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It is a very common custom, especially with those who seek political favors, to impress upon the electors the importance of the fact that the particular candidate in question was born on a farm. It certainly is no disgrace to have been born upon a farm, nor is there any excuse for boasting of it. In so far as the child is concerned, the birthplace is peculiarly accidental. Important as heredity is, the child has no choice in the matter, he cannot choose either his father or his mother. Important as environment is, the new born child is equally the creature of fate, he cannot choose whether he shall be born in a hovel or a palace.
This pleasing fiction, which is so sweet under the tongue of the politician, is a mute tribute to the importance of rural birth. As a means of political preferment it is harmless, and at most creates only a smile in informed auditors. In some respects, however, being born on a farm is a positive disadvantage. As a rule, this is the case with the man who wants to be a farmer, especially in his mature years. Old-fashioned farming in this country has not much to boast of from a scientific point of view. There was plenty of hard work, quite enough getting up at four o'clock in the winter morning to milk the cows, exposed during the night to the inclemency of the season, quite enough of the unscientific methods of feeding the farm animals, which
was done without rime or reason, and quite enough of the toleration of the inconveniences of life, which in old-fashioned farm-houses undoubtedly reached their maximum.
As a rule, I may say with certainty that the man who was born on the farm and lived on the farm until manhood, and afterwards has pursued some other career until the advent of the last period of life, suffers a distinct disadvantage and handicap from his early experiences. The only hope of the new farmer who begins his career of agriculture after the maturity of his years, is in adopting the latest scientific methods of culture. I cannot agree with the theory that successful farming in this country will come from extensive instead of intensive culture. This theory, in effect, is that intensive farming is expensive farming and extensive farming is economical farming. The first part of this statement is undoubtedly true, but in the light of modern progress in agriculture we must take exception to the latter part of it. A more correct statement would be as follows: "Intensive farming is expensive farming, extensive farming is robbery."
The point which I want to bring out clearly is this, that the man of to-day, born on a farm, who, at fifty or sixty years of age, thinks of abandoning the professional carreer to which he has been devoted since manhood, by reason of his longing to return to the farm, has had no real experience in scientific farming during his boyhood. The chances are one hundred to one that he was taught extensive farming, in other words agricultural highway robbery.
Extensive farming means to cultivate as much as possible and pay little attention to the feeding of the fields. The extensive farmer would very probably take
all of his horses at the beginning of the plowing season and keep them at the plow for twelve hours a day, and feed them by turning them out to pasture at night. Apparently he would be getting very economical service; in reality he would be destroying his motive power. For this reason the man born on the farm is likely to begin his new farming career with the handicap of the bad training he has already had.
Proud of the fact of his early experience, he will doubtless proceed again to put it into practice. It was a bad practice economically in the beginning. All the fertility which Nature had stored up for thousands of years, was at the disposal of the extensive farmer. Usually he has succeeded, in from twenty-five to fifty years, in exhausting all this accumulated supply. This is instanced by the well known fact of the rapid decrease in fertility of the virgin soils of the country. Whether they originally were wooded or prairie, the same result is seen. Some of the deeper and more fertile soils last longer, but the shallow and rolling soils rapidly succumb. It is far better, therefore, while still being proud of the birth on a farm, to forget all else except that one fact in resuming agricultural activities.
"Book farming is deceptive and misleading, and the book farmer is doomed to failure." The above statement is both true and false. Book farming is apt to exaggerate the good points and minimize the difficulties of scientific agriculture. This is especially true of official bulletins, both national and State. The law should require that all failures should be as carefully recorded as successes. A book on farming which would feature the failures as prominently as it did the successes would not be a misleading book.
It must not be forgotten that the chances of the old
time farmer resuming his place on the farm are decidedly bad. The doctrine of probabilities does not work out in his favor. He is more likely to fail than to succeed. He is, however, certain to fail if he relies upon the old methods. His only hope is in the reasonable application of the facts which the science of farming has developed. These fundamental facts were never taught to the boy upon the farm of a quarter of a century or a half century ago. What is the fundamental fact of successful agriculture? It is this: the soil is not dead, inert matter; it is a living organism, it demands care and protection, above all it asks for food, it has its idiosyncrasies. The successful farmer is necessarily a psychologist. He studies the mind of the soil. No one can sit down and describe just what a field is like. The fields are fitful as the maidens. They may never be in the same mood two years following. They will fancy this or that, as the passion may seize them, but one thing they never forget and that is to eat. It may be kainite to-day, it is likely to be fish scrap to-morrow, but the field "wants what it wants when it wants it."
Science shows the way. The farmer, however, cannot be made by science alone. He must have the sense of the real farmer. As Whitcomb Riley puts it, he must be able to divine the "feel in the air."
From another point of view the early experience on the farm is likely to be a handicap. As a rule it is not always agreeable. The life of the old-fashioned farmer's boy is a hard one. The man will perhaps retain the feeling of the boy, that labor is a curse, especially farm labor. Above all things the intending farmer of mature years must forget that labor ever was a curse. He must feel that it is an opportunity
and a joy and a blessing. His early experience on the farm is not likely to help him along in that line. Of course he begins his new labors from a new point of view. His attitude towards the plow is quite different from that of a boy; but it is hard to get over these early impressions, and hence the intending farmer is more than likely to look forward to a career of resting in the shade and watching other people work. Rest of course is not only physiological and necessary, and delightful, but there can be no rest if there is no work, and the modern farmer should not sit in the shade until he has earned that right by becoming fatigued in the sun.
But approached from the point of view of science, the labor of the farm is a continued joy. It is a manipulation of the laboratory which the real chemist does not relegate to a helper, it is the touching of a canvas by an artist's brush which cannot be left to an amateur. The hired man can never put a soul into a field any more than the hired painter can put a soul into a picture.
For these reasons the man who was born in the city, and who by the great impress of heredity some time in his life feels the lure of the land, has a good chance to become a good farmer, perhaps as good as the boy who was born upon the farm. I do not claim for a moment that every man, even if born in the city, could be successful on the farm. That is not reasonable. A lot of people who were born in the city can never become farmers, any more than boys born on the farm can be. We must not forget the natural tact and ability, without which none of us can ever succeed in anything, no matter how patiently we try.
The point which I wish to accentuate is that when
[Illustration: The Hired Man Can Never Put a Soul into a Field]
[Illustration: Resting in the Shade and Watching other People Work]
one goes at a plump age to till the soil, he must carry with him the knowledge which science has taught and the implements which the artizan has devised. The old methods of farming to which he was accustomed when a boy are as obsolete as the old implements of agriculture. I remember well when the first machine for cutting hay came into the community where I lived, and a few years after when the first machine for reaping wheat was introduced. I have seen myself and my father and his helpers go into the field with cradles. I remember his telling me what a wonderful thing the cradle was as compared with the sickle of his boyhood days. "The cradle," he says, "has revolutionized the wheat industry and made it possible." So did the sickle in its time. And yet, what would you think of the farmer of to-day who, in starting out in his new career, would buy a cradle for his wheat cutting instead of a reaper and binder, or engine and thrasher, or would cut clover with a scythe instead of a mower? Improved machinery has made extensive farming economical, but it is just as easy to harvest a field of wheat that yields thirty bushels per acre with the reaper and binder as it is to harvest one that yields thirteen, and the economy of the larger yield is readily appreciated.
It is a good heritage to have been born upon a farm, but the farming of our boyhood days is a thing of the past in so far as economy and fruitful farming are concerned. This is the day of the food specialist. It is not always the cheapest food that is the most economical. The idea that a field can be fed solely from its own resources is preposterous. At least a part of the crop must be taken off every year, and the resources of the field are diminished to that extent.
To-day the farmer who farms without the economy of
manure, without a knowledge of any deficiency in plant food that his field has, without the knowledge that the leguminous crops can increase the store of nitrogen, without the knowleddge that certain crops, such as the leguminous, will not grow in an acid soil, without the knowledge of the kind and quantity of so-called commercial fertilizers he can buy, is a man who starts out on his career with a certainty of defeat staring him in the face.
To succeed to-day on the farm requires courage, industry, tact, knowledge, patience, enthusiasm and brains. As S. E. Kiser says in his poem "Where Brains Are Needed":
"I claim it takes more brains to farm," said Ebenezer Brown,
"Than what it does to git ahead and make a splash in town;
Why, I know six or seven chaps from this here neighborhood
Who went away to cities, where they're busy makin' good.
"You take Chicago and New York--size up the big men there--
The lawyer, doctor, merchant and the multimillionaire--
You'll find thay've all been farmer boys, or lived in towns, at least,
Where they could have a chance to learn the ways of bird and beast.
"Now take these city chaps who come to cultivate the land--
I don't mean millionaires who farm for fun, you understand--
But take the common city folks who try to farm, and say!
It's pitiful the way they try to make their farmin' pay.
"I've saw a dozen of 'em fail; I never seen one yet
Who managed to be prominent or not get into debt;
And so I claim a man may make an awful splash in town
And not have brains enough to farm," said Ebenezer Brown.
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