthy and beautifying diversion, and we may expect others to follow, as it certainly promotes happiness and adds to the attractions of those who adopt it. With the aids which science has given, a farmer can now make good profits with less labor than was formerly necessary to get a bare living. The amount that a single well-managed, well-tilled acre will produce in a season is simply incredible. This accounts for the increased demand for farming lands wherever they are to be had on reasonable terms. The wage earners are learning this, and it is only a question of a little time when manufacturing plants will have to be convenient to lands where the families of the hands can have a small tract of land to cultivate. This requires good transportation facilities from the homes to the factories.

Corporate operation has been a great aid to human progress. Organization is man's orderly way of following the Divine Plan for his economic salvation vet the far mer has profited less by organization than trades unions. Where farmers have organized to aid each other to buy and sell, they have gained wonderfully, but a beginning in this direction has but served to show how much more is needed.

To the individual farmer with large area and small means, the improvements in machinery that cheapen his production are not at present available. The discoveries in methods of fertilization of the soil only make it more difficult for him to earn a living in competition with those whose ample capital increases production by its use. Improvements in fruits and vegetation, by hybridization and various methods that add wealth to those of means, only add to the troubles of our present small farmers.

Hitherto corporate operation has been mainly for the benefit of stockholders. The cases where those whose labor creates dividends get more than wages have been rare. "A living wage" has been the ambition of labor itself: all profit beyond this is supposed to be the right of capital. There is with some persons an unconscious reluctance to share profits with labor lest the laborers become independent, and thus reduce their number to an extent to raise the labor market, so that it is difficult to get fair consideration of any business proposition that promises better conditions for the producer or independence for the laborer. This is undoubtedly short sighted, as the higher intelligence of the people who have land increases production and gives enlarged opportunities for the profitable employment of money. However, if capitalists persist in this narrow view, the money of the people when they learn and think, can be applied to this purpose instead of being deposited in savings banks, where much of it is used in increasing the wealth of those who already have abundance.

The idea of "helping others to help themselves" finds a responsive chord in the hearts of many wealthy people. But the question is, how can all be helped? No business method by which this can be accomplished has, as yet, been practically demonstrated.

In no field does corporate operation promise more for the betterment of human conditions, for a higher standard of morals and of education, or great certainty of profit for capital, than by systematically aiding men to obtain farms.

Progress proceeds on the line of returns for expenditure. When a man's economic condition permits, his first thought is to give his children an education and a better chance in life than he had. Those who extol the simple life as the ideal condition of happiness do not mean that want and deprivation of necessities is the ideal condition. If they did, they would put their children in that condition to make them happy. Both extremes of wealth and of poverty are burdens and retard mental and moral progress. The ideal condition is to be found on a farm where the land is paid for and ample means are at hand to supply the necessities for physical demands, with leisure to learn and enjoy those pleasures of the mind which come with knowledge of Nature's laws, and wisdom to live in harmony with them, and in a measure comprehend the purposes of creation.

Mr. G. W. Smith, founder of the Hundred Year Club, suggests that there is an opening in intensive farming for the benevolent but canny wealthy who are interested in the soil and want to combine philanthropy and percentage.

His plan is to get capital to secure land and all the necessary means, give to each approved applicant perpetual leases of land for a small farm and a lot in a village site convenient thereto, with a house merely sufficient for shelter, requiring as a first payment sufficient to secure capital against loss in case the farmer forfeits his contract, say $100. Let the company provide scientific supervision and conduct the operation mainly as though the farmers were employees, all the necessaries to be charged to each with only sufficient profit to pay the expense and a fair interest on the capital employed. Through a purchasing and sales department all products should be sold in the best market and each farmer credited with the net result of his productions until the agreed sale price is received, when title should pass in fee to the farmer, who, during the time, has become scientific so far as that piece of land is concerned, and in future can operate it with the advantages which progress has made. A public building would be necessary for a storehouse, in which rooms for meetings of various kinds should be provided, also such shelter as might be necessary for assembling and storage of products for shipment.

The expense of public buildings and other utilities could be paid for out of the increased value that they bring to the land. The company should have a nursery to provide fruit tree, etc., the growth of which, with the increase of population would make the farms, when paid for, worth far more than their cost. Such opportunities as this, opened to all, would do away with the tramps who are now able to live on the charitable, only because of the known difficulties of finding work.

The farmers should be utilized as far as possible in the purchasing and sales department, and should divide into committees to try various experiments connected with their business, that through their reports all may be benefited by the knowledge gained. Dairying and large orchards on land suitable and not of use in the general farming plan could be conducted by the community, each farmer being a stockholder. The labor performed on these cooperative undertakings should be paid for and charged to cost of production, each one who performs a share of the labor participating in the profits as near as may be. As money is received by the company from products, it can be used in similar operations. When the farms are paid for, the farmers can continue the cooperative features that experience has proved useful and extend the business principle to other fields, such as heating, light, and power by electricity, machinery for preparing products for market, drying, canning, etc., as well as for the cultivation of the soil.

Where the land is level the farms can be laid out on a general plan that will admit of the use of steam plows to reduce the cost of plowing, save hard labor, and reduce the number of work animals.

Among the multitude of advantages the individual would have in these communities, social, educational, and economic, health and physical development appear as not the least.

The farm, as it is, still furnishes a horde of recruits for insane asylums; its isolation and monotony of everyday life, with its lack of social intercourse and educational advantages, nearly counterbalance the strain and poverty of the cities.

But the greatest difficulty is the growing inability of the farmers' sons to secure land and the means to cultivate it when they arrive at a marriageable age. Those who have seen for threescore years the ever-increasing flow of boys and girls from the farms to the cities, greater in proportion to the rural population than in any other age, realize the necessity for aid in this direction. While it is true that the farm has contributed largely to the numbers of our successful city men, the fact remains that the mass of boys who come to the cities as well as the city born, lack the faculty to grab or save, and fail, while the healthy girls swell the ranks of prostitution, where an average of eight years lands them in a pauper's grave.

Our soldiers, as well as those of other countries, are not up to former physical standards. Degeneracy, disintegration is apparent in every direction.

The power of a nation depends on the physical and mental condition of the great mass of people, and to leave the people in ignorance that they may be controlled by the intelligent few who understand their needs and may have their welfare at heart, is a mistake that other nations than Russia have made. The law of the survival of the fittest has wiped out races and nations who have ignored this fundamental law, that all men must progress together.

A race or civilization with such a basis of farmers as this plan would create would be enduring.

The nation or race, like the individual, must have intelligent organization and live in harmony with the laws of nature in order to survive. Opposition to them means destruction Cooperation is constructive.

If we are to profit by this lesson, it is necessary that we improve the conditions surrounding our lower classes. That this is recognized by a large number of leading minds is proved by the efforts of the many who are engaged in educational and other social movements, most of which result in little net good to the wage-earners.

Obstacles to small farming near large cities are that farms of three to ten acres with buildings are not plentiful, and that mortgage loans are hard to get in the East and loans to help in building are hardly to be had at all.

Land is either held intact as large farms or is sold entire to speculators who hold it until it can be divided into city lots. Here, it would seem, is an opportunity for those who are interested in bettering the condition of their fellow men by wholesale, and can invest large capital, but little time, in the work.

Let them buy up land in large acreages and cut it up into small plots of from one to ten acres, charging enough advance to return interest on the money invested and to meet the necessary expenses in such operation. Then make liberal building loans to buyers. Inquiries among real estate men show that they always have a larger demand for small acreage than they can meet, so an immediate market with large profits would await those who are first in this field.

There is no use in blaming people for not leaving the cities to go to the farms; they don't know enough to go, they don't know enough to make a living if they do go, and they don't know enough to enjoy it. Besides this, they have not the capital. We must teach them and help them.

George H. Maxwell's Homecrofters' Guild at Watertown, Mass., where boys are taught what to do with the earth and how to do it, is worth whole shelves of books on "The Exodus to the Cities" or the "Prosperity of the Settler."

It is reported that the state of Texas offered six million acres of land for sale to settlers, at one dollar per acre. It has been suggested that it would be better that the states should rent out the land at four per cent of the sale price. This would leave more money in the hands of settlers and enable many to get farms who cannot pay the price and have enough left to raise a crop. In reality it would be better for the state to help farmers get a start rather than to tax them one dollar per acre to begin with. However, under our system of government, we permit only those who have money to have land.

There can be no doubt that the state of Texas and her people would be better off if the land were leased than to have it sold. Probably a tax on the value of the land instead of a rent would be the best for all the people, especially as it would check speculation.



CHAPTER XXI

THE COMING PROFESSION FOR BOYS

In order that as little as possible may seem to be taken for granted or as mere expressions of the opinions of the author, we cite the views of specialists as to the possibilities of this field, so new in this country, of intensive agriculture.

These will show that the conviction has become general that, as workers, as teachers, and as discoverers, there is no career more inviting or more lucrative or more dignified than that of the skillful foster-father of plants.

"Children brought up in city tenements tend to become vicious and sickly, but if transported to country homes they may grow up strong and self-respecting men and women.

"There are hundreds of applicants for every position in the cities, and competition forces the pay down to the lowest level. Living expenses are heavier. The risk to health from sedentary occupations, long hours in ill-ventilated offices, stores, and workshops is serious.

"There are few inducements to out-door exercise. Even if he lives at home, the boy who is forced to the street or into the factory before he has the strength or education to do good work remains an unskilled worker all his life.

"Manufacturing is upon a larger and larger scale. The division of labor is greater and greater. Not only does the gulf between capitalist and laborer widen, but with it the gulf between skilled and unskilled labor." ("What Shall Our Boys Do for a Living?" Charles F. Wingate.)

It is the city that breeds or attracts most of the pauperism and crime. The country has its own healthy life.

Every one is born with some natural gift, and it is a good thing to discover early in life what one's natural gifts are so that each may be educated in the direction suited to natural capacity.

How are you to treat a lad who has naturally an inclination for the work on the farm? In the first place do not provide him with any spending money unless he earns it. The prime thing necessary is to give the boy a personal interest in what is going on upon the farm. Give him a plot of land as his own, let him understand that anything he may grow upon this land shall belong to him, but do not give him this plot and say, "There, take that; do as you like with it," he will wonder what to do with it. He will need somebody to help him by teaching him what he is to do. Enter into a partnership with him at the start, give him some instruction as to what it is best for him to do with his plot. Find out his inclinations; give him sympathy and help. Bring out his natural aptitude for farming life, teach him method in his work; teach him to think his way out; and, best of all, teach him to work for definite results; that is what is wanted in any line of life, especially in farm life.

Let the work of the boy have a meaning and a purpose. Let him understand that certain results cannot be accomplished in any other way, and give him chances to go outside and see what other people are doing. Let him see good scientific agriculture and be encouraged to pursue such methods.

Provide for him the very best reading that can be found in agricultural journals and books. Let him have three or four years at an agricultural college. All the influences there point to agriculture as the best calling for a young man who is fit for it, whereas in other colleges the influences are all in the opposite direction. At our agricultural colleges a youth has all the necessary advantages of general education, and also an education in the lines fitting him especially for the calling he has selected. (United States Department of Agriculture, Bulletin 138, condensed.)

"Among farmers and gardeners not enough thought is given to the whys and wherefores, or cause and effect; as a rule, they go on year after year without profiting by the personal opportunity afforded them of observation, or by the results of experiments at scientific stations.

"With rare exceptions the young farmer and gardener takes up his work, not from the scientific side, but strictly from the labor side; and he begins at the bottom, meeting the same difficulties as did his father and too often not acquiring information beyond what his father possessed.

"This should not be; agriculture should be taught in all our public schools in country districts, as it has been taught for years in Germany and Austria. It should be elevated as an art; in its higher estate it is already an art. No pursuit possesses a greater scope for development; the field is almost unoccupied by leaders, scientific and practical." (Burnett Landreth, in 999 Queries and Answers.)

In accordance with these ideas, the Baron de Hirsch Agricultural School at Woodbine, New Jersey, is giving practical courses in agriculture to Jewish boys, on the principle of individual plots—all free where necessary.

The trustees of the State Agricultural College of New Jersey, at New Brunswick, have established winter courses in agriculture, open to all residents of New Jersey over sixteen years of age. Courses will be for twelve weeks, and only a small entrance fee is required; few books will be needed.

Other states are doing likewise; all will need many teachers and experimenters. At present all who know anything about intensive agriculture are snapped up by the numerous government experiment stations at good salaries. The land like that of the Rockefellers, the Paynes, the Cuttings, on which farming is carried on by unnecessarily expensive methods, needs the services of trained agriculturists and professional foresters. The Division of Forestry at the start employed eleven persons, but now it has in the field as many hundreds of employees, including a lot of trained foresters.

The railroads also see the profit in teaching farming, and are devoting more and more money to experiments and lectures to show the farmers that they can get more and better crops with the same effort by intelligent selection of seeds.

The Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railway Company ran its first Seed and Soil Special over the entire system in the winter of 1904-1905, and has lectured to hundreds of thousands of farmers since.

They report to us that "there is no doubt that the lectures did a great deal of good, and necessarily the larger increase of crops which followed is due to the scientific methods of farming expounded by the various professors." The late President James J. Hill wrote much about the small farms' large yields.

The hundreds of thousands of "war gardens" unskillfully conducted and glutting the local markets with crops all matured at about the same local time will unreasonably disgust many with intensive cultivation, especially those who work but do not think. The remedy is more instruction. The effect the agricultural colleges and experiment stations is plain to the eye in the better appearance of farms as we near the centers of instruction.

Some years ago a clergyman published a book upon the Adirondacks; it was full of poetry, and he sent men up there who afterwards became known as "Murray's Fools." They knew nothing about the life and had no suitability and little preparation for it. We do not wish to bring out a crop of "Three Acres and Liberty Fools." We are telling what has been done and what can be done again. It does not follow that every man can or will do it, much less teach it or advance the art, but the field is a large one and holds out great promise to those who persevere and excel in it.

If any one thinks that the profit of the earth will come to the cultivator without very intelligent and steady work, he is mistaken. No owner of land, unless others require it to live upon, can make money by neglecting it.

Says Maxwell's Talisman: "The greatest good that can be done to the American farmer to-day is to teach him to make the greatest possible profit from the smallest tract of land from which a family can be supported in comfort. A great influence operating to-day against keeping the boys in the country is that the boy does not have money enough to buy a farm. It is unfortunately true that in some places there is a trend in the direction of absorbing farms into still larger farms with a consequent diminution of population, as in Iowa and other sections. The remedy for this is to demonstrate that if the value is in the boy rather than in the farm, and the boy is taught intensive, diversified, scientific farming, a good living with a surplus profit that will provide amply for old age, may be made from a comparatively small tract of land. The tract may be, say, ten acres, with ample cultivation, irrigation, and fertilization, or even without irrigation because a hoe and a cultivator in the hands of a scientific farmer may bring as good and better results in providing moisture for growing plants as can be had from a ditch and unlimited water in the hands of an ignorant farmer."

The field of discovery is always limitless, and it is to those boys or girls who devote their attention to this that the greatest return will come. "What a fine thing it would be to find even one plant free from rust in the midst of a rusted field. It would mean a rust-resistant plant. Its off-spring would probably be also rust resistant. If you should ever find such a plant, be sure to save its seed and plant in a plot by itself. The next year again save seed from those plants least rusted. Possibly you can develop a rust proof race of wheat! Keep your eyes open." ("Agriculture for Beginners," by Burkett, Stevens, and Hill, pages 76-78.) So you may pluck gain out of loss.

If you want to do experiments, the influence of ether on plants is one new and wonderful field. It seems to induce artificial rest, so that lilacs, for instance, can be made to bloom twice by a treatment, the last time near Christmas.

E. V. Wilcox says in Farming that in 1899 a small quantity of durum or macaroni wheat was introduced into this country for trial. It was found profitable in localities where there was too little rain for ordinary wheat. Six years later, 20,000,000 bushels per year of the wheat was grown in the United States. Its production has increased greatly every season and has added materially to the total of the wheat crop.. Thorough fall cultivation has been found to increase the yield, and in some parts of the wheat belt one in five of the farmers has already adopted the practice. In certain states where manuring has been thought unnecessary, experiments have demonstrated that the yield may be increased 60 per cent by this simple practice. The wheat production of Nebraska was increased more than 10,000,000 bushels by the introduction of a hardy strain of Turkey red wheat. Swedish select oats in Wisconsin have greatly augmented the oat yield of the state. In 1899 six pounds of the seed was brought to the state and from this small beginning a crop of 9,000,000 bushels was harvested five years later.

"Mr. Gideon, of Minnesota, planted many apple seeds, and from them all raised one tree that was very fruitful, finely flavored, and able to withstand the cold Minnesota winter. This tree he multiplied by grafts and named it the Wealthy apple. It is said that in this one apple he benefited the world to the value of more than one million dollars. You must not let any valuable bud or seed variant be lost." ("Agriculture for Beginners," page 61.)

"This fact ought to be very helpful to us next year when planting corn. We should plant seed secured only from stalks that produced the most corn. If we follow this plan year by year, each acre of land will be made to produce more kernels and hence a larger crop of corn, and yet no more expense will be required to raise the crop." (Same, page 71.)

The World's Work tells how the country got a new industry.

Mr. George Gibbs, of Clearbrook, Wash., has made his "stake" by growing tulip and hyacinth bulbs. He had a little place on Orcas Island, in Puget Sound. He did not know anything about growing flowers, but he did know that certain varieties of bulbs brought good prices in the East. He was observant enough to see that the moist, warm, climate and rich soil of the Puget Sound country were peculiarly favorable to flowers.

He had bad luck with his bulbs; that only meant that he still had something to learn. He kept his nerve even when he went bankrupt. His friends told him he was wasting time, but they could not shake his faith.

In twelve years he found that he was right. His wonderful gardens were making him rich. Other men have gone into the business, but he was first and has kept his lead. He has made the Puget Sound country the greatest rival of Holland in the sale of flowering bulbs.

Quantities of wild herbs, fruits, and roots that no one eats are good; the Jesuits had a list of over two hundred kinds that the Indians ate, but it was lost. Some one can do a great service by making it up again by research and experiment. Thousands more of the wild things must be good for dyes, fabrics, and fodder.

Fame like Burbank's and fortune awaits the one who is a good self-advertiser and can find the use of the poetic daisies, goldenrod, and thistle, the all-pervading "pusley," and such other vegetable vermin.

An interesting experiment is conducted in growing tea with colored child labor, at Tea, South Carolina, by the aid of education and machinery and the cooperation of the Agricultural Department at Washington, who will furnish particulars. Whatever may be its outcome, this will give an opening to some intelligent cultivators, and it points the way to other fields.

Those who are first in raising new or improved plants find a waiting market for them.

The Market Growers Gazette, of London, England, reports that Mr. A. Findlay, Mairsland, Auchtermuchty, Scotland, sold one season to five leading growers whose names are given five seed potatoes at L 20 each (which would be, perhaps, $500 a peck). He says enthusiastically: "It is as perfectly round-shaped a potato as can be imagined. There is a slight dash of pink on the outer rim of the eye. My stock of it is very small, only 126 lb. and I do not care to sell any. If next year's crop yields as well as this year's, we shall have twenty times that quantity." Mr. Findlay has other seed potatoes, just as high priced, for which he wants $125 per lb., which, he says, "means that I do not want to sell any."

This shows what progressive people think of the real value of good seed.

It is worth mentioning that "The land on which these are grown is not highly manured; the only artificial manure that it has received is about 200 lb. of potash per acre. It has the drawback of being rather stony."

Of course this is "a fad"; it is doubtful if it will pay any one to give such prices for seed except to sell to some bigger fool than himself. Of course, also, the market for a particular fancy thing may soon be overstocked, but it seems to be a nice thing for the Findlays meanwhile, and it does good in teaching people to appreciate good things.

Yet the average potato patcher prudently saves his small potatoes for next year's seed, which is just as if a breeder were to keep the colts that were too poor to sell, to be the parents of his herd.

In the dark ages of farming—to wit, in 1881, for this is a true story—a minister of the Gospel came into possession, by inheritance, of a fifteen-acre farm a short way from Philadelphia. He found the soil a reddish, somewhat gravelly clay, and so worn out from years of cropping that it did not support two cows and a horse. City born and bred, he was encumbered with no knowledge of agriculture which had to be unlearned. He began a careful and systematic study of the agricultural literature, and ultimately developed a novel system of dairy farming to which he adhered religiously.

The farm Iying near the city is high-priced land; for this reason, and because of the limited acreage, the cows were kept in the barn the year round. For six years his bill for veterinary services was $1.50, while the income from the milk of his seventeen cows was about $2400 a year. In addition, from four to six head of young cattle were sold annually, netting about $500 a year. As the stock on the farm was stall fed every particle of plant food contained in the stable manure, liquid as well as solid, was utilized. No fertilizer was ever purchased. Yet all of the "roughage" for thirty head of stock was raised on the thirteen acres of available soil. Only $625 a year was expended for concentrated feeding stuffs. The net earnings of the farm for the period averaged more than $1000 a year. And this was during the early days of his experience; later he made more.

Professor W. J. Spillman, of the Agricultural Department, visited him in 1903, and studied the methods employed. Then, he says, the rush to see the farm became so great that the owner had to give it up.

Few people who know nothing about it, and won't learn, can take even three acres and make anything off it. To get the phenomenal yields takes capital—sometimes large capital, wisely spent. Sometimes we read of immense products "per acre"; this often means the product of a single rod of ground, this gives at the rate of so much "per acre," or might, if extended.

But any one can take a little bit of ground and use it thoroughly and increase his borders and his knowledge as he goes on. He will find plenty to pay him for doing or teaching whatever he has learned to do that no one else has done "If a man make but a mousetrap better than his fellows, though he makes his tent in the wilderness, the world will beat a path to his door."

The mission of this book is accomplished if it interests you to consider the possibilities of making a living on a few acres and leads you to investigate. It is not written as a textbook, for, as has been shown, there are authorities enough cited to supply all the technical information needed.

Its sole object is to show what has been done and what can be done on small areas and to show that life in the country need not be so laborious if the same methods are used which make successes of business in other lines.

If it does this and is the means of checking in any degree the reckless trend of people from the country to the cities, the author will feel that his efforts have been well repaid.



CHAPTER XXII

THE WOOD LOT

If you have a bit of woods on your little farm, take care of it. By intelligent thinning you can make an average income of five dollars per acre from ordinary second growth wild woods. The cord wood, barrel hoops, fence posts, and so on will decrease your expenses, while the timber will increase in value. That lot is the place to start your boy as a forester.

Instructions how to treat the trees can be obtained from your State Forestry Department or from the National Forest Service at Washington: the care of growing timber is a big subject and requires study, but don't sell your standing timber without their advice. Forestry can hardly be made to pay on a small lot with hired labor or hired teams, and you must not pay much for your wood lot, else interest and taxes will eat up the returns.

To be of high quality, timber must be, to a considerable proportion of its height, free of limbs, which are the cause of knots; it must be tall; and it must not decrease rapidly in diameter from the butt to the top of the last log. In a dense stand of timber there is very great competition for sunlight among the individual trees, with the result that height growth is increased. Trees in crowded stands are taller than those in uncrowded stands of the same age. When the trees are crowded so that sunlight does not reach the lower branches, these soon die and become brittle they then fall off or are broken off by the wind, snow, or other agencies. By this process trunks are formed which are free from limbs, and hence of high quality.

It is evident, therefore, that trees in the wood lot should be so crowded that the crown or top of each individual tree may be in contact with those of its nearest neighbors. A crowded stand of trees produces not only a larger number but also a greater proportion of high quality sawlogs than an uncrowded stand. So vital a matter is their forest shade that it does not do to set out young trees which have grown in the forest. Ordinarily, the exposure to the sunlight stunts them and often kills them. Nursery trees are best; the next best are trees that have grown at the edge of the woods.

The actual value of woodland as pasture is small. One dollar per acre per year is probably a liberal estimate of the value of its forage. Thrifty fully stocked stands of timber will grow at the rate of 250 or more board feet of lumber per year. Adopting only 250 board feet as the growth and assuming the value of the standing timber to be from $5 to $8 per 1000 feet board measure, the value of the timber growth is from $1.25 to $2 per acre per year.

If the timber is given good care, moreover, the growth should be as much as 500 board feet per acre per year. The larger value of the wood lot for growing timber, as compared to the value of its forage only, is therefore apparent.

It must not be thought possible to secure this growth of timber and utilize the wood lot for pasture at the same time, because the stock eat the seedlings and damage the trees.

If shade, however, rather than forage is the wood lot's chief value to stock, it can doubtless be provided by allowing the stock to range in only a portion of the lot. The remainder can more profitably be devoted to the production of wood.

Owners are doubtless in some instances indifferent about fires in their wood lots, because they do not realize that these may do great harm without giving striking evidence of the fact. They burn the fallen leaves and accumulated litter of several years, thus destroying the material with which trees enrich their own soil. The soil becomes exposed, evaporation is greater, and more of the rain and melted snow runs off the surface. The roots may also be exposed and burned. The vitality of the trees is weakened and their rate of growth decreased. Don't burn leaves or waste growth: it is dangerous and they are valuable for mulch and for manure.

It has been found in the prairie region that through the protection afforded by the most efficient grove windbreaks, the yield in farm crops is increased to the extent of a crop as large as could be grown on a strip three times as wide as the height of the trees.

At present the following states maintain nurseries and distribute young trees either free or practically at cost to planters within the state: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, North Dakota, and Kansas.

The names of nurseries which handle stock of certain trees and their quoted prices for all the more important species can be secured from the Forest Service, Washington, D. C.

Whether your wood lot pays a profit or not, like the profit from the rest of your land, depends largely on how it is taxed. The higher it is taxed the harder it is to make it pay. In most states timberland is assessed on the basis of its value, timber and land together. Woodland assessed on this basis is overtaxed as compared with land assessed on the basis of what it produces each year. The value of plowland for farm purposes is established by what it will earn. If the owner can make $10 an acre a year over all expenses by growing say wheat, corn, cotton or alfalfa on it, his land will have a value of perhaps $150 an acre. If it took two years to grow a crop, the land would be worth only half as much. Its owner in that case would kick vigorously if he could not get his assessment lowered. He would kick still more vigorously if he had to pay a tax also on the value of the standing crop, after having to pay too much on the land. "The Lord loveth a cheerful kicker."

With woodland the case is still worse. Each year the owner may have to pay a tax on the merchantable crops of many past years. It is as though the owner of plowland had to pay a tax on the value of his field crops twice a week throughout the growing season. When a full-grown tree is cut down or burned up in a forest fire, it may have been taxed 40 or 50 times over. Each year the land on which it grew has been valued not on the basis of its earning power, but on the basis of what it would bring if sold, timber and all. A tax levied on the income-earning value of the land would be much more equitable.

Certain states have applied this principle by legislation under which land to be used for growing timber can be classified so that the timber can be taxed separately from the land. The land there is taxed annually on its value, without timber. The tax on the timber is not paid until the crop is harvested. It is therefore a tax on the yield. In New York this yield tax is 5 per cent of the value of the crop harvested; Michigan 5 per cent of it; Massachusetts 6 per cent; and Vermont, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania 10 per cent, with different provisions for forests already established.

Such a method is much better than that adopted by a number of states which exempt, under certain conditions, reforested or reforesting lands for a term of years, or allow rebates or bounties on such lands.

The profit of a growing forest crop will depend largely on relief from excessive taxation. It is unthrifty public policy to discourage putting waste land to work. ("The Farm Woodlot Problem," by Herbert A. Smith, Editor Forest Service—from Yearbook of Department of Agriculture for 1914.)



CHAPTER XXIII

SOME PRACTICAL EXPERIMENTS

The Department of Agriculture at Washington, also Cornell University and various other schools publish special studies and monographs of different branches. For some a small charge is made, but they are mostly distributed free. Many of them are very valuable. The United States Department's pamphlet on the Diseases of the Violet is a notable example. The average person does not know how these can be obtained or even that they exist.