Farmers of Forty Centuries Part 9

The season had been unusually dry, as had been the one before, and the people were fearing famine. Only 2.44 inches of rain had fallen at Tsingtao between the end of the preceding October and our visit, May 21st, and hundreds of such temporary wells had been or were being dug all along both sides of the two hundred and fifty miles of railway, and nearly all to be filled when the crop on the ground was irrigated, to release the land for one to follow. The homes are in villages a mile or more apart and often the holdings or rentals are scattered, separated by considerable distances, hence easy portability is the key-note in the construction of this irrigating outfit. The bucket is very light, simply a woven basket waterproofed with a paste of bean flour. The windla.s.s turns like a long spool on a single pin and the standard is a tripod with removable legs. Some wells we saw were sixteen or twenty feet deep and in these the water was raised by a cow walking straight away at the end of a rope.

The amount and distribution of rainfall in this province, as indicated by the mean of ten years' records at Tsingtao, obtained at the German Meteorological Observatory through the courtesy of Dr. B.

Meyermanns, are given in the table in which the rainfall of Madison, Wisconsin, is inserted for comparison.

Mean monthly rainfall. Mean rainfall In 10 days.

Tsingtao, Madison, Tsingtao, Madison, Inches. Inches. Inches. Inches.

January .394 1.56 .131 .520 February .240 1.50 .080 .500 March .892 2.12 .297 .707 April 1.240 2.62 .413 .840 May 1.636 3.62 .545 1.207 June 2.702 4.10 .901 1.866 July 6.637 3.90 2.212 1.300 August 5.157 3.21 1.719 1.070 September 2.448 3.15 .816 1.050 October 2.258 2.42 .753 .807 November .398 1.78 .132 .593 December .682 1.77 .227 .590 ------------ Total 24.682 31.65

While Shantung receives less than 25 inches of rain during the year, against Wisconsin's more than 31 inches, the rainfall during June, July and August in Shantung is nearly 14.5 inches, while Wisconsin receives but 11.2 inches. This greater summer rainfall, with persistent fertilization and intense management, in a warm lat.i.tude, are some of the elements permitting Shantung today to feed 38,247,900 people from an area equal to that upon which Wisconsin is yet feeding but 2,333,860. Must American agriculture ultimately feed sixteen people where it is now feeding but one? If so, correspondingly more intense and effective practices must follow, and we can neither know too well nor too early what these Old World people have been driven to do; how they have succeeded, and how we and they may improve upon their practices and lighten the human burdens by more fully utilizing physical forces and mechanical appliances.

As we pa.s.sed on to other fields we found a mother and daughter transplanting sweet potatoes on carefully fitted ridges of nearly air-dry soil in a little field, the remnant of a table on a deeply eroded hillside, Fig. 124. The husband was bringing water for moistening the soil from a deep ravine a quarter of a mile distant, carrying it on his shoulder in two buckets, Fig. 125, across an intervening gulch. He had excavated four holes at intervals up the gulch and from these, with a broken gourd dipper mended with st.i.tches, he filled his pails, bailing in succession from one to the other in regular rotation.

The daughter was transplanting. Holding the slip with its tip between thumb and fingers, a strong forward stroke plowed a furrow in the mellow, dry soil; then, with a backward movement and a downward thrust, planted the slip, firmed the soil about it, leaving a depression in which the mother poured about a pint of water from another gourd dipper. After this water had soaked away, dry earth was drawn about the slip and firmed and looser earth drawn over this, the only tools being the naked hands and dipper.

The father and mother were dressed in coa.r.s.e garb but the daughter was neatly clad, with delicate hands decorated with rings and a bracelet. Neither of the women had bound feet. There were ten in his family; and on adjacent similar areas they had small patches of wheat nearly ready for the harvest, all planted in hills, hoed, and in astonis.h.i.+ngly vigorous condition considering the extreme drought which prevailed. The potatoes were being planted under these extreme conditions in antic.i.p.ation of the rainy season which then was fully due. The summer before had been one of unusual drought, and famine was threatened. The government had recently issued an edict that no sheep should be sold from the province, fearing they might be needed for food. An old woman in one of the villages came out, as we walked through, and inquired of my interpreter if we had come to make it rain. Such was the stress under which we found these people.

One of the large farmers, owning ten acres, stated that his usual yield of wheat in good season was 160 catty per mow, equivalent to 21.3 bushels per acre. He was expecting the current season not more than one half this amount. As a fertilizer he used a prepared earth compost which we shall describe later, mixing it with the grain and sowing in the hills with the seed, applying about 5333 pounds per acre, which he valued, in our currency, at $8.60, or $3.22 per ton.

A pile of such prepared compost is seen in Fig. 126, ready to be transferred to the field. The views show with what cleanliness the yard is kept and with what care all animal waste is saved. The cow and donkey are the work team, such as was being used by the plowman referred to in Fig. 122. The mounds in the background of the lower view are graves; the fence behind the animals is made from the stems of the large millet, kaoliang, while that at the right of the donkey is made of earth, both indicative of the scarcity of lumber. The buildings, too, are thatched and their walls are of earth plastered with an earthen mortar worked up with chaff.

In another field a man plowing and fertilizing for sweet potatoes had brought to the field and laid down in piles the finely pulverized dry compost. The father was plowing; his son of sixteen years was following and scattering, from a basket, the pulverized dry compost in the bottom of the furrow. The next furrow covered the fertilizer, four turned together forming a ridge upon which the potatoes were to be planted after a second and older son had smoothed and fitted the crest with a heavy hand rake. The fertilizer was thus applied directly beneath the row, at the rate of 7400 pounds per acre, valued at $7.15, our currency, or $1.93 per ton.

We were astonished at the moist condition of the soil turned, which was such as to pack in the hand notwithstanding the extreme drought prevailing and the fact that standing water in the ground was more than eight feet below the surface. The field had been without crop and cultivated. To the question, "What yield of sweet potatoes do you expect from this piece of land?" he replied, "About 4000 catty,"

which is 440 bushels of 56 pounds per acre. The usual market price was stated to be $1.00, Mexican, per one hundred catty, making the gross value of the crop $79.49, gold, per acre. His land was valued at $60, Mexican, per mow, or $154.80 per acre, gold.

My interpreter informed me that the average well-to-do farmers in this part of Shantung own from fifteen to twenty mow of land and this amount is quite ample to provide for eight people. Such farmers usually keep two cows, two donkeys and eight or ten pigs. The less well-to-do or small farmers own two to five mow and act as superintendents for the larger farmers. Taking the largest holding, of twenty mow per family of eight people, as a basis, the density per square mile would be 1536 people, and an area of farm land equal to the state of Wisconsin would have 86,000,000 people; 21,500,000 cows; 21,500,000 donkeys and 86,000,000 swine. These observations apply to one of the most productive sections of the province, but very large areas of land in the province are not cultivable and the last census showed the total population nearly one-half of this amount. It is clear, therefore, that either very effective agricultural methods are practiced or else extreme economy is exercised. Both are true.

On this day in the fields our interpreter procured his dinner at a farm house, bringing us four boiled eggs, for which he paid at the rate of 8.3 cents of our money, but his dinner was probably included in the price. The next table gives the prices for some articles obtained by inquiry at the Tsingtao market, May 23rd, 1909, reduced to our currency.

Cents Old potatoes, per lb 2.18 New potatoes, per lb 2.87 Salted turnip, per lb .86 Onions, per lb 4.10 Radishes, bunch of 10 1.29 String beans, per lb 11.46 Cuc.u.mbers, per lb 5.78 Pears, per lb 5.73 Apricots, per lb 8.60 Pork, fresh, per lb 10.33 Fish, per lb 5.73 Eggs, per dozen 5.16

The only items which are low compared with our own prices are salted turnips, radishes and eggs. Most of the articles listed were out of season for the locality and were imported for the foreigners, turnips, radishes, pork, fish and eggs being the exceptions. Prof.

Ross informs us that he found eggs selling in Shensi at four for one cent of our money.

Our interpreter asked a compensation of one dollar, Mexican, or 43 cents, U. S. currency, per day, he furnis.h.i.+ng his own meals. The usual wage for farm labor here was $8.60, per year, with board and lodging. We have referred to the wages paid by missionaries for domestic service. As servants the Chinese are considered efficient, faithful and trustworthy. It was the custom of Mr. and Mrs. League to intrust them with the purse for marketing, feeling that they could be depended upon for the closest bargaining. Commonly, when instructed to procure a certain article, if they found the price one or two cash higher than usual they would select a cheaper subst.i.tute. If questioned as to why instructions were not followed the reply would be "Too high, no can afford."

Mrs. League recited her experience with her cook regarding his use of our kitchen appliances. After fitting the kitchen with a modern range and cooking utensils, and working with him to familiarize him with their use, she was surprised, on going into the kitchen a few days later, to find that the old Chinese stove had been set on the range and the cooking being done with the usual Chinese furniture.

When asked why he was not using the stove his reply was "Take too much fire." Nothing jars on the nerves of these people more than incurring of needless expense, extravagance in any form, or poor judgment in making purchases.

Daily we became more and more impressed by the evidence of the intense and incessant stress imposed by the dense populations of centuries, and how, under it, the laws of heredity have wrought upon the people, affecting const.i.tution, habits and character. Even the cattle and sheep have not escaped its irresistible power. Many times in this province we saw men herding flocks of twenty to thirty sheep along the narrow unfenced pathways winding through the fields, and on the grave lands. The prevailing drought had left very little green to be had from these places and yet sheep were literally brus.h.i.+ng their sides against fresh green wheat and barley, never molesting them. Time and again the flocks were stampeded into the grain by an approaching train, but immediately they returned to their places without taking a nibble. The voice of the shepherd and an occasional well aimed lump of earth only being required to bring them back to their uninviting pastures.

In Kiangsu and Chekiang provinces a line of half a dozen white goats were often seen feeding single file along the pathways, held by a cord like a string of beads, sometimes led by a child. Here, too, one of the most common sights was the water buffalo grazing unattended among the fields along the paths and ca.n.a.l banks, with crops all about, One of the most memorable shocks came to us in Chekiang, China, when we had fallen into a revery while gazing at the s.h.i.+fting landscape from the doorway of our low-down Chinese houseboat. Something in the sky and the vegetation along the ca.n.a.l bank had recalled the scenes of boyhood days and it seemed, as we looked aslant up the bank with its fringe of gra.s.s, that we were gliding along Whitewater creek through familiar meadows and that standing up would bring the old home in sight. That instant there glided into view, framed in the doorway and projected high against the tinted sky above the setting sun, a giant water buffalo standing motionless as a statue on the summit of a huge grave mound, lifted fully ten feet above the field. But in a flash this was replaced by a companion scene, and with all its beautiful setting, which had been as suddenly fixed on the memory fourteen years before in the far away Trossachs when our coach, hurriedly rounding a sharp turn in the hills, suddenly exposed a wild ox of Scotland similarly thrust against the sky from a small but isolated rocky summit, and then, outspeeding the wireless, recollection crossed two oceans and an intervening continent, bringing us back to China before a speed of five miles, per hour could move the first picture across the narrow doorway.

It was through the fields about Tsangkow that the stalwart freighters referred to, Fig. 32, pa.s.sed us on one of the paths leading from Kiaochow through unnumbered country villages, already eleven miles on their way with their wheelbarrows loaded with matches made in j.a.pan. Many of the wheelbarrow men seen in Shanghai and other cities are from Shantung families, away for employment, expecting to return. During the harvest season, too, many of these people go west and north into Manchuria seeking employment, returning to their homes in winter. Alexander Hosie, in his book on Manchuria, states that from Chefoo alone more than 20,000 Chinese laborers cross to Newchw.a.n.g every spring by steamer, others finding their way there by junks or other means, so that after the harvest season 8,000 more return by steamer to Chefoo than left that way in the spring, from which he concludes that Shantung annually supplies Manchuria with agricultural labor to the extent of 30,000 men.

About the average condition of wheat in Shantung during this dry season, and nearing maturity, is seen in Fig. 127, standing rather more than three feet high, as indicated by our umbrella between the rows. Beyond the wheat and to the right, grave mounds serrate the sky line, no hills being in sight, for we were in the broad plain built up from the sea between the two mountain islands forming the highlands of Shantung.

On May 22nd we were in the fields north of Kiaochow, some sixty miles by rail west from Tsingtao, but within the neutral zone extending thirty miles back from the high water line of the bay of the same name. Here the Germans had built a broad macadam road after the best European type but over it were pa.s.sing the vehicles of forty centuries seen in Figs. 128 and 129. It is doubtful if the resistance to travel experienced by these men on the better road was enough less than that on the old paths they had left to convince them that the cost of construction and maintenance would be worth while until vehicles and the price of labor change. It may appear strange that with a nation of so many millions and with so long a history, roads have persisted as little more than beaten foot-paths; but modern methods of transportation have remained physical impossibilities to every people until the science of the last century opened the way. Throughout their history the burdens of these people have been carried largely on foot, mostly on the feet of men, and of single men wherever the load could be advantageously divided. Animals have been supplemental burden bearers but, as with the men, they have carried the load directly on their own feet, the mode least disturbed by inequalities of road surface.

For adaptability to the worst road conditions no vehicle equals the wheelbarrow, progressing by one wheel and two feet. No vehicle is used more in China, if the carrying pole is excepted, and no wheelbarrow in the world permits so high an efficiency of human power as the Chinese, as must be clear from Figs. 32 and 61, where nearly the whole load is balanced on the axle of a high, ma.s.sive wheel with broad tire. A shoulder band from the handles of the barrow relieves the strain on the hands and, when the load or the road is heavy, men or animals may aid in drawing, or even, when the wind is favorable, it is not unusual to hoist a sail to gain propelling power. It is only in northern China, and then in the more level portions, where there are few or no ca.n.a.ls, that carts have been extensively used, but are more difficult to manage on bad roads. Most of the heavy carts, especially those in Manchuria, seen in Fig. 203, have the wheels framed rigidly to the axle which revolves with them, the bearing being in the bed of the cart. But new carts of modern type are being introduced.

In the extent of development and utilization of inland waterways no people have approached the Chinese. In the matter of land transportation they have clearly followed the line of least resistance for individual initiative, so characteristic of industrial China.

There are Government courier or postal roads which connect Peking with the most distant parts of the Empire, some twenty-one being usually enumerated. These, as far as practicable, take the shortest course, are often cut into the mountain sides and even pa.s.s through tunnels. In the plains regions these roads may be sixty to seventy-five feet wide, paved and occasionally bordered by rows of trees. In some cases, too, signal towers are erected at intervals of three miles and there are inns along the way, relay posts and stations for soldiers.

We have spoken of planting grain in rows and in hills in the row. In Fig. 130 is a field with the rows planted in pairs, the members being 16 inches apart, and together occupying 30 inches. The s.p.a.ce between each pair is also 30 inches, making five feet in all. This makes frequent hoeing practicable, which is begun early in the spring and is repeated after every rain. It also makes it possible to feed the plants when they can utilize food to the best advantage and to repeat the feeding if desirable. Besides, the ground in the wider s.p.a.ce may be fitted, fertilized and another crop planted before the first is removed. The hills alternate in the rows and are 24 to 26 inches from center to center.

The planting may be done by hand or with a drill such as that in Fig. 131, ingenious in the simple mechanism which permits planting in hills. The husbandman had just returned from the field with the drill on his shoulder when we met at the door of his village home, where he explained to us the construction and operation of the drill and permitted the photograph to be taken, but turning his face aside, not wis.h.i.+ng to represent a specific character, in the view.

In the drill there was a heavy leaden weight swinging free from a point above the s.p.a.ce between the openings leading to the respective drill feet. When planting, the operator rocks the drill from side to side, causing the weight to hang first over one and then over the other opening, thus securing alternation of hills in each pair of rows.

Counting the heads of wheat in the hill in a number of fields showed them ranging between 20 and 100, the distance between the rows and between the hills as stated above. There were always a larger number of stalks per hill where the water capacity of the soil was large, where the ground water was near the surface, and where the soil was evidently of good quality. This may have been partly the result of stooling but we have little doubt that judgment was exercised in planting, sowing less seed on the lighter soils where less moisture was available. In the piece just referred to, in the ill.u.s.tration, an average hill contained 46 stalks and the number of kernels in a head varied between 20 and 30. Taking Richardson's estimate of 12,000 kernels of wheat to the pound, this field would yield about twelve bushels of wheat per acre this unusually dry season. Our interpreter, whose parents lived near Kaomi, four stations further west, stated that in 1901, one of their best seasons, farmers there secured yields as high as 875 catty per legal mow, which is at the rate of 116 bushels per acre. Such a yield on small areas highly fertilized and carefully tilled, when the rainfall is ample or where irrigation is practiced, is quite possible and in the Kiangsu province we observed individual small fields which would certainly approach close to this figure.

Further along in our journey of the day we came upon a field where three, one of them a boy of fourteen years, were hoeing and thinning millet and maize. In China, during the hot weather, the only garment worn by the men in the field, was their trousers, and the boy had found these unnecessary, although he slipped into them while we were talking with his father. The usual yield of maize was set at 420 to 480 catty per mow, and that of millet at 600 catty, or 60 to 68.5 bushels of maize and 96 bushels of millet, of fifty pounds, per acre, and the usual price would make the gross earnings $23.48 to $26.83 per acre for the maize, and $30.96, gold, for the millet.

It was evident when walking through these fields that the fall-sowed grain was standing the drought far better than the barley planted in the spring, quite likely because of the deeper and stronger development of root system made possible by the longer period of growth, and partly because the wheat had made much of its growth utilizing water that had fallen before the barley was planted and which would have been lost from the soil through percolation and surface evaporation. Farmers here are very particular to hoe their grain, beginning in the early spring, and always after rains, thoroughly appreciating the efficiency of earth mulches. Their hoe, seen in Fig. 132, is peculiarly well adapted to its purpose, the broad blade being so hung that it draws nearly parallel with the surface, cutting shallow and permitting the soil to drop practically upon the place from which it was loosened. These hoes are made in three parts; a wooden handle, a long, strong and heavy iron socket shank, and a blade of steel. The blade is detachable and different forms and sizes of blades may be used on the same shank. The mulch-producing blades may have a cutting edge thirteen inches long and a width of nine inches.

At short intervals on either hand, along the two hundred and fifty miles of railway between Tsingtao and Tsinan, were observed many piles of earth compost distributed in the fields. One of these piles is seen in Fig. 133. They were sometimes on unplanted fields, in other cases they occurred among the growing crops soon to be harvested, or where another crop was to be planted between the rows of one already on the ground. Some of these piles were six feet high. All were built in cubical form with flat top and carefully plastered with a layer of earth mortar which sometimes cracked on drying, as seen in the ill.u.s.tration. The purpose of this careful shaping and plastering we did not learn although our interpreter stated it was to prevent the compost from being appropriated for use on adjacent fields. Such a finish would have the effect of a seal, showing if the pile had been disturbed, but we suspect other advantages are sought by the treatment, which involves so large an amount of labor.

The amount of this earth compost prepared and used annually in Shantung is large, as indicated by the cases cited, where more than five thousand pounds, in one instance, and seven thousand pounds in another, were applied per acre for one crop. When two or more crops are grown the same year on the same ground, each is fertilized, hence from three to six or more tons may be applied to each cultivated acre. The methods of preparing compost and of fertilizing in Kiangsu, Chekiang and Kw.a.n.gtung provinces have been described. In this part of Shantung, in Chihli and north in Manchuria as far as Mukden, the methods are materially different and if possible even more laborious, but clearly rational and effective. Here nearly if not all fertilizer compost is prepared in the villages and carried to the fields, however distant these may be.

Rev. T. J. League very kindly accompanied us to Chengyang on the railway, from which we walked some two miles, back to a prosperous rural village to see their methods of preparing this compost fertilizer. It was toward the close of the afternoon before we reached the village, and from all directions husbandmen were returning from the fields, some with hoes, some with plows, some with drills over their shoulders and others leading donkeys or cattle, and similar customs obtain in j.a.pan, as seen in Fig. 134.

These were mostly the younger men. When we reached the village streets the older men, all bareheaded, as were those returning from the fields, and usually with their queues tied about the crown, were visiting, enjoying their pipes of tobacco.

Opium is no longer used openly in China, unless it be permitted to some well along in years with the habit confirmed, and the growing of the poppy is prohibited. The penalties for violating the law are heavy and enforcement is said to be rigid and effective. For the first violation a fine is imposed. If convicted of a second violation the fine is heavier with imprisonment added to help the victim acquire self control, and a third conviction may bring the death penalty. The eradication of the opium scourge must prove a great blessing to China. But with the pa.s.sing of this most formidable evil, for whose infliction upon China England was largely responsible, it is a great misfortune that through the pitiless efforts of the British-American Tobacco Company her people are rapidly becoming addicted to the western tobacco habit, selfish beyond excuse, filthy beyond measure, and unsanitary in its polluting and oxygen-destroying effect upon the air all are compelled to breathe. It has already become a greater and more inexcusable burden upon mankind than opium ever was.

China, with her already overtaxed fields, can ill afford to give over an acre to the cultivation of this crop and she should prohibit the growing of tobacco as she has that of the poppy. Let her take the wise step now when she readily may, for all civilized nations will ultimately be compelled to adopt such a measure. The United States in 1902 had more than a million acres growing tobacco, and harvested 821,000,000 pounds of leaf. This leaf depleted those soils to the extent of more than twenty eight million pounds of nitrogen, twenty-nine million pounds of pota.s.sium and nearly two and a half million pounds of phosphorus, all so irrecoverably lost that even China, with her remarkable skill in saving and her infinite patience with little things, could not recover them for her soils. On a like area of field might as readily be grown twenty million bushels of wheat and if the twelve hundred million pounds of grain were all exported it would deplete the soil less than the tobacco crop in everything but phosphorus, and in this about the same. Used at home, China would return it all to one or another field. The home consumption of tobacco in the United States averaged seven pounds per capita in 1902. A like consumption for China's four hundred millions would call for 2800 million pounds of leaf. If she grew it on her fields two million acres would not suffice. Her soils would be proportionately depleted and she would be short forty million bushels of wheat; but if China continues to import her tobacco the vast sum expended can neither fertilize her fields nor feed, clothe or educate her people, yet a like sum expended in the importation of wheat would feed her hungry and enrich her soils.

In the matter of conservation of national resources here is one of the greatest opportunities open to all civilized nations. What might not be done in the United States with a fund of $57,000,000 annually, the market price of the raw tobacco leaf, and the land, the labor and the capital expended in getting the product to the men who puff, breathe and perspire the noxious product into the air everyone must breathe, and who bespatter the streets, sidewalks, the floor of every public place and conveyance, and befoul the million spittoons, smoking rooms and smoking cars, all unnecessary and should be uncalled for, but whose installation and up-keep the non-user as well as the user is forced to pay, and this in a country of, for and by the people. This costly, filthy, selfish tobacco habit should be outgrown. Let it begin in every new home, where the mother helps the father in refusing to set the example, and let its indulgence be absolutely prohibited to everyone while in public school and to all in educational inst.i.tutions.

Mr. League had been given a letter of introduction to one of the leading farmers of the village and it chanced that as we reached the entrance way to big home we were met by his son, just returning from the fields with his drill on his shoulder, and it is he standing in the ill.u.s.tration, Fig. 131, holding the letter of introduction in his hand. After we had taken this photograph and another one looking down the narrow street from the same point, we were led to the small open court of the home, perhaps forty by eighty feet, upon which all doors of the one-storied structures opened. It was dry and bare of everything green, but a row of very tall handsome trees, close relatives of our cottonwood, with trunks thirty feet to the limbs, looked down into the court over the roofs of the low thatched houses. Here we met the father and grandfather of the man with the drill, so that, with the boy carrying the baby in his arms, who had met his father in the street gateway, there were four generations of males at our conference. There were women and girls in the household but custom requires them to remain in retirement on such occasions.

A low narrow four-legged bench, not unlike our carpenter's sawhorse, five feet long, was brought into the court as a seat, which our host and we occupied in common. We had been similarly received at the home of Mrs. Wu in Chekiang province. On our right was the open doorway to the kitchen in which stood, erect and straight, the tall spare figure of the patriarch of the household, his eyes still s.h.i.+ning black but with hair and long thin straggling beard a uniform dull ashen gray. No Chinese hair, it seems, ever becomes white with age. He seemed to have a.s.sumed the duties of cook for while we were there be lighted the fire in the kitchen and was busy, but was always the final oracle on any matter of difference of opinion between the younger men regarding answers to questions. Two sleeping apartments adjoining the kitchen, through whose wide kang beds the waste heat from the cooking was conveyed, as described on page 142, completed this side of the court. On our left was the main street completely shut off by a solid earth wall as high as the eaves of the house, while in front of us, adjoining the street, was the manure midden, a compost pit six feet deep and some eight feet square. A low opening in the street wall permitted the pit to be emptied and to receive earth and stubble or refuse from the fields for composting, Against the pit and without part.i.tion, but cut off from the court, was the home of the pigs, both under a common roof continuous with a closed structure joining with the sleeping apartments, while behind us and along the alley-way by which we had entered were other dwelling and storage compartments. Thus was the large family of four generations provided with a peculiarly private open court where they could work and come out for sun and air, both, from our standards, too meagerly provided in the houses.

We had come to learn more of the methods of fertilizing practiced by these people. The manure midden was before us and the piles of earth brought in from the fields, for use in the process, were stacked in the street, where we had photographed them at the entrance, as seen in Fig. 135. There a father, with his pipe, and two boys stand at the extreme left; beyond them is a large pile of earth brought into the village and carefully stacked in the narrow street; on the other side of the street, at the corner of the first building, is a pile of partly fermented compost thrown from a pit behind the walls.

Further along in the street, on the same side, is a second large stack of soil where two boys are standing at either end and another little boy was in a near-by doorway. In front of the tree, on the left side of the street, stands a third boy, near him a small donkey and still another boy. Beyond this boy stands a third large stack of soil, while still beyond and across the way is another pile partly composted. Notwithstanding the cattle in the preceding ill.u.s.tration, the donkey, the men, the boys, the three long high stacks of soil and the two piles of compost, the ten rods of narrow street possessed a width of available travelway and a cleanliness which would appear impossible. Each farmer's household had its stack of soil in the street, and in walking through the village we pa.s.sed dozens of men turning and mixing the soil and compost, preparing it for the field.

The compost pit in front of where we sat was two-thirds filled. In it had been placed all of the manure and waste of the household and street, all stubble and waste roughage from the field, all ashes not to be applied directly and some of the soil stacked in the street.

Sufficient water was added at intervals to keep the contents completely saturated and nearly submerged, the object being to control the character of fermentation taking place.

The capacity of these compost pits is determined by the amount of land served, and the period of composting is made as long as possible, the aim being to have the fiber of all organic material completely broken down, the result being a product of the consistency of mortar.

When it is near the time for applying the compost to the field, or of feeding it to the crop, the fermented product is removed in waterproof carrying baskets to the floor of the court, to the yard, such as seen in Fig. 126, or to the street, where it is spread to dry, to be mixed with fresh soil, more ashes, and repeatedly turned and stirred to bring about complete aeration and to hasten the processes of nitrification. During all of these treatments, whether in the compost pit or on the nitrification floor, the fermenting organic matter in contact with the soil is converting plant food elements into soluble plant food substances in the form of pota.s.sium, calcium and magnesium nitrates and soluble phosphates of one or another form, perhaps of the same bases and possibly others of organic type. If there is time and favorable temperature and moisture conditions for these fermentations to take place in the soil of the field before the crop will need it, the compost may be carried direct from the pit to the field and spread broadcast, to be plowed under. Otherwise the material is worked and reworked, with more water added if necessary, until it becomes a rich complete fertilizer, allowed to become dry and then finely pulverized, sometimes using stone rollers drawn over it by cattle, the donkey or by hand. The large numbers of stacks of compost seen in the fields between Tsingtao and Tsinan were of this type and thus laboriously prepared in the villages and then transported to the fields, stacked and plastered to be ready for use at next planting.

In the early days of European history, before modern chemistry had provided the cheaper and more expeditious method of producing pota.s.sium nitrate for the manufacture of gunpowder and fireworks, much land and effort were devoted to niter-farming which was no other than a specific application of this most ancient Chinese practice and probably imported from China. While it was not until 1877 to 1879 that men of science came to know that the processes of nitrification, so indispensable to agriculture, are due to germ life, in simple justice to the plain farmers of the world, to those who through all the ages from Adam down, living close to Nature and working through her and with her, have fed the world, it should be recognized that there have been those among them who have grasped such essential, vital truths and have kept them alive in the practices of their day. And so we find it recorded in history as far back as 1686 that Judge Samuel Lewell copied upon the cover of his journal a practical man's recipe for making saltpeter beds, in which it was directed, among other things, that there should be added to it "mother of petre", meaning, in Judge Lewell's understanding, simply soil from an old niter bed, but in the mind of the man who applied the maternity prefix,--mother,--it must have meant a vital germ contained in the soil, carried with it, capable of reproducing its kind and of perpetuating its characteristic work, belonging to the same category with the old, familiar, homely germ, "mother" of vinegar. So, too, with the old cheesemaker who grasped the conception which led to the long time practice of was.h.i.+ng the walls of a new cheese factory with water from an old factory of the same type, he must have been led by a.n.a.logies of experience with things seen to realize that he was here dealing with a vital factor.

Hundreds, of course, have practiced empyrically, but some one preceded with the essential thought and we feel it is small credit to men of our time who, after ten or twenty years of technical training, having their attention directed to a something to be seen, and armed with compound microscopes which permit them to see with the physical eye the "mother of petre", arrogate to themselves the discovery of a great truth. Much more modest would it be and much more in the spirit of giving credit where credit is due to admit that, after long doubting the existence of such an ent.i.ty, we have succeeded in confirming in fullness the truth of a great discovery which belongs to an unnamed genius of the past, or perhaps to a hundred of them who, working with life's processes and familiar with them through long intimate a.s.sociation, saw in these invisible processes a.n.a.logies that revealed to them the essential truth in such fullness as to enable them to build upon it an unfailing practice.