The change that is now taking place, especially in New England, is toward the greater economy of living, and the harder work and closer management of business, that comes with immigrant proprietorship; and this element is by no means to be depended upon for the improvement of our farming. It may result in a more money-making agriculture, but it will supplant our best political element by the introduction of what has thus far seemed to be one of the worst.

Look at this question as we will, it is difficult to see how else than by improving the race of American farmers we are to accomplish any result whose good effect will be radical and lasting. This brings us around to that threadbare subject of the vague discussion of agricultural writers: "How to keep the boys on the farm."

The devices recommended for accomplishing this result have thus far failed of their object. The average farmer boy is not a sentimentalist, and he is not likely to be moved by the sort of talk so often lavished upon him. To use a vulgarism, he has an extremely "level head." He fails to realize the attraction and the dignity which are implied by what he is told of the nobleness of his father's calling, of the purifying and elevating influences of a daily intercourse with nature. He is not to be caught with this sort of chaff. His cultivation has not been of that aesthetic character that he has an especial drawing toward nobleness, or purity, or elevation. Nature, as he knows it, shows at times an unattractive side; and he fails to recognize precisely what is meant by Mother Earth as a source of dignity. To him Mother Earth is an exacting parent, calling for constant and regular toil, and whipping him on day by day with weeds to be hoed, dry gardens to be watered, snowdrifts to be shovelled, and an almost endless round of embarrassments to be overcome. As for the purity and simplicity of the farmer's life, he knows very much better than to pin his faith to it. To him the farmer's house is too often a place where the mother is overworked, tired, wearied with constant annoyance, and made peevish and fretful. The conversation of hired men and young neighbors and brothers is not marked by refined delicacy and simplicity, as he understands these terms. At the end of all our preaching he will say, at least to himself, that this is probably the sort of talk that we consider appropriate to the occasion, but that, if we knew what he knows about farming, we should see how little effect it is likely to have. If he sought our motive in saying it, he would conclude that we were interested in keeping up the supply of farm labor; and that so far as he was concerned, since he must work for a living, he would work at some other industry if he could get a chance, and leave those who were less fortunate to work on the farm.

The more sentimental and more influential considerations governing in this matter were very well set forth by Dr. Holland in a paper on Farm Life in New England, published in "The Atlantic Monthly" some twenty years ago. While acknowledging the frequency of bright exceptions to the rule, he does not hesitate to set it down as a rule that the life described is in every way a hateful one; where every member of the family, from father to child, is driven by the lash of stern necessity, and where many conditions which are deemed requisite in the life of all other classes of the same wealth are comparatively rare; where the expectant mother of the child is worked without stint to her last day, while the mother of the colt is relieved from all hard toil and treated with consideration throughout the last months of her time; where, in short, whether from interest or from a mistaken idea of necessity, hard work long hours, poor food, and dismal surroundings are the rule of the farmer's household.

Since that time there have been noticeable modifications, involving the introduction of more or less tastefulness, because of the cheap literature and cheap music of these later days. But, much as these have done to affect the individual characters of the younger members of the family, they have only aggravated the evil, so far as farm-work is concerned, by creating a desire, born of knowledge, for the pleasanter manner of life which the town has to offer. The young girls whom one now sees about railway stations in the most distant part of the country are dressed after the instructions of "Harper's Bazar" and "Peterson's Magazine;" and they know more than their older sisters did of the difference between their own life and that of their city cousins. They are certainly not to be blamed if they long for some vocation in which they can more freely indulge their growing ideas of luxury, and gratify their growing desire for better dress and more interesting companionship.

All that has here been said is seriously true and important. The circumstances described are so generally prevalent as to constitute, with constant minor variations, an almost universal rule. Where we are to look for relief, is the most serious problem. Relief must be found, or the character of our farming class must assuredly degenerate. In one way or another we must change, in a radical degree, the conditions of the farmer's life. We can perfectly understand why it should be distasteful to any young person of ordinary ambition or intelligence; and we know, from the constant flocking of farmers' sons and daughters to even the least attractive employments of the town or village, that this distaste is everywhere a controlling one.

It is easy to say that the farmer's life must be made more cheerful, attractive, and refined, and less arduous; but it is by no means easy to see how the improvement is to be brought about. The cardinal defect is the loneliness and dulness of the isolated farmhouse. Intelligent and educated young women, brought up among the pleasantest surroundings, marry young farmers, and undertake their new life with the determination that, in their case at least, the more obvious social requirements shall be met. During the earlier years after marriage they adhere to their resolution, and are regular in attendance at the church and public lecture; and they keep up, so far as possible, social intercourse with their neighbors. But as time goes on, as the family increases, as toil begins to tell on health and strength and energy, they drop out, little by little, from the habit of going abroad, until often for weeks together they never exchange a look or thought with any human being outside of their own households. Aside from the overworked members of their own families, their companionship is confined to hired men who smell of the stable, and to hired girls with whom they are yoked in the daily round of household duties.

Having given much consideration to the subject, I have come to believe that the agriculture of Continental Europe is far more wisely arranged than ours; for there, almost as a universal rule, isolated farm-life is unknown. The reward of the cultivator is less, and his labor is at least as great. The people are of a very much lower order, and are lacking in the cultivated intelligence which distinguishes so many of our own farming class. Women and even young girls perform rude labor in the field and in the stable; and those aspirations which are born of a universal diffusion of periodical literature are almost unknown. At the same time, when the hard and long day's work is over, there comes to all the inexpressible relief and delight of the active social intercourse of the village, where the tillers of the country for a mile around have gathered together their homes and their herds, and where the most intimate social life prevails.

Observation even indicates that the habit of out-of-door labor has had no injurious effect upon the women of these villages. The "nut-brown maid" grows too fast into the wrinkled-brown woman; but better a sunburnt and weather-beaten cheek than that pallor that comes of anthracite and in-door toil. Better the broad back and stout limb of the peasant mother than the hollow chest and wasted energy of the American farmer's wife.

I by no means intend to say that our own farming class is not far superior to the peasantry of Europe; but I do believe that if a good system of village life for farmers could be adopted here under the modifying influences of the more refined and intelligent American character, we should have gained a most important step in advance. We have in New England many villages almost exclusively of farmers,—villages where the old-time settlers gathered together for defence against the Indians, and for the protection of houses and stock and store from river floods. These villages are as different as it is possible to conceive from the ordinary European cluster of unattractive cottages, lining both sides of a street which is filled for one-half of its width with manure-heaps. It may be naturally assumed that any adaptation of the village system among us would be governed by the same refining influences which have made our few existing agricultural villages so beautiful and attractive.

That which most distinguishes American people is the general spread of education among them; but it is, after all, an education which soon reaches its limit, and, so far as the district-school of a sparsely-settled country neighborhood is concerned, it goes little beyond the simplest rudiments. An inexperienced young miss holds school for not more than one-half the year in an unattractive and inconvenient room, in which are gathered together most of the boys and girls of the school-going age from all the farms about. The books and other appliances of instruction are inadequate. There is no grading of the pupils, and the frequent change of teachers prevents the possibility of experienced instructions. Even in the meanest peasant village of Germany, a village always prolific in children, an inexorable law compels all between the ages of five and fourteen to attend regularly the teaching of a master, an officer of the state, who has generally adopted his profession for life, and who adds to a certain specified degree of capability the advantages of long experience.

No thoughtful person can fail to be convinced, after a due consideration of the argument in its favor, that, if the social influences inseparable from village-life could be secured to the American farmer, the greatest drawback of his life would be done away with. It remains, unfortunately, a serious question, how far such a radical change is practicable. There is little doubt that the family would naturally drift into some more costly style of living; and the necessity for hauling to a distant home all the crops of the fields, and of hauling out the manure made at the homestead, would add somewhat to the expenses of the business.

In the case of the individual farmer now cultivating land upon which he lives, it is not unlikely that he would find a certain pecuniary disadvantage in the change. But, as a broad question of the future benefit of our agriculture, it must be conceded that whatever will tend to make the occupation more attractive cannot fail, by enlisting the services of more intelligent minds, to insure its very decided improvement. As the case now stands, the farmer's son will become a clerk or a mechanic rather than remain a farmer, because clerks and mechanics live in communities where there is more to interest the mind, and where, too, the opportunities for enjoyment and amusement are greater. The farmer's daughter will marry the clerk or the mechanic rather than a farmer, because she knows the life of a farmer's wife to be a life of dulness and dearth, while she believes that the wife of the clerk or mechanic will be condemned to less arduous labor, and will have much more agreeable surroundings. I have no means of judging what may have been the experience in Deerfield, Mass., for instance; but I am confident that many a mechanic's daughter, and indeed many young women of much higher position in life, would consider her lot a fortunate one in becoming the wife of a farmer whose homestead lay on the beautiful street of this old village.

All that is here said is, to a certain extent, mere theory; but the subject is one that has not thus far met any practical solution, and in which, therefore, nothing except theorizing is possible. The broad fact is that the farming class in this country is degenerating by the withdrawal of its best blood; and still more serious injury is being done to it by the introduction of the lower class of foreigners. It may well be doubted whether it is possible so to modify the manner of life of the isolated farmhouse as to make it materially more attractive to American boys and girls. All that can be done is to rob it of its isolation by withdrawing its people, and placing them under better conditions of life.

In a word, the only way that seems to offer to keep the boys on the farm is to move everybody off of the farm, bringing them together into snug little communities, where they may secure, without abandoning the manifest advantages of their occupation, the greater social interest and stimulus which they now hope to enjoy by going into other callings whose natural advantages are less. That such a course as this would restore the farmer to his former position as a leading element in Eastern civilization, cannot be questioned. That he will retain even the relative influence that he exercises to-day, unless some radical change is made, is at least very doubtful.

In considering the questions here suggested, we must never lose sight of the fact that the controlling element is economy. The farmer exists because he is needed. The world demands the products that he produces, and the world must needs pay him a living compensation for them. No change will be possible which disregards this; and all who know the present circumstances which control the reward of the farming class know that these circumstances would be inadequate to maintain him in a life of greater ease, while calling for greater expense. This gives the added embarrassment that we must not only change the mode of life, but must also increase the ratio of profit, if this is possible. This is possible only through a reduction of the area cultivated, the cultivation of this reduced area in a more thorough and profitable way, and the turning of farming industry into channels better adapted to securing a profitable return.

To discuss a modification of the whole system of farming would involve far more detail than is possible in this paper, since such a discussion must include the consideration of features which would change with changing locality; but, by way of illustration, we may take the previously supposed case of a farmer owning one hundred acres of land, and milking a dozen cows, selling the milk as before in the distant town. Assume that he and his neighbors within a radius of about a mile are living in a central village, from which his land is one mile distant. During the working season, say from the middle of April until late in October, he must, with his teams and assistants, spend the whole day on the land. The cows are milked and all stable work done before breakfast, and some one drives them out to pasture. The men remain a-field until an hour before sunset. They must be content with a cold dinner, as is the usual custom with mechanics and laborers. The cows are driven home in time for the evening milking, and are put into the barnyard at night with green fodder brought home by the returning teams. After the "chores" are done, and a hearty and substantial supper is eaten,—the principal meal of the day,—all hands will be too weary for much enjoyment of the evening, but not so weary that they will not appreciate the difference between the lounging places of a village and the former dulness at the farm. Other farmers in the neighborhood will, many of them, also be milk producers; and, as the stables are near together, they will naturally co-operate, sending their milk to market with a single team, employing the services of a single man in the place of five or six men and teams heretofore needed to market the same milk. I have recently received an account of this sort of co-operation, where the cost of selling was reduced to a fraction over eight cents for each hundred quarts.

This arrangement will have the still further benefit of allowing the farmer to remain at home and attend to his more important work, leaving the detail of marketing to be done by a person especially qualified for it and therefore able to do it more cheaply than he could do it in person. During the working season there will be enough rainy weather to allow the work of the stable, the barnyard, and the woodshed to be properly attended to. There will of course be sudden showers and occasional storms, and other inconveniences, which will make the farmer regret at times that he lives at such a distance from his field work; but he will find more than compensation in the advantages that come naturally from living in a village.

For his wife and children the improvement will be absolute; and it will be no slight argument in favor of the change, that both in doors and out of doors a better class of servants will be available, because of the better life that can be offered. It will be easier to secure the services of laborers who are married and who live in their own houses, and so avoid the serious annoyance to the household that attends the boarding of hired men.

To make this radical change in any farming neighborhood as at present constituted, would be impracticable. It would probably take a generation to convince the farmers of a community of its advantages; it would cost too much, even if not entirely impracticable, to move the house and stables to the central point; and it would involve such a change of habits of labor and of living as must necessarily be the work of time. However, if the principle commends itself to the leading men of the neighborhood, and especially to young men about to marry, the nucleus of a village may be established, and sooner or later the present or the coming generation will find a way to come into the fold.

If we assume that by this or some other means the more intelligent of the young men are induced to remain farmers, it is interesting to consider in what way their greater intelligence is to be made to tell on their work so as to secure the necessary improvement. It would not be unreasonable to suppose that young men of the class we have in mind, those who now seek occupations which afford a better field for their intelligence, and who seek them because of their intelligence, would establish such centres of discussion and interest in improved farming as would not only mitigate the worthless gossip now so common at the country store, but would awaken a real enthusiasm in better processes and systems.

Not only would there be this tendency toward improvement; but where farmers are close neighbors, and are able to conduct their interests in such a way as to help each other, there would naturally grow up some sort of co-operative business. By the establishment of a butter-factory or cheese-factory, or by the common ownership of a milk-route, or where tobacco is grown by the undertaking of its manufacture as an employment for winter, or by the raising of honey or of poultry, or by the establishment of some valuable breed of live stock with a reputation for excellence that will cause it to be sought for from abroad, or by some other combination, they would secure profitable business.

Of course all the farmers in New England cannot within the next ten years move into villages; but what is suggested is that the farmers of some one community should try the experiment. Their success might induce others to follow the example; and little by little, in proportion to the promise of a good result, more and more would seek the advantages which the system would offer, so that sooner or later the benefits which are now experienced in village life in Europe might be felt here in the higher degree which greater intelligence and greater freedom would be sure to produce.

While advancing these suggestions, with much confidence in their practical value, I would by no means confine the outlook for Eastern farming to this single road to success. Co-operative industry may be largely adopted among farmers living at some distance from each other. The cheese-factory has become an institution. The better quality of the product when made in large quantities, and the better price that its quality and the improved system for marketing have secured, constitute a very decided success in our agriculture. Butter-factories are coming into vogue with a promise of equally good results.

A very good substitute for the co-operative management of a milk route is in very general adoption throughout New England, where some single farmer who devotes himself to selling milk buys the product of his neighbor's dairies for a certain fixed price, taking upon himself the labor, the risk, and the profit of marketing. The co-operative breeding of live stock cannot as yet be said to have become well established, but its possibilities of success are considerable. A community can afford to buy and keep a thorough-bred horse, or bull, or boar, or buck, which would cost far too much for the means of a single owner, and thus gradually give to the stock of the whole neighborhood a superiority that will secure it a wide-spread reputation and insure good prices. Let us keep always in view the important principle of making two blades of grass grow where but one grew before; but let us remit no effort which may tend to make one blade worth what two were worth before.

Incidentally, there may be combinations to secure good outlet drainage for tracts of land belonging to different owners, and later a provision for the general irrigation of these lands.

It is not to be hoped, that, either as a whole or in its details, agricultural improvement is to be advanced with any thing like a rush. Farmers are generally "conservative" in the worst sense of the term. They have during the past generation adopted many improvements and modifications in the methods of their work, the mere suggestion of which would have been scouted by their fathers; but they are themselves as ready as their fathers were to scout any further new suggestion, and it is only by iteration and reiteration that the shorter steps of tentative experiment can be urged upon their acceptance.

In reviewing what is written above, the thought arises that the one impression that it will surely produce will be that its writer fails to appreciate the better influences that cluster around the better class of farmers' homes. Such an inference would be quite unjust. Knowing as I do the intrinsic worth and the charming qualities of very many of these households, I appeal to the best of the thoughtful men and women whom they include, to confirm my statement that they find many elements of their life to be pinching and hard, and that however admirable they may now be, they would be in no way injured, but in many ways improved, by more frequent intercourse with their equals, and especially with their betters.

That the picture I have sketched of the average farmer's family is not overdrawn, I appeal to every country clergyman and physician to bear witness. The truths suggested are patent to all. They are set forth in no spirit of hypercriticism, and with no other view than to help to ameliorate the condition of those to whom they refer. Knowing the farmer more intimately than does the average editor or orator, I am confident that my estimate of his character and of his life will strike him as being more just, if not more honest.

* * * * *

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

A FARMER'S VACATION. Sketches of Travel in Europe; with a very complete Account of the Drainage of the Great Haarlem Lake in Holland; Notes on Dutch Farming; a Journey in Normandy and Brittany; and an Elaborate Description of the Channel Islands,—their Agriculture, Social Customs, Scenery, &c. Beautifully illustrated. Price $3.00.

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THE END