THE average American farmer is one of the best fellows in the world. He also is one of the most unfortunate.
He generally comes to his profession by accident. He may not have meant to become a farmer, but through death, or change of family, or some other circumstance entirely out of his own control, he comes in possession of the family estates, almost certainly encumbered with mortgages, and must continue the family business to secure a living for himself. From the first he is doomed to loneliness, which is one of the worst curses that humanity can suffer. He cannot afford to employ help, for if he had capital he would not be a farmer, and it requires capital to secure proper assistance in the conduct of a farm. He must do all of his work himself. If he cannot do it, it must remain undone. As a rule the farmers of the United States are awake long before daylight in the morning, and their work continues long after dark in the evening. The working hours of the day, which to the{273}
Image not available: TACOMA BUILDING.
TACOMA BUILDING.
ordinary laborer are ten hours, and to more favored classes eight or seven, or even six, are to the farmer as a rule at least fourteen in twenty-four. His work is never done, any more than woman’s.
As a natural consequence he always is tired out. Custom and the demand of the markets restrict him generally to a single crop. Whether this be wheat, or corn, or oats, the seeding time is comparatively short. So is harvest time. The farm is larger than any one man or family can possibly manage, but American demand being at present only for raw materials, he has no choice. He must plant the staples from which foreign countries are willing to purchase the surplus for cash. Otherwise his condition would be worse than that of a slave. It is very hard for any one man to “break up” more than one acre of ground per day with a good team of horses. What, therefore, can the single-handed American farmer, who owns a hundred and sixty acres of ground, the customary “quarter section,” expect to do with his immense estate? To properly care for his family he should plant all of it; but, except in the case of wheat, if he were to plant it all, one-half to three-fourths of the crop would be wasted through lack of necessary cultivation. His horse is like himself, an overworked animal. In any section of the country the farmer is regarded safe who owns a pair of good horses. But{274} animals working twenty-six days per month from sunrise to sunset in the long days of summer cannot be kept up to their work by any amount of feeding or care. Sooner or later one or the other of a span of horses may break down, and then the farmer is helpless unless he has money in hand with which to purchase a substitute. Not ten farmers thus fortunate can be found in any contiguous hundred.
For the farmer is always poor. If it were otherwise he would not be a farmer. A very little experience on the farm and less observation of men about him show him that there is more money in mechanical or mercantile business, to say nothing of other callings, than his own. But he is handicapped from the start, no matter if he begins young, and while he still is a bachelor. When he has a family on his hands he is simply helpless so far as the possibility of change goes. The average farmer lives in hopes that in time his children, of whom he generally has many, will be of some assistance to him. Frequently his hopes are apparently fulfilled for a short time. But children are not as steady as grown people. They roam about in any time which they have to themselves. They reach the villages. They learn of a life which contains less toil and more comforts than that to which they are accustomed, and one by one they begin to intimate a desire for a change. It is utterly out of nature for the{275} farmer to disregard this desire. No matter how much he may love their company he knows in his inmost heart that a change from farm life to some sphere of activity which is less exacting would be a benefit to them physically and mentally, possibly morally also. His sons endeavor to become salesmen in stores, or to be clerks in lawyers’ offices, or solicitors for one business enterprise or another—anything to avoid the persistent and wearing drudgery of the farm. His daughters, in spite of the boasted independence of the farmer, and of his family, are very easily persuaded to go into any factory that there may be in the vicinity. It is not that they love home less, but they love companionship more, and, being like human beings everywhere else, they are keenly sensitive to the cheering influence of money—real cash received once a week instead of a possible balance to the family’s credit at the village store at the end of the year.
For the American farmer is generally at the mercy of the trader. The trader is as good as the average merchant, and is practically a merchant in all respects. He is generally the keeper of a general store at which the farmer during the year purchases everything which he may need for his family on an open account; with the understanding that when his crops are made they shall be turned over to the merchant, and a general balance struck. When there is{276} a good year the result may be in favor of the farmer, but good years are not the rule in the United States, even though the country is, as is said, the garden of the world. People who work and strain their energies to the uttermost require more in the way of ordinary creature comforts than those whose lives are more regular, and, though the farmer may discuss prices with great earnestness with the local merchant, the end is practically the same: he purchases whatever his family wants, so long as he can have it “charged.” He must purchase at the price stipulated by the merchant, for it is utterly impossible for him to look anywhere else for what he may need.
Some newspapers have made sensational complaints of the system of peonage to which some southern blacks or freedmen have been reduced by the storekeepers of plantations since slavery days, but there is no practical difference between their condition and that of the farmers the country over. “The borrower is servant to the lender,” and the man who has no money with which to purchase must submit to the exactions of whoever is willing to extend credit to him. Farmers’ notes are in the market in almost every county of the United States, and frequently those of which sell at the lowest prices are drawn by men of whose honesty of purpose and intention to pay no one has the slightest doubt. The only reason is that{277} the farmer’s absolute necessities have been in excess of the cash value of his farm products.
It is customary to speak of the farmer’s life as being the happiest and the safest occupation in the world. Nearly every one knows of some one successful farmer, and bases his judgment upon his knowledge of that solitary individual. But facts are stubborn things, and they have been proved by figures in the United States in a manner that should make those who are envious of the farmer think again.
According to the last census report the average valuation of the farm-lands of the United States, including buildings, was less than twenty dollars per acre. The average value of the products was less than eight dollars per acre. A quarter section of land, which is the ordinary size of an American farm in the States most devoted to agriculture, is a hundred and sixty acres. The reader may cipher out his own inferences with very little trouble, remembering that groceries, medicines, clothing, and everything else not produced by the farm costs quite as much in the rural districts as in the large cities, and generally a great deal more.
It has been said that the gold produced in the mining districts of the United States has cost far more in labor and physical loss than its value amounted to. The cost of the farm-land in the United States leaves the apparent waste on gold{278} in absolute insignificance. There are thousands of American farms to-day, probably hundreds of thousands, of which the land under the hammer would not bring as much money as the fences of those same farms have cost. The expense of clearing wooded land to fit it for agriculture has been far greater in almost every section of the country than the value of the land at the highest price prevailing would repay. The work of fencing and clearing was done by other generations, who got less from their farms than the present occupants are receiving.
One of the favorite arguments of men who urge younger men to go West and take a farm and grow up with the country is, that they will never lack for plenty to eat. This statement is entirely true. A man can always have plenty of food from his own estate if he cultivates it at all, or has any live stock. But one accompanying fact is, and this fact should be carefully considered—that frequently he has no place at which to market at a profit what he produces. He is so far from any market that what he does not eat he frequently is obliged to waste. Corn in the ear has been used during many winters for fuel in portions of the West, not because there was no wood to be had, but because there was no convenient place at which to market the corn, even at the bare expense of shelling and hauling to market, to say nothing of the previous cost of{279} planting, cultivation, and harvesting. Where a farmer is near a market, as in some eastern States, his table is no better set than that of the cheapest-paid mechanic in the city. He may have eighty acres of wheat, but if his family wishes to eat a cabbage they are obliged to go to some village market and purchase it; the farmer himself has not had time to plant and cultivate it. Summer boarders find fewer vegetables in the country than in the city.
The natural question occurs, why does not the farmer change his business as hundreds of thousands of mechanics and other men are doing every year? The answer is that it is impossible for him to do so. He cannot leave his farm without ruin to his family, for to neglect to plant and cultivate is to lose the credit upon which in ninety-nine cases in a hundred he must subsist. He cannot sell his farm at auction under the hammer as if it were a city house or a village residence, for purchasers of farms are the rarest of all purchasers of real-estate in the United States. This is not in accordance with European precedent or supposition, but it has been demonstrated in every State, and almost every county of the union.
Does all this mean that farming will not pay? No. Farming will pay if backed by capital as well as practical knowledge. But it is almost impossible that the American farmer of the{280} present generation shall have any capital from any source whatever. Farming, when conducted int............