Workers - An Experiment in Reality: The East — Chapter 5 - Part I - A Farmhand

WILLIAMSPORT, LYCOMING COUNTY, PA.

, Saturday, 3 October, 1891. From Wilkesbarre it was an easy day's march to the village of Pleasant Hill, which lies in the way to Williamsport.

The only notable incident of the tramp was one which confirmed me in an early formed policy.

I

have avoided railways, and have walked in preference along the country roads, as affording better opportunities of intercourse with people.

But in going on that morning from Wilkesbarre to the ferry which crossed the river to Plymouth, I took the advice of a gate-keeper at a railway crossing and started down the track on a long trestle as a short cut to the ferry.

All went well until I was half way over, and then two coal trains passed simultaneously in opposite directions, and I hung by my hands from the framework at one side, while the engineer and fireman on the locomotive nearest me laughed heartily at the figure that I cut, with the side of each car grazing my pack, and my hold on the railing growing visibly slacker.

It was a little after nightfall when I reached the tavern at Pleasant Hill.

Of my wages I had fifty cents left.

I questioned the proprietor as to the demand for work in his community.

He was quite encouraging.

Only that afternoon, he said, one of the best farmers of the neighborhood had been inquiring in the village for a possible man, and to the best of his knowledge he had not found one.

I said that I should apply at his farm in the morning, and then I broached the subject of entertainment.

We soon struck a bargain for a supper and breakfast, and the privilege of a bed on the hay; but when, after supper, I asked to be directed to the barn, the landlord silently led the way to a little room upstairs, and there wished me good-night.

In the early morning he pointed out to me the road to his neighbor's farm, which I followed with ready success.

I was penniless now, and had only an uncertain chance of work.

And then, if the farmer should ask me, I should be obliged to own to inexperience, and the demand for farm-hands I thought must be limited, at a date so far into the autumn.

But the morning was exquisite, and the buoyancy that it bred was an easy match for misgivings, so that it was with a light heart that I turned from the road into a lane which leads to the house of the farmer, whom I shall call Mr. Hill.

All about me were the marks of thrift.

The fences stood straight and stout, with an air of lasting security.

On a rising ledge above the lane was the farm-house, a small, unpainted wooden cottage, bleached to the rich, deep brown of a well-colored meerschaum pipe, and as snug and tight as a pilot's schooner.

Near it was a summer-kitchen that seemed fairly to glow with conscious pride in its cleanness, and the very foot-path from the gate to the cottage-door was swept like a threshing floor.

On the door-step sat a girl in a calico dress of delicate pink, with a dark gingham apron concealing all its front.

She was shelling peas into a milk-pan which rested on her lap, and the morning sunlight was in her flaxen hair, and showed you the delicate freshness of a pink-and-white complexion.

Sober hazel eyes were fixed on me as I walked up the foot-path, and of us two I was the embarrassed one.

I have not got over a certain timidity in asking for work, and each request is a sturdy effort of the will, with the rest of me in cowardly revolt, and a timid shrinking much in evidence I fear.

"Is this Mr. Hill's farm?"

I ask, and I know that I am blushing deeply.

"Yes," says the young woman, with grave dignity and the most natural self-possession in the world.

"Is he at home?"

I am sweating freely now, as I stand with my hat crushed between my hands, and the pack feeling like a mountain on my back.

"He is down at the pond on the edge of the farm."

And her serious eyes follow the line of the long lane which sinks from the house with the downward slope of the land.

With her permission I leave the pack behind, and then follow the indicated way.

The barn is on my right, a large, unpainted structure, stained by weather to as dark a hue as the house, but there are no loose boards about it, nor any rifts among the shingles, and the doors hang true on their hinges, and meet in well-adjusted touch.

The cowyard and the pigsty flank the lane, and the neatness of the yard and the tightness of the troughs make clear that there is no waste of fodder there.

Farther down and on my left is the wagon-house, as good a building almost as the cottage, and with much the same clean, strong compactness.

There are no ploughs nor other farming tools lying exposed to the weather, no signs of idle capital wasting with the wear of rust, but everywhere the active, thrifty strength of wise economy.

Two men are at work at the pond, and I pick my man at once.

They are plainly brothers, but the Mr. Hill of whom I am in search is the stronger-looking man, and is clearly in command of the job.

I am reminded of a certain type which one comes to know on "the street," a clean-cut, vigorous man, who keeps his youth till sixty, and who, for many years, has had a masterful, compelling hand upon the conduct of affairs, has put railways through the West, and opened up mining regions, and knows the inner workings of legislatures and of much else besides.

I wait for a pause in the work, and try to screw my courage to the sticking-point; and then I tell Mr. Hill that the landlord at the tavern has sent me to him in the belief that he needs a man, and I add that I shall be glad of a job.

Without preliminary questions Mr. Hill engages me on the spot, and makes me an offer of board and lodging, and seventy-five cents a day, which, he says, is the usual rate on the farms at that season.

I close with the bargain, and ask to be set to work immediately.

A minute later I am walking up the lane with a message for Mrs. Hill, to the effect that I am the new "hired man," and that she will please give me, to take to the pond, a certain "broad hoe" from the wagon-house.

Mrs. Hill understands the situation at once; she makes no comment, but goes with me to the wagon-house, where she points out the hoe among other tools in a corner.

She has said nothing so far, and I feel a little uncomfortable, but now she turns to me with a frank directness of manner that is very reassuring.

"I ain't got no room for you in the house, but I guess you'll be comfortable sleeping out here.

You can fetch your grip, and I'll show you your bed."

Pack in hand, I follow her up the steps to the loft of the wagon-house, and she points to a cot near the farther window and a wooden chair beside it.

"Some time to-day I'll make up your bed, and if there's anything you want you can tell me."

This is her final word as she leaves me to return to the house.

I slip on my overalls and take note of my new quarters.

Windows at both ends of the loft provide ample ventilation.

The cot is covered with a corn-husk mattress, as clean and fresh as a cock of new hay.

The very floor is free from dust.

The rafters hang thick with bunches of seed-corn on the cob, with their outer husks removed and the inner husks drawn back and neatly interwoven, the whole effect suggesting stalactites in a cave.

The air is fragrant with the perfume from slices of apples, that are closely threaded and hung up to dry in graceful festoons from rafter to rafter.

Five minutes later I am at work at the pond.

The pond is an artificial one, created by a wooden dam.

The water has been allowed to flow out, and the old woodwork is to be renewed.

My immediate task is to dig a ditch along the outer side of the rotting planks, so that they can be removed and replaced by new ones.

I am soon alone on the job, for the farmers' work calls them elsewhere.

The experience in the sewer-ditch at Middletown is all to my credit, and my spirits rise with the discovery that I can handle my pick and shovel more effectively, and with less sense of exhaustion.

And then the stint is my own, and no boss stands guard over me as a dishonest workman.

At least I am conscious of none, and I am working on merrily, when suddenly I become aware of my employer bending over the ditch and watching me intently.

It is a face very red with the heat and much bespattered with mud, into which my tools sink gurglingly, that I turn up to him.

"How are you getting on?"

"Pretty well, thank you."

"You mustn't work too hard.

All that I ask of a man is to work steady.

Have an apple?"

He is gone in a moment, and I stand in the ditch eating the apple with immense relish, and thinking what a good sort that farmer is, and how thoroughly he understands the principle of getting his best work out of a man!

He has appealed to my sense of honor by intrusting the job to me, and now he has won me completely to his interests by showing concern in mine.

The work is hard, and the morning hours are very long, but the labor achieves its own satisfaction as the task grows under one's self-directed effort, and there is no torture of body and soul in the surveillance of a slave-driving boss.

But I am thoroughly tired and very hungry when Mr. Hill calls to me from across the pond that it is time to go to dinner.

I join him in haste, and we walk up the lane together, while he drives his team before him, and points out with evident pride the young colts and other stock in the pasture.

On a bench near the door of the summer-kitchen are two tin basins full of water, and there we wash ourselves, drawing by means of a gourd-dipper from a brimming bucket near by any fresh supply of water that we want.

A coarse, clean towel hangs over a roller above the bench, and at this we take our turns.

The dinner is a quiet meal, and tends to solemnity.

Mrs. Hill and her daughter sit opposite the farmer and me.

Little is said, but for me there is absorbing interest in the meal itself.

It is worthy of the best traditions of country life, clean in all its appointments to a degree of spotlessness, really elegant in its quiet simplicity, and appetizing?

--how was I ever to stop eating those potatoes that spread under the pressure of my fork into a mass of flaky deliciousness, or the ears of sweet-corn fresh from a late field, or the green peas that swim in a sweet stew of their own brewing, or, best of all, the little pond pickerel that are grilled to a crisp brown turn?

In our more artificial forms of living we habitually eat when we are not hungry, and drink when we are not thirsty, and we know little of the sheer physical delight in meat and drink when our natures seize joyously upon the means of life, and organs work in glad adaptation to function, and the organism, in full revival, responds to its environment!

The work moves uninterruptedly in the afternoon; and at six o'clock, as I wearily drag my feet along the lane by the farmer's side, I can see his daughter driving the cattle through the pasture to the cowyard, and I wonder how I shall fare at the evening milking.

But I am not put to that test; for the farmer declines my offer of help, with the explanation that, under our arrangement, my day's work is done at six o'clock, and that he is not entitled to further help, nor does he need it, he adds, for his wife and daughter always lend a hand at the chores.

Supper is almost a repetition of dinner, with a pitcher of rich milk kindly pressed upon me when I decline the tea, and with apple-sauce and cake in the place of pumpkin-pie.

Soon after, I am lighting my way with a lantern through the dark to my cot in the loft, and for ten hours I sleep the sleep of a child, and awake at six in the morning to the farmer's call of "John, hey John!"

from under the window.

All of that day, which was Wednesday, was given to completing the work on the dam.

The necessary excavation was soon finished, and then we laid the timbers, and nailed the new planks into place, and filled in and packed the earth behind them.

Over the completed job the farmer expressed such a depth of satisfaction that I felt a glow of pride in the work, and a sense of proprietorship, which was splendidly compensating for the effort which it had cost.

The remaining three days of the week we spent in picking apples.

Behind the wagon-house was an orchard.

Mr. Hill first selected a tree, and then we placed under it the number of empty barrels, which, in his judgment, corresponded to its yield, a judgment which was always singularly accurate.

Then, each supplied with a half-bushel basket with a wooden hook attached to the handle, we next climbed among the branches, and suspending our baskets, we carefully picked the apples with a quick upward turn of the fruit, which detached them at the point at which the stem was fast to the twig.

Both baskets were usually full at about the same moment, and then we took turns in climbing down and receiving the baskets from the tree, and emptying the apples into the barrels with great caution against possible bruising.

All this was Arcadian in its joyous simplicity.

All day we moved among the boughs, breathing the fragrance of ripened fruit and the mellow odor of apple-trees turning at the touch of frost; picking ceaselessly the full-juiced apples "sweetened with the summer light," while above us white clouds fled briskly before the northwest wind across the clear blue of the autumn sky; and below us lay the pasture, where the patient cattle grazed, and beyond stretched open country of field and forest, which, in that crystal air, met the horizon in a clean, sharp line.

Mr. Hill and I were growing very chummy.

A faint uncomfortable distrust of me, which I suspected through the first two days, had wholly disappeared.

We talked with perfect freedom now and with a growing liking for each other, which, for me, added vastly to the charm of those six days on the farm.

I tried at first to lead the talk, and to draw Mr. Hill into expressions of his views of life, that I might learn his attitude toward modern progress, and catch glimpses of the growth of things from his point of view.

But Mr. Hill was proof against such promptings.

He was a shrewd, practical farmer, with a masterful hold upon all the details of his enterprise, and with a mind quickened by thrifty conduct of his own affairs to a catholic taste for information.

His schooling had been limited, he said, but he must have meant his actual school training; for life itself had been his school, and admirably had he improved its advantages.

He was a trained observer and a close student of actual events.

Instead of my getting him to talk, he made me talk, but with so natural a force as to rob it of all thought of compulsion.

The talk drifted early into politics, and I soon found that my light-hearted generalizations would not pass muster.

Back and back he would press me upon the data of each induction, until I was forced to tell what I knew, or was confronted with my ignorance.

And then he delighted in talk of other people than our own, and his knowledge of a somewhat general contemporaneous history was curiously varied and accurate.

Stories of succeeding English ministries, and even of the short-lived French cabinets, were ready to his use, and he tactfully righted me in my errors.

But he held me closest to my memories of things among the common people, the agricultural laborers in England, and their relation to the farmers, and theirs in turn to the landed proprietors, and the promise which the land could give of continued support to three classes, under the changed conditions of modern life.

All that I could remember of a typical laborer's home, and of its manner of life, and of the general aspect of an English farm, seemed only to whet his appetite, and to strengthen his demand for what I knew of the continental peasantry.

His interest centred strongly in the French, and there was plainly a peculiar charm for him in every detail which I could give of the French farmers, with their small holdings, and their inherited habits of thrift, and of the close culture of their lands.

But he would even lead me on to speak of great cities, and of the life in them of the rich and poor, and of any signs, of which I knew, of growing social discontent.

And with an interest that never flagged, he questioned me on works of art; and followed patiently, and with a zest that warmed one's own enthusiasm, through endless churches, and long dim galleries, and by narrow, crooked streets of a modern city to the ruins of its distant past.

And there we restored the crumbling piles, until there stood clear to his imagination a vision of Imperial Rome, and his eyes kindled to some great general's triumph moving through the _Via Sacra_, and the people swarming to the very chimney-tops, their infants in their arms, and on the air the deep, rich moving roar of high acclaim!

Sunday was the last day of my stay on the farm.

When, in the middle of the week, I found that Mr. Hill was likely to keep me, I was conscience-stricken, because I had not told him that my stay would be short.

He said nothing at first in reply to my announcement, but presently remarked that it was very hard to get men in that part of the country.

"But, surely," I said, "more men apply to you for work than you can possibly employ."

He looked at me with some wonder, at my ignorance.

"For a long time I have been looking for a man to help me," he said.

"I'm growing old, and I can't do the work that I once did.

If I could find the right man, I'd keep him the year round, and pay him good wages.

But the best young fellows go to the cities, and the rest are mostly a worthless lot.

There's hardly a day in the year when I haven't a job for any decent man who'll ask for it.

I have to go looking for men, and then I generally can't find one that's any account."

This was much the longest speech that he had made to me so far, and a very interesting one I thought it, and I am only sorry that I cannot reproduce the exact phraseology, with its Anglo-Saxon words set, by an instinctive choice, into rugged sentences which admirably expressed the man.

I waited hopefully for further speech from him, and at last it came, quite of its own accord; for I had given up trying to draw him out.

We were sitting together on Sunday evening on the platform of the pump in front of the farm-house.

It had been a very restful Sunday.

In the morning I went to the village church, where two services followed each other in quick succession.

The first was a prayer-meeting, attended by a little company of farming people and village folk, who conscientiously parted company at the door on the basis of sex, and sat on opposite sides of a central aisle.

The service was a simple one.

The leader read a passage from the Bible, and offered prayer, and then gave out a hymn.

When the singing ceased, one after another, the older men, with nervous pauses between, rose to "testify" or sank to their knees, and prayed aloud.

I chiefly remember one as a typical figure--an old man, whose thick white hair mingled with a bushy beard that covered his face.

I noticed him first in comfortable possession of a bench along which he stretched his legs.

On his feet were loose carpet-slippers; and with his shoulders braced against the wall, and his head thrown back, and his eyes closed, he looked the vision of physical ease, which matched the expression of deep contentment that he wore.

There was no suspicion of sleep about him.

Most evidently he followed with liveliest sympathy every word that was said or sung.

I looked up presently at the sound of a new voice, and found the old man on his feet.

He was adding his "testimony" to what had gone before, and was speaking rapidly in a deep, gruff voice with blunt articulation.

There was a strong reminder in the performance of a school-boy's "speaking his piece;" the monotonous, unnatural tone;

the rapid flow of conventional, committed phrase; and the nervous tension, which communicated itself to his hearers in a fear that he might forget.

But there came at length, without calamity, the final "Pray for me that I may be kept faithful," and then he knelt in prayer.

Invocations from the Prophets, and supplications from the Psalms, and glowing exhortations from the Epistles, were interwoven with strangest interpolations of his own, while his voice rose and fell in regular cadences and he audibly caught his breath between.

But he was losing himself in his devotion, and presently his voice fell to a natural tone, and his words grew plain and direct, as he held converse with the Almighty about our common life--of sin and its awful guilt, of temptation and its fateful trial, of suffering and its terrible reality, of sorrow and its cruel mystery.

Then, as though quickened by the touch of truth, his faith rose on surer wings, and his prayer breathed the sense of sin forgiven, and of life made strong by a power not our own, and of hope exultant in the knowledge "of that new life when sin shall be no more!"

A solemn stillness held us when he rose, and made us feel the presence in our common lot of things divine and that deep sacredness of life which awes us most.