Village Improvements And Farm Villages Part 7

After the "ch.o.r.es" are done, and a hearty and substantial supper is eaten,--the princ.i.p.al meal of the day,--all hands will be too weary for much enjoyment of the evening, but not so weary that they will not appreciate the difference between the lounging places of a village and the former dulness at the farm. Other farmers in the neighborhood will, many of them, also be milk producers; and, as the stables are near together, they will naturally co-operate, sending their milk to market with a single team, employing the services of a single man in the place of five or six men and teams heretofore needed to market the same milk.

I have recently received an account of this sort of co-operation, where the cost of selling was reduced to a fraction over eight cents for each hundred quarts.

This arrangement will have the still further benefit of allowing the farmer to remain at home and attend to his more important work, leaving the detail of marketing to be done by a person especially qualified for it and therefore able to do it more cheaply than he could do it in person. During the working season there will be enough rainy weather to allow the work of the stable, the barnyard, and the woodshed to be properly attended to. There will of course be sudden showers and occasional storms, and other inconveniences, which will make the farmer regret at times that he lives at such a distance from his field work; but he will find more than compensation in the advantages that come naturally from living in a village.

For his wife and children the improvement will be absolute; and it will be no slight argument in favor of the change, that both in doors and out of doors a better cla.s.s of servants will be available, because of the better life that can be offered. It will be easier to secure the services of laborers who are married and who live in their own houses, and so avoid the serious annoyance to the household that attends the boarding of hired men.

To make this radical change in any farming neighborhood as at present const.i.tuted, would be impracticable. It would probably take a generation to convince the farmers of a community of its advantages; it would cost too much, even if not entirely impracticable, to move the house and stables to the central point; and it would involve such a change of habits of labor and of living as must necessarily be the work of time.

However, if the principle commends itself to the leading men of the neighborhood, and especially to young men about to marry, the nucleus of a village may be established, and sooner or later the present or the coming generation will find a way to come into the fold.

If we a.s.sume that by this or some other means the more intelligent of the young men are induced to remain farmers, it is interesting to consider in what way their greater intelligence is to be made to tell on their work so as to secure the necessary improvement. It would not be unreasonable to suppose that young men of the cla.s.s we have in mind, those who now seek occupations which afford a better field for their intelligence, and who seek them because of their intelligence, would establish such centres of discussion and interest in improved farming as would not only mitigate the worthless gossip now so common at the country store, but would awaken a real enthusiasm in better processes and systems.

Not only would there be this tendency toward improvement; but where farmers are close neighbors, and are able to conduct their interests in such a way as to help each other, there would naturally grow up some sort of co-operative business. By the establishment of a b.u.t.ter-factory or cheese-factory, or by the common owners.h.i.+p of a milk-route, or where tobacco is grown by the undertaking of its manufacture as an employment for winter, or by the raising of honey or of poultry, or by the establishment of some valuable breed of live stock with a reputation for excellence that will cause it to be sought for from abroad, or by some other combination, they would secure profitable business.

Of course all the farmers in New England cannot within the next ten years move into villages; but what is suggested is that the farmers of some one community should try the experiment. Their success might induce others to follow the example; and little by little, in proportion to the promise of a good result, more and more would seek the advantages which the system would offer, so that sooner or later the benefits which are now experienced in village life in Europe might be felt here in the higher degree which greater intelligence and greater freedom would be sure to produce.

While advancing these suggestions, with much confidence in their practical value, I would by no means confine the outlook for Eastern farming to this single road to success. Co-operative industry may be largely adopted among farmers living at some distance from each other.

The cheese-factory has become an inst.i.tution. The better quality of the product when made in large quant.i.ties, and the better price that its quality and the improved system for marketing have secured, const.i.tute a very decided success in our agriculture. b.u.t.ter-factories are coming into vogue with a promise of equally good results.

A very good subst.i.tute for the co-operative management of a milk route is in very general adoption throughout New England, where some single farmer who devotes himself to selling milk buys the product of his neighbor's dairies for a certain fixed price, taking upon himself the labor, the risk, and the profit of marketing. The co-operative breeding of live stock cannot as yet be said to have become well established, but its possibilities of success are considerable. A community can afford to buy and keep a thorough-bred horse, or bull, or boar, or buck, which would cost far too much for the means of a single owner, and thus gradually give to the stock of the whole neighborhood a superiority that will secure it a wide-spread reputation and insure good prices. Let us keep always in view the important principle of making two blades of gra.s.s grow where but one grew before; but let us remit no effort which may tend to make one blade worth what two were worth before.

Incidentally, there may be combinations to secure good outlet drainage for tracts of land belonging to different owners, and later a provision for the general irrigation of these lands.

It is not to be hoped, that, either as a whole or in its details, agricultural improvement is to be advanced with any thing like a rush.

Farmers are generally "conservative" in the worst sense of the term.

They have during the past generation adopted many improvements and modifications in the methods of their work, the mere suggestion of which would have been scouted by their fathers; but they are themselves as ready as their fathers were to scout any further new suggestion, and it is only by iteration and reiteration that the shorter steps of tentative experiment can be urged upon their acceptance.

In reviewing what is written above, the thought arises that the one impression that it will surely produce will be that its writer fails to appreciate the better influences that cl.u.s.ter around the better cla.s.s of farmers' homes. Such an inference would be quite unjust. Knowing as I do the intrinsic worth and the charming qualities of very many of these households, I appeal to the best of the thoughtful men and women whom they include, to confirm my statement that they find many elements of their life to be pinching and hard, and that however admirable they may now be, they would be in no way injured, but in many ways improved, by more frequent intercourse with their equals, and especially with their betters.

That the picture I have sketched of the average farmer's family is not overdrawn, I appeal to every country clergyman and physician to bear witness. The truths suggested are patent to all. They are set forth in no spirit of hypercriticism, and with no other view than to help to ameliorate the condition of those to whom they refer. Knowing the farmer more intimately than does the average editor or orator, I am confident that my estimate of his character and of his life will strike him as being more just, if not more honest.