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

A short preaching service followed.

The preacher drove up on the hour from another parish, and started off, at the meeting's end, for yet a third appointment.

This is a long digression from Mr. Hill's talk of the evening, and I have said nothing yet of the afternoon.

We took chairs out on the grass in front of the cottage, after dinner, and sat in the shade.

We soon had visitors.

Mr. Hill's brother and his wife walked up from the lower farm, and a little later there came Mr. Hill's son and his young bride.

The son is a physician, whose practice covers much of that country-side; and it was interesting to me to learn that his professional training was got at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York.

Fearful of disturbing the family gathering, I drew off a little, and gave my attention to a book.

Late in the afternoon I was roused by the coming of another guest.

He was an old neighboring farmer out in search of a heifer which had broken through the pasture-fence.

As he joined us he was speaking so swiftly and incoherently about the heifer's escape that I felt some doubt of his sanity, but he quieted down in a moment, and threw himself on the grass with the evident purpose of resting before resuming the search.

He was lying flat upon his back, and his long bony fingers were clasped under his head.

He wore no hat, nor coat, nor waistcoat, and a dark gingham shirt lay close to the sharp outlines of his almost fleshless body.

Braces that were patched with strings passed over his lean shoulders, and were made fast to faded blue jeans, whose extremities were tucked into an old pair of cowhide boots.

A long white beard rested on his breast, reaching almost to his waist.

Only a thin fringe of hair remained above his ears; and over the skull the bare skin was so tightly drawn that you could almost trace the zigzagging junctures of the frontal and the cranium bones.

But skeleton as he was, he was marvellously alive.

His eyes were aflame, and prone as he lay and resting, he impressed you as a man so vitalized, that with a single movement he could be upon his feet and in intense activity.

He was talking on about the heifer, nervously repeating to us, again and again, the details of where he had seen her last, and the rift which he had found in the fence, and how he had sent his hired man in one direction, and had gone in another himself.

He was a rich farmer, Mr. Hill told me afterward, and he lived alone, except for an occasional hired man whom he could induce to stay with him for a season.

But even in his old age he worked on his farm with the strength and endurance of three men, laying aside, year by year, his store of gain.

Without a single human tie he worked on as though spurred by every claim of affection and the highest sense of responsibility to provide for those whom he loved; and all the while a vast misanthropy grew upon him, and he would see less and less of his fellow-men, and an almost life-long scepticism hardened into downright unbelief.

So far he had not noticed me; but now he turned my way, lifting himself upon his elbow, and fixing his sunken, burning eyes on mine, while the white hairs of his beard mingled with the blades of grass.

"You're hired out to Jim, ain't ye?"

Jim was his designation of Mr. Hill.

"Yes," I said.

"What's he payin' you?"

I told him.

Mr. Hill was squirming in nervous discomfort.

"What's your name?"

I gave it him.

"Where are you come from?"

"Connecticut."

"Connecticut?

That's down South, ain't it?"

"No, that's down East."

"Was you raised there?"

I do not know into what particulars of my history and of my antecedents this process might have forced me had not the heifer come to my relief.

She was a beautiful creature, with a clean sorrel coat, and wide, liquid, mischievous eyes; and as she ran daintily over the turf at the side of the lane, saucily tossing her head, you knew that she was closely calculating every chance of dodging the gawky country boy who, breathing hard, lunged after her.

Without a word of parting, and as abruptly as he came, the old man was gone to head her off in the right direction at the mouth of the lane.

And so he disappeared, as strange a human being as the world holds, living tremendously a life of strenuous endeavor, yet Godless and hopeless and loveless in it all, except for the greedy love of gain, which holds him in miserable bondage, as he works his life away.

It was soon after supper that Mr. Hill and I sat down together on the platform of the pump.

There was little movement in the air, and it was very mild for the twenty-seventh of September.

As the stars appeared, they shone upon us through a mellow warmth, like that of summer, in which they seem magically near, and one feels their calm companionship in human things.

"And you've made up your mind to go in the morning?"

Mr. Hill began.

"Yes," I said, "I must be off.

I am truly sorry to go.

But you surprise me by what you tell me of the difficulty in the country of getting men to work.

One hears so much about 'the unemployed,' that any demand for labor, which remains unsupplied, seems to me an anomalous condition."

[A]

"That's a big question," he said, with a deep sigh, as he leant back against the pump and looked at me out of blue eyes that were gray and keen in the starlight.

"It reminds me of what we used to call a hard example in arithmetic in the district school when I was a boy.

There's a good many things you've got to take account of, if you work it out right, and there's a good many chances of mistake, and a mistake goes hard with your answer.

I haven't worked this sum and I haven't seen it worked, but I've studied it a good while, and I think I know how to do parts of it."

He paused for a moment and then went on: "In the last hundred and fifty years there have been great changes in the world in the ways of producing things--'improved methods of production' the books call it.

Some say it ain't really 'improved,' only faster and cheaper, but I'm not arguing that point.

The power of people to produce the necessaries of life is a big sight greater than it was a hundred and fifty years ago--that's my point.

It's what the books call 'increased power of production.'

And among civilized people there's been this increase of producing power in about all the forms of production.

In some forms it's been very great, and in others not so great; but I guess there ain't many kinds of business that haven't been changed by it.

"Now, I think that the farming business has lagged behind the rest.

Not that there ain't been improvement, for there's been great improvement.

There's the steam-ploughs, and the reapers, and harvesters, and mowers, and the threshing-machines; and then there's the science of agricultural chemistry.

But I'm judging of what I know of the farming business as it's carried on.

"Now, here's my farm: it's part of a tract that my great-grandfather settled on and cleared.

I've heard my grandfather tell many a time of the Indians that were all about here when he was a boy, and even my father often went hunting deer down on the lake this side of the woods.

"Well, I know this country pretty well, and I find that a farmer now don't work any bigger farm than my grandfather did, nor the work isn't much lighter, nor he doesn't get much more for it.

There's been a good many changes, but as the farming business goes, there ain't any increased production that's kept up with other kinds of business when you calculate how many farmers there are and how much they do.

"I read in a book the other day that twenty-five men, with modern machinery, can produce as much cotton cloth as the whole population of Lancashire could produce in the old way; but there ain't any twenty-five men who could work the farms of this township with all the modern farming machinery.

"Take it day in and day out the whole year round on the farms, and a man's work or a team's work is pretty much what it was a hundred years ago.

"And here's another thing that makes a great difference between farming and other kinds of business.

When I go to the city I most generally visit some factory and go through it as carefully as I can.

The machinery is interesting and wonderful, and if it's something useful they're making, I like to compare the productive power of the factory hands with what it would be if they were all working separately by the old methods.

But besides this, there's the wonderful economy that I see.

The factory is built so as to save all the carting that's possible, and there's men always studying how they can make it more convenient, and can improve the machinery and cut down the costs.

And then I don't find any leakage anywhere that can be helped; and it's most wonderful what they do in some kinds of manufacturing with what you'd think was the very refuse, working it up into some by-product that makes the difference between profit and loss in the whole business.

It's close culture of the closest kind applied to manufacture.

"Sometimes I've had a chance to talk to a superintendent of a factory, and he's told me about the business from the inside--how carefully he must study the market and how closely he must calculate a hundred things; and how exactly his books must be kept, and how easy it is for a little thing that's been miscalculated or overlooked to ruin the business.

"I tell you that I've come to see pretty clearly that the business that pays in these times of competition is a powerful lucky one and powerful well managed.

When the year's work is done and the wages have been paid, and the rent and the interest on the capital paid up, and the salaries paid to the brains that run the thing, it's a remarkable business that's got anything over in the way of profit.

"Now, the farming business, as I look at it, is a long way behind all that.

We don't know much about close culture in farming in America, and I don't believe there's one farmer in five hundred that keeps books and can tell you exactly where he stands; and these things we've got to learn.

It's terrible easy to let things go their own way pretty much--until the fences are falling down and your buildings are out of repair, and your tools are going to ruin with rust, and your children are not having good advantages.

You may think that you're too poor to afford anything different and that it's economy to live so.

But it ain't; it's the worst kind of waste.

It takes a sight of hard work, brainwork, and handwork, too, to get good, substantial buildings and fences, and tools and stock, and to keep them good and to raise your children well.

You've got to make a close calculation on every penny, but it's the only true economy.

The difference between the economy of shabbiness and the economy of thrift is the difference between waste and saving.

"My father could not give me much school learning, but he learnt me to farm it thoroughly.

I've been at it a good many years now, and I know by experience the truth of what he taught me.

If there's ever been anything more than our living at the end of the year, it's only because we all worked hard, my wife and daughter as hard in the house as me and my son on the farm; and because we studied to raise the best of everything we could, and to get the best prices we could, and we saved every penny that could be saved.

"My son wanted to study to be a doctor when he was growing up, and so I gave him the best schooling that he could get around here; and when he was old enough, and I saw his mind was made up, I sent him to the best medical college I could find.

And I've given my daughter all the schooling she's had the strength for.

It's the best economy to get the best, whether it's buildings, or tools, or stock, or education; and there's a great deal more satisfaction in it besides.

I tell you this because it's my experience, and I know it, but I owe it mainly to the raising my father gave me.

It's hard work, and it's hard study, and it's awful careful economy in little things as well as big, that makes a man succeed in any business.

"You've heard the saying that 'the luxuries of one generation are the necessities of the next.'

That's certainly true in the country.

I've heard my grandfather say that when he was a boy it didn't take more than ten dollars a year to pay for everything that the family bought.

All that they wore and ate and drank they raised on the farm, and they built their own buildings, and made their own tools, mostly, and worked out most of their taxes.

"I'm not saying that farmers must go back to that.

It ain't possible.

It's every way better now to buy your cloth than to make it, and so with your tools, and many other things; but when I see a farmer's family spend in a year for clothes and feathers and finery as much as ten families did for all they bought in the old days, and at the same time their fences are falling and their stock suffering from neglect, I see that these people don't know their business.

And when I see a farmer mortgage a piece of land to give his daughter a fashionable wedding, and then complain that there ain't a living to be made any more in farming, I'm sorry for him.

"You see, in the old days the ways of farming were primitive and simple, and the ways of living were primitive and simple, too, and they matched each other.

Now both have changed.

Farming is different, and living in the country is different.

The style of living in the country is copied from the towns, where there's been the greatest increase of producing power; and I argue that the increase of producing power on the farms hasn't by any means kept up to what it is in the cities.

"Now, this difference ain't unnatural.

Everybody knows that the big fortunes of the last hundred years have mostly been made in manufacture in the cities, and in the increase of land values in the cities, and in the development of railroads and mines.

And where the big fortunes have been made, there's been the best chances for brains and energy and enterprise.

And where brains and energy and enterprise are at work, there all kinds of labor will go, for it's these that make employment for labor.

"Now, it ain't saying anything against farmers to say that the best brains that have been born on the farms for the last hundred years haven't stayed on the farms.

The farming business hasn't had the benefit of them, but they've gone to the professions, and the business in the cities, where the most money was to be made.

"So that through all this time of 'increasing power of production' there's been a constant drain from the country of its best brains and blood, and it ain't strange that the farming business has lagged behind the others which these have gone into.

"I believe there's going to be a change.

I believe the change is begun.

Competition is so keen now in about all kinds of business, that the chances of making a fortune and making it quick are very few.

There's about so much interest to be got for your capital, and if the security is good, the interest is very low, and there's about so much to be got for your brains, unless you've got particular rare brains; and as the competition grows keener, brains begin to see that there's about as much to be made out of farming as out of other kinds of business.

Invention has done a lot already, and when the same economy and thrift and thorough business principles are used in farming as are used in other kinds of production, the farming business will soon catch up with the others.

And where the brains and enterprise and energy go, labor will soon follow; and for a time anyway, there won't be as many unemployed in the cities, nor as many farmers in the country looking for men to work.

But why are there unemployed in the cities, while there is already a demand for men in the country?

Why, because many of the unemployed ain't fit for us to take into our homes as hired men, and many don't know that there's such a chance for them, and many if they do know, would sooner starve in the cities than work and live on a farm.

I've got an idea that when the farming business is developed, there'll be a big change in country life.

Where there's plenty of brains and push and enterprise, there's likely to be excitement.

"But it's got to come naturally; you can't pump interest into country living by legislation.

I had to laugh the other day when I was reading a speech that Mr. John Morley made in Manchester, I think it was.

Anyway, he was arguing for parish councils, and he said that this 'gregarious instinct' that makes country people flock into towns that are already overcrowded, is something that we ought to counteract by making country life more interesting, and he thought that parish councils would help to do that.

Lord Salisbury got into him pretty well a short time after, when he said in a speech that he never had thought it was the duty of the government to provide amusement for the people, but if _he_ was making a suggestion in that line, he would like to recommend the circus.

"There's another reason besides the keen competition in other kinds of business that makes me think that farming is going to be brought up to the others, and that is, that so many of the colleges are teaching scientific farming.

You ain't going to see any very great result from this in a year, nor in ten years, for there's a pretty big field to work on.

But when smart young fellows that are raised in the country, and other smart young fellows that see a good chance to make something at farming--when they all get a thorough training in scientific farming, and when they all get down to work, just as they would in some other highly developed form of production, you will see results.

There won't be much in shiftless farming when the scientific kind pretty generally sets the pace.

"I've read a good deal, of late years, about 'organized charities' in the cities, and it certainly does seem as if charity was a good deal more sensible than it used to be.

It's hard to see how there can be any kind of serious destitution in the cities that ain't got some society to relieve it.

And the rich in the cities do certainly spend a powerful lot of time and work and money in keeping up these charities and amusements for the poor; but I don't see any signs that the poor love the rich any more, nor that there's any less danger but that some day they'll rise up in war against society.

"It seems to me that a good deal of all this time, and labor, and money, and a good deal more besides, might be better spent in providing that no child among the poor grows up without proper education, technical education in useful trades; especially, I think, in scientific farming.

"If the rich lived simpler and less showy, the poor wouldn't envy them as much, nor feel as bitter against society, and the money that was saved could be pretty well invested in kinds of education that would cure poverty and destitution by preventing them, and the people that would be thrown out of work by the economies of the rich might be a good deal better employed in more productive work.

It seems a pity, anyway, to keep people at practically useless labor, when the brains and the money that keep them employed in that way might be used in keeping them at productive labor, and it's all the greater pity as long as there's bitter want in the world for the necessaries of life."

This, in substance, is what he said.

I apologize for the injustice of the account, its vagueness in contrast with his clearness, its circumlocutions in contrast with his crisp sententiousness, its weakened renderings of his vigorous forms of native speech; but I have tried to suggest it all, and to give the sense of its manly, wholesome spirit.

Under the stars we sat talking until nearly midnight, and, quite inevitably, we launched upon the subject of religion.

Mr. Hill appeared curiously apathetic, I thought, as I urged what seemed to me vital.

And when, at the end, he narrowed it all to the single inquiry as to whether I believed in a real recognition in some future life among those who have loved one another here, I found myself wondering, with a feeling of disappointment, at so wide a drift from essentials, on the part of a mind which had impressed me as so natively clear and strong.

I looked up in my surprise.

Even in the starlight I could see the tears, and from a single halting sentence, I got the hint of a daughter dead in early childhood, and of a sorrow too deep for human speech, and of an eager questioning of the future that was the soul's one great desire.

"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face; now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known," was all that I could say to him, and I went to bed pitying myself for my shallow judgment, and my ignorance of life.

FOOTNOTE:

[A] I have presented here, together with ideas advanced by Mr. Hill, others secured in fragmentary conversations with various farmers by the way.

These ideas seem to me to represent a body of accordant thinking.

It is fair to say that I also found among the farmers quite another school of thought.

This I shall try to present later with equal fulness.

CHAPTER VI IN A LOGGING CAMP