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A LITTLE LAND
AND A LIVING

mrATITLE LAND
AND A LIVING

BY

BOLTON HALL

Author of ‘‘ THREE Acres AND LiBerty,” ‘‘ THINGS
aS THEY Are,’’ ‘‘ FREE AMERICA,”
ELC, ETC:

WITH A LETTER
AS AN INTRODUCTION
BY

WILLIAM BORSODI

Introduction to Fourth Edition by
JOSEPH FELLS

NEW YORK
THE ARCADIA PRESS
1909

FOREWORD

NTEREST in the “little lands” from which
men may make a living continues to grow
and spread. A money panic does more than
scare people—it sets them thinking how they can
protect themselves against a recurrence of this
thing. That necessarily turns their thoughts to
the land as the source of wealth and indepen-
dence. It is because of this growing desire on
the part of the people to know what can be done
with small areas, that the author has written this
book. Every chapter has been submitted to some
expert for correction and revision, and the author
gladly acknowledges indebtedness to Mr. George
T. Powell, President of the Agricultural Ex-
perts Association; Professor W. G. Johnson, of
the Orange Judd Co.; Mr. R. F. Powell, Super-
intendent of the Philadelphia Vacant Lots As-
sociation; Miss Kate Sanborn, Mr. Howard

FOREWORD

Goldsmith, of the Suffolk Farms Co.; Mr. Sam-
uel Milliken, and others for valuable aid and
suggestions. The footnotes give credit to other
sources of information.

The reception accorded by press and public to
my book, Three Acres and Liberty, which Mac-
millan published a year ago, was a pleasing proof
of the interest already awakened in this matter.
Six editions of that book have been issued, and
indications are that others will follow.

But no one volume could begin to exhaust
so fruitful a subject, and the readers of Three
Acres and Liberty will not find A Little Land
and a Living in any sense a repetition of its
predecessor. The reasons for its publication at
this time are numerous and cogent, many of
them being set forth in Mr. Borsodi’s letter,
which follows this foreword. Others may wisely
be left to its readers to infer.

Those who are facing the problem of rearing
a family on a weekly wage, with the purchasing
power of the dollar decreasing, will find much
in this book to encourage them to reach out for
a better, saner living, through cultivating the lit-
tle lands. ‘

FOREWORD

Those who know most of farming believe that
it is only a question of once learning what to
do and how to do it, to draw many of the city
workers to the outlying lands. This A Little
Land and a Living aims to do; not to induce
the unfamiliar to rush headlong into farming,
but to encourage those who feel the pressure of
city life to study how they may get away from
the overcrowded city into nearby country, where
the gardens may first be made an adjunct to the
income and later, perhaps, prove the source of
the income.

Mr. George T. Powell writes:

“You have brought together many facts and
information that should be helpful and be an
aid to many who, for the want of specific infor-
mation, do not realize what they might do on a
small land-holding.

“If there could be lectures given on this sub-
ject in the tenement districts it would be of spe-
cial value. I advocated this in a lecture at the
United Charities Building on ‘How to Help
the City Poor to Get Out to the Land.’

“They do need specific instruction, first, where

FOREWORD

they are, and should then be given some aid in
reaching cheap land, so that they might make a
start. I believe that if a regular course of in-
struction of the simple, plain kind could be given
in these parts of the city it would be of real
value.”

That is sound sense.
BOLTON HALL.

CONTENTS

“A Lirrtz Lanp ann a Livine” . . . . .Frontispiece

PAGE

Tue Lerrer THat Prompren THis Book WRITTEN TO THE
AvurHor By Wituiam Borsopl .....-.- 17

A Many-Sided Problem of International Scope—How
Poverty, Insanity, Vice, Might Have Been Prevented—
. Objections to the Cry ‘‘ Back to the Farm ’’—You Show
How to Make Farm Life Pay—Does the City Give Com-
fort?—The Curse of ‘‘ Credit ’’—Where ‘‘ Home”’ is Not
“Sweet Home’’—No ‘“ Sweetness and Light’ Here—
*““Oh, the Cold and Cruel Winter’’—Waiting for Jobs
That Do Not Come—‘‘ The Bread Line’’ and Other
Lines—The Misery Seen in Missions—‘‘ Three Acres’”’
Would Mean “ Liberty ’’—City Amusements and Other
“Elevating ’’ Things—Statistics That Give False Im-
pressions—The Improvidency of the Poor—Dire Neces-
sity—‘‘ The Great White Way” as Seen by Rich and
Poor—The Dance Halls and the Street—No Real Suffer-
ing and Destitution on Farms—The Educated and Inex-
perienced Adapted for Agriculture—Scope for ‘‘ Knowl-
edge Learned of Schools ’’—Toil and Payment of Farm
Life—The World’s Ideal Farming Country—<Agricul-
ture’s Golden Age—Independence in Agriculture—Land
Enough for a Living—One Point of Honest Difference—
Who Should Go Back to the Farms?—Who Would Bene-
fit by Such a Movement?—Semi-Agricultural Colonies
—Other Letters from Railroad Men—A Pleasing Ten-
dency—What I Have Done—Write a New Book—The
Cause and the Remedy—Foreigners Live More Cheaply
—Concerted Action Necessary—Many Men of Many
Minds—The Real Hope.

CHAPTER I
Lire Not Merety Maxine a Lavine . . 2. 2 © © « 7

Opportunities Past and Present—Chances Lost—New
Chance—Intelligence—Slums a Symptom—tThe Origin of
Wealth—Capital—An Acre Enough—Possibilities—Thor-
oughness — Available Land— New Methods — Intensive
Farming—Trucking—Dairying—How They Do in Japan
~—Denmark—Jersey—We Can Do Better.

10 | CONTENTS
CHAPTER II

BUREN GEAR GARTEN} c, . cern ist nants Mise a See cite heels atom

Ownership—Sourees of Information—Agents—Where
Not to Go—Fertility Secondary—Soil Never Barren—
What to Buy—Run-down Farms—Cheapness Relative—
Where to Buy—How to Buy—Don’t Fear Debt—Bor-
rowing Money—Insurance—The Monopoly—Unproduct-
ive Lots—Use and ‘‘Improvements’’—Make Unused
Land Pay—To Buy or to Build.

CHAPTER III

WACANT UOT GARDENING ©). 0).2hre0 bees die shea 4c) eee

Charity vs. Self-Help—Opportunities—Assistance—Co-
operation—Little Government Needed—Cost—Health and
Success—A Variety of Returns—One-half Acre—Large
Profits—Land, not Capital, Necessary.

CHAPTER IV

REASONABLE ProsPEcts SP Bey aver ET eM UR sss f fy! LORE:

Living Costly—Hunger—Value of Food Products—What
a Man Wants to Know—Fortune in an Acre—Stony
Wold Record—Old Methods—New Methods—Acre Profits
—Irrigated—Shearer’s Success—O’Brien’s—Hartman’s—
Small Gardens—A Woman’s Patch—A 40x50 Garden—
A City Backyard—Five Cents per Square Foot—Glade
Lands—An Illinois Plot—A Michigan Experiment—
Farmers as Robbers—Youthful Gardeners—With Brains—
Average Yields—Census Reports—What Averages Imply
—Bailey’s Estimate—Philadelphia Gardens—Uncommon
Vegetables—Other Callings Similar—Scientific Farming
—The Farmer’s Returns—What Could Be Made—What

He Makes.
CHAPTER V

TRECORT: *KIELDS )i7il ete foresee ee et Pear Preece) Lay, gree ae RnR

Possibilities—Production and Cost—A Standard—Rec-
ords—A Garden for Five—School Gardens—Small Plots
—Yields of ‘‘ Poor’’ Soil—Celery—Texas Onions—Corn
Record—Strawberry Yields—Rhubarb—Christmas Trade
—A House-Cellar Patech—Forcing Cellar—Onions by New
Culture—Asparagus.

CHAPTER VI

WIAs: OF UWORKING:! (23.0250 orgies eee cate oa eee ea

The Home Garden—First—Working the Soil—A Begin-
ner’s Garden—Save Labor—Fruit—Planting and Trans-
planting—One Crop Risky—Companion_Cropping—Spe-
cialties—Marketing—Succession Crops—Deepening Culti-
vation—Subsoiling—Soil Enriches Itself—Insects Smoth-
ered by Ashes—Winter Plowing to Kill—Spraying—Fer-
tilizers — Irrigation — Drainage — Dry Farming — Fancy
Packing.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER VII

Monky AND. [ime REQUIRED :4.°) <2 veka feels coe eth

The Teacher of Fools—Success—Failure—‘‘ Think-box ’’
Secrets—Large Capital Not Needed—Specialties as
Money-Makers—The Value of Money—Equipment—Out-
lay and Income—Five-Acre Investment—Ten Acres
Costly—Cost of Starting—Union Wages in Different
Cities—Hand vs. Horse Cultivation—Crops Every. Month
—The Condition of the Farmer.

CHAPTER VIII

GROWENG VUINDER. (GEASS) 9 /.Tecoy COCs Goa ceyt ied oleae

Early Vegetables—A Sample Hot-bed—Heating by Fire
—Cost and Returns—Flowers Better Than Vegetables—
Greenhouses—Success.

CHAPTER IX

PACNANEATIN FONE PIORORTT trot bie eh ee cei utes, vis) lea wee eve

Animals on the Farm—A Snail Park—Frogs—Turtles—
Bass—Pheasants—Dogs—Cats—Silver Foxes—Expenses
and Receipts—The Busy Bee.

CHAPTER X

UAT COWEN GMM Tse ERY chN esp RR. clon re, haus Lohincel, eho vie te celgedes

American Supremacy—Development—Improvement—Ap-
ples, Quality, Thinning—Peaches—Chances of Success—
Protecting Grapes—Pears—Plums—Quinces—Cherries—
Persimmons—Small Fruit—Extra Culture—Strawberries
—Bush Fruit—Exceptional Returns.

CHAPTER XI

PREC E EUR E eee Wc et. Re rel viele oi ik et laf rixtetniey ive) olen. 4

The Market—Violets—Greenhouses—Diseases—Roses—
Chrysanthemums—Poppies—Flowers in the _ Street—
Sweet Peas and Wild Flowers—Orchids—Plants for
Renting—Floriculture.

CHAPTER XII

ESTEDUNG TE ROU Erne eee ATs Rese ieee, Loom ey «beeen ts

Clearing the Land—Lumbermen Buy—Profitable Trees—
Building a Home—‘‘ Hickory Bungalow ’’—Portable
Dwellings—Remodeled Buildings—Comfortable Cabins—
Water Supply.

187

194

211

227

237

13 CONTENTS
CHAPTER XIII

PAGE
Go-OPERATION IN. OPERATION (icp ties ele en istlevese bane fe) eee
Toil Without Reward—‘‘ Back to the Land’’—How to
Get Land—Co-operation—Man’s Natural Job—Organiza-
tion—In Europe—In America—Fellowship Farm—The
Arden Colony—Farming a Business—Changes Imminent.
CHAPTER XIV
To.) “Spann SAN TEARIUME AW OBR ich tyetean es tees tre ae sera cen te
Outdoor Life Effective—Dr. Trudeau’s Plan—Bad Con-
ditions—Convalescents Work—The Earth for Men—Lo-
action Important—The Superintendent’s Value—The
Money Needed—Supplementary Industries—Preserving,
Baking, Selling, etc.—Start Now.
CHAPTER XV
rE: IPRORESSION, (OF AAR MING) vslu ect acs ce, Mel iis a-tet pal ieee

Agriculture, Past and Future—The Average Farmer—
The Boy and the Garden—The Trained Farmer—Salaries
Await Him—Fresh Discoveries—Fields for Investigation
—Grown from the Best—The Profit of the Earth—Mon-
opoly Conditions—The Value of the Farm—How to Pro-
ceed—The Aim of This Book.

INTRODUCTION
TO THE THIRD EDITION

AVING seen the independence, health, education
and prosperity that come from free direct use of
land, I ordered a Jarge number of the first edition

of “ A Little Land and a Living ” sent to a list of leading
moulders of public opinion. Although I had not at that
time read the book, I knew that Mr. Hall saw “the Land
Question ” and would bring it out in theory as well as
in the practice of those who might be induced to get back
to the land.

The effect of the book, if I am to judge of its reception
by the press, from the letters that I have had, and from
the reports of those who have availed themselves of its
instruction, has more than justified the expenditure.

The natural thing would be to have our cities sur-
rounded by small homes, each with its bit of garden; be-
yond that the truck farms; beyond that the pasture lands,
and beyond that again the forest and the wilderness.
Instead of this, our crazy system of taxation gives us wil-
dernesses in the heart of the city, the workers piled one
on top of the other in tenements, and the farmer usually
pushed to outlying lands where the difficulties and disad-

vantages of living are greatly increased.

INTRODUCTION 14
TO THE THIRD EDITION

The immediate remedy for this is to show how land can
be used to produce a living and how land alone is neces-
sary that men may live. To learn how to use such lands
as are available near the cities is a long step to this end,
and if all the little lands were furnishing a living for some
one, we would be able to accommodate in our country hun-
dreds of millions more than the eighty millions that we
now think of as overcrowding us.

I have made a beginning of this practical teaching at
our Mayland, near Southminster, England, which is be-
coming a model village, with small or intensive cultivators
predominating. There is growing there an open air school,
and consequently an object lesson to the grown people
throughout the county and the country. The establishment
of this new type of school for children means that when
the children come to an age for selecting their occupa-
tion they will probably turn to land cultivation, with a
better chance of success than their fathers.

I believe in catching the farmer when he is young. We
must give the child an education under the right auspices
if we are to continue to keep his interest in the land. I
hope that in future the greater part of the people in the
country will continue to live in the country, but we have
got to show them the advantage of doing so. Where the
school comes in is this: We cannot well take the children

of farmers and smal] cultivators, who are used to an out-

15 INTRODUCTION
TO THE THIRD EDITION

door life, and imprison them within the close walls of a
school for the greater part of a day, if we hope to retain
their health while we instruct them. The new school is
simply giving facilities for teaching in the open air what
is taught at present in a closed building. That is of course
when the weather permits, though at Mayland we shall
have a building protected from the weather, to be used
when it is too cold or too wet for outside work. There
will be sheds, however, in which the children even then
will spend most of their school time. In connection with
the school there will be a bath-pool. That is to keep them
clean outside, while we fill them with knowledge inside.
I have simply applied to the county to provide the ordinary
teaching staff and equip a larger school. I am going to
provide the bath, and skilled teachers for the purpose of
giving the children good school garden instruction.

Mr. Hall has warned his readers against thinking that a
living on the land can be had without both careful and
intelligent work and thought. He has given instances of
extraordinary yields and even of average crops with a cau-
tion that these results may be repeated, but that they can
be repeated only through work of hands and head; never-
theless these points can hardly be over-emphasized. The
dunce and the sluggard are less likely to starve in the
country than in the city, but they are just as unlikely to

secure a competence.

INTRODUCTION 16
TO THE THIRD EDITION

In “A Little Land and a Living” Mr. Hall has shown
the principles which must be mastered in order to secure
a living from the land, and in “ Money Making in Free
America ”’ he has shown the principles with which one
must master, either consciously or unconsciously, in order

to secure a great fortune.
JosEPH FELs.
PHILADELPHIA.

By Way of Introduction

THE LETTER

THAT PROMPTED

THIS BOOK

Written to the Authos

BY

WILLIAM BORSODI

My Dear Mr. Hall:

In making myself acquainted with your
book, “'Three Acres and Liberty,” I have done
a great deal more than just fingering it. I am
convinced that this work will fill a pronounced
want and become, in its line, an epoch-maker.

I thank you for referring to me in your auto-
graph introduction as your “co-worker.” You
certainly hit the nail on the head. So far as
concerns the desire of getting the people back
to the farm, I am your “ forerunner,” and noth-
ing would make me happier than to be your
“co-worker” in a practical way and to see
crowds taking advantage of the proposition your
book so ably puts before them. If I were
wealthy I would circulate this book broadcast.
The needy would profit by its suggestions, and
I should feel amply repaid for the money ex-
pended.

More than thirty-five years ago, I started to
think and to reflect. Since then, naturally, I

A LITTLE LAND 20
AND A LIVING

have found out my early mistakes. I was at-
tracted for the most part of that long period by
the teachings of our conservative, reactionary,
liberal Henry George, and even “my ” own sa-
cred “ policies” and ideas attracted me. Social-
ism in Germany is very good; anarchism in Rus-
sia is not a bit less good, but these “isms” are
not good everywhere, nor are they good for all
the time. There are other remedies and policies
for the alleviation of the degrading social con-
ditions that confront us everywhere; but there is
one which is as efficient now as ever, in every
land, in all places and at all times—farm life.

A MANY-SIDED PROBLEM OF INTERNATIONAL
SCOPE.

I have in mind a problem, complicated and
far-reaching in its being and influence, because
it vitally concerns every large city of all coun-
tries; a problem of international scope—the
over-crowding of large cities with unadaptable
laborers, all seeking a livelihood where the oppor-
tunities don’t increase in proportion. And as
soon as practical methods expedite the solution
of this many-sided problem, the lives and des-

21 THE LETTER THAT

PROMPTED THIS BOOK
tinies of millions of working men, women and
children now living only half-lives will be en-
larged and improved.

HOW POVERTY, INSANITY, VICE, MIGHT HAVE
BEEN PREVENTED.

In all countries and climates I have found
that all people would benefit to a surprising de-
gree by keeping close to the land, and that thou-
sands of those now in the hospitals, lunatic
asylums and penitentiaries, or who are living in
abject poverty, or on the borders of that state,
could have kept in healthful conditions had they
gone back to the land in good time and remained
there.

OBJECTIONS TO THE CRY “BACK TO THE FARM.”

Mine is not a mere judgment or opinion based
on a moment’s observation or consideration. I
have spoken with all classes and grades—the
“under dogs,” the middlemen, professional men,
statesmen, philanthropists and sociologists, so-
cialists and retired farmers, and even with poli-
ticians, only to find that the majority of them
have something against the “ back to the farm”

A LITTLE LAND 22
AND A LIVING

proposition. The preponderance of opinion is
that while it is desirable to own a plot of land
and a home, farming does not pay, and that you
cannot keep the people on the farm once their
“ambitions” are aroused by the alluring so-
called “ opportunities ” of the city, and that you
cannot induce them to go back to the farm again
after a taste of city life, however disagreeable.

YOU SHOW HOW TO MAKE FARM LIFE PAY.

Your book proves that farm life does pay.
If the city dweller can be made to see this and
to realize what a small percentage city life pays,
it will be easy to arouse sufficient interest in a
movement which will eventually bring us to
heaithful conditions and to a race that will feel
content on the farm. Money-making attracts
every one; those with much money, yet want
more; those with some, wish to increase it; and
those with little or none are ever in a maelstrom
of passion for money. Certainly it would at-
tract a large number of those who now shovel
snow for the mere purpose of self-preservation,
and those of starved physiques, who can only

93 THE LETTER THAT

PROMPTED THIS BOOK
look on while the world moves, and others whose
life is incessant toil with practically nothing to
show for it but ill health, a wife and children in
stuffy and gloomy half-furnished, broken down
boxes of flats in “houses ”’ where twenty to forty
families live in similar circumstances.

DOES THE CITY GIVE COMFORT?

New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and prac-
tically every large city in the United States, are
the scenes of heart-rending struggles for exist-
ence. Not only in our country, but in every
country is this so. It is only at our own doors
that such scenes strike our sympathies and
awaken our pity, and bring to our face a glow
of shame that such is the living of millions of
our countrymen.

Take a trip through the “living”’ sections of
our large cities—not only the slums and sections
where foreigners herd together like so many cat-
tle. I mean the homes of the poor American
bred or the naturalized Americans, be they Irish,
Scotch, English, German, Italian, or what not—
those who are making the United States what

A LITTLE LAND 24
AND A LIVING

it is; the toilers, proud to call themselves Ameri-
cans. Yes, take a trip down any of those ave-
nues or through those streets—they are found
everywhere. Look into the apartments through
the dilapidated shutters, you will see all that is
necessary. You go by hundreds of houses not
properly protected by the windows against cold,
nor against the burning sun in summer. The
landlord gets “only” enough to pay his taxes,
to make only absolutely necessary repairs on the
buildings—more to protect the property from
dilapidation than to give comfort to the tenants
—and for a few incidentals, so he cannot afford
to keep them in good shape. In most cases you
will be shocked by the scanty and broken-down
furnishings that fill these rooms; or, if the fur-
nishings are in any way respectable-looking, you
are safe in believing them to be the outfit of
some instalment house, on whose basis many of
the tenants of three or four rooms furnish their
homes.

THE CURSE OF “CREDIT”

There are hundreds of these house-furnishing
firms selling on credit in New York and other

25 THE LETTER THAT

PROMPTED THIS BOOK
cities. Some of these houses carry thousands
of such accounts, so you can judge for yourself
how many persons are sleeping on what the mar-
shal may take away in the morning because four
weeks’ instalments of fifty cents or a dollar are
in arrears.

WHERE “HOME” IS NOT “SWEET HOME.”

During the summer their houses are prac-
tically untenantable. In the evenings you will
find the occupants sitting in the streets, on the
roofs, in the parks, or in other places more at-
tractive to the body and soul. “ There’s no place
like home” is a farce to more than 75 per cent.
of the inhabitants of every large city.

Has it not come to a bad pass when cities
like New York or Chicago and others have to
grant special permission for the millions of ten-
ement dwellers to utilize the public parks and
piers and playgrounds as lodging houses, be-
cause their homes are so stifling during the dog
days as to make it a torture for a human being
to sleep in them? Is it not as revolting to see
families sleeping on fire-escapes and roofs in

A LITTLE LAND 26
AND A LIVING

summer; or in winter to read of persons freezing
to death in the streets and even in their scanty,
ill-protected houses? Or to listen to the thou-
sand appeals from as many charitable organiza-
tions and institutions, calling for aid in the re-
lief of the untold misery of the poor, all the
year round?

NO “SWEETNESS AND LIGHT” HERE.

Picture the “happy homes” of hundreds of
thousands of poor, who live in dilapidated struc-
tures that occupy the space needed for ventila-
tion and light—the back yards. Thus sand-
wiched in they are surrounded on all sides by
higher houses, shut off from sunlight all day,
their only view of the outside world being the
back windows of the flats of families little better
situated than themselves; their avenue of en-
trance into their little world being a dark,
gloomy, foul alley, often used as a refuse dump.
There is where you can also see hard-working
Americans “living ”—freezing well-nigh to
death in winter and fairly roasting alive in sum-
mer! And these are the people who are the first

Qn THE LETTER THAT

PROMPTED THIS BOOK
objects of charity if the man of the house be
out of work. They live without thought of the
morrow; they cannot do otherwise, for their in-
come hardly covers living expenses. There is
where the children, if they survive, are compelled
to help out by working in factories at an early
age, stunting their youth, undermining their
health, and befitting themselves for only the
meanest sort of labor in after years.

“OH, THE COLD AND CRUEL WINTER!”

This winter proved to be one of the severest
in misery for the poor and unemployed—every
winter is, more or less, But this year’s scenes of
misery were more pronounced. Everywhere
workers were cast out, the army of street beg-
gars and vagrants and fakirs increased appar-
ently an hundredfold, and the free municipal
and mission lodging houses, not counting the
five, ten and fifteen cent varieties, turned away
thousands of men and women, whose only
refuge from the cold and storms were alleys,
doorways, vacant lots and unused trucks. In
Pittsburg a conservative observer estimated the

A LITTLE LAND 28
AND A LIVING

unemployed alone at 15,000; in Chicago 75,000,
while here in New York it was reported that
90,000 members of organized labor were without
jobs and that there were 30,000 vagrants.

WAITING FOR JOBS THAT DO NOT COME.

At the time the mercury was at its lowest, I
happened to pass along Union Square early in
the morning, plowing my way through several
inches of snow, which had fallen the night be-
fore. I noticed on one corner a group of four
poorly-clad men, hands stuffed deep into pock-
ets, while they shivered and _ shivered, nose,
cheeks and lips blue and purple from the cold.
From what I could see they were trying to
secure work at shoveling snow. ‘Three hours
later, returning down-town, I passed the same
group—still waiting for the “ job.”

“THE BREAD LINE” AND OTHER LINES.

The old bread line at midnight in New York
is a favorite topic of the writer on sociological
subjects, but such strings of workless and
starved beings were to be seen everywhere. I
saw a new kind of a line after the big snow-

29 THE LETTER THAT

PROMPTED THIS BOOK
storm. I glanced along it and saw that it ex-
tended fully a block. Every man in that line
was waiting to get the few dollars, or few cents,
he was entitled to for his share in cleaning away
the snow. Such frost-bitten, hungry looking in-
dividuals it has not been my lot to look upon in
years.

THE MISERY SEEN IN MISSIONS.

Still another picture of the “ abounding com-
forts” of the big city was to be seen here in
the Metropolis, and photographs of it have
been scattered far and wide by an enterprising
photographer, as if the scene was one to be proud
of! The municipal lodging houses being filled,
a Bowery mission opened its doors to 500 un-
fortunates. There were no beds, but these peo-
ple were permitted to sit in the mission all night
until seven a. m., so as to be out of the cold.
Many of these found the welcome opportunity
to snatch a few hours of sleep in a sitting pos-
ture.

A LITTLE LAND
AND A LIVING

COLD WAVES, WARM HEARTS.

They should go together at
the thought of thousands of
women and children in our
city, shivering, hungry, sick,
through no fault of their own.

They are sent to us by
teachers, doctors, churches, city
officials, neighbors.

An instance: “I am an iron-
worker laid off two months ago.
My wife is sick; there has not
been a crumb in our house for
two days. I can’t bear to go
home.”

We relieve suffering at once
and then try to get people on
their feet.

$20,000 are urgently needed
for food, coal, rent, clothes,
bedding, medicine. We have
over 2,000 families in charge
to-day.

N. Y. Association for Improy-
ing the Condition of the
Poor.

30

LEND A HAND.

This storm means suffering
which will last for days.

You would cheerfully help
to get a fallen horse upon his
feet. Will you do as much for
a man?

Many in our city have heavy
burdens and a very insecure
footing. An accident, tempo-
rary loss of work, brings quick
suffering to dependent women
and children. We know over
2,500 such families to-day. Will
you help’ relieve at least one;
details if desired? $20,000 ur-
gently needed. Send $1.00,
$5.00, $10.00, $50.00, $100.00,
and let us tell you what it does,
to R. S. Minturn, Treas., Room
210, No. 105 East 22d St.

N. Y. Association for Improy-
ing the Condition of the
Poor

These two advertisements, which have recently

been appearing in the New York papers, are ap-
pealing on behalf of people who would not be a
burden on the public at large—who would not
lose their own self-respect, if they would remain
on or return to the land.

31 THE LETTER THAT
PROMPTED THIS BOOK

“THREE ACRES” WOULD MEAN “LIBERTY.”

Just why all these people should not live on
your “three-acre” farm, even in a large dry
goods box rather than increase the value of real
estate in Manhattan or Philadelphia or the great
city on Lake Michigan, or than swell the ranks
of the objects of charity, I cannot see. Why
should not these people live upon a farm near
the city, to come daily to their business, what-
ever it be, and occasionally for amusement, and
to spend their spare time in the profitable and
healthy occupation—farming? At this time
when the news of the day gives us startling in-
stances of top-heaviness in population in reports
of the destitution almost everywhere, the benefits
of the “back to the farm” movement are appar-
ent on its face. If these people for whom the
land is crying could be induced to locate in the
rural districts, the cause and results of much of
this suffering would be done away with. Not
only would the country districts be benefited by
such a change, but the cities as well. Much of
the distress which now prevails in the cities is a

A LITTLE LAND 32
AND A LIVING

detriment to all in these days when country and
city are so knit together in a subtle bond of ac-
tion and interaction.

CITY AMUSEMENTS AND OTHER “ELEVATING”
THINGS.

Talk to the young men or women here in
New York (of course not ALL of them), es-
pecially those born and brought up in town, and
before anything else they will tell of the great
fun they are having. They work hard, and have
long hours. Yet these young people, inclined
toward fun, spend every cent they can spare on
clothes and amusements.

STATISTICS THAT GIVE FALSE IMPRESSIONS.

I will cite here a few instances which show
what the city offers the poor. I call “poor”
every one who cannot afford to be sick for a
few weeks, or who has not over four weeks’
wages in the savings bank. The savings bank
reports show how many hundreds of thousands
of people have deposited in the hundred odd sav-
ings institutions on Manhattan Island alone. If
you walk into any worker’s home, even on Third

33 THE LETTER THAT

PROMPTED THIS BOOK
Avenue, you will at once know the real truth of
those savings statistics.

While the habit of thrift is being cultivated
to a larger extent than heretofore, these statis-
tics leave false impressions; and it is only when
you get in touch with the people that go to
make up our large cities that you become in-
formed as to the impossibility of saving among
workers. There are few bank accounts to be
found among the toilers, the clerks, the stenog-
raphers, the bookkeepers, the tradesmen, and
even some of the professionals of our great
cities, who earn barely enough to give them a liv-
ing, much less a decent home, or to give them
opportunities for saving. The younger ones
know not the value of money; the call of the
great white ways is too strong to resist. They
will stint themselves, week in and week out, in
order to scrape together enough of their meagre
earnings to go to the theatre, dances and din-
ners. I discussed this subject recently with a
young man, nearly twenty years of age, and
he told me in all confidence that one day’s out-
ing with his “lady friend” a few days previous

A LITTLE LAND 34
AND A LIVING

cost him all told a little over ten dollars—and
his salary is just twelve dollars per week! If
this was a thing to be indulged in once or twice
a year I should be able to see how he does it, but
to repeat the same performance about once a
month and sometimes more, and all on that small
salary, is past comprehension or belief.

THE IMPROVIDENCY OF THE POOR.

When a slack season comes and these young
people are thrown out of work they have noth-
ing to fall back on. The task of tiding them
over for a few weeks, or until they secure an-
other position, rests upon their family or friends.
If not that, then the men go to swell the tide of
beggars, paupers and criminals, and the women
turn to other forms of social viperism, such as
prostitution, where they can “ get ” more money
and better clothes than is afforded through
legitimate and healthy occupations. How many
a young woman, especially among the clothes
workers who earn mean pittances by piece work,
has to resort to this means of a livelihood in
order to make ends meet, not only for herself,

35 THE LETTER THAT

PROMPTED THIS BOOK
but for an aged mother, possibly, whom circum-
stances have thrown upon her care! Yet what
a common story it is to us living in the big cities.

DIRE NECESSITY.

Passing through Fifteenth Street in New
York recently, I noticed a woman and a young
girl with small pieces of iron raking the refuse
out of ash-cans and putting it into a bag.

It is a revolting scene you have often seen,
but you probably turned away, praying for
power enough to place these people in a posi-
tion where such acts would not become a neces-
sity. The woman was poorly dressed, but from
her energy and activity she had nothing of the
beggar about her. The child, not more than ten
years of age, had inflamed eyes, due most likely
to the unhealthy occupation. The husband prob-
ably was out of work at the time, or was strug-
gling along on five or six dollars a week. From
this at least two dollars a week must be paid
for rent, so, in order to help along, the wife must
do some such work as this in addition to her home
duties,

A LITTLE LAND 36
AND A LIVING

“THE GREAT WHITE WAY” AS SEEN BY RICH
AND POOR.

In one of my rambles up Broadway I passed
the Metropolitan Opera House just at the time
the carriages were discharging ladies exquisitely
gowned and resplendent with diamonds and jew-
els, and gentlemen in evening dress. They, in
turn, were being ushered into the lobby, attended
by ushers and policemen, while, at the same time,
groups of men, women and children, attracted
more by a curiosity born of envy than mere idle-
ness, were ordered to move on. Some passed on, °
and, as though they, in their poverty, must have
the same kind of entertainment, entered one of
the slot-machine parlors which furnished amuse-
ment for as many pennies as their patrons can
or cannot afford to spend, and whose pictures,
for the most part, are not fit for young people
to look at. These people appeared to be fam-
ilies of workingmen who were, in their way, see-
ing the great white way, and these slot-machine
parlors were their avenues of entrance.

THE DANCE HALLS AND THE STREET.
Then again think of the hundreds and hun-

37 THE LETTER THAT

PROMPTED THIS BOOK
dreds of cheap dance halls—an evil which the
papers are loudly decrying—where the children
of these poor workers go of an evening to seek
amusement, but in reality to be thrown into dens
of vice and iniquity and started on the down-
ward path.

While going to a lecture one Sunday by Prof.
Felix Adler, of the Ethical Culture Society, I
saw a man on the corner evidently suffering
greatly from the cold. The saloons were closed
and he probably would not have been a welcome
guest at the meeting of the society, broad-minded
though its aims are, even if he had been in a mood
to listen to an abstruse lecture.

NO REAL SUFFERING AND DESTITUTION ON
FARMS.

A short time ago I was on a visit to the South
and I took particular care to note the conditions
surrounding the living quarters everywhere.
Perhaps the farmers of the South are not very
prosperous; as a rule they do not appear to be
as hard-working as those of northern latitudes;
yet I saw no suffering such as even the most
casual observer sees in any city. There are no

A LITTLE LAND 38
AND A LIVING

half-blind children, no such degrading occupa-
tions as picking over slop-barrels!

It is clear that the woman with the child pick-
ing the refuse and being jostled by bumptious
policemen, and the men looking for work at shov-
eling snow, would be much better off on a farm,
and that it would be much better for them to be
sent to the farm than kept in the large city to
help along the unearned uncrement in the most
unsanitary districts; that the families of work-
men, who had only money enough to go into the
slot-machine parlors and “nickel” theatres, but
the men of which are of good ability to work,
should, of their own volition, rather select the
farm, and thus be enabled to come to the city
once or twice a year and take in the better forms
of amusements. And the fellow who, whatever
his proclivities may have been, could not enjoy
ethical expositions because he was not dressed
well enough to enter the rooms of the society,
would certainly be better off if he were on the
farm, as would the entire community. The
young and able-bodied men of our cities who
idle away their time in gambling, drinking and

39 THE LETTER THAT

PROMPTED THIS BOOK
riotous living, all at some one else’s expense, in
most cases, should be induced to take up the
healthful, vigorous life of the farm—there to
see accomplished the results of his labors, not
only in a monetary sense, but in his improved
physical well-being as well. Many of the work-
ers in the crowded, filthy factories and sweat-
shops would get double the price of their labor
if put in agriculture, at the same time improving
their health, instead of marring it by working
and sleeping among the remnants of their work,
five, ten and sometimes fifteen or more human
beings in one stuffy room.

THE EDUCATED AND INEXPERIENCED ADAPTED
FOR AGRICULTURE.

Many park benches in the cities are filled in
these years of much education with college and
public school graduates, who, in the words of
Mark Twain, “ know everything but how to ap-
ply it.” Much of their knowledge—which they
do not find use for even in menial labor, often
the only kind they can obtain—if, indeed, they
are so fortunate as to obtain that—could find its

A LITTLE LAND 40
AND A LIVING

application in modern agriculture. Their learn-
ing, instead of being a curse which has robbed
them of the best years of their lives, would on
a farm not only help them in their work, but be
an endless gratification and pleasure to them,
both in their work and in their recreation.

SCOPE FOR “KNOWLEDGE LEARNED OF SCHOOLS.”

In spite of the fact that agriculture is unique
among occupations, in that it can be engaged in
without one’s first attaining any particular ex-
perience, there is ample room for the knowledge
learned of colleges—and, moreover, agricultural
colleges cannot fail to benefit both the “ pres-
ent” and the “ prospective” farmer. Many suc-
cessful farmers of the present day, however, be-
gan farming with very little knowledge. ‘They
had, of course, to meet the occasional “ joshing ”
of the country-bred, but they bore this in good
part, and picked up knowledge and skill with
the readiness and pluck of the tenderfoot of the
Western plains. They have not found that an
academic course of study or book-learning in ad-
vance was necessary for a start as a successful

41 THE LETTER THAT

PROMPTED THIS BOOK
farmer, such as is required of the beginner in
law, medicine, etc., but still they found that they
were engaged in a profession where knowledge
is power, just as in everything else.

TOIL AND PAYMENT OF FARM LIFE.

The average city dweller is afraid, perhaps,
of the drudgery and long hours which undoubt-
edly prevail on the farm. But the drudgery on
the farm is not like the drudgery of the city,
which has a twin—suffering. It is a mistake to
think that the farmer works longer hours at
harder work than the man in the city. There
are thousands of people in our large cities who
would be infinitely better off, morally, physically
and financially, making a living in the country by
no harder work and without the misery involved
in cheap living in the cities, where good, health-
ful foods are well-nigh beyond the meagre al-
lowance of the workingman’s scanty purse.

THE WORLD’S IDEAL FARMING COUNTRY.
The United States is the world’s ideal farm-
ing country. Its varieties of climate and soils
make it a natural producer of almost everything

A LITTLE LAND 42
AND A LIVING

that can be furnished by the agricultural and
stock-raising interests. There is not the slight-
est doubt that farm land will ultimately become
the most valuable asset of our country. Benja-
min Franklin said a century ago: “This coun-
try is fond of manufactories beyond their real
value; for the true source of wealth is hus- .
bandry.” Franklin was possibly wrong in his
deprecation of factories in his day, for manu-
facturing has proved to be a prime factor in the
present greatness of the United States. But
he really spoke with the tongue of a prophet,
for this is the time when the words of America’s
greatest philosopher on agriculture are pregnant
with meaning and force. And this is likewise
the time when this great manufacturing country
should awaken to the terse and intensely direct
sentence of Gibbon: “ Agriculture is the foun-
dation of manufactures.”

AGRICULTURE'S GOLDEN AGE.

Those very manufactories have made possible
the Golden Age of farming, which has now be-
gun. No more remarkable inventions have been

43 THE LETTER THAT

PROMPTED THIS BOOK
made during the last fifty years than those agri-
cultural appliances which have taken the place
of the sickle, the flail and the wind. What a
difference is there in reaping, cradling, raking,
binding and mowing, even in planting, from the
days of old! The antiquated methods to suc-
ceed with which a man had to get up at four
o’clock in the morning and work until long after
“early candlelight,” are responsible for much of
the ignorance of city people in regard to the
farm life of this day. What drudgery used to
be entailed on the women of the farm, which is
now done away with by all kinds of modern im-
provements in their work!

The modern farm-house, with its labor-saving
appliances, its piano, its books and magazines,
its compartively short hours of toil and its
manifold interests, is an unknown quantity to
the city woman, who thinks she is comfortable
in a small flat, where she is under the dominion
of the cook and the janitor. Many city people
under present conditions, however, think them-
selves lucky to be under that rule.

The last twenty-five years have been the great-

A LITTLE LAND 44
AND A LIVING

est transformation-period the world has ever
known—and have brought as great changes in
country as in city life. Even on farms remote
from towns and cities, telephonic and telegraphic
communication, and the later boon, rural free
delivery—have come to keep their residents in
close and constant communication with the out-
side world. 'These have annihilated distance for
the farmer of to-day.

INDEPENDENCE IN AGRICULTURE.

Some of those who have guided the destiny
of young men have realized that there is danger
in a land that suffers from over-education and
over-crowding of the professions. The careers
of our young men plainly show that society is in
need of both brains and brawn, and that while
we have need of the professional class we must
not neglect those callings that give us our bread.
Ex-Governor Hoard, of Wisconsin, exclaimed
in a public speech: “I cannot bear to go to my
grave until I see imparted to my nation the
spirit that shall make agriculture not only the
support of men’s bodies, but an inspiration to
their intellects.”

45 THE LETTER THAT
PROMPTED THIS BOOK

It has been ably shown in the recent reports of
the Department of Agriculture that it is an in-
spiration to men’s pocketbooks and bank ac-
counts as well as to their bodies. Many who read
these reports are surprised at the results of the
years of unequalled prosperity. 'The immense
annual increments, which are comparable only
with astronomical figures in their demands upon
the imagination, have a real significance when
capitalized and expressed in terms of value based
upon earning power. In one report the Depart-
ment stated that in five years farms had gained
in value by a third, or nearly $7,000,000,000, and
that within those five years nearly 1,800 national
banks had been organized, mostly in the South-
ern and North Central rural regions. ‘These
banks depend upon farmers for their business,
and are not organized, as would have been the
case a few years ago, with Eastern capital. “ It
has been an era of small banks in isolated com-
munities,” said the State Bank Commissioner of
Kansas, at the time, “and so many have been
started that to-day every hamlet in the State
where any considerable business is done has a

A LITTLE LAND 46
AND A LIVING

bank.” This shows that the farmers are sharing
in the national prosperity which they have done
so much to bring about and are banking their
surplus and looking for investments. How few
of the city tenement dwellers can do that! I sin-
cerely wish that these facts which the Agri-
cultural Department collects could be placed in
a striking way before every man, woman and
child in the large cities of the United States, who
might be induced to seek their fortune in a field
than which nothing is surer of bringing full re-
turns for honest work.

LAND ENOUGH FOR A LIVING.

Your book “ Three Acres and Liberty,” shows
that with little work three acres will yield enough
for any family to make a living on. If a man
will devote all his time to it he might make a
living for half a dozen families, using only so
much as his family needs, and saving what would
be the living expenses for five families.

ONE POINT OF HONEST DIFFERENCE.
There is one thing, however, in which I dis-
agree with you.. You believe that the city is

4 THE LETTER THAT

PROMPTED THIS BOOK
more favorable to general education. It is my
opinion that education comes more from read-
ing, reflecting and the observation of nature than
from mingling with crowds. The farmer has
more opportunity to read and reflect, and less
opportunity to talk, and consequently learns
more than the average city dweller, whose mind
is confused by conflicting ideas and schemes and
whose time is spent in the hunt for amusement.
The children could learn more where they could
read, but where they would see less of the “high ”
life and degrading low morality of big city life,
and be the better for it in after years.

WHO SHOULD GO BACK TO THE FARMS?

One of the most potent reasons that makes
this a particularly good time to promote a vigor-
ous increase of rural settlement, is the present
high cost of living in the city and the destitution
among the poor, ill-clad and ill-fed city workers.

But who shall go? There are thousands even
of the most careful and industrious men and
women in the cities now, who are making a bare
living and nothing more; and who have always

A LITTLE LAND 48
AND A LIVING

the fear of loss of steady work, such as is brought
about under modern conditions by strikes, lock-
outs, and by improved machinery. The division
and subdivision of labor and the constant change
in cities in this age of specialization puts many
out of employment—hence out of bread—when
factories shut down. ‘This surplus labor should
go to the farm.

Those lads and young men who have left the
farm for the city, and are not meeting with the
success which they expected, should, in most
cases, be encouraged to go back to the farm.
Many young people continue in cities, suffer-
ing, in many cases, want and discomfort, simply
because they are ashamed to return to the coun-
try after having, perhaps, boasted of their com-
ing success in city life. ‘They should be shown
that it is no disgrace, in most cases, to have
failed in the city. Or, if their lack of success
has been due to the temptations of city life,
they should be likewise induced to return to the
farm, where those who have once yielded to
temptation have better chances of growing up
to be reputable and honorable citizens. The

49 THE LETTER THAT

PROMPTED THIS BOOK
very city experience which young people who
revert to farming life have gained will aid them
in becoming progressive beyond former ambi-
tions.

WHO WOULD BENEFIT BY SUCH A MOVEMENT?

In settling the question as to who would
benefit most by the back to the land movement,
we would also determine who should take the
initiative in making the theory a practical suc-_
cess.

First of all, and in a large degree, the
public would benefit, even though much of it
remains in the cities; but, as Henry George
said, “these bad conditions are-due to the leth-
argy of the public.” Consequently, it should
be the business of philanthropists and sociolo-
gists to arouse interest among the public.

The next who would benefit (and possibly
they should be placed first, because theirs would
be chiefly a monetary benefit), are the railroads.
For instance, if one hundred people working
during the day in New York would live upon
farms, the railroads would carry them to and

A LITTLE LAND 50
AND A LIVING
from the city, and would haul their products
also. In this way the railroads would make
money out of the enterprise, once a colony was
started.
SEMI-AGRICULTURAL COLONIES.

Heretofore railroad communication followed
town building, and later town building followed
the opening of the railways nearby. The rail-
roads should look into this proposition and
should co-operate, to the extent of supplying
land along their lines, advancing the necessary
funds to lay out and build, or going so far as
to build houses themselves, renting the homes
at a nominal figure and realizing on the pas-
senger and freight traffic, which would increase
year by year as the colony grows. In the end
such an investment would bring handsome re-
turns and would go far toward making the rail-
roads a real big factor in civilization—not only
in a commercial sense, as heretofore regarded;
not only as avenues of communication between
distant points; not only as builders and openers
of empires, but also as builders of a new and
healthful race, clutched from the fangs of the

51 THE LETTER THAT

PROMPTED THIS BOOK
tens and hundreds of thousands of misery-deal-
ing “reptiles” of the social and commercial life
of our big cities.

The colonies, which I would call semi-agri-
cultural, ought to be started near each city. The
railroads should run convenient commutation
trains, and soon the experiment would prove a
success. Possibly some people would come
back, but not without having had at least a good
vacation for a year or two, and when they come
back they will remember “the good meat they
ate in Egypt.” Movements somewhat similar
have been tried by Socialists and economists,
more than once, but they were confined to peo-
ple imbued with certain teachings of their lead-
ers. The new “back to the farm” converts
would owe no allegiance to any particular party
or sect and would follow the dictates of no per-
son or persons, but, instead, would heed only
the call in their hearts for a happy, healthful
home for their families; their own patches of land
and accounts in the savings bank.

I had some talks and correspondence about
this proposition with railroad men. Some I

A LITTLE LAND 52
AND A LIVING

‘““made” read your book, and here are a few ex-
tracts from the great number of letters received:

F.. H. La Baume, Agricultural and Industrial
Commissioner of the Norfolk and Western Rail-
way, writes:

“. « . In no‘other book by a Sociologist have I
found so much sound sense and so many facts marshaled
for the promotion of the ‘back to the land’ movement
and for intensive farming as in that of Mr. Bolton Hall—
“Three Acres and Liberty ’"—which he has sent me upon
your suggestion. It certainly ought to convince even the
most doubting Thomas that for a great many people who
are now fretting along in large cities, hardly able to make
both ends meet, the land of promise is not far away.

“T have seen Mr. Hall’s theory—the ‘Three Acre’
proposition—fully vindicated, and I am proud to say that
I have been instrumental in bringing about its practical
application. Two years ago myself and friends divided a
tract of land at Waverly, Va., by no means the ‘ most fer-
tile’ in the United States, nor with the ‘most’ favorable
location, into 10, 15, and 25-acre farms, and upon each
farm was built a three-room cottage. We originally sold
one of these farms and cottages for $400, to be paid for
in instalments, but this price had to be increased later to
$500 on account of the increased. cost of labor and build-
ing material.

“On these farms we have settled up to date about forty
families, the men being of all vocations, but hardly one a
farmer. Most of the ten acres are timbered, very little
of it under cultivation, yet every one of these persons has

53 THE LETTER THAT
PROMPTED THIS BOOK

made good not only in the payments to the company, but
in saving something for themselves and increasing the value
of their land by development work. In other words, by
working only a very small part of the land which they have
purchased for so little money (and only with cash pay-
ments averaging about $100) they have succeeded in es-
tablishing themselves in an occupation in which they have
less worry and even less work than in many of the occupa-
tions that are offered in large cities.

“The hunger for land and a self-supporting home is
inherent in every right-minded man. The natural habitat.
of mankind is in the country, and the city life at best is
an artificial one. A reaction is setting in, and city people
are to-day taking an interest in the country and its possi-
bilities as a home that has not been manifested in years.

“The farmer certainly has the best of it. He works
hard when necessary, but this individual effort brings direct
returns in proportion, and though he may not deck himself
in the fine raiment of his salaried brother in the city, his
clothes are the clothes worn by the ‘boss,’ and he is re-
spected accordingly. His hours of work are not longer as
a rule than the city man’s, and he has his Sundays and in
addition many days when he is not compelled to be out
attending to his crops. The winter season also affords
him ample leisure in which to read, visit his neighbors, and
keep in general touch with the world and its doings.

“He is not compelled to rely entirely on the butcher, the
baker, and the groceryman for the necessities of life, but,
to a very large extent, produces them himself. His garden
furnishes him with an abundance of vegetables and small
fruits, he has access to his eggs and tender young broilers
without considering them a luxury. A few pigs keep him

A LITTLE LAND 54
AND A LIVING

supplied with tender young pork, which, if necessary, he
can divide with his neighbors, and in thus taking turn about
and dividing with each other, they are able to have fresh
meat throughout the year, to say nothing of the delicious
hams and sides of bacon that are put in the smokehouse to
contribute to his comfort throughout the winter. His
orchard ‘supplies him with the finest apples of many
varieties and in the late fall when he has tucked them
away in barrels in his cellar, along with a barrel or two of
sweet cider, a few rows of golden pumpkins, Hubbard
squash, and large piles of potatoes and turnips; when the
contributions of the boys and girls—the popcorn from the
fields and the nuts from the woods, which every farmer’s
child takes pride in supplying—have been deposited along
with the rest; when the good wife and mother looks upon
the long shelves swinging from the cellar rafters and sees
the rows and rows of fruit jars containing the delicious
preserves, jellies, canned fruits, and vegetables which bear
such eloquent testimony to the loving thoughtfulness and
preserving foresight of herself and her girls; when the
farmer and his family, I say, sit together in the late fall
and contemplate these many blessings; when the buzz of
industry and contentment from the poultry yard, the stable,
and the pen is adrift in the air and permeates everything;
then with the thoughts of the Thanksgiving and Christmas
approaching, the long winter evenings with their comple-
ment of cider, nuts, popcorn, and apples, the sleigh-rides
and jolly gatherings at each others’ homes—then the farmer
and his family can indeed count themselves among the
princes of this earth, secure in the conviction that the real
blessings of life have been dealt out to them in generous
measure.

55 THE LETTER THAT
PROMPTED THIS BOOK

“ Now, let us look at the city man’s side of the question. I
mean the laboring man and the man who works for a wage.
In times of prosperity, it is very true that he can command
the conveniences and many of the luxuries of life; but
prosperous times make high prices and therefore he is
compelled to pay liberally for all he receives. If he has
been fortunate and provident, he probably owns his own
home, which affords him bodily shelter during times of de-
pression and adversity, but is in no sense a revenue-produc-
ing investment. It is not necessary to go into all the details
of the adversities, the mental and physical suffering en-
dured by the wage earner in times of strikes, lockouts, and
periods of business depression.

“The man who has a little farm can fall back upon it
when other avenues of support fail him. It is 7

“1. A refuge in times when adversity, business stagna-
tion, or strikes and lockouts deprive him of work or his
usual source of support.

“2. A healthy outdoor life in God’s own sunshine, where
his sons and daughters can be reared in an atmosphere that
will insure self-reliant, strong and morally and physically
perfect men and women, a credit to their parents and to
the country that gave them birth.

“3. The knowledge that he is an American freeholder,

_with all of his privileges and responsibilities, and therefore,

is as vitally interested in the affairs of this great country
and as fully entitled to her protection and consideration as
any other citizen in the land.

“4. Last and best of all, the knowledge that he has a
comfortable and productive home awaiting him in his old
age, where he can be assured of a competence and a refuge
after he has reached the pinnacle of life and is traveling

A LITTLE LAND 56
AND A LIVING

down the farther slope over a path which has been strewn
with many blessings due to the foresight of his younger
days. Near every city which offers a ready market for the
product of the farmer or the “amateur” farmer there is
land which could be satisfactorily and profitably used for
three acre farm plots, and it will be a blessing to this great
country if Mr. Hall’s theory can be tested soon, for each
test will more than show its practical side. We have on
this tract people from all walks of life—clerks, mechanics,
professional men, those previously engaged in all trades
and professions. All of them are less than two years on
our tracts, but you will not find anywhere else such a happy
lot of people are found there now.

“TI enclose you a few photographs of those farm houses
which I take the liberty to call ‘ cottages.’ Compare the ex-
terior with tenement houses surrounded by other tenement
houses and these little ‘ boxes’ surrounded by gardens and
pure air. Compare their interiors with the interiors of the
tenements, without light though possibly with more elabo-
rate furniture, and you will find that there are thousands
who could be made happy by going to just such places
near large cities, even if they have to go to the city to
work during the day.”

OTHER LETTERS FROM RAILROAD MEN.

Extract from a letter from an enthusiastic
officer of a prominent railroad:

«e

I have resigned my position here to take ef-
fect on or before May 1. I am sick and tired of the city,

57 THE LETTER THAT
PROMPTED THIS BOOK

and want to get in the country to spend my declining years.
I will see what can be done about getting the necessary land
for the colony you speak of. I would gladly give it my-
self, if I had it.”

This is from a man in middle age, hale and
hearty in body and also in soul and mind, or he
would not see things as they are.

Mr. Fred P. Fox, industrial agent of the
Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad
Co., writes me as follows:

“One of the most serious problems of the present day
is the reclamation and rehabilitation of unused farm lands,
especially east of the Mississippi River. The subject
divides itself into two questions:

- “How to get the youth of the country, bred on the
farm, to stay there?

“ How to induce the city bred youth to take up farming
as a profession?

“These are questions that are occupying the attention
of many great minds.

“For the country-bred youth, better schools, teaching the
chemistry of agriculture, the technique of farming, the
analysis of soils, better environments, etc.

“To the city-bred youth, literature telling in pleasing
form the profits to be derived from farming in money as
well as the larger dividends of health and happiness.

“In regard to the appeal to the dwellers in cities the

A LITTLE LAND 58
AND A LIVING

best message is contained in Mr. Bolton Hall’s ‘ Three
Acres and Liberty,’ which you so kindly sent me with your
compliments. It is as fascinating as a story, as true as
history.

“Down deep in the hearts of all there is a desire to
spend the last golden days of earth on a little plot of
ground in the country. It is the picture drawn by Hope
and colored by Faith, that makes life worth living in the
congested marts of trade.

“Some day, somewhere, I’m going to have a little home
in the country ’—nine out of ten people say this, believing
it will come true.

“Railroad managers are deeply interested in this
problem, for next to a paying industry along its rails,
should be a paying farm, for without the farm there could
be no paying factory. The Industrial Departments of the
railroads have on file and are interested in giving out
literature, maps, and particulars in regard to vacant farms
along their lines.

“The idea of making these desolate gardens of earth
bloom again like the rose; to see the abandoned farm houses
filled again with bright-eyed, laughing children; to see
deserted fields covered with flocks and herds; to see again
the golden harvest days, is a consummation devoutly to be
wished, and there is no more blessed mission than bringing
it about.”

Still another enthusiastic note is struck by
Mr. Ira H. Shoemaker, industrial agent of the
Delaware and Hudson Railroad:

ee

I am in hearty accord with the ideas which

59 THE LETTER THAT
PROMPTED THIS BOOK

are so attractively presented by your friend, Mr. Bolton
Hall, in ‘ Three Acres and Liberty.’ I am much interested
both personally and as a railroad man in the possibilities
of support to be derived from intelligent, intensive farming
applied to small land holdings. People who have wearied
of ‘ flat-cramped, closet-roomed apartments, or pigeon-holes
for humanity ’ will find the helpful suggestions of this book
invaluable in aiding them to find real homes which will not
only contribute to their health and pleasure, but also to
their material support.

“In studying the industrial conditions of our own rail-
road and other roads, I am fully convinced that the value
of tonnage is greater from one acre of land intensively and
intelligently farmed than from large tracts cultivated in
a careless and inefficient manner. Therefore aside from
any altruistic motive, I hope that this book will create a
widespread interest and that many will be induced to put
Mr. Hall’s ideas to a practical test.”

These letters show plainly that these people
see the benefit, but they seem to be afraid of
the slowness of the general public, or they would
start active work in the three-acre direction.

A PLEASING TENDENCY.

It is a pleasure to note that there is now a
tendency among those who have made money
in the city, or those who are in good positions,
to take their families to spend the remainder

A LITTLE LAND 60
AND A LIVING

of their lives amid the rejuvenating influences
of the country. These men come to the city
daily to work, yet when you talk to them about
their efforts in the agricultural line they fairly
swell up with pride and without a shade of
modesty they will tell you of the wonderful
specimens their little gardens produce. These
gardens furnish them as much gratification as
their life-business. Business men, as they feel
able to withdraw from the severe activities of
commerce, are looking forward to a happy old
age in the rural districts. Many fine farms are
already being developed by these men of wealth.
The movement is developing among this class
to a surprising extent and also among the brain
workers of the commercial centres, and you have
only to visit the railroad stations or the ferry
houses, morning and evening, to get an ade-
quate idea of the number of business men who
come daily from their country homes to their
work in the city. As these people buy farms,
land will become more expensive, and for this
reason alone, now is the time for the man of
small means to go into farming.

61 THE LETTER THAT
PROMPTED THIS BOOK
WHAT I HAVE DONE.

Aside from talking in my own circle about
the proposition I addressed an open letter to
the Secretary of Agriculture early in 1906, and
more than 500 newspapers in the country, in-
cluding many of the leading ones, noticed it.
It elicited editorials from such men as Henry
Watterson, Lafayette Young and _ others.
Giants of the press have realized the national
importance of the subject. The suggestions I
made to the Secretary to promote this move-
ment were novel yet feasible. My appeal to
have the Government, through the Department
of Agriculture, facilitate matters by providing
special bureaus and publicity to acquaint city
dwellers with the golden opportunities awaiting
the worker in agricultural fields has, as yet, been
unheeded. Mr. Wilson received the letter, yet
nothing has come of it, possibly because the
Honorable Secretary realizes the inertia of the
public. However, he has given the idea a gen-
eral endorsement, for in receiving a delegation
which came to interest him in a plan to open
lands to the unemployed, he said: “The duty

A LITTLE LAND 62
AND A LIVING
and burden of establishing the enterprises rest
unmistakably upon the State and municipal
governments. The great manufacturing cen-
tres, like New York, Chicago and St. Louis,
have had the advantage of large populations in
time of industrial prosperity. They have
drained the country district of a large propor-
tion of the wealth-producers, and it is only fair
that, having had the advantages, they should
shoulder some of the disadvantages. They must
not expect to eat their cake and have it, too.
“The idea is a good one, and the distance be-
tween a closed-down factory and a newly-
plowed farm should be made as short as pos-
sible. Let the great municipalities, and the
smaller ones also, for that matter, provide land
within a five-cent fare from town; let the unem-
ployed have access to it, and we will send them
experts, without charge, from the Department
of Agriculture to show them how to do it, and
we will furnish the seeds also. It would solve
the problem of unemployment as quickly as
anything else would, and the worst that could
happen, in case of a return of prosperity in the
factories, would be the possession of valuable

63 THE LETTER THAT

PROMPTED THIS BOOK
farms by the municipalities, which they might
conduct profitably on ordinary business prin-
ciples.”

WRITE A NEW BOOK!

“'To the making of books there is no end,”
but it is books, and particularly such practical
ones as yours, that educate the public to the
needs of their conditions. I should suggest
that you write another book on this subject. It
must be shorter in order that even he who is
busy would start to peruse it; that even “he who
runs may read.” ‘That book ought to sell for
little money. It ought to notice your “ Three
Acres and Liberty,” so that those who read the -
smaller book and find that they are interested,
and, like Oliver Twist, want more, should get
the first book as a second dose—the heavier one.

The new book should answer the old ques-
tion: ‘Who are they that shall go?’ And if
the public will but take notice and heed, they
will give the answer that Moses did: “We will
go with our young and with our old; with our
sons and with our daughters; with our flocks
and with our herds we will go.”

A LITTLE LAND 64
AND A LIVING

YOU, MR. HALL,

are a man of strong powers of observation and
have the ability to express your thoughts in an
inspiring manner; you know the sociological
conditions in this country as well as any man.
Can you not make glow to a flame the spark
that is existent in everybody? You hear from
a great number of people that when they get
a competency they want to have a spot of land
that they can call their own and where their
wives and children can ENJoy life. This shows
that it is human nature everywhere for every one
to long to be nearer Mother Earth and to claim
a patch of the land as his own.

In your book, “Three Acres and Liberty,”
you have shown one side—that it pays in money
to go back to the country and take up agricul-
ture. Now write a book which will show that
it pays from other standpoints as well. You
do not have to go far out of your way; the
means are near at hand and the evidences for
the movement are to be found everywhere you
turn in the cities. Let the people go to the
land for their own sake, for the good of their

6 THE LETTER THAT

PROMPTED THIS BOOK
children, and for the good of others that remain
in the city; for the good of the whole country,
and, last but not least, for the good of the human
race. If a few go away from a tenement house,
it will give a chance for only five to sleep in a
room where ten are now crowded together. Let
a few of the unemployed take up duties on a
farm, there to earn wages and live happily, for
then only fifty men would apply for a position
where now a hundred apply.

THE CAUSE AND THE REMEDY.

The tendency of population to flock to the
already congested cities is a menace to the pros-
perity of America. While much of the brain
and nerve power which is so great a force in the
cities of this country was originally nurtured on
the farm, the time has come when the farm
needs to retain much of that ability which it
has heretofore given so profusely to the city.
The twentieth century will recognize the farmer
as the king among the workers who benefit man-
kind. The dignity and independence of that
which our first President (himself a farmer)

A LITTLE LAND 66
AND A LIVING ,
called “the noblest occupation of man,” will be
illustrated in this country as never before. The
young man and woman will find it profitable as
well as pleasurable to stick to the farms, or to
leave the crowded cities for the country, where
one with small capital may more easily secure
credit and a competency, and can have better op-
portunities for the right kind of “ life ” than that
which is concomitant with limited means in the
city. The superiority of country life for rais-
ing families will be recognized by all, and the
happiness of being “near to Nature’s heart ”
will be truer and better than the pleasure which
the city affords.
FOREIGNERS LIVE MORE CHEAPLY.

In urging this “back to the land” proposition,
I have purposely omitted any discussion of the
foreign element and the influx of immigrants.
It is noticeable that, in spite of the congested
conditions of the foreign districts of our cities,
and the almost pauperous conditions in which
they seem to live, there is not that extreme dis-
tress and destitution which prevails in the other
poorer districts of the cities. This is probably

67: THE LETTER THAT

PROMPTED THIS BOOK
due to the fact that foreigners, generally, live
more simply than our poor. As they live their
own. characteristic life, and are thrifty, they
make their scant earnings from vending, sweat-
shop work, or that of their own little shops, or
in their hard out-door labor, go twice as far as
those of the other class of poor, with their un-
warranted perverted tastes for “high life” and
extravagant wants.

However, in the congested Jewish and Italian
quarters, with their millions of new comers each
year, there lies a great problem, and it is grati-
fying to note that it is being solved, though
slowly to be sure, by organizations of their own
better-situated countrymen.

HOW TO MEET THE INFLUX OF POPULATION.

How are we to meet this influx of population
in a way that will be of the greatest benefit to
the increasing hordes and also to the United
States? We do not intend to deport such of
these immigrants as are mentally, physically and
morally sound. That is not the spirit of Amer-
ica. Many of them come to these shores with
the intention of taking up farm life, but get

A LITTLE LAND 68
AND A LIVING

caught in the maelstrom of city life. Several
societies are making systematic efforts to send
as many as possible to farming communities
where labor is needed, or to buy lands and lay out
farms where families released from the sweat-
shops and tenements of the cities can live in
comparative comfort while becoming independ-
ent and earning homes. Such experimental col-
onies have been started in small ways by the
Baron de Hirsch fund, the Industrial Removal
Society, the Jewish benevolent societies and
others. For instance, at Arpin, in the northern
woods of Wisconsin, a farming settlement has —
been in operation for over three years and the
plan seems to be working successfully. The
ground was laid out and each family was pro-
vided with a team of horses, a cow and necessary
farming implements. The men were paid a
weekly wage by the association and were on pro-
bation for one year. At the end of the year, if
mutually satisfied, a contract was signed, giving
the family ten years in which to pay for the land
and equipment, and the profit realized by the as-
sociation from the man’s work over the wages

69 THE LETTER THAT

PROMPTED THIS BOOK
advanced was applied to the first payment. In
spite of poor crop conditions, the majority of
the original eighteen families remained through-
out the first year and the quitters were quickly
replaced. It is estimated that it took an average
of $1200 to establish a family.

CONCERTED ACTION NECESSARY.

All these efforts, you will readily see, are as
only a drop in the bucket. They should have the
aid of an arm more far-reaching, with unlimited
resources and facilities, so that all societies and
individuals might unite their efforts in one big
organized movement for the welfare of the poor
and unemployed of our large cities whatever
their nationality and religion. By concerted ac-
tion alone can permanent and influential results
be accomplished; otherwise while the process
would go along slowly, conditions in the cities
would grow worse and worse, without hope of
our good efforts catching up with them. The
United States Government should follow the ex-
ample of Canada, and even go further in in-
fluencing the poor and unemployed to go to the
land, by holding out special inducements.

val THE LETTER THAT

PROMPTED THIS BOOK
far as to compel to go to the farm those who are
manifestly unable to eke out a living in the city
and thus are on the way (if they have not been
so already) to injuring themselves and becoming
a charge to the community. Ultimately the com-
munity, for its own protection, sends its vagrants
and criminals to the workhouse and the peniten-
tiary, and it is largely from the ranks of these
unfit citizens that criminals are made. Why not
prevention instead of a ‘
cure!

‘cure” that will never

MANY MEN OF MANY MINDS.

To-day there are the most conflicting ideas on
foot to aid the poor and needy of our cities—
some practical, most of them merely theoretical
—hbut too many for the good they may do.

Ex-President Cleveland and Prof. Felix
Adler seem to realize, as the Bible says, that
“the poor shall never cease out of the land.”
It was Prof. Adler who a few days ago declared
boldly that there was no hope for the poor;
while Mr. Cleveland, in an interview in a daily
paper, holds out only a faint hope for the needy
ones, and wishes to encourage charity through

A LITTLE LAND "0
_ AND A LIVING

Briefly, I would suggest that such proofs as
can be obtained about the condition of agricul-
ture in this country should be widely dissemi-
nated; that the Department of Agriculture es-
tablish, in each of the large cities of the country,
offices which would give full information to in-
quirers who wish to know of the best places in
any part of the rural districts of the United
States in which to take up their residences with
a view to engaging in agricultural pursuits.
These offices should, I believe, co-operate with
associations and with individuals to draw away
from the city such elements of the population as
are not likely to succeed there. This could be
done through co-operaton with charitable asso-
ciations, immigration officials, lecturers, the
press, ete.

If results from this educational campaign do
not materialize within a reasonable time, then
there should be more widespread and drastic
measures, even going so far as supplying the
land, and even the home, from the government’s
own tracts or from the various States’ aban-
doned homesteads. Yea, I would even go so

A LITTLE LAND "9
AND A LIVING

the medium of a sort of clearing house or charity
trust. On the other hand, there are a great num-
ber of people who would like to relieve the situa-
tion—I happen to be one of them—by giving
the poor what is due them, or, in other words,
by not stealing from them what is their inherent
right and so keeping them poor. Yet in the
light of to-day such philosophy gives little hope
—a theory that will not be practically applied
before the people will realize that nothing is
holy because it is hoary, as well expressed by the
words of Schiller’s “ Wallenstein ”:

“Woe unto him who dares to shake the ancient,

Dignified run of things, the precious heirloom of his
sires!

Time does exert a mighty soothing power

On what hoary is with age that is for him divine.

Be in possession and thou dwellest in law and right,

And sacredly the crowd will recognize what thou
possess.”

THE REAL HOPE.

The idea which you so strongly and ably ex-
pound, Mr. Hall, is the only real hope—the one
ray of sunshine that is destined to lighten the
burden and cheer the lives of the needy of our

"3 THE LETTER THAT

PROMPTED THIS BOOK
- large cities. The movement to get the poor to
the farm will help a great number, if not all, and
the results will be permanent. However much
charity would help, it keeps only for a short time,
and it has its drawbacks. As the honorable ex-
President says: “Charity is responsible for the
apparent contented dependence of the poor.” -
This dependence, he says further, “is the thief
of self-respect. The poor are not permitted to
help themselves. [It is the privilege of the few
to help themselves with that which belongs to the
many.] Once they come within the ken of the
charity workers they are robbed of their initiative
and are made dependent.”

Mr. Cleveland’s remarks bring back to me
very strongly my contention that of all the
plans to aid the poor yours is the ideal one. It
would do away with all the drawbacks of the
charitable aid and promote independence instead
of dependence—not unlike what Macaulay pic-

tured:
“Then none was for a party;
Then all were for the State;
Then the great men helped the poor,
And the poor man loved the great;

A LITTLE LAND 74
AND A LIVING

Then lands were fairly portioned
The Romans were like brothers,
In the brave days of old.”

The time has arrived when the increase of edu-
cation will send people back to the country, and
will populate the rural districts with those who
will apply their education to a profession which
is becoming more and more profitable because of
the dependence of the cities upon agricultural
districts. |

By writing “Three Acres and Liberty ” you
have done a signal service to your country and to
your fellow men. Our editors appreciated it
greatly, as was shown in the notices the book re-
ceived, which must bring home to you your con-
viction that all these efforts are for a good cause.
Now complete the work which you have so ably
begun, and we will see a mighty concerted effort
to make the movement to the land a practical
success. You have pointed out the way, now go
on, write another book, that will discover the

leader.
Yours sincerely,

WM. BORSODI.

New Yorx, March 18, 1908.

A
LITTLE LAND
AND
A LIVING

CHAPTER I

LIFE, NOT MERELY MAKING A LIVING

Opportunities Past and Present—Chances Lost—New
Chance—Intelligence—Slums a Symptom—The Origin
of Wealth—Capital—An Acre Enough—Possibilities—
Thoroughness—Available Land—New Methods—Inten-
sive Farming—Trucking—Dairying—How They Do in
Japan—Denmark—Jersey—We Can Do Better.

HEN a goose goes under an arch she
ducks her head; that is not because there
is not space for her, but because she thinks there
is not, and that is because she is a goose. Perhaps
she does not see very clearly what is above her.
But we can hold up our heads if we will; it
is only necessary to look and think. Many of
us believe we had no chance in life. Others were
in at the oil excitement or the natural gas boom
or got in with the trolley development or a mine
discovery, or found some good opening; but we
have never seen any opportunity.
Well, we have our chance now. A new boom
is on, the farm land boom; a new development is

beginning, intensive agriculture; a new discov-
ay

A LITTLE LAND 78
AND A LIVING

ery, the riches of the soil; a new opening, the
intelligent use of “the little lands.” It does not
demand any more brains than any of the other
opportunities and it is open to a far larger num-
ber. “The profit of the earth is for all.”

There is more money to be made out of the
soil, if you go at it intelligently, than there is in
any endeavor that is open to everyone. The
city man who has brains enough to conduct a
shop, or who knows how to make a profit out of
his employees, or who is a good enough fianancier
to meet the monthly bills, knows enough to
make money out of the soil. The same attention
to details, the same care of an orchard or of a
vegetable farm or of a fruit farm or a flower
garden, will bring far greater profits. Anyone
who has a little store or who makes things in a
small way, is oppressed with the ever present
danger of being crushed by a trust or forced to
the wall by richer and more powerful competi-
tors. What chance has a woman in the city now,
other than a mere living? And what chance has
the average clerk? Both grow old trying to
keep abreast of their expenses. Many of these

79 LIFE, NOT MERELY
MAKING A LIVING
people have a natural taste for the land. They
love to prune, they love to plant, they love to
‘help nature perform her marvels. They potter
away in their little garden patches at their homes
in the suburbs, and find more real enjoyment in
their gardens than in anything else. These are
the ones who might make grand successes of
their lives if they worked the soil. And it is a
life worth living, with real social advantages.

Civilization does not breed over-crowded cities,
nor do we need to stay in them. The slums and
the billionaires are not diseases, but the symp-
toms of a disease, the divorce of the people from
the land.

All things that go to make well-being, things
that we call wealth, come from the land by
work; so that all political economists agree that
wealth is anything that people want which is got-
ten out of the earth by labor. Cotton, wool,
linen, leather, felt, all that we wear; wheat, fish,
beef, vegetables, everything that we use, comes
directly or indirectly out of parts of the earth.

Even the money that we buy or sell these
things for, the tools that we use to make them,

A LITTLE LAND 80
AND A LIVING

the machines with which we manufacture them,
are themselves drawn from the land, so that
economists say again that capital is only that part
of wealth, of the product of land and labor,
which is used to make or to get more wealth.

To get the simplest kinds of these things in the
simplest way, and to let the children learn to get
them in the best ways, a few acres is enough, with
modern methods and active minds.

An acre is not a big plot; the base ball dia-
mond has about a fifth of an acre. About two
blocks of the space on Fifth Avenue, between
the houses, is an acre.

On such a plot any dunce can raise the average
crop of onions, say three hundred bushels, and
make at least big wages. If we use brains, and
transplant from hot beds, we can raise that yield
to five hundred and fifty bushels of choice early
onions. ‘That is much better and more profit-
able than “to farm” and raise four hundred and
fifty bushels of rye on 80 acres, and it gives much
more satisfaction. 'The farmer’s work, like the
woman’s work, is never done, and what gets done
is never done thoroughly. Toil as he will, there

81 LIFE, NOT MERELY

MAKING A LIVING
is still crying need for more work at the house or
somewhere on the fields until he gets so worn and
_ discouraged that he has not time or the energy
even to make a shelter for his machine or to take
his tools in out of the rain.

But just such thoroughness, just that kind of
care is necessary to success in any business; for
the husbandman it is practicable only on the lit-
tle plot, or what is practically a lot of little plots.

The successful grocer and the successful cot-
ton spinner start their business near their cus-
tomers, or near their labor; we must start our
garden or our little onion farm in the same way.
The price of land will quickly teach us that we
can get but little of such land, and that therefore
we must use it to the very best advantage.

For that is what the best department stores
and the best bankers and wholesalers do; they
_get the best possible situated bit of land regard-
less of the price, and put it to the best possible
use. But the farmer is often working on a
place that is literally worth less than nothing, for
the whole outfit will generally sell for less than
the fences, drains, buildings, and the “good

A LITTLE LAND 82
AND A LIVING

bearing condition to which the land has been
brought” could be reproduced for.

So it will pay us better to hire or buy an acre
or two, worth a thousand dollars, near the mar-
ket, than a farm for fifty dollars an acre far
from the market. It saves capital, increases re-
turns, lessens risks, and facilitates education to
be near the city on a little bit of earth, for it can
be rented without a fortune, worked without
buildings, and its product can be sold without
delay. In primitive times when we had virgin soil
which cost little or nothing, a more evenly dis-
_ tributed population and little foreign competi-
tion, the farmer could get “independent rich”
raising varied crops on a large area. ‘To-day,
with the high price of farm lands and the con-
trol of the markets by the railroads, which will
often haul freight to New York from Chicago
as cheaply as from Albany, it is well nigh im-
possible to get more than a living that way

Intensive farming, intensive trucking, mten-
sive dairying, and specializing are the up-to-date
methods that promise sure and good returns.

Three cows to the acre, not three acres to the

83 LIFE, NOT MERELY

MAKING A LIVING
cow, $700 produce to the acre, not seven acres
to the hundred dollars produce; four truck crops
to the acre, not four acres to the truck crop—
these are the methods that pay.

This is no “pipe dream” nor experiment.
Japan shows us communities living off little
patches of land of two and a half acres to the
family. Denmark is a country of prosperous
little farms. The Island of Jersey in the Eng-
lish Channel is about eight miles average length,
and less than six miles wide, about the size of
Staten Island, in New York Harbor; high rocky
cliffs bound its coast on the north and west. Its
agriculture sustains its 60,000 inhabitants, more
than three to the acre of arable land, which is in
the hands of about 2500 owners, who get a yearly
rental of $50 to $100 per acre. The soil is not
very fertile, but its productiveness is enhanced by
mildness of climate. The holdings vary from
three to thirty acres, and herds of more than a
dozen cows are very rare; land and grass are so
valuable that cattle are never permitted to roam
at large, but are all tethered and are moved sev-
eral timesaday. They are always led by women

A LITTLE LAND 84
AND A LIVING

instead of being driven. The cows remain out of
doors the greater part of the year. Very little
grain is fed, but in addition to grass and hay,
the cattle are liberally supplied with roots, chiefly
parsnips. With our higher intelligence, lower
rents, and better machines we can do much better
in this country.

“The Man with the Hoe” is a back number;
it has been proved by measurement and by clock
over and over again that a man with an ordinary
hand cultivator costing less than ten dollars, and
lasting for years, can do as much work as ten
men with hoes.

You remember the story of Hercules and the
wrestler Antaeus: Exhausted by fierce competi-
tion, Antaeus gained new strength every time
his feet touched the ground; he was overcome
only when he was lifted bodily from the soil. Get
your feet upon the soil literally and figuratively,
and draw from it not only wealth but health and
the joy of the earth—not only a living, but Life.

Earth is your Mother; honor her that your
days may be long in the land that the Lord thy
God giveth, for all the children of men.

CHAPTER II

BUYING A GARDEN

Ownership—Sources of Information—Agents—Where Not
to Go—Fertility Secondary—Soil Never Barren—What
to Buy—Run-down Farms—Cheapness Relative—Where
to Buy—How to Buy—Don’t Fear Debt—Borrowing
Money—Insurance—The Monopoly—Unproductive Lots
—Use and “ Improvements ”—Make Unused Land Pay
—To Buy or to Build.

T is necessary to get hold of a bit of this
earth; even a lease is a limited ownership, but
it is far better to buy.

Do not be tempted off to the deserts or the
tropics; thousands of years have been used in
adapting your mind and body to contact with
your fellows and to temperate climes. New con-
ditions elsewhere are uncertain. Western Kan-
sas and Nebraska were settled up after 1883 and
a few wet years gave fine crops; then a few
dry years and the grasshoppers brought despair,

and homes and thriving towns were absolutely
85

A LITTLE LAND 86
AND A LIVING

deserted. With modern methods they are now
coming into use again.

The State Agricultural Department will tell
you a lot about climate and soils and general
prospects and prices, and sometimes even of
“abandoned farms,” which you can sometimes
get for less than the mortgages on them, and
the United States Department at Washington
will furnish you a map giving the soil survey and
will tell you all about temperature and rainfall
of most districts. 'The Industrial Agents of the
Railroads will give you more points, but the big
Real Estate Agencies are the ones you must go
to for personal and particular directions. Find
out all you can by writing, and especially by talk-
ing to anyone whose knowledge or even opinion
is likely to be worth something. When you want
anything, the way to get it is to tell everyone
you meet what you want.

Don’t try to skimp by seeking sellers yourself,
so as to save the agent’s commission; even a
poor agent knows far more about what is to be
sold and for how much, and what is cheap, than
you are likely to learn by days of travel and

87 BUYING A

GARDEN
weeks of inquiry, and he can generally buy
cheaper and get better terms than you can, be-
cause he knows what arguments to use and will
use many that, for the sake of your soul, you
would not use.

Get a good map as soon as you decide what
locality you like; then get from one of the banks
the name of a real estate agent whom they can
recommend—at least he won’t be a known thief,
as some are; examine one farm in that section
and talk with those who have cultivated it, even
in their crude way; by it you can judge of other
land near by.

Don’t be deluded by five-acre plots on easy
terms, even if the soil is fertile, where there is
no market; the farther you go from a good mar-
ket the less the acre is worth. For a small piece
of land, situation and cheap transportation
facilities are of far more importance than is
mere fertility; the German idea is, that a good
soil is any place where one can put fertilizers.

You should look for a good soil, but situation
is the thing. Location, nearness to a good place
to get manure and to sell crops, has more to do

A LITTLE LAND 88
AND A LIVING

with profitable cultivation than the quality of the
soil or anything else.

The following extract from the Year Book of
the Department of Agriculture for 1902 (page
562) shows what can be done with barren soil:
“The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment
Station has grown carnations and other crops in
sifted bituminous coal ashes with three per cent.
of peat moss. There is practically no plant food
there, so for 100 square feet of bench-space six
pounds and three-quarters of nitrate bone black,
and muriate of potash were thoroughly incorpo-
rated with the ashes before setting the plants and
proved to be better in some ways than rich com-
post.”

So look out for a good place where you can
get stable manure cheap. Don’t be discouraged
by the run-down look of a place or the ratty
looking shacks—those are the places that sell for
much less than they are worth. <A lot of pains
and a little paint will do wonders to renew a
tumble-down, weed-grown farm, and you will get
big pay for them. You are out for a bargain,
and if a place looks well it sells well.

80 BUYING A
GARDEN

Get land that is in the line of improvements,
so that the value will grow through the efforts
of others while you sleep; it is cheaper to pay
several hundred dollars for an acre that is sure
to double in value because someone will need
it, than to get a tract out at “jump-off” for a
song.

If possible buy or get a long lease near a
growing city and with good trelley or railroad
connections. If you don’t, the growth of the
city will benefit only the land owner, and will
in time crowd you out. If you buy, the increased
value due to the growth of the city will be
added to the profits of your crops and later will
pay you for moving out of the way.

Get your land in a district that people are be-
ginning to go to; there is where you can earn a
living off the plot while it is advancing in value,
but you must not buy more than you can carry
through the hardest times, or through a time of
sickness.

Have as much as possible left on mortgage
for as long a time as possible, say five or even
ten years, with the privilege to you to pay off

A LITTLE LAND 90
AND A LIVING

earlier on any interest day. Of course if you can
pay cash and have enough capital left, it is well,
but don’t be afraid to go moderately in debt; to
borrow money to spend is one thing; to borrow
it to invest is quite another. All banks and all
merchants begin by getting in debt and adding
the use of the capital so acquired to their own
——even cash houses always owe their clerks.

The experience of the Building Loan Asso-
ciations in the East, and of the pioneers in the
West, shows that you may borrow money even at
twenty per cent. and make money. It is not debt
but recklessness and improvidence that ruins
men. Invest carefully in something that you
yourself know as much about as anybody else
does—not in wild-cat stocks. Says Frederick F.
Ayer, “Wall Street is a trap.”

Insure your life and your health too, if you
can, so as to make provision for those dependent
on your efforts and get on your feet as soon as
possible. You may get rich having others work
for you. You never will by working for others.

But don’t get excited over a “snap” and pay
too much. There are as good chances to-day to

91 BUYING A
GARDEN

get rich off land owning as there ever were; and

there will be just as good chances to-morrow.

So many great fortunes are due to the rise in
land values that we are apt to try to get rich
that way without due knowledge of principles
or of circumstances; and so to lose. Only luck
can make up for lack of foresight, discretion, and
experience. Lambs are shorn in the real estate
market as well as in the stock exchange.

Remember in your buying that the ownership
of land is a method, not only of making money
by industry, but of making money by law. It
is the fundamental monopoly, and intensive use
of the land will enable you to hold it and live by
it while you wait for the natural increase in value.

If you are one of the many thousands who
have bought “lots” that have not risen in value
as was expected, think whether they might not
be made productive by raising vegetables or ani-
mals, instead of raising prices.

It is useless to wait for large advances in lots
which are partly settled with small homes; few
can pay over five hundred dollars for a home lot.
Unless the home lots are wanted for business,

A LITTLE LAND 92
AND A LIVING

apartments, or other expensive improvements,
they have a very definite limit in value, because
the small home owner does not greatly enhance
land values and he will not move.

Determine what you want to do, lest you fall
between two stools; whether to speculate in land,
making a living off it while it increases in value,
or to get produce and take the chance of increase
in value.

If you merely want a place to work, nearness
to an asylum, hospital, or institution will often
help greatly, but such “bad improvements” hurt
the speculative value as much as a cemetery does
—unless it is so situated that a growing concern
must have it. But if you wish to speculate—
that is another story.

You can often buy a tract that the owner won’t
divide, and sell off part of it at an advance. If
you have to carry land that you cannot use to its
full capacity, see that there is some kind of
shanty on it so that someone else will be working
to pay you rent.

Look out for the probabilities of assessments
for street sewers, sidewalks, and especially for

93 BUYING A

GARDEN
grading. Get an old building if you can, even
if you have to have it moved a long distance on
to your land. It is cheaper to buy and alter by
your own work than to build; a tumble-down
barn with good lumber in it makes a surprisingly
good house at a low figure, especially if you can
do the most of the work yourself. I have tried
it repeatedly and know, though I did not do the
work myself.

If you have any special knowledge of soils, of
minerals, of coal, or clays, or water power, you
may make special profit of it. Thousands have
got fortunes (as Carnegie got his first start by
buying natural gas land) through seeing capa-
cities or uses of earth that others overlooked.

CHAPTER III

VACANT LOT GARDENING

Charity vs. Self-Help—Opportunities—Assistance—Co-
operation—Little Government Needed—Cost—Health
and Success—-A Variety of Returns—One-half Acre—
Large Profits—Land, not Capital, Necessary.

No nation was ever overthrown by its farmers. Chaldea and
Egypt, Greece and Rome, grew rotten and ripe for destruction not
in the fields but in the narrow lanes and crowded city streets, and
in the palaces of their nobility. So let us thank God and take cour-
age as we see in our day the movement countryward, and the
“abandoned farm” and lot no longer abandoned. Surely the
history of creation is repeating itself, and again is the Lord God
taking man and putting him in a garden to dress it and keep it.

Dr. Francis E. Crarx.

HAT unskilled labor with little capital can

do on quarter acre plots of poor soil, well

situated, is best shown by the Vacant Lot Gar-
dening Associations of various cities.

Placing the half sick, the disabled, worn-out

people and the unemployed on vacant lots, where

they can employ themselves raising their own

food, is now no experiment, but an important
95

A LITTLE LAND 96
AND A LIVING

support of many families which would otherwise
be dependent upon charity.

Captain Gardner, U. S. A., the first Superin-
tendent of the Detroit Vacant Lot Gardens, in
a letter said: “It is the opportunity to help
themselves that these people want, and it does
seem so wrong that in cities people should almost
die of starvation and yet thousands of acres held
for speculation lie idle within the city limits. It’s
a sort of a ‘dog in the manger’ business. Poor
people are often as sensitive about being objects
of charity as you or I would be, and as a rule
they prefer to work for what they get—
rather Vacant Lot work—than to receive it for
nothing.”

It has met with marked success between the
waves of speculation, in over twenty cities
throughout the United States and also in Eng-
land and France, as a means of opening employ-
ment to those who are incapable of earning a
living elsewhere. Its practicability and efficiency
have been recently demonstrated, particularly in
Philadelphia, where for years from one to two
hundred acres have been kept in cultivation. In

97 VACANT LOT

GARDENING
1907 over eight hundred families raised on about
two hundred acres, crops worth $40,000.

There are plenty in New York City who want
land, but Vacant Lot Gardening there has a
serious drawback—lack of land within easy reach
of congested centres, that can be had free; how-
ever, thirty acres in the Bronx was loaned by the
trustees of the Astor Estate. Only fifteen was
cultivable, the rest being woods; the land was so
rough that sod and stone, making ridges three or
four feet high, were removed by the gardeners
before the soil was in condition to plant.

An announcement in the papers brought in
a few days more than three hundred applications,
coming from the five Boroughs and some from
Jersey City and from Newark. Applicants were
sent to the manager at the Farm to secure a
definite plot varying in size from an ordinary city
lot to one-half acre. Such persons or families as
needed assistance were supplied with seeds and
tools by the Association.

A hotbed was made to supply early plants.
An expert gardener was employed in the begin-
ning to instruct the gardeners in preparing the

A LITTLE LAND 98
AND A LIVING
soil, selecting and planting the seeds, cultivation,
etc.; each gardener was expected to cultivate his
own plot, and was held responsible for its con-
dition. ;

In our gardens each cultivator received a card

like this:

1. Each person receiving a cultivating privilege is re-
quired to cultivate the land throughout the season.

2. Each gardener accepting a privilege, agrees not to
trespass on another’s garden, but to co-operate with all in
preventing trespass.

8. Failure to comply with these regulations will cause
forfeiture of the privilege.

4. The decision of the Superintendent shall in all cases
be final.

These simple rules have been found sufficient.
Although the cultivators were recruited from
many nationalities—French, German, Swedish,
Italian, English, Jews, native Americans, Negro
—there was not a single case of disorder and
hardly any thieving.

It is hoped so to train these families in agri-
culture, that they can transplant themselves to
the country, and so be permanently benefited,

99 VACANT LOT

GARDENING
as has been done at Philadelphia, where in 1904
sixteen families who had gardens in 1908, leased
nine acres at $15 per acre per year and made
one of their number manager. Their children
from nine to twelve years old sold the products
to consumers; organizing their own routes, and
receiving daily twenty per cent. of their sales in
payment. They often made four to five dollars
a week each, never working over five hours daily,
and at work that seemed to them more like play.

Such results encouraged the New York Com-
mittee. In New York the cost to contributors is
about ten dollars per family. Against this the
families have products of nearly $10 for every
dollar expended.

The opportunity to cultivate was especially
welcome to wage earners whose large families
found no room for healthy activity in the nar-
row streets of, Manhattan. A single man, too
old for active work, had one of the best gardens.
A consumptive, aided by his wife and two small
children, cultivated an eighth of an acre, pro-
ducing fifty dollars worth of products. This
man lived in a tent all summer and built a shack

A LITTLE LAND 100
AND A LIVING
12 x 20 feet for the winter. Although not cured,
his condition was much improved. Another
man, a sailor, who was a nervous wreck as the re-
sult of an operation, performed a prodigious
amount of labor on a piece of the roughest land »
on the farm. His condition was such that he
could work but a few hours at a time, thus being
unfitted for any steady employment. Neverthe-
less, his garden compared favorably with any
of the others. A Jewish family, mother and
eight children, worked assiduously on a half-acre
plot, the largest granted to any one family.

Some, who lived in the vicinity, did the plant-
ing and weeding early in the morning and after
work hours in the evening. Others residing far
down in Manhattan, came to their Gardens Sat-
urday afternoons and Sundays. A few hours
during the week was sufficient to cultivate one-
quarter acre throughout the season. The time
required for one-quarter acre is about 72 hours,
in a season covering six months or 24 weeks.
This gives the time required per week as three
hours.

The product of one-quarter acre varies with

101 VACANT LOT

GARDENING
the skill of the gardener. Our experience bears
out the results that have been attained in Phila-
delphia—to wit—a product of fifty to one hun-
dred dollars per garden. For the time put in,
the garden earns, therefore, from 70 cents to
$1.40 per hour—without any of the advantages
‘of capital and without any employer.

In addition to the product of the garden, those
families who lived in tents saved from fifteen to
twenty dollars per month in rent. For six
months the entire saving amounted to from $140
to $220 per family. The expense was the cost of
the tent—about $20 complete—and such items as
seeds and tools, which for a quarter-acre garden
amount to five dollars for the season.

The indirect benefits to persons with large
families were very great. In a few weeks after
going to the Farm the pale, puny children became
ruddy and robust, playing in the grass and living
healthy, natural lives. They helped the mother
in the gardens, and added their mite of strength
to weeding the growing vegetables, to feed the
family during the summer and to make a store
for the winter.

A LITTLE LAND 102
AND A LIVING

Ignorant people, women, cripples, boys, the
aged and infirm have proven their ability to sup-
port themselves from lots 100 x 150 feet of poor
land without hotbeds, greenhouse or any perma-
nent improvements.

Unfortunately in every city the willingness to
work far outstrips the opportunities now open.
Most of us prefer to keep the land and the peo-
ple idle.

The following is a sample of many letters re-
ceived and shows the importance of this oppor-
tunity:

“New York, Sept. 29, ’06.

Dear Sir: I have about one-half acre which my little

ones and my wife have been working. Here is a list of

some we have sold:

TRROERHOS Tire sists te iatale lnm ee @ S40... Peppers). £2. ...4..\.-5 aan 15
ROGIER Wael fetesiern motte sieisre 3.00" <“Epe Plant: icons. eee .60
PEE SIO feo). ceils. Geer moei 10\; -Pumpkins © 625/040. G-ehees 2.40
UNVENOTE Ge gdsnsobasseas DE2S DS 2 4s vale amie oe ste 1.50
(OGM Soboncggsocbddoodan S10: “Bets oS a.5 + ae cee 2.00
IXGANS)) sishs,cisisicletelsplejnrelae ee 2:36") “Cabbage «.:-0 05m. inccgamae 2.15
(CEYANOUEY So dolegadagaboond E10): SPOEREOCS 4.0 s'sse'sjera'e aie ee 12.00
Cucumbers). 258ancenes 3.75 Muskmelon ............. 2.50
Dai ghey aa sabcoge ds oc #10, Kale. acs ss 0\sin sinc pee 15
OMG, Soadodagocaoouees 4.15

TPO AS))) sislstetcre siete erorsteree aretere 2.25 Total: ccaeessnee dene $70.35

103 VACANT LOT
GARDENING

Besides this our cellar is filled for the winter, and I am
satisfied, my six children and my wife are well provided
for. Yours truly,

>

In addition to the amount sold and stored this
man had supplied his table since June 1 with all
the vegetables needed by his family besides
taking in four boarders for several weeks. A
low estimate of the vegetables used by his family
and boarders for twenty weeks would be $100,
and this must be added to the amount sold and
stored to get his total production. This would
amount to at least $200 in all.

Another remarkable showing was made by an
oldman. On a plot 60x 100 feet he raised fifty
dollars’ worth of products, entirely by his own
labor. At that rate of production he could have
produced $360 worth of products to the acre.

Ninety gardeners started in at the beginning
of the season and less than five per cent. failed
to carry their work to completion.

Gaylord Wilshire, a prominent Socialist, and
Editor of Wilshire’s Magazine, says:

“In our grandfathers’ days ‘necessary ma-

A LITTLE LAND 104
AND A LIVING

chinery,’ meant an axe, a hoe, and a log cabin, all
of which were easy of individual production and
ownership. To-day, ‘necessary machinery’
means a combined reaper and harvester, made by
a one-hundred-million-dollar trust, a one-hun-
dred-million-dollar railway to haul the wheat to
market, a million-dollar elevator to unload it, and
a million-dollar mill to grind it into flour, and
finally a hundred-million-dollar trust to bake it
into biscuits for all America.” (Wilshire’s Edi-
torials, page 210.)

But the Vacant Lot Gardens show that even
to-day available land only and not capital is
necessary to make a living, and that any person
who can get a bit of land can succeed upon it if
he will work with his head as well as his hands.

CHAPTER IV

REASONABLE PROSPECTS

Living Costly—Hunger—Value of Food Products—What
a Man Wants to Know—Fortune in an Acre—Stony
Wold Record—Old Methods—New Methods—Acre
Profits — Irrigated — Shearer’s Success — O’Brien’s —
Hartman’s—Small Gardens—A Woman’s Patch—A 40 x
50 Garden—A City Backyard—Five Cents Per Square
Foot—-Glade Lands—An Illinois Plot—A Michigan Ex-
periment—Farmers as Robbers—Youthful Gardeners—
With Brains—Average Yields—Census Reports—What
Averages Imply—Bailey’s Estimate—Philadelphia Gar-
deners—Uncommon Vegetables—Other Callings Similar
—Scientific Farming—The Farmer’s Returns—What
Could be Made—What He Makes.

“LET US HAVE THE FACTS.”—Joseph H. Choate.

UN & Co., the commercial agents, calculate
that the cost of food has increased over
one-half in the last ten years. Wages have ad-
vanced less than twenty per cent. Now they

seem likely to recede.
105

A LITTLE LAND 106
AND A LIVING

In the winter of 1905, at the height of the
boom, I saw a double line of men standing in
the bitter wind at eleven o’clock at night waiting
their turn for the cup of coffee that a newspaper
gave—there was not one overcoat among them.

A look at these “bread lines” will convince
anyone that even if “the amount of food that
the world could consume is limited,” as Dr. En-
gel thinks, we are still far from the limit, and
that a fall in prices from increased production
would be no unmixed evil.

These people are hungry because they can find
no opportunity to work; one of the first steps
toward their finding it is to show them that they
need access to the land.

The food products of the United States in
1900 were worth $1,837,000,000, but the material
that was grown for use in textile, leather and
lumber industries alone was worth fourteen mil-
lion dollars more than that. So we need not
hesitate for economic reasons to send the city
man to the Farm. Nor need the city land owner
fear that he will suffer by the new farm move-
ment draining away his tenants out of the city.

107 REASONABLE

PROSPECTS
Increased production and wider prosperity will
help his land values; for it is self-evident, when
one thinks of it, that any improvement in the
condition of the earth must go first and mainly
to the owners of the earth.

But the hard pressed city man does not want
theories nor statistics; he wants to know what
show there is for him, and where he shall go and
what he is to do when he gets there. He wants
to know how he is to earn more than he is earn-
ing and more surely, by his own effort, and what
land to buy and how to use land that may make
him rich through the efforts of others if he only
knows how to hold on to it.

He does not need much land for either pur-
pose. An acre in the Bronx Borough of New
York City, where I saw vegetables growing less
than ten years ago, will sell to-day for more than
a hundred thousand dollars.

“One man in one year, as I have understood,”
said Carlyle in “Sartor Resartus,” “if you lend
him earth, will feed himself and nine others.” To-
day one man, with access to an acre. can feed
scores, no matter where that acre may be.

A LITTLE LAND 108
AND A LIVING

Now the Stony Wold Sanitarium for con-
sumptive girls is at Lake Kushaqua in the
Adirondacks, where two feet of snow fell on the
8th of April, 1907. But one man’s work sup-
plied over 150 persons with all the garden truck
they could use, from May to November, and fed
a lot to the chickens and cattle, off one and three-
quarters acres. Besides that, as Dr. Goodall
writes, they got forty-five bushels of potatoes
and a large quantity of root crops also, to lay
away for winter.

Taking those figures to pieces we find that,
even in that climate, 1750 feet above the sea,
where the snow lies into April and frosts always
come in June, one-tenth of an acre will feed
five persons and leave a surplus. The rest of an
acre will give room for fruit or flowers to sell
and will keep enough chickens and a litter of
pigs to supply the most of the animal food de-
sired.

Prince Kropotkin gives a higher estimate than
this. In “The Conquest of Bread” he says:
“'T'wo and a half acres of market-garden yield
enough vegetables and fruit to richly supply the

109 ; REASONABLE

PROSPECTS
table of 350 adults during the year. Thus 24
persons employed a whole year in cultivating
2 7-10 acres of land, and only working five hours
a day, would produce sufficient vegetables and
fruit for at least 500 individuals.” But this can
be done only by intensive methods.

A. R. Sennett in a recent publication entitled
“Garden Cities in Theory and Practice” shows
that it requires at least two acres of farm land,
as at present cultivated, to feed each one of the
people of America with grain and vegetable
products.

Again, he estimates that it requires from two
to three acres of cultivated pasture land to feed
an ox, cow, or horse for a year, and, allowing
one ox as the animal food sufficient for three
persons per year, it requires at least an additional
acre of pasture land on which to raise our beef
or animal food; or three acres to feed each per-
son. ‘These estimates are based on the present
ordinary wasteful methods of culture and pas-
turage.

The difference between such methods of pas-
turage and what has been accomplished by using

A LITTLE LAND 110
AND A LIVING

intensively cultivated fields for permanent pas-

ture, may be seen from the following table of the
product of an acre in various crops.

Equiva- Number
Average lent to cattle
crop per feed in fed yearly
acre in lbs. | dry hay from every
in lbs. 10 acres

clover pastures cut twice

DEE VOT Vacate eiccs = ee cisicieie nat 4,800 4,800 2.6-10
Swedish turnips cultivated.... 38,500 10,000 5.2-10
Rye, well cultivated......... 64,000 18,000 10.8-10
IUGR PM BSA Aodagoongecosnue 64,000 21,000 2.16-100
Indian Corn ensilage ........ 120,000 30,000 3.30-100

Unirrigated meadows and
|
I

In the first case two acres of land are required
for each animal. In the latter, the two acres
will feed six animals and leave six-tenths of
enough to feed another. Merely a difference in
what is raised.

By calling to our aid the latest scientific cul-
ture of food products we can show even a
greater difference than in the feeding of cattle.

One irrigated acre has for thirty years given
Samuel Cleeks of Orland, Glenn County, Cali-
fornia, a larger net income and a better home
than many of his neighbors get from hundreds
of acres apiece. Mr. Cleeks saves an average of

111 REASONABLE

PROSPECTS
four hundred dollars per year after getting a
good living from his acre, while many are be-
coming poor trying to run big farms without
irrigation.

In the Eastern and Middle States are chances
to do just as well on a single acre. Oliver R.
Shearer of Hyde Park, near Reading, Pennsy]-
vania, makes $1200 to $1500 a year on 3 1-3
acres, of which he cultivated 2 1-2 acres. He
has raised and educated three children and paid
$3800 for his property out of the profits of his
intensive farming.

D. L. Hartman, of New Cumberland, Pa., in
1905, got $454 from an acre of early tomatoes
and an equal amount from an acre and half of
later tomatoes. An acre and a half of strawberries
brought him $555 and his early cabbages aver-
aged about $300 per acre.

He says that no one can fix the limit of value
one acre can produce. One-sixth of an acre
planted in radishes and lettuce, followed by egg-
plant and cauliflower, and the next year to rad-
ishes alone, followed by eggplant, brought over
$200 each year; at the rate of over $1200 an acre.

A LITTLE LAND 112
AND A LIVING
A small plot 20 x 65 feet was planted first in pan-
sies sold in bloom, then in radishes, part of which
proved a worthless variety, then idle long enough
to grow another radish crop, then half in late let-
tuce and the other half in winter cabbage which
yielded no cash return. Yet $86.78 was received
from this one thirty-second of an acre, at the rate
of $2780 per acre. This amount could have been
raised to $4000 an acre; all without using
glass. |

A woman on Long Island cultivated a patch
of garden 25x50 feet and raised radishes, let-
tuce, onions, peas, string’ beans, carrots, beets,
sweet corn, potatoes, tomatoes, lima beans, egg-
plant, peppers, parsnips, squash, and cucumbers,
enough to feed her family of three and cleared
$50 on sales in one season. This is at the rate, for
the things sold, of $1750 per acre, after paying a
man to spade the plot, for manure to fertilize,
and $1.00 for seed. Even a city yard, though
only 25x80 feet, if properly worked, can be
made to produce enough vegetables for a small
family.

A lot 40x50 feet, by careful cultivation,

113 REASONABLE

PROSPECTS
yielded radishes, lettuce, onions, peas, beans, cab-
bage, beets, sweet corn, potatoes, cucumbers,
sweet potatoes, and tomatoes, amounting to more
than $20 in value, which was $438 per acre. Such
returns are not confined to pieces of naturally
“good” soil, but may reasonably be expected
from any soil properly cultivated.*

In the mountain region of Garrett County,
Md., there are swampy lands with streams run-
ning through them, known as glade-lands. A
gentleman gave plots of these glade-lands to men
employed in his tanneries, to be used as they
pleased.

Truck gardening was the result. In the fall,
when the crops were gathered, the gentleman
had the yield of potatoes carefully measured
twice, to be sure that the result was correct.

* The Garden Magazine for May, 1907, is the authority for an
account of a city backyard garden 28 x 28 feet, which produced
enough vegetables to supply a family of three from the middle
of May until November. Successive sowings were made where-
ever a little space could be found, with the result that all the
ground produced two crops, and most of it three during the
season. The produce included radishes, lettuce, parsley, onions,
strawberries, currants, peas, beans, salsify, tomatoes (early and

late), corn, cucumbers, celery and winter squash. The value of
the yield was $30.80.

A LITTLE LAND 114
AND A LIVING

The yield of potatoes was at the rate of 900
bushels per acre.*

Mr. E. A. Sutherland of the Nashville Agri-
cultural and Normal Institute of Madison, Ten-
nessee, writes: “I leased an eighth of an acre in
Battle Creek, Michigan, and put it into ordinary
garden vegetables. This little plot of land pro-
duced me green vegetables that would have cost
me $80 (or $640 an acre) on the market. I kept
a strict account at the time because I was desirous
of knowing just what could be done. I took no
other special pains with my garden beyond giv-

*Farmer’s Bulletin No. 149 of the Department of Agriculture,
in 1902 says: “In order to secure data regarding the amount of
labor involved in the care of a garden, and the amount of produce
it would yield, a ‘farmer’s garden’ was planted at the horticul-
ture department of the University of Illinois in 1901 so as to
furnish a continuous supply of vegetables throughout the season.
The garden was 280 feet long and 77 feet wide, or about half an
acre. It was manured with 20 loads of well rotted manure,
plowed early in the Spring and well worked down and then
planted in long wide rows, so that most of the cultivation could
be done with a horse. A succession of the same vegetable through-
out the season was secured by planting early, medium, and late
varieties, or by planting the same variety at different times. A
combination of these two methods was found most satisfactory.
The cost of all the seed used was $5.45. Putting a low estimate
on the value of the crop raised, the vegetables could not ordinarily
have been bought for $83.84. What other half acre on the farm
would pay as well?

115 REASONABLE

) PROSPECTS
ing it ordinary care and cultivating it often. I
was president of the Battle Creek College at the
time, and was carrying heavy work, so could put
only a little time each day in the garden. I did
not sow another crop on any piece of the ground
as soon as it was cleaned. I might have increased
the value of the products considerably by raising
two or three crops on a portion of it.

“ Afterwards, I got about a third of an acre
at Berrien Springs, Michigan, and cared for that
for two years in about the same way. I had some
fruit there. My own experience has been suffi-
cient to satisfy me that an acre of land cultivated
on the intensive plan will produce all the way
from $300 to $1000. I find that this is a very
common experience with those who can give the
proper attention to the soil.

“T am convinced that there is very little syste-
matic farming done in the United States. The
most of the so-called farmers are simply robbers,
who continually take from the soil without build-
ing itup. In a short time the soil becomes ex-
hausted, and does not yield its strength. Then
they doctor it with ‘ patent medicine’ fertilizer.

A LITTLE LAND 116
AND A LIVING

“We have a tract of land near Nashville, upon
which we are building an agricultural school.
' One of our first objects is to train men to take a
piece of land and cultivate it in the right way,
demonstrating what can be done with a few acres.
We are making it possible for a man in the city
to secure a home in the country and make a com-
fortable living.”

To show what the least skilled labor may pro-
duce, the following samples are given: On a lot
10 x 10 there was grown in Philadelphia by school
children ten to twelve years old:—

Beets, 6 bunches 30
Cabbages, 3 heads 15
Lettuce, 40 heads $2.00
Lima Beans, 24 pecks 75
Radishes, 20 bunches $1.00
String Beans, 13 pints 10
Tomatoes, 24 pecks $1.00

4 Ko 22) ee PEE NADIec - $5.30

This is at the rate of over $2000 an acre.

Mr. Edward Mahoney, Superintendent of the
Garden School in Yonkers, N. Y., writes:—
“‘Qur school covers one and three-quarters acres,
the actual area cultivated by the children being
1 1-40 acres, the remainder being used for walks,

117 REASONABLE
PROSPECTS
observation gardens, tool house, flower beds, ete.
The total value of the vegetables raised by the
children last year was $1350.00. This value was
computed from the prices the parents of the chil-
dren paid to hucksters, stores, etc., for the same
kind of vegetables. We use each year on our
Garden School $150.00 worth of fertilizers.

Two students in the Colored Training School
took a vacant lot and raised enough vegetables to
supply two families all summer and sold enough
to pay the taxes on the lot. A boy, fourteen years
old, raised enough vegetables on an ordinary sub-
urban lot to supply the needs of a family and
sold $30 worth of truck besides.

Similar results are constantly coming to light
from all over the country, proving that they are
not confined to any specially favored section, but
may properly be regarded as “reasonable pros-
pects” from any gardener. It is a question
purely of how much care and intelligence are
given to the garden.

An old Master was asked, “ With what do you
mix your paints to produce such exquisite col-
ors?” “T mix them with brains,” he aptly re-

A LITTLE LAND 118
AND A LIVING

plied. If we are to cultivate a garden or farm
with our brains as well as our hands, small hold-
ings should be selected as near to large cities as
possible, so that large quantities of stable manure
can be had cheaply. This not only greatly in-
creases productiveness but also warms up the
soil, thereby ensuring early vegetables.

If you don’t think, you will make more money
carrying a hod than you will cultivating an acre.
It is not things like onions that require the most
work, but things like blackberries, asparagus,
which require the most intelligence, that pay the
most. The following are average crops per year:

Beets, 300 to 400 bushels.

Cabbage, 8,000 heads.

Carrots, 200 to 30 bushels.

Horseradish, 2 to 5 tons (it sells for ten to fifty dollars a ton).

Onions, 300 to 400 bushels (but this can be doubled).

Potatoes, 75 to 300 bushels.

Rhubarb, 36,000 bunches.

Salsify, 200 to 300 bushels.

(These are actual averages per acre shown in Census Bulletin
No. 237).

But in averages, the crop of the man who
farms with his head and gets big results is “ aver-
aged” with fifty who use neither brains nor fer-
tilizers. Like the school teacher who asked what

119 _ REASONABLE
PROSPECTS
was the average wealth of a class of twenty which
had altogether twenty dollars, and was told one
dollar. But when he asked if they were not pros-
perous, the boy at the foot said: “That depends
on who has the twenty dollars.” Yet good aver-
ages imply some wonderful yields.
In the “Horticulturist’s Rule Book” Prof.
L. H. Bailey gives the following table of average
yields per acre in vegetables and fruits:

Beans (ereen OF string) ...........scecceseees 200 to 300 bushels
PMeAMS CliMaA) . 2... esses ec cctcenssescsnsece 75 to 100 bushels
\SEEIS) dodbdbebte copddcuueGuD cobooccaUpOUrUCODT 400 to 700 bushels
DME Ye cnc ea fiereeie'e cies edie sie o's Fo tthotates ie etait 400 to 700 bushels
IESE as charalajninde ale a'aicie's. xiaigx <iaielaeieloige creme 100 to 300 bushels
MURS CeLITED PETG oe oa ots) aierote evoleie re “alc) over avece Jarel's cueies,eissioves sie sveisie 150,000 fruits
RRIATIL SS oes afe'cls asd cistalaroiw 5 wlela.b oso ate’d sate, a'e a a/e'eltia,s 100 bushels
MS ee cess aga 9 olin nis atein (ecko xacole} s wie'eip) e160) 4)0)4 500 to 1000 bushels
Onions (from seed) .......ccesssscccsecveees 300 to 800 bushels
MRURSTALOS) pve otole)w(afoleleiserciorolelsloie ts ieie ele} ayel «\ ale)! sleielee 500 to 800 bushels
BME CAR POG) eco cess ceca ccencsseeacieecisas 100 to 150 bushels
MMMSIY IE Ac dial ales 's cid'c'e sa cialeitivic bie'ee's¥ie slates oi 100 to 300 bushels
BP ESME VARI Yet fol nj loiefavela(olals/tio'e\eielsiate) “Ko olels.s)s)sie,sis{e\e(s'» 200 to 300 bushels
SNM Soa -Wi ra Veen a0) wei 0] asi ak fee aial alel wa Sj! ete uelasel's 200 barrels
MPRMUSSE cre Soha AE jvchaiclsleleleis wae weit. wieie eve 8 oles wigs wie’ este ae 8 to 16 tons
LD SAS TAR UNE ORT CLO Sencar Sartre cine 600 to 1000 bushels
Apples (trees 25 to 30 yrs. old) alternate years)..25 to 40 bushels
meeekes (in full bearing): \......... 06d. cece ences 5 to 40 bushels
REET a feet oie Sad a Sale ale alee eis'aeie See's sies'e 5 to 8 bushels
Pears (20 to 25 yrs. Old)........ccesesscseees 25 to 45 bushels
MTS METEICS RET trs oi on cle'e) «iets eieie) cielo eels oie sie) vials 1600 to 3200 quarts
_ UULRRNIGRLY CA Gpaégengaueaduoonun oocoounodd 1600 to 3200 quarts

EMURONMETTICS cece vacivcsscscevesecsaestaeas 2400 to 9600 quarts

A LITTLE LAND - 120
AND A LIVING

You’ve read many advertisements of fortunes
to be made in tropical plantations, yet the yields
advertised as marvellous are only $500 to $1200
per acre. Many market gardeners and nursery-
men near our great cities can beat that. Don’t
take chances in a wilderness when you can do bet-
ter at home.

Philadelphia market gardeners pay $25 to $50
an acre rent for five to forty acres each. Land as
fertile can be bought for less than this, but they
are right at the market and can sell their produce
direct. Manure costs nothing and they can get
the contents of privy wells delivered on their
farms free; trolleys and telephones are at their
service and they market two to three crops a year.
They employ several men for each acre. They
study to find, not what most people grow, but
what crops will bring the most profits.

In his “Book of Vegetables and Garden
Herbs” Allen French says that Jerusalem arti-
chokes * are more profitable than potatoes and

*Farmer’s Bulletin No. 92, page 21, 1899, tells of an experi-
ment made by the D_ partment of Agriculture in feeding pigs
upon artichokes at the Oregcn station. A portion of the plot was

121 REASONABLE

PROSPECTS
just as valuable for food. They will yield from
600 to 1000 bushels per acre, will grow in any dry
soil and may be used like potatoes.

The French Globe artichoke is the favorite for
table use, and is so little grown here that it brings
a good price in the market.

Seed of the French Globe artichoke can be
sown in boxes in the house or in a hot bed about
the first of March, and set out in the open ground
about the end of May, in a deep, rich, moist soil,
not too wet. Generally they do not bear until the
second year, although if they get an early start
and the season is favorable they may begin to
appear in September. Like asparagus, they will
beai for many years. In the North they need
some winter protection; they should be tied to
stakes in November, and the whole rows above
the tops of the plants covered with earth and a
layer of stable manure. The edible part is the
flower head, which must be cut before fully ex-
measured and the artichokes dug to determine the yield, which
was found to be 740 bushels per acre. The pigs gained 24 pounds
from October 22nd to December 11th at a saving of two pounds

of grain for each pound of live weight over the usual methods
of feeding.

A LITTLE LAND 122
AND A LIVING

panded, boiled, well drained and served with
Hollandaise sauce. No vegetable is more deli-
cious.

Asparagus is a profitable crop. The main cost
to establish a bed is labor, manure, and the use
of the land two years. Part of a crop can be had
the second year without injury. To maintain a
bed costs per acre about:

For manure (applied in the Spring)...........ceeeeeeees $25 .00
Fertilizer (applied, after veutting) \7...0 65 end. t os cena 15.00
Labor, plowing, cultivating, hoeing, etc.............2.e0e 20.00
Cutting and bunching.........ccscesccccenccsccsccoccnes 40.00

$100.00

When well established, say in five years, and
well cared for, it should produce 1800 to 2000
bunches a year for the next ten to fifteen years.
At the factory price of ten cents a bunch this
would be $180 to $200.

By free use of proper fertilizers and through
careful culture, it is said that six tons per acre
can be raised, which at $100 per ton would be
$600, while the cost would hardly be $150 per
acre, leaving $400 per acre profit.

Brussels Sprouts cost to grow $30, yield fre-

123 REASONABLE

PROSPECTS .

quently over 3000 quarts of miniature cabbage
heads per acre, which sell at 10 to 30 cents per
quart. Average net returns $555 per acre, but
the market is limited.

Cabbage average twenty-two tons per acre.
Price from $8 to $10 per ton. Easy to grow,
gather and pack. One grower netted $935 from
three acres.

Cabbage seed, one of the specialties of Long
Island, which is the biggest producer, nets over
$400 per acre, but is not an easy crop to grow.

Cauliflower, where there is a good rainfall, is
a delicacy that can be grown in large quantities
in the open air. The crop requires care, but pro-
tected and blanched, its floweret-formed head
nets a profit per acre averaging over two hundred
dollars.

Other vegetables easily raised and profitable,
although not common, include cardon and chard,
of the artichoke family; sea-kale, leek, lentils,
corn-salad, kohlrabi, celeriac, and egg-plant. But
with all these you must be sure of your market in
order to be likely to get a profit. Chard may be
made by cutting back Globe artichoke leaves and

A LITTLE LAND 124

* AND A LIVING

tying the new growth of leaves at the tips to
blanch for about a month. All these vegetables
grow well in temperate latitude.

Tobacco pays on the right soil—2000 pounds.
per acre can be raised. Connecticut tobacco
brings twenty to thirty cents a pound, or four
to six hundred dollars per acre for a good crop.
Some soils in Connecticut raise tobacco equal to
Sumatra, which sells here for about $3.50 a
pound. It is claimed that in parts of Pennsyl-
vania and Ohio Cuban tobacco can be grown.
Soil is of such importance in tobacco growing
that the Department of Agriculture is making
soil maps of the important tobacco sections.
Write for them if interested.

Mushrooms can be grown as a supplement that
interferes with nothing else in the winter time.
The new method of germ isolation and spore
culture has cut out much of the uncertainty. The
only things needed now, besides knowledge, to
insure success is an even temperature, careful at-
tention, plenty of good barnyard manure and
commercial sense enough to get your product
sold to advantage. An outhouse, cellar, limekiln

125 REASONABLE

PROSPECTS
or waste space for a greenhouse will answer for
mushroom culture.

Don’t forget to find out about the wild mush-
rooms that are good eating, for your own ben-
efit. There is only cne poisonous family, whilst
there are more than a hundred wholesome ones
that commonly grow wild. So it is only neces-
sary to learn the dangerous ones and then eat
with confidence any mushroom that tastes nice,
provided it has pink gills or looks like coral or
grows on wood or is a tender young puff ball.

That there is another side to agricultural pros-
pects the following letter states clearly:

“Those who do any farming are rarely very
enthusiastic about it. There is something truly
diabolical about the uncertainties of nature in
connection with growing things, when it is neces-
sary to get definite results. In chemistry it is
possible, by experiment, to get exact results. We
know that certain things, in definite amounts, will
always produce a definite something. We can be
absolutely certain. But in farming it is not so.
Man can study his soils, and plant his seeds, ever
so scientifically, but there is an element that con-

A LITTLE LAND 126
AND A LIVING

trols the results far more than seed or soil, over
which man has no control, and that is the climate.
Nature performs such freaks in this domain that
farming seems a little less certain than most
forms of gambling. For instance, a cold north
wind has been blowing down here in Alabama,
for the past ten days or more, that is blasting
everything—after they had been growing for
weeks in the soft summer air. Once, in Colorado,
we had ten acres of navy beans. They were grow-
ing wonderfully; we expected to make between
$1000 and $2000 easily; had the beans all sold to
hotels in Denver, before the crop was half grown.
It was the marvel of the whole country; people
came from far and near to see those beans. We
were not farmers; had no experience. Just pure
“luck.” We were spending the summer out
there, and raised the beans to see what we could
do. Well, early in August there came a hard
freeze one night. The next morning our beans
were utterly destroyed. The “oldest inhabitant ‘
had never heard of such a freeze that time of the
year. We had a neighbor in Colorado who in the
early days made $900 one year on potatoes. He

127 REASONABLE
PROSPECTS
has farmed ever since, he and his whole family
working like slaves, and they barely make a liv-
ing.. Who can tell what made such a truly mirac-
ulous yield that one year? It is beyond the sub-
tlest science, evidently. I know dozens of cases
like these. Men who devote themselves to farm-
ing for years, who study every detail with the
greatest care, know that they never can tell, an
hour ahead of the actual harvesting of things,
what they will get. I wish it were not so. It
makes living a hard proposition, even if the land
was properly distributed, and all had a chance.”
This is all true of farming big acreage for lit-
tle crops. But before the chart and the compass
and steam came into use, the sailor had just such
risks as our farmer has now. He also was at the
mercy of the weather.

Now, what are the risks of the farmer? Tor-
nadoes? A lumber business or a factory is
equally exposed to those. Drought or excessive
rains? Cultivation or irrigation protect against
the one, and trenching and draining against the
other. Insects and diseases? We know how to
combat those. Late frosts or early frosts? Hot

A LITTLE LAND 128
AND A LIVING

beds and setting out plants avoid the late chills
and bring the vegetables to maturity before the
early frosts. There remain summer hail storms,
but compared with fire and other risks in other
businesses, this is insignificant.

If that farmer, instead of working like a slave,
had thought like a scientist, he would know why
he had made big profits one year and only a living
since.

In fact, the scientific farmer, who cultivates
not scores of acres, but the little patch that he
can watch and manage, is in no more danger than
any other business man, and he does not suffer
from strikes and cannot be discharged.

But one may not ignore the condition of the
ordinary farmer. Let us take the actual case of
a farmer living near Ghent owning 160 acres, of
the average value of $20 per acre; total $3200.
One hundred and fifteen acres are in cultivation.
If this produces $87.50 per acre, the gross aver-
age in the New York Vacant Lots, we have a
gross value of $10,062.50. Now, the New York
“Vacant Lots Cultivation Report” based its es-
timated valuation on wholesale market prices, but

129 REASONABLE

PROSPECTS
retail prices were generally received by the plant-
ers. The U.S. Agricultural Department calcu-
lates that the farmer receives 60 per cent. of the
retail price. This gives him gross, $6037.50.
That is what he ought to get.

Out of this he has to pay interest on mortgage
of say $1300, $78; taxes, $48; seed, $60, leaving
$5851.50 for wages, machinery, tools, food, cloth-
ing, insurance, repairs and general expenses.

On this farm it takes two young men to do the
work, so we must divide all the items and the re-
sult in halves to represent the result of the work
of one. We find $2921.25 as his gross income,
after paying the interest, taxes and seed.

On this showing he would do very well; but see:
The farmer whose real expenditures we have
taken is forced to till poor land, and tills far too
much of it, and probably, cut off by his isolation
from the sources and stimulus of instruction, he
tills it badly, and the actual product is only
$264.50 for each man, less $93 each for the three
items specified, leaving $171.50 each for all other
expenses and for “ profit.” That is what he does
get.

A LITTLE LAND | 130
AND A LIVING

This is a very different result from that of the
poor people, working land near New York on an
intensive scale with good instruction.

Of course in most cases, seed, and in some cases,
fertilizer, were given these people, but we must
remember that if they had even a five years’ lease
of this unused land they could supply their own
seed and pay this back besides, and that if they
had the use of all the fertile unused land about
our cities they would not need to buy fertilizers.

CHAPTER V

RECORD YIELDS

Possibilities—Production and Cost—A Standard—Records
—A Garden for Five—School Gardens—Small Plots—
Yields of “ Poor” Soil—Celery—Texas Onions—Corn
Record — Strawberry Yields — Rhubarb — Christmas
Trade—A House-cellar Patch—Forcing Cellar—Onions
by New Culture—Asparagus.

ONE of the figures we give show the full

possibilities of an acre. No man can
measure that; the only question is how far it
will pay to increase its products. You could
not hope to “beat the record” with a horse
or with a yacht unless you have hundreds of
thousands of dollars to spend. Nor to make
a new record in the mile run or the high
jump without a special physique or long
training; but by experiment through tillage and
care, an ordinary person may surpass the best rec-
ords shown in crops, or may develop new trees

and plants that will benefit the world. Hitherto,
131

A LITTLE LAND 132
AND A LIVING

truck farmers and market gardeners have origi-
nated most modern improvements in farming.

The farmer does not usually even notice how
much he raises per acre; he has plenty of land,
and the only question that interests him is how
many bushels he can get altogether and what they
cost. Besides, he has neither the time nor the ed-
ucation to tabulate results.

The Experiment Stations are so occupied with
more pressing problems—insects, varieties, hy-
bridization, inoculation, fertilizers, and so on,
that they have not given much attention to the
maximum increase of crops nor to the proportion
of increase of cost.

A healthy interest could be excited and much
valuable information be obtained if the Agricul-
tural Societies and Granges would ask the exper-
iment stations and progressive farmers to figure
out records as standards for each crop raised in
their neighborhood by which progress could be
measured. We have abundant well established
“records” of high jumping, of speed of horses,
of automobile runs and a thousand other things,
why not of the productivity of acres?

133 RECORD
YIELDS

While many elements enter into this problem,
only a little common sense and practical knowl-
edge are needed to fix profitable standards, and
it would bring great benefits. A standard would
differ materially from an average. All averages
are misleading, especially those shown by the cen-
sus, and unless you use brains and raise more
than the average, you will make but a bare living,
though comfort and even luxury are easily within
your reach.

It would be easy to get a lot of unverified
newspaper clippings about astonishing harvests,
and profits like the ghost stories in the mining ad-
vertisements. But the records given here have
been investigated by the writers or else rest upon
unimpeached authority, which we quote. Un-
questionably they are not the best ever, and pos-
sibly some errors will remain; but they are given
in the belief that they will bring out many better
records, and perhaps some corrections.

However, the record that interests you the
most, is the record of what you can get and how.

The old way of getting a bare living from
much land and great labor has no attraction for

A LITTLE LAND 134
AND A LIVING

the average man, nor should it have. If Nature
were the niggard she has sometimes seemed to be,
we would owe her no gratitude. In reality she
has provided a wholesome and bountiful living
for the average family in every acre of soil, and
if we do not get it, the fault is our own.

It must be borne in mind that in most cases
three or four crops or more can be grown on the
same land during one season.

If we raise only one crop, we will not get a
good living from even ten acres; that is no fault
of the soil; it is due rather to ignorance or care-
lessness.

A few years ago Professor Bailey said that
100x150 feet of land, if well tilled, will give a
family of five an ample supply of all kinds of
vegetables, except potatoes.

Now comes Mrs. Helena R. Ely and says that
a plot of ground 20x 80 feet, or 1-5th of Prof.
Bailey’s estimate, if well fertilized and well cared
for, will yield cauliflower, egg-plants, lettuce,
peppers, parsley and tomatoes for a family of
eight persons. If one chose to vary the list some-
what the results would be about the same. Two

135 RECORD

YIELDS
five-cent packages of each variety of seed, except
cauliflower, which costs ten cents, will raise more
than sufficient plants. The seeds should be sown
in March, either in boxes in a sunny window, or in
a hot bed, and set out about May 20th; or plants
may be bought and set out at that time. A
very little regular attention is all that is needed
by such a plot.

By putting in a new crop as soon as one was
harvested, School Garden boys, eleven to twelve
years old, raised on a sixteenth of an acre, 336
bunches of radishes, 110 bunches of onions, 368
heads of lettuce, 89 bunches of beets, 8 bushels of
beans, 7 bushels of tomatoes, 7 bunches of car-
rots, and 1 peck of turnips, besides nasturtiums
and petunias, many boxes of which found their
way to the hospitals of the city. This was at
Washington on the grounds of the Department
of Agriculture. At regular market prices $55
worth of produce was gathered from the small
plot. This is at the rate of $960 per acre. The
report naively remarks, “experienced farmers
sometimes fail to do as well.” (U.S. Bulletin
No. 160.)

A LITTLE LAND 136
AND A LIVING

The best lay-out for an acre garden for easy
cultivation is about 1382 x 330 feet, and easy cul-
tivation is an important factor in creating profits.
In one such garden in Pennsylvania, one-half
acre was planted with strawberries, one-half with
early beans, beets, cabbage, cauliflower, celery,
cucumbers, lettuce, melons, onions, peas, pota-
toes, sweet corn, tomatoes, while the last row was
set with Hathaway raspberries and Blowers
blackberries. This garden fed a large family,
provided vegetables and fruit for winter can-
ning, and furnished $300 worth of surplus veg-
etables and fruit for market.

On Prof. W. G. Johnson’s truck farm in
Palatka, Fla., between the sowing of lettuce seed
on September 23d and the first of January fol-
lowing, the profits of half an acre amounted to
$295. Three crops of lettuce were gathered from
the same land during the year, with celery and
cucumbers intervening. The celery yielded from
650 to 850 crates per acre, ranging in price from
$1.25 to $3.00 per crate.

Half an acre of land in Bath Co., Kentucky,
on the farm of V. C. Razor, was made produc-

137 RECORD

YIELDS
tive by successive crops. In 1905 it was planted
first in strawberries, which sold for $60.00. The
second crop was of sugar corn and pole beans.
Besides supplying two families, $12.00 worth of
corn was sold, and the poor ears were used to fat-
ten a pig. Of the beans, some were sold, some
given away, a great many were eaten by the two
families, and a bushel was dried for winter use.
When the frost came, rye was sowed and har-
rowed with a disc harrow. This furnished excel-
lent pasture for pigs and chickens all winter, and
in the spring was turned into the ground as
“manure.

A 25x25 foot garden at Rhode Island Agri-
cultural College yielded vegetables worth $32.18
at market rates, or at the rate of five cents per
square foot per acre. Three cents per square
foot is considered a good gross yield.*

* One of the students at the Normal School at Washington,
D. C., cultivated half of his back yard, and raised enough vegeta-
bles to feed a family of eight persons all summer. This garden
patch was about 18x15 feet. At that rate an acre would have
fed 1290 persons.

A preacher in Indiana Co., Pa., on a patch equalling about
one-fiftieth of an acre, raised beans, peas, some strawberry plants,
and a fine crop of tomatoes. The vegetables supplied all the wants
of a family of four.

A LITTLE LAND 138
AND A LIVING

To prove that any soil could be made produc-
tive by reasonable care and preparation, Mr. C.
E. Conwell, a business man of New York City,
chose two acres of poor, hard, clayey soil, almost
impossible to plow, for potatoes. The land was
plowed in June and sown with a mixture of oats,
rye and peas. In August this whole crop was
plowed under and then harrowed in. The land |
was next plowed in May and planted with Peer-
less potatoes on May 9th. The yield in October
was 964 bushels of perfect tubers which sold for
50 cents a bushel. Mr. Conwell says that his ex-
pense for that first yield was $156.15; his returns
$482.00, leaving a balance of $825.85 on his two
years’ work. The following year the same plot
yielded 985 bushels. After that, for several suc-
ceeding years, the yield fell off slightly, but what
was lost in quantity was more than offset by im-
provement in quality.

But large returns are not restricted to potatoes.
Alfred P. Edge, of Hartford Co., Maryland, set
out celery plants in rows 6 inches apart and 3
inches apart in the rows, in a bed 54 x 64 feet, get-
ting 11 rows of 2380 plants each, or a total of

139 RECORD

YIELDS
2530 plants. He sold and used 2220 plants, re-
ceiving 5 cents each for 720, and 4 cents each for
1500, making an income of $96.00 from 352
_ square feet.

At this rate of yield and price an acre would
give 277,500 plants and bring in $12,000. But it
would not be practical to plant an acre so closely,
_ because it would make cultivation almost impos-
sible.

Kalamazoo, Mich., is the real centre of celery
culture in America, about 200 acres of marsh
land being under cultivation there. Most of the
work is done by Holland families, the women and
children working in the fields with the men. One
man can tend two or three acres, or from 40,000
to 60,000 plants. The returns average about
$200 to the acre.

Before the severe freeze of 1895 oranges were
almost the only crop grown in Orange County,
Florida. Celery growing has since developed
and is becoming more general every year. Twelve
hundred crates to the acre is considered a good
yield, the income therefrom being $1680. This is
net income at point of shipment.

A LITTLE LAND 140
AND A LIVING

The possibilities of onions as profit makers are
only now becoming known.

Referring to his success in raising Bermuda
onions on his farm in Texas, Mr. E. L. Hoffman
writes:

“The statement in the land advertisement that
we cleared $10,000 net profit from 20 acres of
Bermuda onions is not exactly correct. We, how-
ever, did clear a net profit of $500, after paying
freight and commission, from one single acre of
onions, but the whole 20 acres did not average us
quite $300 an acre. In rough figures I could say
that last year’s crop ran about 18,000 lbs. to the
acre.”

Mr. John Closner, of Hidalgo, Texas, says he
made a net profit of $11,000 on 83 acres of
onions. The yield was 36 car-loads.

The average onion yield in the United States
is 200 bushels per acre, although in Connecticut
it runs from 350 to 500 bushels. E. N. Foote, of
Northampton, Mass., has made a specialty of —
onion-raising and this year has averaged 800
bushels per acre, with some acres yielding 1000 |
bushels. Formerly his highest yield has been 910 |

141 RECORD

YIELDS
bushels, but he expects to get 1200 from some of
his acres later on. His crop this year, covering
25 acres, brought from $12,000 to $14,000.

Corn is the staple American product, but there
are many other things that give larger returns for
time and labor expended. The yield of corn per
acre for 1906 was 81 bushels; this is the general
average. The prize offered by the American Ag-
riculturist for the best yield for that year was
won by J. A. Tindale, Clarendon County, S. C.,
with 182 bushels. But this does not touch the
world’s record, won in a similar contest in 1889
by Z. J. Drake, of Marlboro Co., with 217 bushels
of chemically dry corn, or 255 bushels green
weight, to one acre. That little 150 bushels of
corn extra which Mr. Tindale raised was the re-
ward of intelligent effort; but unless someone
will give you a prize it won’t pay to try for it.

Henry Jerolaman, of New Jersey, is known
as the Strawberry King of the World. His farm
has been producing strawberries for more than
forty years. When it was the property of Seth
Boyden, it produced in 1869 the world’s record
for size, and the berry was called after the

A LITTLE LAND | 142
AND A LIVING

American Agriculturist. Mr. Jerolaman has
beaten that record more than once; Prof. W. G.
Johnson says that Mr. Jerolaman has produced
berries four inches in diameter. Four inches di-
ameter would make a big apple. ‘They hold the
world’s record and are likely to for some time to
come.

Large, sweet, good flavored berries, Mr. Jero-
Jaman says, sell on sight, and never glut the mar-
ket. Of the berries raised on his farm, thirteen
usually fill a quart box; he considers 6,000 quarts
per acre a good yield.

Mr. Frederick Wright, of New Jersey, is au-
thority for the statement that the Climax Straw-
berry has yielded 6300 quarts on less than 4 acre.
Mr. Wright saw the field in bearing in the ground
of the originator of the Climax, Mr. H. W. Gra-
ham, White Haven, Md. (in 1908, I think).

Two years ago, Mr. T. C. Kevitt, Athenia,
N. J., had an acre of Glen Mary strawberries
that yielded 21,780 quarts. Mr. H. W. Colling-
wood, Editor of The Rural New Yorker, went
over to Mr. Kevitt’s, measured the acre, and saw
a portion of the berries picked, from a measured

143 RECORD

YIELDS
space, and was convinced of the yield. Mr.
Charles Wiley writes: “On a small plot in Bay
Shore, on the place on Park Avenue which I sold
to Mr. Cartwright, I raised at the rate of 35,000
quarts to the acre of strawberries.” That would
carpet over two-thirds of the acre with a layer of
good-sized berries.

Perhaps the most wonderful story of straw-
berries is that published in the Rural New
Yorker, April 20th, 1907, and supported by affi-
davits. Samuel Cooper, of Delevan, N. Y.,
grows strawberries out of doors as late as when
the first snow falls. During 1903-’04,-’05,-’06
he supplied late strawberries from August 7th
to the end of October, to the Hotel Broezel, Buf-
falo, N. Y., as well as to local customers.

The largest quantity shipped on any one day
in October was 20 quarts. Soon there will be no
season without this luscious fruit.

But strawberries have no monopoly as revenue
producers. Any garden product that is better
than the average of its kind, will fetch a good
price, particularly if “out of season.” Under
old methods each season brought its own prod-

A LITTLE LAND 144
AND A LIVING

ucts; now we have almost annihilated seasons so
far as garden truck is concerned.

Mrs. P. Bailey, of California, says: “When
a girl, I had the picking and selling of the straw-
berries, and I see by my old note book that I sold
more than $100.00 worth of berries from our bed.
It was about 20x 20 feet, if I remember rightly,
and during the month of June I sold more than
$40.00 worth and had regular customers for the
berries all summer.”

That was at Stockton, California, but Mrs.
Bailey now has a little home of her own at Sali-
nas, and of this she says: “I get all the berries
we can eat from a little bed of six rows—12 feet
long, and have put up some and given away a
few. There was a man called on Sunday and he
was surprised at our little home garden and said
he liked the strawberries best of all. As he has
just bought a little home of his own, he wants a
good patch of strawberries right away.”

Rhubarb is another profitable crop, and J. E.
Morse, in “‘ New Rhubarb Culture,” tells how it is
forced for the Christmas market. All that is
necessary is the complete exclusion of light and

145 RECORD

YIELDS
frost, maintaining a small degree of heat, and a
little regular attention.

Although specially constructed forcing cellars
are desirable for large crops, Mr. Morse tells of
a rhubarb patch, 36x 54 feet, in a house cellar
which gave $144 in returns. It was partitioned
from the rest of the cellar, kept perfectly dark
and heated by two ordinary kerosene house lamps
with chimneys smoked to prevent them lighting
the patch. The light from even a small lamp will
bleach the stalks near it. It requires little ferti-
lizer, heat or moisture, so that there is no disagree-
able odor in the cellar where grown, if the roots
are taken up as soon as the forcing season is
over.*

As forced rhubarb requires little soil, even a
cellar with a cement floor can be used, two or
three inches of earth on the surface being suffi-
cient. Rhubarb is a hardy northern native, and
does not thrive in warm countries. The best re-
sults are obtained if the roots are frozen before

* The expense of building forcing-cellars varies with their size,
but need not be great, especially if old lumber is used. From
such a cellar, 12 x 50 feet, the returns for one winter amounted
to more than $160.00.

A LITTLE LAND 146
AND A LIVING

transplanting. The same roots will not do for
forcing two seasons in succession.

The new method of cultivating vegetables in
the field during winter has been successfully ap-
plied to rhubarb. Exhaust or waste steam is
forced through numerous tunnels running: be-
tween the beds, thus keeping the ground moist
and at the proper temperature. This is prefer-
able to heating by steam pipes. The returns
from rhubarb thus forced are from $100.00 to
$500.00 per acre.

As Greiner says in his “ New Onion Culture,”
these new methods, accompanied by transplant-
ing, are wonderfully successful when applied to
onions. By the new culture an acre will yield
from 1000 to 1500 bushels of onions. It cost
$300 to produce 1000 bushels upon one acre; the
price received was $750.00, leaving a profit of
$450.00 for the acre.

But a prominent grower estimates that it costs
only $100.00 per acre to prepare the soil, start
seedlings, transplant, cultivate, weed and pull the
crop when the new culture methods are followed.
From 800 to 1000 bushels per acre is a frequent

147 RECORD

YIELDS
yield and will cost little more to produce than 500
bushels. Transplanting increases the quan-
tity and greatly improves the quality of the
yield.*

The new methods of culture apply to aspara-
gus also, a crop not so generally grown as it
should be, the prevailing idea being that it does
not greatly reward attention. F. M. Hexamer
in “Asparagus” shows what a mistake this is.
Nothing better repays care, but it is necessary to
grow it from good seed. One pound of seed will
produce 10,000 plants, about half of which will
be vigorous, the others should be thinned out. It
requires about three years to get a thoroughly
profitable crop.

A New Jersey grower cut 22,584 hunches of
asparagus from 12 acres, all of which were not in
full bearing, or 1882 bunches per acre. His net
returns from the commission houses were $2611,
or a little more than 11 cents a bunch. Higher

*The Department of Agriculture (Bulletin No. 39 on Onion
Culture), says that at the Ohio station 10 selected transplanted
Prize-taker bulbs weighed 8 pounds and 4 ounces. A decided in-

crease was noted in the 14 different varieties tried, amounting in
some cases to 100 per cent.

A LITTLE LAND 148
AND A LIVING

prices and larger yields are common enough, but
this is a fair average.

The average annual yield of one acre was
2500 bunches; value 124 to 25 cents per bunch;
the net yearly returns for ten years averaged over
$550 per acre.*

Asparagus yields for thirty years, but good
business policy dictates renewal after ten years’

cropping.

* Great stories are being told about the profits of growing
asparagus in California. We read of farms with over 100 acres
of asparagus in one field, and also of profits of $1,500 on one
acre. A Massachusetts asparagus grower who is ranked as a
large operator here, sends a clipping and writes:

“IT enclose one which tells of a profit of $1,000 per acre.
Now, this is for blanched asparagus and is a long way ahead of
anything we can show. Incidentally the white asparagus is not
fit to eat, but if they get such ‘profits’ they do not care much
for the quality. In New Jersey one man writes me of $1,500
profit on three acres exclusive of freight and commission. My
best yield on a 15-acre field was $450 per acre. One of my towns-
men received last year $1,000 from 1? acres, and another $450 per
acre, but the rust had not hurt them much. Who under the sun
can tell a ‘bigger story’ than a California westerner? Even
Eastern people who go there catch the ‘ fever.” My wife came
home from Los Angeles a few years ago anc told me that some
of the guests in a large hotel in Californa had to walk half a
mile to their meals in the building! It reminded me of a Nova
Scotia man who said they had trees so tall down there that it
took a man and a small boy to look to the top of them. But
really large stories are true in California.”

Rural New Yorker, May 25, 07.

CHAPTER VI

WAYS OF WORKING

The Home Garden—First—Working the Soil—A Begin-
ner’s Garden—Save Labor—Fruit—Planting and Trans-
planting—One Crop Risky—Companion Cropping—
Specialties—Marketing—Succession Crops—Deepening
Cultivation—Subsoiling—Soil Enriches Itself—Insects
Smothered by Ashes—Winter Plowing to Kill—Spraying
—Fertilizers—Irrigation—Drainage—Dry Farming —

Fancy Packing.

O matter what the profits of the farm are to
come from, the home garden should have
first attention ; that is what men live by, regardless
of prices or hard times. It must be large enough
to supply the family with food in abundance and
variety, but, to economize labor, it should be
larger than that. A quarter acre will give your
family a succession of vegetables in summer and
fall, and potatoes and turnips for the winter. It
will take about four days to dig it over and four
to plant.

The part kept for radishes, lettuce, beets,
149

A LITTLE LAND 150
AND A LIVING

spinach, Swiss chard, peas, string and wax beans,
may be dug over for three successive plantings,
but that used for early potatoes would need dig-
ging only twice; the second time when you are
planting late cabbage or turnips. Plow it if pos-
sible, in the fall, so that the freezing and thaw-
ing will break up sods and clods. Before plow-
ing, manure with twenty-five heaping wagon-
loads to the acre.

After manuring and plowing use a disc or cut-
away harrow till the soil is fine as dust. Then
your seeds will have a chance to grow. Mrs. Ful-
lerton says: “Weeds are the farmer’s best
friends, they force him to cultivate, but every
stone, weed or clod left, destroys part of the food
your plants must live on. Don’t be deluded with
the sluggard’s reason that “the stones warm the
ground.”

For beginners who want fresh fruits and vege-
tables from May till Christmas 100 x 200 feet is
enough; a regular fruit garden alone takes about
100 x 100 feet.

To get the best results, the chief factors are
nearness to market, rotation of crops, saving of

4151 - WAYS OF

WORKING
labor in cultivation and keeping up the fertility
of the land. When the land is near the market
the product can be peddled or sold to customers,
which makes a big saving of capital in crates,
storage room and teaming.

To save labor we must plant in long rows each
just wide enough apart to allow the furrows of
the wheel-hoe to cover the whole ground between
both small plants and large ones without read-
justing the blades.

If you plant in beds you can’t use the wheel-
hoe well, and you'll probably plant yourself in
your own bed with backache. Choose a southern
exposure; as this gets all the sun, it will make the
earliest garden. Lay out a plan of your land,
and whether for home use or for market :—

(1) Plant in rows; 100 feet of anything is usually
enough.

(2) Put asparagus, rhubarb, sweet herbs, and other
permanent vegetables in a row at one side so that you can
plow the rest easily. Run the rows north and south so that
each row will get the sun from the east in the morning and
from the west in the afternoon.

(3) Plant together vegetables of the same height, tall

ones back at the north end so as not to shade the others;
and see that there are woods, a hedge or a building for

A LITTLE LAND 152
AND A LIVING

a breakwind against the prevailing winter wind; this will
often give vegetables a fortnight earlier in the spring and
from two to six weeks later in the fall.

(4) Plant vegetables that ripen at the same time near
one another.

(5) Practice rotation; for instance, lima beans should
not follow green beans or peas; and, as far as possible,
put the plants subject to the same diseases and insects
together.

A row of apple trees about fifteen feet apart
might go on the northern border, plums and pears
on the west, and cherries and peaches on the east.

Put a grape trellis next the apples, then a row
of blackberries, raspberries, gooseberries and cur-
rants. These will form the windbreak to protect
the vegetables besides adding income. Small
fruits planted this year will bear next year. Then
between these and the vegetable rows you can put
the rhubarb and asparagus.

When it comes to planting it is important to
plant seeds at the proper depth. If you plant
them too thickly it is easy to thin them out when
they grow.

Transplanting can be done on a large scale.
Many vegetables are greatly benefited by it; it
gives each plant room to develop, as well as econ-

153 WAYS OF

WORKING
omizing space. This is especially true of lettuce
and salad plants. Lettuce may be started under
cover in old berry boxes and the boxes then
plunged in the soil.

Onions also gain greatly and about as much
labor is saved in thinning and weeding as it takes
to transplant. For fine grades, these gains are
important. ‘The soil must be kept busy all the
time; if idle even for a week, weeds will grow
which steal the food from your paying crops.

Ernest Rollenbeck says that as soon as early
peas are harvested he plants squash. If sweet
peas are grown, a row of onions may be grown
on each side of the peas, without detriment to
either. Late cabbage may be set in the rows of
early onions and make their growth after the
onion harvest. This gives three crops.

To raise but one crop is risky; its failure may
ruin you. With a number of crops, what hurts
one may help another, and even a complete fail-
ure of one will not be so serious.

Companion cropping grows two crops in the
same soil at the same time, one maturing early
and leaving the ground free for the main crop.

A LITTLE LAND 154
AND A LIVING

In this way late celery is planted between the
rows of early celery; radishes with beets or car-
rots; before the beets need all the room the rad-
ishes mature; corn with squashes, citron, pump-
kin or beans; horseradish or early onions with
cauliflower or cabbage. Lettuce with early cab-
bage, etc.*

No one need fear that his land will become too
rich.

Specialties often pay better than general
crops. ‘The returns can be made immediate and
the work almost continuous, through compan-
ion cropping.

Marketing is an important item in success,

*A complete planting table for vegetables is printed in the
appendix of “ Three Acres and Liberty.”

+ At a recent meeting of the New York Florists’ Club, M. H.
Weezenaar, of Holland, made the following statement as reported
in “ The Florists’ Exchange ”:

“Land in Holland adapted for the cultivation of hyacinths,
he said, runs from $2,000 to $3,000 per acre. The manure used
amounted to something like $1,000 an acre, in addition to which
there was a big water tax, levied for service of the pumping en-
gines, the water having to be pumped at certain seasons from
the canal.

The soil in which the hyacinth bulbs are planted is dug to @
depth of three feet, the work being done in winter, the aim being
to get as much frost as possible into the soil. When spring arrives,
from 10 to 15 inches of pure cow manure is dug into the soil to

155 WAYS OF

WORKING
and judging from the prosperous condition of
the savings banks in Long Island and Jersey it
seems clear that the farmers have studied the
markets to good purpose.

One of the earliest centres for truck farming
was along the Chesapeake Bay, where oyster
boats were employed to send the produce to the
markets of Baltimore and Philadelphia; so the
gardeners about New York early began push-
ing out along Long Island, using the Sound for
transportation. The eastern shore of Lake
Michigan is another sample of the effect of con-
venient water transportation in causing an early
development of this industry.

The time spent in “ pro-ducing” is not only
the time between putting the seed in the ground
and putting the crop in the basket. ‘The pro-
ducer is one who brings things forward, and

a depth of one foot. In that soil are planted potatoes, peas or
beans, either for seed or market. In August the products are
gathered. The same soil is then dug to a depth of 14 feet, cow
manure being again applied to it. The beds are rounded and
there is a ditch of about one foot broad and deep, dug along the
sides of the beds to carry off the water. The bulbs are planted
from 2 to 24 inches deep. The beds are then covered with reeds
to a depth of 10 inches. This covering is not put on until the
severe weather is past, the object being to allow freezing.

A LITTLE LAND 156
AND A LIVING

production consists just as truly in getting it to
market and seeing that it gets a fair chance there,
as it does in buying the seed or in setting out the
sprouted potatoes.* How much time may be
spent in that part of production, depends upon
the individual and it is not reckoned here. We
calculate only the time spent in physical work,
not the time spent in thinking how to do the~
work, which is more essential than money. You
must be willing to work and work hard with your
hands when necessary, but you can, after you get
started, hire men who will not or cannot use their
heads, to do most of the hard work. Corn, which
everyone can raise, sells for half a cent a pound;
mushrooms need care and skill and bring fifty
cents a pound.

Vegetables may be grown in rows between the
trees in a young orchard. The best beans grow
in orchards. Radishes, lettuce and cabbage may
all grow at the same time in space used for one
crop.

* R. B. Greig in the Aberdeen and North of Scotland College
of Agriculture Bulletin (No. 3) says that experiments with
sprouted seed potatoes gave a gain of from one ton (say 35
bushels) to three tons per acre.

157 3 WAYS OF
WORKING

Plant corn after early lettuce and radishes are
gathered, and more lettuce when beans are
picked; then cabbage, cauliflower or spinach
where the early corn grew, so that the small
patch may earn your living and pay big divi-
dends. Early potatoes and early cauliflower are
followed by celery and Brussels sprouts.

Onion seeds are sown between early planted
onion sets. Then cauliflower is planted. Later
we may put a few cucumber seeds between the
cauliflower. 'The onion sets mature first and are
gathered, then the cauliflower in time to permit
free growth to the cucumbers. Between the
seeds and onions we may plant radishes, lettuce,
peppergrass or spinach, which will mature before
their shade could hurt the seedling onions. Later,
turnips may be sown between the onion rows.

This gives two crops of onions as well as cauli-
flower, cucumbers, radishes, and turnips from
the same plot, and it leaves no chance at all for
weeds.

One can live while waiting for the crops to
come up, for many crops mature rapidly. The
accompanying diagram, taken from the United

A LITTLE LAND 158
AND A LIVING

States Agricultural Bulletin No. 149, will show
the time various crops ripen and how they may
follow one another:

VEGETABLES. MAY | JUNE | JULY | AUG. | SEPT.| OCT..

See ee eee

Tomat0es so fs:s:s10-s,c-« Rrciehe as ee
Dima beanss se cect eee pee. aY ss

Pepperdiican -ciecmias scien 6 ae
iF Avregcands Sbabgn sds eee =

Summer squash......... —

Cucumbers: iss sea cece ete JERE eae
Miuskmelons-ic. ecsilece eo. @

See how one crop goes off to make room for
another; most of them will be planted in the
Spring and will be growing all together, but

:
|
:
)

159 WAYS OF

WORKING
they don’t need to take up your valuable land
all together. You start the seeds in plates with
wet brown paper, and the plants in “ flats,” shal-
low boxes of earth, or in window boxes, cold
frames, hot beds or glass houses and set them
out intelligently. How to do that is a study by
itself. For it is necessary that the crops should
get their growth at sufficient intervals not to steal
nourishment from one another.

Of course, many crops, radishes for instance,
may be grown, by successive plantings, right
through the season, and late sweet corn may be
planted as late as August 15th in the Central
States.

Three acres will give a good living on this
basis.

To produce big crops deepening cultivation
is necessary. This is because the more soil sur-
face exposed to the air, the greater the regain
by that soil of the productiveness lost in former
cropping. The market gardener who breaks
and subsoils his land deeper each year down to
a depth of 24 to 30 inches, will, if the under soil
is good, greatly surpass the gardener who only

A LITTLE LAND 160
AND A LIVING

plows his land to a depth of 8 or 10 inches. The
subsoiling should be done in the early fall or
early spring.

During drought the land should be thoroughly
watered once a week and every precaution taken
by careful drainage to prevent excessive wet. If
cattle are kept, the soiling system should be pur-
sued. ‘

If you have land enough you can keep one or
more cows, if you can find folk willing to pay an
extra price for milk they know to be pure and
fresh and from well kept cows. At times grow-
ers have to throw produce away. Sometimes it
occurs through failure to find out in advance
what vegetables are wanted and the probable ex-
tent of the demand. Such surpluses would help
the milk yield very much.

If you can get land that has been in red cio-
ver, alfalfa, soy beans, or cow peas, for years, so
much the better. Bacteria on their roots draw.
nitrogen from the air which becomes fixed in the
soil. Nitrogen is the great meat maker and
forces a prolonged and rapid growth.

Mr. A. Crosby, of the Bureau of Plant In-

161 WAYS OF

WORKING
dustry in Alabama and Mississippi, says that a
farmer who had red hill land increased the yield
of cotton six fold, from one-third of a bale to
two bales, by merely putting in a crop of bur
clover in the winter. The clover reseeded itself.
Not bad use of an acre, especially if the cotton
follows lettuce, radishes or tomatoes. Two hun-
dred dollars’ worth of cabbage, two bales of cot-
ton, say at $75 per bale, and $75 worth of turnips
seems to be about the record for this sort of farm-
ing, but it can easily be beaten. (See Year Book
—United States Department of Agriculture,
1905.)

Many farmers have found that the inocula-
tion of the soil with nitrogen bacteria * or the
growing of clover, soy beans, or cow peas, will
make a considerable difference in their yields.

To manage insects (or infants) you must be
interested in them and study them. It is fun
and it pays in both cases.

Ashes slacked in lime, or any other dust or

powder freely put on leaves when dry, will

* Nore. Send to the Agricultural Department at Washington
for the latest reports on this subject, which is an important and
interesting experiment.

A LITTLE LAND 162
AND A LIVING

smother most of the insects so destructive to
plants. Winter plowing kills cut worms. As
each family of vegetables has its own peculiar ©
bugs, constant change to new soil keeps the bugs
from getting a good start. This is only one of
the advantages of the rotation of crops.

Even if you raise fruits and nuts that need
no hands and knees work (which in any case can
be reduced to the minimum by the use of the
wheel-hoe), the time to fence off borers with a
circle of tin pushed a few inches into the soft

soil is just when the borers threaten; the time to
spray is before and after the bloom, and gen-
erally if you won’t or don’t do these things, they
will be done too late or will not get done at all.

You would better run an office without a type-
writing machine, than a farm without a spray
pump. Spraying at the proper time may mean
all the difference between profit and loss. “In
fourteen co-operative experiments, covering 180
acres, made in 1904, in New York State, the
average increase in yield of potatoes due to
spraying was 624 bushels per acre, the cost of
spraying was $4.98 per acre, the cost per acre

|
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163 WAYS OF

WORKING
for each spraying, 93 cents, and the net profit
per acre $24.86. Not only were the gains in
yield due mainly to ‘lengthening the time of
growth by preventing foliage destruction by late
blight,’ but the sprayed potatoes being more ma-
ture, were of better cooking quality.” (U.S.
Dept. of Agriculture, Bulletin 251, page 9—
1906).

Stable and barnyard manure furnish heat as
well as plant food; to get the maximum advan-
tage of both it must be carefully treated and not
allowed to waste itself on the desert air. Manu-
factured fertilizers can be used to great advan-
tage if used wisely, but before paying forty dol-
lars a ton, one must know exactly what the ton
is composed of, what to do with it, and what the
results are to be, for learning all of which there
are abundant facilities in the books. The beginner
is safe on stable manure, but on very dangerous
ground with these commercial fertilizers. It is
wise for him to use manufactured fertilizer only
to raise green crops to plow under, in order so
to improve the land as not to need to use them
again. The bill for them is sure to come in, but

A LITTLE LAND 164
AND A LIVING
a crop from them is not so sure to come out, al-
though on early tomatoes, beets and cabbage and
for high-priced crops they sometimes pay ten-
fold their cost.

Early vegetables pay best, and properly mixed
manure heats the soil sufficiently to force them.
But many gardeners now find it cheaper and
more convenient to use hot water pipes, perma-
nent or portable, to heat the soil.

Irrigation is giving astounding results, not the
least important of which is that it is cutting
down the size of the farms from the conventional
160 acres to a maximum of about 40 acres, run-
ning down to five acres, besides aiding and fore-
ing plants and improving quality. That is a
study by itself, but we can avail ourselves of its
principles in the use of the farm-house waste and
any pond or stream we find. It is as stupid to
waste water, and especially dirty water, as it is
to waste manure.

Ordinary farmers do not think it profitable to
irrigate. A man who has push and the ability to
handle a fine crop to advantage, finds it very
profitable. |

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j

165 WAYS OF
WORKING

B. F. Calvert, of Willows, California, reports
$1200.00 from an acre irrigated with his iron
gasoline engine: the highest, watermelons, giv-
ing $300.00, down through strawberries, black-
berries, Logan berries, tomatoes, to the lowest,
cabbage, $100.00. The fuel costs only fifty
cents a day.

The simple method of surface irrigation is to
lay out at some distance—at least 100 feet—
from the house a small sewage farm where the
sewage may flow over the surface and slowly
sink into the ground, which should have suffi-
cient slope, and the soil should be porous, not re-
tentive.

The liquid sewage, including kitchen and cham-
ber slops, is conducted to this field in a water-
tight drain and then allowed to flow into shallow
trenches. To avoid the overloading of the soil
with sewage at any one place, the main distrib-
uting trench should be so arranged that it, and
the irrigation trenches branching from it, may be
temporarily blocked at any point to divert the
sewage into one or more different trenches every
day. In winter the warmth of the sewage will

A LITTLE LAND 166
AND A LIVING

keep it in motion and the filtration will go on
although the field may be covered with snow and
ice.

The water from the roof may be used to ad-
vantage along with the soap-suds and slops, in-
stead of simply keeping dampness around the
house.

The simplest way to utilize kitchen slops is to
pour them upon plants about the house in sum-
mer, in winter upon the soil, each time in an-
other spot, so as not to supersaturate the surface
layers of soil in any one place. However, mar-
ketable fruits and vegetables should not be care-
lessly allowed to come in contact with fresh sew-
age, nor should the irrigation field be near the
well.

The Waring system, best adapted for climates
where there is little frost, is to conduct the
sewage underground in pipes with open
joints and with trenches: but this is somewhat
costly.

Here was an ingenious scheme for getting
others to do his work—described by a writer in —
Maexwell’s Talisman:—

167 WAYS OF
WORKING

“I put my new well on the higher side of the
garden, with a large tub as a reservoir to get
sun-warmed. The pump is near a road, and
many people passed by daily. So I placed two
cups and a notice on a box seat, which read, ‘If
you want a nice, cool drink, please pump a little
while.’ We had many a laugh over the notice
at the well. Troops of ladies and gentlemen
passing would stop and read the notice, and
then start pumping. It takes over 200 lifts of
the handle to fill the tub, but it has been filled
five, six and seven times in a day, and during
the warm weather the pumping was all done for
us.

“The overflow of the tub went into the gar-
den, and it saved me the expense of a windmill.
The pump was well patronized, except on wet
days. The bulk of this overflow went to the peas,
beans, rose trees, black currant and some 500
raspberry and blackberry bushes.”

Plenty of manure and then thorough cultiva-
tion make an almost complete protection against
ordinary droughts. It is clear that when the
raises bumper crops on twelve

39

“dry farmer

A LITTLE LAND 168
AND A LIVING

inches annual rainfall, drought should have lit-
tle terror for those who have forty to fifty inches
per year. Always provided that we have no
more land than we can treat thoroughly.

If the soil is cultivated carefully and inten-
sively, it will hold and store water underneath
the growing crop. Finely pulverizing and pack-
ing the seed-bed makes it retain most of the
moisture that falls, just as a tumbler filled with
fine sponge or bird-shot will retain much more
water than one filled with buckshot.

The air sucks up the moisture from the earth
unless we prevent it by a soil blanket or “ mulch”;
this also readily absorbs the dew and the showers.
Water moves in the soil by capillary attraction
as in a lampwick; the more densely the soil is
saturated the more easily it moves upward, as
oil “climbs up” a wet wick faster than a dry
one. Put some powdered sugar on a lump of cut
sugar and put the cut sugar in water; the pow-
dered sugar will remain dry even when the lump
is so wet that it crumbles to pieces; this shows
how a mulch helps to check evaporation.

Grain and forage crops acclimated to dry con-

169 WAYS OF

WORKING
ditions are being brought here from all parts of
the world and are making lands productive which
were formerly valueless.*

Much will be done with other crops also by
dry farming; that is by plowing the soil very
deep and cultivating six or eight times a season,
thus reducing evaporation to a minimum and
retaining all the moisture for the crops.

Thousands of acres in Montana grow good
crops without irrigation. In Fergus County,
for instance, the once incredible yield of 45
bushels of wheat per acre is grown without irri-
gation. Heavy crops of grain and vegetables
are grown in the vicinity of Great Falls by dry
farming.

In the strictly arid regions there are many
millions of acres, now considered worthless for
agriculture, which are as certain to be settled in
small farms as were the lands of Illinois.

What irrigation has done for arid regions
drainage will do for swampy, overflowed lands.

According to the geological survey, there are

* Macaroni wheat will yield fifteen bushels to the acre with ten
inches of rainfall. This is two bushels more than the average
wheat yield in the United States.

A LITTLE LAND 170
AND A LIVING

60,000,000 acres of this sort of land now wait-
ing reclamation. If half these swamps were
drained it would increase the land values of the
country by $300,000,000 and the crop values by
more than $900,000,000; it would provide ten-
acre farms for 3,000,000 families, thus putting
about 15,000,000 people on lands now practically
worthless. There is no doubt that the federal
government will some day reclaim these lands as
it already has the desert, so there is no real fear
of the pressure of farm population in this
country.

The gardener, like manufacturers and mer-
chants, must devise new ways of packing and
selling. One of the latest is the “family bas-
ket,” devised by the Fullertons.

A crate holding six three-quart baskets was
selected. The three baskets in the bottom con-
tained beets, newly dug potatoes (the kind you
can eat boiled in the skin) and cabbage. A par-
tition over these and the top three contained peas,
lettuce and cucumbers in one box, young carrots
and onions in the third box. (“The Lure of the —
Land,” page 88.)

171 WAYS OF

WORKING

This is attractive, but you will have to find

a customer who will pay a fancy price for fancy

goods, direct to you. It is apparently trivial

things that do so much to increase profits: Kast-

ern gardeners and farmers have much to learn
yet about packing.

cou wei ouhe pene Seg | ives
iS ak eis ie vine wine Hoyt ton ee
Seetistys ihe a Dade aj ao bey: ‘he pad it

—* eyes

te vie bag deny series x8 eit ae ey: wae PRS

v3 say ment |
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‘ Tce % }
Aa fs Ҥ :

‘eg

: F | j ‘3 f . ;

CHAPTER VII

MONEY AND TIME REQUIRED

The Teacher of Fools—Success—Failure—“ Think-box ”
Secrets—Large Capital Not Needed—Specialties as
Money-makers—The Value of Money—Equipment—
Outlay and Income—Five-acre Investment—Ten Acres
Costly—Cost of Starting—Union Wages in Different
Cities—Hand vs. Horse Cultivation—Crops Every
Month—The Condition of the Farmer.

OST persons suppose that if their legs or

their hands are not going, they are idling.
But after all, as Mr. Carnegie says, “The
man that does the work, the hewer of wood
and the drawer of water, never gets rich.”
If working could make one rich, every mule
would be a Croesus. Take time to consider
what you should do and how you should do
it, and read Agricultural papers, Department
year books, and especially the farmer’s bul-
letins. In our appendix is a selected list of
those particularly adapted for the Intensive

Agriculturist.
173

A LITTLE LAND 174
AND A LIVING

The charge of the prophet against Israel was
not merely that the nation had sinned, but
“Tsrael doth not know, my people do not con-
sider.” If the printing press had been invented
in those days, he would have added, “ neither will
they read good books.”

Fools sneer at book-farming, but you need
the best books by practical men. “ Experience
is a dear teacher, but a fool will learn of no
other.” A wise man learns by the experience of
others.

Some people can’t help being successful with
plants, but while they have this gift they may
lack the ability to teach you how to do it. If
you watch them closely you will see that they
love their work; that they handle their plants as
tenderly as you do your children, and study them
as closely as children should be studied.

Study the new methods of scientific, practical
men, not the methods of ignorant yokels, who
are still using the rack-rented hand-to-mouth
methods that their grandfathers learned in Po-
land or in Ireland. You will find that if you
use your powers of observation you can do most

175 MONEY AND

TIME REQUIRED
men’s work better than they have been trained
to do it.

Did you ever notice how little people know
of their own business? Hardly a clerk can do
up a decent package, or even tie the string so
that it won’t slip. So don’t be overawed by
experience nor by success. Even the successful
man might have done much better if he had used
others’ brains as well as his own. The trouble
is that men do not use their brains. As Dan
Beard says, “It hurts the head to think,—try it
and see.”

To learn the rotation of crops and what things
can be double cropped or companion cropped,
what plants exhaust the soil and what restore it,
and what weeds can be turned over for manure
instead of being pulled up, and how deep to
plow, is more work and counts for more than
grubbing up stumps with a pick-axe.

You can spend indefinite labor, or money
either, on an acre; your “ think-box’
you how and where your labor and money can
be most profitably spent and how to arrange
so that the labor won’t all need to be done at

bd

must tell

A LITTLE LAND 176
AND A LIVING

once. If you can’t find that out, you will be
like the “ plain farmer,” overworked and under-
paid.

It does not usually pay at present, however,
to work an acre to its full capacity; it hardly
ever pays if you have to hire your labor, except
for the merely mechanical part such as plowing.
If there is plenty of cheap labor at hand you can
exploit that; if not, you had better exploit only
the land. 3

Large capital is not needed. Near every large
city you will find market gardeners worth ten
to fifty thousand dollars who started with little
or no money. The uneducated Slavs, Hunga-
rians and Wallachians are taking up the eastern
farms long since abandoned to the mort-
gagees, and though they are not the most avail-
able lands that intelligence can get, the farm-
ers are getting rich by cultivating them inten-
sively.

A market garden is merely a big kitchen gar-
den to supply the public as well as your family.
For success or for profit, land near markets and
transportation, manure, hot beds, crates, wagons

177 | MONEY AND
| TIME REQUIRED
and tools are needed. You can raise vegetables
in variety and quantity sufficient to justify giv-
ing all your time to it.

So farmers, tired of small profits and hard
work, should get away from staple crops to
specialties. They will need only a few addi-
tional tools and fertilizers. A cash capital of
$20 to $25 an acre would be enough for them,
where @ novice would need $80 to $100 an acre.
A beginner in South Jersey on a five acre truck
patch would need $500 to start and run till his
sales of truck started. In Florida $95 an acre,
in Texas $45, Illinois $70, around Norfolk, Vir-
ginia, $75 to $125, and in Long Island $75 to
$150 are needed for tools, seeds, fertilizers and
appliances, including rent of land, but not in-
cluding labor.

Borrow the capital even if you pay high rates.
It is a common superstition that money is worth
only four or five per cent., and that all over that
is a premium on risk. But the banks that pay
that rate manage to make much more on what
they get. :

If you are making a thousand dollars out of

A LITTLE LAND 178
AND A LIVING
an acre that costs $500 you can certainly afford
to pay much more than $25 a year interest on
its cost, for the money will bring you far larger
return than that.

You can work with only an axe, a plow and
a spade, although a scythe and a sickle extra are
handy, but to get the best results you need the
best tools. Special work calls for special tools.
They will pay for themselves many times a
year. |

Aside from axe, saw, plane, hammer, etc.; for
market gardening, the following will be needed:
1 team of horses, $200 (though these may be
hired) ; wheel hoe, $6.00—a wheel hoe saves back-
ache—walking plow, $10.00; disc or cutaway
harrow, $25.00; farm wagon, $50.00; cultivator
(2 horse), $25.00; cultivator (1 horse), $8.00;
wheelbarrow, $4.00; shovels, pick, matlock or
grubbing hoe, $10.00; work harness for two
horses, $25.00; spade and fork each $1.00; push
hoe, 65 cents; watering can, 60 cents; rake and
common hoe, $1.00; bulb-sprayer, 25 cents;
trowel, 10 cents. A few good tools carefully se-
lected and cared for are better than a number

179 MONEY AND

TIME REQUIRED
carelessly bought and then neglected. With
proper care all these things, even the team, should
be good for twenty years.

A broomstick or a tool handle sharpened, will
make a dibble. Garden lines, to insure straight
rows; labels; tomato supports, plant protectors
and stakes can be home made, and thus lessen ex-
pense, but the following additional “boughten”’
tools will be useful :—

Wheel-hoe with seeder, $8.50; roller, $8.00;
sprayer, $3.75; crowbar, $1.50; weeder, 35 cents.
You push a weeder backward and forward and it
cuts both ways. It’s best on soft ground; on
hard, use a push hoe. A horse hoe will save time
on many crops; horse labor can be hired.

In Northern Long Island, if you do your own
work, the cash outlay on an acre which produces
250 to 400 bushels of potatoes, usually selling for
fifty to seventy-five cents per bushel, or from
$125 to $300 an acre, is

MEL EAT OCS icin aiere oieisr iain sralarele eVardiele de Gineioieie slataye eta lsyere ts $10.00
BMEAIIETCIAL FTCTUIUIZED, 6c. ccc cece ccs eto cecscaccecseeccseee 13.00
Spraying Against Blight, etc.........ssseeeeeeeeeeeeeeees 4.00

A LITTLE LAND 180
AND A LIVING

Hand labor, if you grow but one acre, might
cost you $40, with wages at $1.35 to $1.50 per
day. If you ship by rail to a consignee the selling
charges would be forty to fifty dollars, leaving
about thirty net profit. Where you do the work
yourself, the labor cost, of course, goes to you as
wages or additional profit. By thorough cultiva-
tion and care you can probably get 600 bushels
without any greater cash outlay.

The cost of preparing an acre garden and the
seeds for planting may be estimated as follows:

Counting Five Dollars per day for man and team, and two

acres as a day’s work, plowing .........ccccccccccccess $2.50
One harrowing, at rate of 10 acres a day.........2.2eeeee -50
Manuring, 5 loads at $1.00 each... 6... 0. 0s. cccrcccseeens 5.00
Seeds, one planting, mixed produce..........seseeesecees 4.00
DOtal soa ceicinsscbecesesnoccsae cele cic cisies eu he wis soem $12.00

The cost of seed is not a big item, but if you
have to buy plants, the expense will be much
greater. Mrs. Helena R. Ely in “ Another
Hardy Garden” says that $10 or $12 will buy
all the seeds (excepting potatoes) required for a
vegetable garden large enough to supply a fam-
ily of eight to ten persons.

181 MONEY AND
TIME REQUIRED

Two men could handle an acre with occasional
extra help. On new rich land it will take two to
three years to get fairly established. Worn out
land takes longer. Asparagus and rhubarb take
two years and bush fruits three, to become prof-
itable. So you should lease for not less than ten
years, or better, buy.

Give one acre to vegetables, one to small fruits,
and one for buildings, poultry, cow and horse lot,
ete. An active man should clear a thousand dol-
lars a year, besides a good living, and be abso- |
lutely independent, unless he is located where
some pirate can steal his profits.

When the writer asserted some years ago that
he had known some “amateur farmers” to make
not farm wages, which are about eighteen dollars
per month and board (U.S. Department of Ag-
riculture) , but Trades Union wages, four dollars
for every day of work, the judicious smiled, and
the injudicious, including most of those who have
failed in farming themselves, and even some agri-
cultural editors, were tempted to scoff.

They said: “If that be so, how is it that the
regular farmers can hardly make even one end

A LITTLE LAND 182
AND A LIVING

meet, let alone two?” The answer seems to be
first, that most farmers are really speculating in
land; that few farmers know much about farm-
ing; and, finally and principally, that the farmer
is pushed out by the high speculative prices of
land to places where he ought not to be, and be-
ing, cannot succeed.

It might well be that some of the cultivators
themselves were too enthusiastic about the re-
sults of their labors, but we will find that other
facts cannot be explained if the returns were
less than those stated. There is a story of an
old Irish woman who was getting her mistress to
write home for her. She dictated: “Oi get mate
for me dinner onct a wake.” “Why, Bridget,’
said the lady, “you get it every day.” “Ah, yer
leddyship, sure they’d never belave that at all,
at all.” That is like our four dollars—it was
all of the truth that the public knew enough to
believe.

T. B. Galloway, Chief of the Bureau of Plant
Industry at Washington, calculates that where
a man can sell his own crop of miscellaneous
vegetables grown on five acres, his investment

183 MONEY AND
TIME REQUIRED
will be five acres of land at $250, $1250; green-
house, 20 x 100, $1200; hotbed, sash and mis-
cellaneous equipment, $500. He figures that the
gross income from such a plant should be from
$2000 to $3000 a year, or $1500 to $2000 net.

W. W. Rawson estimates that exclusive of the
Jand and buildings it would cost $11,000 to equip
ten acres for the highest intensive market garden-
ing and require ten men in winter and twenty in
summer, including three greenhouses 200 x 300.
Therefore, don’t invest in ten acres unless you
have ample capital.

Where labor is scarce it is important to know
how much time is needed for the thorough cul-
tivation of each acre.

The Boston Report of the Industrial Aid So-
ciety (October, 1895, p. 5, Supplement), gives
the average time spent on one-third of an acre
as “eight or nine full days, some not spending
over six days from the time of planting to har-
vesting inclusive.” Call it nine, that is twenty-
seven days per acre.

The estimate of Mr. J. W. Kjelgaard, New
York, is that with the first plowing done, with-

A LITTLE LAND 184
AND A LIVING

out the assistance of hotbeds, thorough culti-
vation of an acre of good land, one-half of
which is in potatoes, will employ a good worker
for twenty-four days a year.

Hon Seth Fenner, of East Aurora, New
York, writes: “‘On a third of an acre of ground,
plowing and fertilizing being furnished, half be-
ing potatoes and having no hotbeds, from six to
eight days should be ample for a good worker to
perform all the needed labor from inception to
finish.”

Mr. Joseph Morwitz writes: “Saturday after-
noons and Sundays during the six months of
work, or 89 days, ought to be just enough for
one acre, if our test of 1901 on three acres Joint
Account Patch were made the basis of calcula-
tion. ‘These three acres cost us 1120 hours or
112 days of 10 hours, or 37 days per acre. Two
crops per season. ‘They were plowed, and I be-
lieve, cultivated, by the teams of the Society.
The gardeners only planted and harvested and
helped out the cultivating to some extent.”

John G. Thompson, the fertilizer expert of
Passaic, New Jersey, writes: “You wish an

185 MONEY AND
TIME REQUIRED
estimate of the time taken digging and plant-
ing. It will take an ordinary steady workman
about four days to dig over and three days to
plant a 4 acre lot (28 days to an acre). This
means persistent effort and continuity of pur-
pose. Many persons will spend from two to
five times as long and in fact never get through.
They lack patience or perseverance, or both.”
Mr. George T. Powell, the expert of the New
York Committee on the State of Agriculture,
says: “I think it will require thirty-seven days
to cultivate an acre, one-half potatoes, and the
balance in vegetables of an ordinary variety, in-
cluding the gathering of crops. If the crops
could be partly cultivated by horse power, the
days would be reduced four or five in number.
More labor is required on poor land without
fertilizers.”

Mr. Daniel B. Safford, an experienced gentle-
man farmer of White Plains, New York, figures
it at thirty-five days for an acre.

We are safe, then, in counting thirty-six days
as the time needed for an ordinary able farmer
to cultivate a full acre plot.

A LITTLE LAND 186
AND A LIVING

In Long Island City, New York, 56 acres
divided into 84 plots averaging two-thirds of
an acre each, required altogether 2016 days’ work
or 24 days for each plot. The total product was
worth $4900.00, which gives an average wage
of $2.43 per day. In Brooklyn, where the Gar-
dens were as nearly a failure as anywhere, the
average was $1.52. In St. Louis, Boston, Buf-
falo, Detroit, and Omaha the returns ran from
$5.55 per day to 88 cents, or an average in the
five cities of $2.70, and these places all started
late and suffered greatly from drought.*

You can thoroughly cultivate an acre in 140
hours if you have a horse, or 250 hours by hand,
say 14 or 25 days. At the South seeds can be
planted every month; North from the first of
March to August. Simple but complete tables
are given in “'Three Acres and Liberty” to have
crops to sell every month. You can plant quick
maturing crops and get almost immediate re-
turns.

* The average product per acre was as follows: New York
(commercial fertilizer used), $87.50; Boston (commercal fer-
tilizer used on only 14 acres), $130; Brooklyn, $55; Buffalo
(very poor soil), $48; Detroit, $60; St. Louis claims $200.

CHAPTER VIII

GROWING UNDER GLASS

Early Vegetables—A Sample Hot-bed—Heating by Fire—
Cost and Returns—Flowers Better Than Vegetables—

Greenhouses—Success.

O get early vegetables you need a hotbed.
For it you want the best soil and the sun-

niest spot possible.
_ All hotbeds are right-angled boxes covered
with movable glazed frames and heated. The
bed may be of any size or shape but the stand-
ard is six feet wide, since the stock glass frames
are usually six feet long by three wide. The
cheapest plan is to get some old planks, broken
brickbat or stone, and piece together a box-like
affair in proper shape, then lay on the sashes;
the front should be at least ten inches above the
ground and the rear fourteen inches, for drain-
age. Make it face south or southwest and pro-

tect it on the north. This will do to start with,
187

A LITTLE LAND 188
AND A LIVING

but will last only two or three seasons. Cement
walls extending to the bottom of the manure
are best. Bank them with earth or straw to
keep out the cold, and have mats or shutters for
extra cold weather. The best material to heat
the bed and the most easily obtained is fresh
horse manure in which there is a quantity of
straw and litter. This will give a slow, moist
heat and will not burn out before the plants
mature. Get all the manure you need at one
time. Pile it in a dry place and let it ferment;
every few days, work the pile over thoroughly
with a dung fork; sometimes two turnings of
the manure are enough, but it is better to let it
stand and heat three or four times.

The soil should be equal parts of garden loam
and well-rotted barnyard manure; tramp well
the first layer of three inches; to make it entirely
safe for the seeds add another layer of the same
depth. Use no water with garden loam and
manure if you can help it.

Before sowing the seeds, put a thermometer
three inches deep in :the soil of the bed. If it
runs over 80 degrees Fahrenheit, do not sow. If

189 GROWING

| UNDER GLASS
below 55 degrees it is too cold; you will have to
fork it over and add more manure. If the bed
gets to hot, you can ventilate it by making holes
with a sharp stick.

Another way to make a hotbed is with fire.
On a large scale this is cheaper than manure.
Start six feet from the east end of your hotbed
and dig two trenches to about four feet west of
the hotbed. Give them a slight taper to create
a draught, and arch with vitrified tile, laying
two bricks on each side, lengthwise, a little bevel-
ing, and one brick crosswise to complete the
arch, and cover with dirt that was dug out of the
trenches; to these the flue from a small stove
supplies the heat. Unless you can get waste
exhaust steam, steam heat is only economical in
large houses. The care and expense do not pay
except where the business is on a large scale.

There are ninety-five million square feet of
glass in the United States devoted to vegetables,
of which more than thirteen million feet are in
New York State. Under favorable conditions,
glass devoted to this work will earn an average
of fifty cents per year per square foot.

A LITTLE LAND 190
AND A LIVING

The cost per sash is at least four dollars, or
about sixteen dollars per frame, made up as fol-
lows: A well-mortised sash frame (4 sashes),
$4 to $5; sashes unglazed, $1 each; glazing, 75
cents per sash; mats and shutters from 50 cents
to $1 per sash, depending upon the material.
These prices vary greatly, however.

An estimate for a one-acre garden to grow a
general line of vegetables where half the acre
is to be set with plants from hotbeds, is as fol-
lows: One-eighth acre of early cauliflower and
cabbage, about 2000 plants, would require two
6 x 12 frames of four sashes each, allowing nearly
250 plants to each sash. These frames may be
used again with 450 tomato plants, for the same
area, about 55 plants to the sash.

Another frame would be needed at the same
time, say for egg-plants and peppers, two sashes
of each, growing fifty transplanted plants under
each sash.

Two frames will be needed for cucumbers,
melons, and early squashes; for extra early let-
tuce count sixty or seventy heads to a sash.
Celery and late cabbages are to be started in

|

191 GROWING

UNDER GLASS
seed-beds in the open. If spinach is grown in
frames, the sash used for one of the late crops
of endive, escarole, celeriac, and other October
plantings, may be used through the following
winter.

This makes five frames altogether, the cost
from one to five dollars, according to make and
material; twenty sashes and covers at say $2.75,
$55; manure at market price, counting at least
three to four loads per frame. This is a liberal
estimate of space, and allows for all ordinary
loss of plants, and for discarding poor ones.
Most, or all of the plants, are to be transplanted
once or more in the frames. Many gardeners
have less glass.

Flowers pay better under glass than vege-
tables. A plant of carnations brings much more
than a head of lettuce and suffers less from the
competition of southern crops. But vegetables
can be raised in houses that are too poor for
flowers. Lettuce and tomatoes are the principal
crops in amount and in profits. The greenhouse
is also used for forcing plants which are after-
wards transplanted to the open air. This de-

A LITTLE LAND 192
AND A LIVING

velops them before they could grow outdoors,
. so that they are very early on the market, there-
by realizing the highest prices.

That a small heated greenhouse is far better,
and in the long run cheaper, than the manure
heated hotbed, is the conclusion of many prac-
tical gardeners. 'The novice, however, will need
to go slow in its use until he learns by experi-
ence. Greenhouses, like hotbeds, are expensive,
varying according to size and materials used, but
the increased returns from them justify their
cost.

Small greenhouses, say 12 x 9 x 8 feet, with
double walls, double-thick glass, plant tables,
etc., are built in sections ready for putting to-
gether. They may be bought for from $80.00
to $115,000, and will more than repay the out-
lay, as the income is from 25 to 50 cents for
every square foot of bench room, the prices, com-
pared to those for open air products, being as
five to one.

Nearness to market is most important. In
large cities the chief fertilizer, manure, can be
had for the hauling. The short haul is impor-

193 GROWING

UNDER GLASS
tant, and above all, the gardener who is near
the market can take advantage of high prices. If .
near enough to make two or three trips a day
when prices are high, so much the better.

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CHAPTER IX

ANIMALS FOR PROFIT

Animals on the Farm—A Snail Park—Frogs—Turtles—
Bass—P heasants — Dogs — Cats— Silver Foxes — Ex-

penses and Receipts—The Busy Bee.

VERY farm has its quota of animals for

profit or for pets. Of recent years even
pets are made profitable; there is a good living
in rearing animals, preferably uncommon ones.
This has opened opportunities to those who have
land and yet are not able to carry on farming or
even gardening.

Although the snail industry is practically un-
known in this country, it has been in vogue since
the days of Caesar, and flourishes now in Bur-
gundy, France. Any plot of damp, limy soil
can be made into a snail park by enclosing it
with smooth, tar-coated boards to prevent the
snails crawling out. The boards must penetrate
the ground for a depth of eight inches at least,
and have a ledge or shelf at the ground level,

so that the snails may not burrow under them.
195

A LITTLE LAND 196
AND A LIVING
Strong stakes are driven outside the boards to
prevent the wind blowing them over. A plot
of ground 100 x 200 feet will serve for about
ten thousand snails. The soil is plowed deeply
in the Spring; the snails are then put in and
covered with several inches of moss or straw,
which is kept damp. As they eat only at night,
their food,—lettuce, cabbage, vine leaves, or
grass,—must be supplied daily about sunset. To
improve the flavor of snails, mint, parsley, and
other aromatic herbs are planted in their enclo-
sure. The snail lays from fifty to sixty eggs in
a year. Her nest is a smooth hole in the ground,
where the eggs hatch in less than 20 days. The
game is marketable when six or eight weeks old.
They are ready for picking in October after
they have sealed themselves up in their shells;
they are then put on trays and kept in store-
house for several months, when they are brushed
and cooked in salted water. They are shipped
to market at once in wooden boxes holding from
50 to 200 each, and bring high prices as an epi-
curean delicacy.

Frog culture is successful only when the pond
is large enough to be partitioned, thus separating

197 ANIMALS
FOR PROFIT
the young from the old. The frog is a cannibal
and will eat tadpoles and even the larva. The
chief difficulty in raising frogs is to find the
proper food for them, unless insects are abund-
ant. There are many frog ranches near San
Francisco and some do a thriving business, but
as a general rule, commercial success has not
attended the enterprise in this country.

Young diamond-backed turtles are cheap,
while the full grown are enormously expensive,
and the demand for them is constantly increas-
ing. It is possible that purchasing young ones
and maturing them would open a new line of
profit. Common box tortoise and snapping tur-
tles are raised for canning, and often take the
place of the more expensive diamond-back.

Although fish culture is little known in this
country except under Government auspices, yet
carp, black bass, and trout are raised where con-
ditions are favorable. It is comparatively easy
to cultivate carp, although the industry has never
attained such proportions here as in Europe.
A pond with a mud or loam soil, and water of the
same depth all the year, is all that is needed.
In stocking a pond three females are allowed for

A LITTLE LAND 198
AND A LIVING
two males. They spawn in the Spring, laying
a large number of eggs, but only 800 to 1000
to each spawner prove fertile. Carp live to a
great age and often weigh from 80 to 40 pounds.

Black bass give good returns. The small
mouthed variety require a pond six feet deep in
the middle and not less than two feet at the
edge, with a sandy bottom and many water
plants; 100 x 100 feet is a good sized breeding
pond. As the bass needs a barrier behind which
to spawn, artificial rectangular shaped nest
frames are provided, two adjoining sides being
16 inches high, the other two four inches high.
To keep the water in healthful condition the
pond must be fed by a flowing brook protected
from freshet disturbances. Bass feed upon min-
nows and in their absence must be supplied with
fresh liver cut in threads like angle worms. Even
then they must have minnows from September
until they go into Winter quarters. Raising
young bass or fingerlings to stock rivers and
ponds is a profitable enterprise

Trout are more difficult to raisé, as cold run-
ning water and unremitting care are necessary

199 ANIMALS
FOR PROFIT

Although with pheasants, like all birds of the
turkey family, the more ground they have to
range in the less are they liable to disease, yet
with proper care they can be raised on the home
acre. We find authenticated cases where as
many as sixty pheasants were kept in a house
10 x 50 feet with five yards averaging 10 x 25.

The chief difficulty in raising them is securing
their food, such as flies, maggots, and ant-eggs.
They also require green food like lettuce, cab-
bage, turnip tops, etc. The pheasantry should
be placed on high, well-drained land with a south-
ern exposure, and must be thoroughly protected
from cats, dogs, and other small animals.
Pheasants bring fancy prices and the supply
does not begin to keep pace with the demand.

So much has been written about the raising of
chickens that little remains to be said.

We do not propose to hatch out another arti-
cle on the exhausted chicken subject. It is
necessary to take with large allowance the articles
in the poultry journals, as well as the Ananias
stories on this and other subjects in certain highly
illustrated “farm” journals.

A LITTLE LAND 200
AND A LIVING

It is easy to figure out a profit in anything—
on paper—and this is the way chickens figure
out on paper:

Lot Date

A Jan.1, ’07 | 1 cock, 20 hens, will on Jan.
22, 1907 hatch 100 cocks, | Sold |Kept
100 hens. To preserve the Cc Ci a
Mormon proportion—sell 95 |——__|___|___.
cocks. Begin with........ 1 20

; HATCHED
Hatch, etc. (B) Jan. 22, 07 95 5 | 100
“ “ec

—————— | —__——

A July, 07 (C) July 22, 07 95 5 100
A Jan, 708 2 “« (D) Jan. 22, 708 95 5 | 100
A July, 08 < “ (E) July 22, 708 95 5 100
ByyGet, 7) Ga © s (Fy) Oct 22, 707 A475 25 500
B Apr, 708 2 s G) Apr, 22, ’08 475 25 500
B Oct. 708 sg Sy H) Oct: 22, 708 ATS 25 500
Cc Mch,; 708 “$ * (I) Mch. 22, ’08 A475 25 500
C Sept, 08 “ “ (J) Sept. 22, 708 A475 25 500
D Oct. 708 = *. (CK) Oct. 22, “08 475 25 506
E not matur. rd “« (L) July 22, 708 | 2375 | 125 | 2506
F July, ’08

G not matur.

H_ not matur.

I Dec, ’08 * “* (M) Dec., 708.. | 2375 | 125 | 2500
K not matur.

L not matur.

M not matur.

J

not matur. 4 7980 | 421 | 8426

201 ANIMALS
FOR PROFIT
Raising fancy chickens looks attractive, but
it requires much experience to get the goods
and much reputation to sell them; the risks are
also great, so that unless one loves to fuss with
fancy poultry it is not an encouraging field.
But to raise chickens of the ordinary variety,
good for laying and for table use, much less
fussing is necessary. A 200-egg incubator is
filled twice in a season with fresh eggs, gathered
from neighboring farms and henneries. Eggs
laid the very day of collection are preferred,
for those a week old are quite apt to be infertile.
Practically all of those eggs will hatch and pro-
duce vigorous birds which will begin to lay early.
No effort is made to secure any particular variety
and only the most active and healthy are re-
served for winter laying. Over-breeding has
produced so many disabilities in fowls as in other
animals that wise egg producers are now experi-
menting with cross-breeds. So far the plan has
proven most successful.
Even a few chickens can be made to pay on
a farm, particularly where the food is raised
for them, so that nothing extra has to be bought;

A LITTLE LAND 202
AND A LIVING

the meat scraps from the table, the corn, cabbage,
and other green things, wheat, oats and what-
ever food is used, will not be felt as an addi-
tional expense and the returns are therefore clear
profit. A flock of 25 fowls, if properly housed
and fed, will give eggs and chickens enough to
add materially to the farmer’s income.

There is more money in eggs than there is
in chickens. Eggs out of season, like everything
else out of season, bring high prices, and it is
possible to nourish and even deceive the chicken
into laying at unseasonable times. I do not know
how good that is for the morals of the chickens,
but it is good for our finances.

Intelligence alone will bring profits, and un-
less intelligence be reinforced by a careful study
of the many valuable reference books and au-
thorities, it will not secure large returns.

There is more profit in ducks than in hens,
now that we know that they can be raised with-
out swimming places. Ducks that are wholly
land-raised have fewer feathers and more flesh,
less oil and a finer flavor, and the demand for
ducks as food has increased proportionately.

203 ANIMALS

FOR PROFIT
White pekins are the most popular breed be-
cause of their size and white meat; and more-
over, they are splendid layers. They lay from
100 to 165 eggs a season and the ducklings are
easy to raise.

Geese are another source of profit and like
ducks can be successfully raised without water.
‘The feathers of both are valuable, although
goose feathers bring the higher price. In the
autumn, pure white goose feathers, dry and in
good condition, are worth about 60 cents a
pound; gray goose and white duck, 40 cents each;
gray duck 32 cents. Scalded stock brings from
3 to 5 cents a pound less. The small feathers
are shipped in burlap or cotton sacks and, to
avoid mildew, should be perfectly dry when
packed.

Squab-raising is a lucrative business, but the
returns are often exaggerated. Although
pigeons naturally breed ten or eleven times a
year, every egg will not hatch a big squab for
the market. The inexperienced beginner, if he
start with well mated pure Homer stock, may,
with good management and close attention, clear

A LITTLE LAND 204
AND A LIVING

$2.00 a year on each pair of birds; but that is
not likely.

Attention is turning to the “poor man’s cow”
as goats are called. The U. S. Experiment Sta-
tion in Connecticut imported a herd of 50 Malta
goats, which is the best breed of milch goats, for
experiment. The goat is almost immune from
tuberculosis, which makes its milk most whole-
some. It is easily and cheaply fed, ten goats
costing no more to keep than one cow. A good
milker will give from 2 to 3 quarts a day and
a child can give all the care needed. ‘The does
cost from $5 to $8 each when full grown; a
young one from $1 to $38.

A further profit can be made from goats’ hair,
which is extensively used in the manufacture of
so-called ‘‘camel’s hair” goods. The best breed
of goats for this purpose is the Angora, whose
long, silky hair is much in demand for making
the best grades of plush, silk dress goods, thread,
ete. From three to five pounds of soft, silky hair
is sheared from each goat annually, and the mar-
ket price ranges from $2.50 to $7.00 a pound.
Angora goats are not good eating, but they are

205 ANIMALS

FOR PROFIT
splendid milkers; both butter and cheese are made
from their milk. They are good breeders too,
and cost but little to keep, although they need
a herder and require shelter at night. The aver-
age price for a pair of Angora goats is $7.50;
the male $5.00 and the female $2.50. A man
who took up government irrigated land in Si-
rocco County, California, put nearly all his sur-
plus cash, $100, into Angora goats, and soon
owned all his land, built a house and started a
bank account which is steadily increasing.

Swiss goats also are money makers. George
L. Cook, of Winnetka, IIl., had a buck and six-
teen does selected for him in the Saanen valley
and brought to this country. It has proved a
paying investment. Each doe gives from four
to six quarts of milk a day, and the cost of
keeping is very small. It is possible to build up
a good trade in goats’ milk in big cities, as it
resembles mother’s milk more closely than cow’s
milk does, and is better for babies. In Swit-
zerland peasants drive the goats to the doors of
their customers before milking them.

Of course goats are a venture, but they are

A LITTLE LAND 206
AND A LIVING
probably a better venture than cattle, especially
if you get into the business before everyone else
is in the race.

Dog breeding is not a new occupation, but
many persons make money by it. It does not
require much land or capital and there is al-
ways a profitable market, particularly for fancy
lap-dogs, like the King Charles spaniel. To
make profit on the breeding of retrievers or any
sort of hunting dogs, kennels should be located
in a game country and the puppies trained by
a practical hunter.

Breeding cats is a newer and better paying
venture than dogs. The purchasers are women
who will pay any price for a cat that strikes
their fancy, and as fashions in cats change fre-
quently, there is always a demand. Parti-col-
ored cats are just now in vogue, the favorites
being Persian, tortoise-shell, and coon, but any
oddity like the tailless Manx cat, or the lynx
cats will find a ready market.

At Dover, Maine, there are two fox ranches
where from twenty to forty silver foxes are
raised each year on less than an acre of land.

207 ANIMALS

FOR PROFIT
They are not expensive to breed, as their food
is chiefly sour milk and cornmeal or flour made
into a small loaf, with a little meat once a week.
They are clean animals and with careful atten-
tion are free from disease. They breed as well
in captivity as in their wild state, six or seven
being the average litter, and any man who has
made a success of raising hens can succeed with
foxes, which require no more space or care and
are worth twenty times as much. Fine silver
fox furs are worth $150 a pelt. A cold climate
is needed.

A fox ranch should have a No. 16 galvanized
wire fence, ten feet high with an overhang of 18
inches to keep the foxes from escaping. Stakes
must be driven close to the fence to prevent
burrowing. This and the purchase of stock com-
prise the whole expense for starting in a busi-
ness whose gross receipts may mean from $3000
to $6000 a year on a score or two of animals.

But an easier business that is fast becoming
popular is bee-keeping. More than the average
living is made in raising honey bees, by careful
and intelligent study. Any farming, gardening,

A LITTLE LAND 208
AND A LIVING

fruit raising, or wild brush land will suit bees.
Indeed, in Cincinnati and in Philadelphia, there
are large colonies of bees kept on the roofs of
houses in the busiest parts of those cities.

It is possible to begin with one hive, adding to
it as circumstances permit. Even in a city one
hive will yield 50 pounds of honey in a season,
while under more favorable conditions from two
to four times as much can be had.

The work should be taken up systematically
and the would-be apiarist should take the best
bee journals,

Bee-keeping has proved a very profitable ven-
ture to Mr. Stoughton Cooley of Maywood, Illi-
nois. He started with four hives which yielded
400 Ibs. of honey the first season, and at the end
of four years they had increased so that his honey
yield was 2700 pounds.

Mr. Cooley writes: “I worked at bee-keeping
faithfully and thoughtfully and was particu-
larly fortunate in small winter losses—one of the
handicaps of the business. On the other hand,
the foul brood, the worst of all evils to the bee-
keeper, broke out among my bees and practically

209 | ANIMALS

FOR PROFIT
wiped out one season’s profits; but I succeeded
in stamping it out. I am well satisfied from my
experience that I could attend to a hundred colo-
nies (and I am lame), clearing from $500 to
$1000 a season. After all, it comes to this, suc-
cess in any line is for the few who will apply
themselves faithfully.”

Dr. C. C. Miller of Marengo, IIl., who is re-
garded as the American authority on bees, has
harvested 18,150 lbs. of honey from 124 colo-
nies. However, his warning is that the man
whose sole aim is the accumulation of wealth
would better let bees alone; but all bee-keepers
agree that health, pleasure and a comfortable
living are found in intelligently raising honey-
bees.

Profit in animal raising, like profit in all other
lines of business, depends largely upon the time
and attention given to it and the willingness of
the worker to study, to observe and to profit by
experience.

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CHAPTER X
FRUIT GROWING

American Supremacy — Development — Improvement —
Apples, quality, thinning—Peaches—Chances of Suc-
cess — Protecting Grapes — Pears — Plums — Quinces
— Cherries — Persimmons — Small Fruit — Extra
Culture — Strawberries — Bush Fruit — Exceptional

Returns.

RUIT growing is rapidly increasing. The
general climate of the United States is more
favorable than that of Europe. Much American
fruit is now exported because our fruit is more
uniform and better than the European. Large
quantities of apples go to England and Ger-
many and we may look forward to an increasing
trade in pears and other fruits.
In the last few years plantations of all sorts,
orchards, gardens and nurseries, have increased

wonderfully, from the extreme north to the
a1

A LITTLE LAND 212
AND A LIVING

south. But this does not necessarily imply im-
provement in quality. In the best fruit growing
counties of New York more than three-fourths
of the fruit plantations consist of very ordinary
apple orchards. Few high grade pears, plums,
cherries, apricots, grapes, or bush fruit have yet
been produced. Cold weather in the spring tends
to make conditions harder in New York than in
the middle sections.

There is no profit in apple growing under ay-
erage conditions and ordinary management, yet
apples are the most popular orcharding fruit.

It costs only about ten per cent. more, mostly
labor, to raise good fruit than poor, but it costs
fifty per cent. more brains and brings a hundred
per cent. more profit.

Prof. Samuel Maynard says we must make
the trees grow vigorously, whether upon poor or
good soil, as the first requirement. To get the
finest fruit, we need a strong, deep, moist soil;
good grass land well underdrained is best. An
elevation with a northern or western exposure is
better than a southern or eastern one. On land
that is free from stones and not too steep, thor-

213 FRUIT

GROWING
ough and frequent cultivation will give the quick-
est and largest returns. On such land hoed gar-
den or farm crops may be profitable while the
trees are small, but after five or six years it will
generally be found best to cultivate it entirely
for the trees. Organic matter in the form of
stable manure or clover-crops must be applied
in the Fall or very early in the Spring to keep
up the supply of humus in the soil. Good fruit
crops may be raised on land too stony for other
agricultural uses, if the soil about the young trees
be well worked and the moisture retained by
means of mulch. Grafting is so successfully
done now that fruit trees may be made profitable
early instead of waiting six or seven years for
maturity. Windfalls, no matter how hard, can
be made into sauce, jellies or pies, and thus fur-
nish a return even before the fruit is ripe.

The new intensive methods are now applied
to fruit growing. One of the most satisfactory
of these methods is thinning.

In the Massachusetts Hatch Station experi-
ment in thinning, Gravenstein and Tetofsky
apple trees were chosen, only one of each being

A LITTLE LAND O14
AND A LIVING

thinned and one of each left unthinned as a
check. In the Gravensteins the yield on the
thinned and unthinned trees respectively, was,
first quality fruit, 9 bushels and 24 bushels; sec-
ond quality, 1 bushel, 24 bushels; windfalls, 94
bushels, 10 bushels. In the Tetofskys the
thinned trees gave 1 bushel windfalls, the un-
thinned 3 bushels; each tree gave a half bushel of
second quality fruit, while of first quality the
thinned tree yielded 2 bushels, and the unthinned
tree none at all. First quality fruit brings 60
cents per bushel, second quality only 25 cents, so
that the thinning more than doubled the value
of the Gravenstein yield and increased that of the
Tetofsky eleven times.*

Similar results were obtained with plums and
in other places with peaches and pears and even
with currants.

The advantages of thinning are that it in-
creases the size and color, and gives a better fla-
vor; it also increases the quantity of No. 1 fruit,
lessens the windfalls, etc., and sometimes in-

* Such benefits did not show in every case, probably because of
inexperience.

‘215 FRUIT

GROWING
creases the total yield. It tends to check injuri-
ous insects and to prevent the spread of disease.
Systematic thinning overcomes the tendency of
fruit trees to alternate “apple years” and poor
crops. It helps to establish a medium yield which
averages more than the alternate abundance and
scarcity both in quantity and in profit to the
grower.

The peach crop is next in importance to the
apple crop, and location is the chief considera-
tion in planting an orchard. The orchards giv-
ing the largest returns are in Connecticut, Dela-
ware, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia and
Georgia. For large crops it is well to choose
land near large bodies of water as the tempera-
ture of the water prevents too early budding, and
also delays killing frosts. While sandy, porous
soil is best, peaches may be successfully raised in
clay soil if plenty of humus be provided.

Some peach orchards are very profitable. Mr.
Cornelius P. Swain, of Bridgeville, Del., says
he picked 1100 baskets of Elberta peaches from
208 trees growing on about two acres, and sold
this fruit for cash at the Bridgeville Station for

A LITTLE LAND 216
AND A LIVING

$1140. His orchard has had excellent tillage, is
now eight years old, contains 500 trees, and has
borne five crops, all of which have been profitable.
The first paid $500, the second $850, the third
$1000, the fourth $1200, and the fifth $1500.

Mr. Swain’s orchard has had the best of atten-
tion, peas have been grown in it for the canning
factory and cow peas and crimson clover for
turning under, insuring good cultivation. The
crops other than peaches have paid all the ex-
penses of growing and tilling the orchard since it
was planted.

Willis T. Mann, of Niagara Co., N. Y., says
there is no branch of fruit growing in that sec-
tion of country that is so much of a gamble as
peach growing. The uncertainties of produc-
tion, the very perishable character of the fruit
gluts” in the market all tend to
make the income uncertain, and it may vary from

“

and possible

nothing to one thousand dollars per acre, after
paying transportation charges and commis-
sions.

Mr. Mann has sold a crop at five cents per
pound and realized $900 per acre. A friend of

217 FRUIT

GROWING
his having a thirty acre orchard realized a few
years ago $18,000 for the crop, $600 an acre.
These, however, are possible, rather than prob-
able results. Half these figures would still be
considered high, and $250 or $300 per acre would
generally be above rather than below the average.
There has been a great increase in peach raising
during recent years, and the fruit is now pro-
duced in large quantities where it was formerly
thought impossible. During the past decade the
number of bearing trees in the United States in-
creased from 58,000,000 to more than 99,000,000,
and the increase continues. The result is that our
markets are often congested, and it is difficult to
get satisfactory prices. Still, if the fruit raised
is all choice, it will prove a very profitable end of
the business. Land suitable for peach growing
can be bought for $75 to $100 per acre in New
York, and $25 more should procure the trees and
plant them, thus making the initial cost $100 to
$125 anacre. Five years of care, two or three of
which should be self-supporting by the produc-
tion of other crops on the land, would bring the
orchard into bearing condition, and two or three

A LITTLE LAND 218
AND A LIVING

years more would bring it to its highest value. It
is difficult to state what the value of the orchard
really is, because it depends more upon the man
than upon any other factor. Two or three years
of neglect will ruin the best orchard. Certainly
the real value of the orchard would be greatly in
excess of the cost of production.

At the Massachusetts and Colorado State Ex-
periment Stations a new method of protecting
peach trees has been successfully tried. This
consists of laying the trees down in the Fall as
soon as they have shed their leaves and the wood
is well ripened. The earth is removed from
around each tree in a circle about four feet in
diameter, and the hollows are saturated with
water and the trees are worked back and forth
until loosened. ‘They are then bent in the di-
rection that offers least resistance until they lie
on the ground,

The ground should be allowed to dry enough
to handle easily before any further work is done;
then the hole is filled in, the limbs of the trees are
tied together and covered with burlap held in
place with earth. A light layer of earth is then

219 FRUIT

GROWING
spread over the tree, affording ample protection
to the tender buds.

Care must be taken that the covering is not so
warm as to force the buds prematurely. In some
comparative tests it was found that while in un-
protected trees about 50 per cent. of buds were
killed, only 10 per cent. of the buds of protected
trees were destroyed. When they begin to open,
the covering is loosened to admit light and air,
but should not be removed except by slow
degrees.

The trees are raised in the same way that they
were laid down, softening the soil with water. In
Colorado the trees are raised about the middle of
May; in the Kast the season must determine the
raising. ‘Trees so treated will not stand unsup-
ported, but are usually propped up at an angle,
with two props to keep the wind from swaying
them.

When this treatment is begun while the tree is
young and persisted in each year, there is little
or no injury to the root system, but it is not wise
to try it on old trees. Indeed many practical
farmers say that very few growers could use this

A LITTLE LAND 220
AND A LIVING

method successfully even on young trees, and
that it would, generally speaking, be unwise to
attempt it.

Professor Waugh of the Massachusetts Ex-
periment Station has done some important work
on dwarf fruit trees; the ‘Miniature Fruit
Garden” gives increasing promise, not only for
its better resistance to frost and later bud open-
ing, but for the beauty and convenience of these
cut-back pigmy trees. |

Fruits are second only to flowers in beauty and
variety. We have miniature orange trees for
decoration, why not baby apples and cherries
also? Surely, too, a bouquet of fruit would af-
ford as much scope for taste as one of “ weeds.”
Poetry clings about the tree: if the poet clings,
the profit might do it too. Think of the romance
as well as the money in grapes.

No farm is complete without a grape-vine,
though only fruit enough for the family be
grown. The vine can be planted near the house
so as not to interfere with crops, and at little
expense an arbor can be built. This will provide
a cool, shady retreat in hot weather. Grapes

221 FRUIT

GROWING
form a delightful table fruit and can be made
into delicious and lucrative jams and jellies for
winter use; there is little grape jelly now on
the market.

At Fredonia, Chautauqua County, New York,
in “the Grape Belt” of this State, there is a col-
ony of wine growing Italians holding title to
1758 acres of land and conducting a thriving
business. There are four hundred families or
about 2000 persons, and they have increased
the value of the land in that section from $35 to
$150 per acre. A large proportion of them own
their own farms and are not therefore paying
tribute to landlords. Frugality, thrift, and per-
sistent, faithful attention have made their vine-
yards profitable to an extent unknown elsewhere
in this country. The fresh grapes bring from
$20 to $30 a ton, the wine from a ton of grapes
fetches from $80 to $36. The cost of production
runs from $8 to $10 per acre, and an acre pro-
duces three tons of grapes annually after the
first three years, so that the grower has an aver-
age profit of $75 per acre.

These farms and vineyards have done much to

A LITTLE LAND 229
AND A LIVING

relieve the congested Italian quarters in Buffalo
and other interior cities, and may well prove a
satisfactory solution of the Italian problem of
New York city, when further extended. The
Italian will only work ina gang. He is too civil-
ized to go out by himself among strangers. But
when settled in groups with their families, Ital-
ians succeed famously as farmers.

The plum, the pear and the quince may be
made profitable under conditions like those for
peaches, and recently cherries have come into
prominence, although a more precarious crop
than any of the others. Care must be exercised
in choosing a site for the cherry orchard, high
ground and free circulation of air being neces-
sary. Because of poor packing, Kastern cherry
growers have suffered from competition with
California growers, who have reduced packing
to a science, although Eastern cherries have a
better flavor. |

The persimmon is another fruit not generally
grown; in fact the native variety was little known
until the Japanese persimmon was introduced.
Some of the native wild varieties are of excep-

223 FRUIT

GROWING
tionally fine quality, and careful selection and
grafting can make it the equal, if not the supe-
rior, of its Japanese relative.

A persimmon will ripen wherever peaches
thrive well, although they do best in Southern
States. They are usually picked and sold before
fully ripened, and few consumers know just how
delicious the ripe fruit is. A market for them
could be created in any large city. Like fresh
figs, the damage in transit makes them scarce in
the Eastern market. Let someone learn how to
pack them. Figs preserved in glass bring excel-
lent prices.

In the “Small Fruit Culturist” Andrew S.
Fuller says, “The cultivating of small fruit as
a distinct feature in horticulture commenced
less than twenty-five years ago. We may well
feel proud of the progress we have made in small
fruit culture, but the limits have not been reached,
and for those who may wish to enter this field,
there is many an unsolved problem to work out.

“With a constantly increasing demand, and
no apparent prospect of our market being fully
supplied, many have turned their attention to the

A LITTLE LAND 224
AND A LIVING

cultivation of small fruit. It offers as wide and
safe a field as any other branch of business except
natural monopolies. In many instances with an
annual expenditure of twenty-five dollars per
acre, a return of only one hundred dollars is ob-
tainable, while upon the same soil and with the
same variety, if fifty dollars had been expended,
the return would have been three or four hun-
dred dollars. All experiments show that evtra
culture is far more profitable than what is
generally termed good culture. Many fruit
growers, for the purpose of extending their busi-
ness, increase the number of acres, when, if they
would double the depth of those which they
already possess, they would obtain the same in-
crease in product without the expense of more
land, and the extra travel and travail of cultivat-
ing two acres, when one acre might produce the
same results.

About four out of five growers in northern
New Jersey prefer a sandy soil for strawberries,
and in the southern section, where the greatest
number of growers are located, fully two-thirds
preferred sand loam. Yet from statistics gath-

295 FRUIT

GROWING
ered in the southern section, the State Experi-
ment Station showed that the average returns per
acre from clay loam were much heavier than from
sandy soil; a given number of growers averaging
3223 quarts per acre from the clay against 23829
from the sand. For large yields, clay loam is
most satisfactory, but for early crops a sandy
loam with southern exposure is best.

Prof. Fred W. Card in “Bush Fruit” says that
“Jand which will yield profitable returns in bush
fruits can be found almost everywhere, if the
soil be not wet and heavy. Red raspberries and
blackberries succeed well on comparatively light
soils, provided they retain moisture, while dew-
berries thrive on very light sand, and currants
and gooseberries are at home even in heavy clay.
Stable manure is the best fertilizer. Wood ashes,
cotton-seed hull ashes and muriate of potash
form a useful supplement.

In answer to an inquiry for an average yield
of blackberries per acre, fifty growers in dif-
ferent parts of the country reported from 1280
to 10,000 quarts, the average being 3158 quarts
or more than ninety bushels per acre.

A LITTLE LAND 226
AND A LIVING |

Instances of admirable yields during one sea-
son are common enough. One grower in a small
town in central New York sold $500 worth of
berries from half an acre, and M. A. Thayer, of
Spark, Wis., raised 200 bushels per acre and
made a profit of about $250.00.

Of course, one great consideration in fruit
growing is to be near a good market. Shipping
long distances often causes loss by decay, while
the freight charges materially lessen the profits.

To grow fruit for family use and have some
for sale would not require much land. One of
the U. S. Agricultural Department bulletins
gives a plan for a small fruit garden, about 60
x 80 feet, on which the following could be grown:
Six peach trees; six cherries; six dwarf apple
trees; six plums; twenty blackberries; forty black
caps; forty red raspberries; three hundred straw-
berries; thirty-two grape vines, planted at inter-
vals of ten feet all around the plot; and eighteen
dwarf pear trees. If properly cared for, such a
garden would yield a large return.

CHAPTER XI

HORTICULTURE

The Market — Violets—Greenhouses—Diseases—Roses—
Chrysanthemums—Poppies—Flowers in the Street—
Sweet Peas and Wild Flowers—Orchids—Plants for
Renting—Floriculture.

N every city there is a growing demand for

flowers. Roses, violets, carnations, and chrys-
anthemums are now most popular. But to make
horticulture profitable you must in this, as in
everything else, study your market before de-
ciding what to raise. If you give all your
thoughts and energies to raising one flower you
can produce better results than by raising a
variety. If you raise enough you can sell direct
instead of through a commission man and so
get better prices. There are always good mar-
kets somewhere, and flowers are shipped from
New York to Chicago, Buffalo, Boston, Phila-
delphia, Baltimore, and Washington, and vice
versa.

Intelligent effort is the road to success, very
227

A LITTLE LAND 228
AND A LIVING

little capital being needed. Few among the
leaders in floriculture started with more than
$500, and many of them with less. A dozen
men who have been in the employ of one New
York florist, some of whom got only twenty dol-
lars a month at first and afterwards started in
a small way for themselves, are now making a
substantial living.

A lover of flowers can succeed in this busi-
ness better than in any other with as little capi-
tal. In the last ten years the business has
doubled, and while many have gone into it, the
profit they are making shows that supply has
not equaled the demand and that is not likely to —
be overdone soon.

An acre of soil under glass pays fifty times
as much as an acre out-doors. There are eight
to ten million square feet of glass in the United
States devoted to carnations alone, and about
seven million dollars worth of this one flower
are sold each year.

Mrs. H. C. Reynolds and Miss Nina F.. How-
ard started a violet farm at Glencoe, Illinois, in
1905. Their friends predicted failure, but they

229 HORTICULTURE AND
THE MARKET
studied the best methods of growing, got the
best possible soil and a greenhouse. They have
made it a big enterprise. You can do as well.
Mrs. Reynolds says: “I am only a begin-
ner. The first year I had a small house of 3000
plants and was so successful that I have begun
now on a larger scale. I have 210 x 165 feet
of land on which I hope some day to have six
houses 25 x 150 feet each. I have now two,
of 5000 plants each. Of course the market is
here, as all our double violets came from New
York and however beautiful they were, they had
lost their perfume on a long journey.”

W. J. Harrison, a druggist at Lakewood, N.
J., has a violet frame on the ground in front of
his show window; it gets enough radiated heat
from the cellar to give a winter crop of violets
with almost no attention, and violets sell remark-
ably high in Lakewood. You may make a start
in some such way and grow up to greenhouses.

For women who like country life and wish to
work at home, violet growing offers very great
inducements. The work is easy, but constant
attention and great care are necessary.

A LITTLE LAND 230
AND A LIVING

The temperature of the violet greenhouse
must be kept between forty-five and fifty de-
grees. It must have a system of ventilation so
arranged that it can be operated from within or
without, as fumigation with the deadly hydro-
cyanic gas is sometimes necessary, for insects.
Violets need all the sunshine you can give them
in December and January and as little as pos-
sible at other times. They are subject to four
dangerous diseases, all difficult to exterminate
when once started, and known as spot disease,
root rot, wet rot, and yellowing. The best pre-
ventive is toget strong vigorous cuttings, to
give careful attention to watering, cultivation
and ventilation, and to destroy dead and dying
leaves and all runners as soon as they appear.

Chrysanthemums are in great demand, par-
ticularly the large sized, oddly colored ones.
They are extremely decorative and last so well
that their continued popularity is assured. The
importance of the rose and chrysanthemum busi-
ness is well indicated by the annual shows.

Poppies are fast coming into favor as a cut
flower, although they wither quickly. But by

231 HORTICULTURE AND

THE MARKET
picking off all blooms in the evening, cutting
the new flowers early in the morning and plung-
ing them immediately into deep water, they are
made to keep fairly well.

Mr. Powell, of Fairhope, Alabama, the single
tax colony, has shipped some gladiolus “ spears ”
to New York in the winter, when they readily
bring ten cents each wholesale, though they sell
in the Spring at five. He says that fine bulbs
will sell better still.

In flowers, as in all garden products, it is
the thing out of season that pays best. . In sum-
mer when gardens are all a-bloom, there is a
smaller demand for greenhouse flowers, but
Fleischmann of Fifth Avenue quotes the follow-
ing winter prices for cut flowers in New York:

Chrysanthemums, $2.00 to $5.00 per dozen;
American Beauty Roses, $1.50 to $5.00 per
dozen; Violets, $1.00 per hundred; Carnations,
Killarney Roses, Brides and Maids, Richmonds,
$1.00 per dozen; Lilies of the Valley, $1.25 per
bunch of 25.

Flowers that are sold cheaply in the streets
are the discarded stock of swell florists. You

A LITTLE LAND 232
AND A LIVING

will find that they are either fading or revived
with salt and will not keep: That they are so
peddled, shows that everyone wants flowers,
those angels without souls. Even common
flowers will bring good profits and are easily
grown. We have only to supply a want to find
our place in life.

Sweet peas, a favorite flower with many, may
be grown out of doors in the summer where the
soil is of good depth and quality. Mayblos-
soms, autumn leaves on the branch, and even
goldenrod are brought into town and sold at
good prices.

Bachelor buttons, cosmos, and even nastur-
tiums, which you can’t keep from growing, if
you just stick the seed in the ground, or lilies
of the valley, hardly to be got rid of when once
started, all find a market, if fresh. And the
best of it is that one does not even need a green-
house to grow them and many other dear fa-
miliar garden blossoms.

No soil, however hard or apparently barren,
is too poor for flowers. Eben Rexford, in “ Four
Seasons in a Garden,” says that the ground of a

233 HORTICULTURE AND

THE MARKET
city yard which he, with the aid of two boys,
made into a garden in one season, was so hard
that they had to use axes to break up the clods.
It was then allowed to stand two days for the
action of sun and wind, was fertilized by stable
sweepings, and planted with Petunias, Phlox,
Calliopsis, Nasturtiums, Zinnias, Asters, Pop-
pies, Marigolds, Sweet William, and Morning
Glories. It was a source of delight the whole
season through. No home acre should be with-
out its flower garden, as a joy and a revenue
raiser.

Some florists have ventured into orchid rais-
ing, but the business has many drawbacks. To
make any profit, the flowers must be shipped in
large quantities and with great regularity, else
customers are lost and expenses eat up returns.
To get such a supply of orchids would require
a large investment and involve much labor.

By keeping a supply of ferns, palms, and rub-
ber plants constantly on hand and renting them
out for social functions, weddings and other oc-
casions, many florists make considerable money.

Near the larger cities a thriving business is

A LITTLE LAND 234
AND A LIVING
done in tree planting, which is everywhere on the
increase. Many florists now raise young trees
and plants for sale to people improving their
grounds, planting orchards, etc. This nursery
business, as it is called, is a special department
of horticulture and bears the same relation to
the commercial florist or orchardist that seed
growing does to the market gardener. The
largest nurseries in the country were started on
small capital, but soil and climate enter so largely
into success that the business is not over-crowded.
The ever increasing demand for bulbs has led
to a great extension of the business of raising
them, but America has a comparatively small
share in it. Holland is the greatest producer,
large areas being devoted exclusively to the rais-
ing of lilies of various sorts. Bulbs require deep,
rich, warm, and highly manured soil and the
most careful attention. The high prices paid for
land in Europe has led to the most modern and
ingenious methods of increasing soil-production.
The same necessity has not hitherto existed in
this country, but it exists now, and it has become
necessary to get the greatest possible returns, by

235 HORTICULTURE AND

THE MARKET
intensive farming and gardening, from the
smallest possible piece of land.

Flower growing is well adapted to women be-
cause, generally speaking, they have a light touch
and a capacity for details. The work is light,
has few disagreeable features and the rewards
are sure. As the aesthetic qualities of our people
develop, the raising of flowers for sale will be
proportionately greater.

CHAPTER XII

BUILDING

Clearing the Land—Lumbermen Buy—Profitable Trees—
Building a Home—‘‘ Hickory Bungalow ”—Portable
Dwellings—Remodeled Buildings—Comfortable Cabins
—wWater Supply.

F there is but little timber on the land, a
man can clear it at odd times, but even if
covered with trees there is no cause for discour-
agement. Lumbermen will readily buy timber
by the acre, cut it and haul it. Or the lumber
may be used in building the house where there
is no suitable shelter for the family on the “home
acre.”

Good judgment should be used in cutting trees,
considering not only the market value, but also
their qualities as shade trees or revenue pro-
ducers. Elm and sycamore trees near a house
are better than a stock of awnings and shades,
and nut and fruit trees are better than income

bends. Sugar maples ten or fifteen feet high
237

A LITTLE LAND 238
AND A LIVING

can be transplanted or sold. For the rest, black
locust sticks can be sold for insulator pins; cedar
sticks for hop and bean poles, “curly ” or “ bird’s-
eye” maple or birch are in great demand for
furniture. Stumps may be burned or dynamited
out. Dynamiting is the quicker method, but it
needs an expert and is expensive. |

The cheapest and simplest way of getting rid
of large rocks is blasting by fire. A fire is built
on the top of a rock and kept burning until the
boulder has been thoroughly heated. When it
cools it will break easily. If the rock is below
the surface, a trench must be dug around it, the
rock slightly raised by levers, and a fire built
in the trench so that the heat may get under the
rock. Some people who have burned rock out,
advocate pouring water upon them while hot, to
cool them quickly, while others again have found
that the natural process of expansion and con-
traction is all that is necessary.

This method, which has been endorsed by
miners, farmers, and others, will recall the an-
cient story that when Hannibal crossed the Alps
he removed the rocks by heating them and pour-

239 BUILDING
WATER SUPPLY

ing vinegar over them, thus causing them to
break. The story has long been regarded as
legendary, but recent events seem to give it an
air of truth. So far as has been reported, no-
body has actually tried Hannibal’s method.

When the clearing has been made, we tackle
the house building. Recent experiments show
that this need not be the expensive undertaking
it once was. Even if one be unwilling to live
in a tent or put up a mere shack, there is no
call to expend thousands of dollars on a house.

Comfort, convenience and utility are the im-
portant considerations, and these may be se-
cured in a bungalow. In the June, 1907, issue
of “The Village” Mr. William Jeffery says:

“To get rid of household care, live in an
American bungalow. I know, for I have tried
it. A bungalow is a low, compact, rural build-
ing, with small cellar and large porches, and ours
is built alongside of a large hickory tree on ac-
count of which we selected that site for Hick-
ory Bungalow. The tree is cooler than any
awning in summer and the delicate tracery of its
branches is a delight in winter.

A LITTLE LAND 2 240
AND A LIVING

“The main structure is 80 x 30 feet and faces
south. The piazza takes eight feet in width
across the front. The kitchen is at the end,
leaving 22x30 feet living room; from the end
of this a strip twelve feet wide is screened off
by frames of pine and burlap secured by mould-
ings, for bedrooms. On top of the screens and
reaching to the ceiling we have a nice grill
which permits of sound ventilation and adds dig-
nity to the interior. The floor of the large room
upstairs is laid with two smooth faces on top of
the beam; two chestnut posts support it. The
room upstair is 18 x 30 and is reached by a de-
tachable combination ladder and stairs. Some of
the boys sleep up there. A window in each end
provides ample ventilation and light.*

“We built a large chimney with an open fire-
place, but we found that the open fireplace was
a delusion. It looked pretty, but did not give
enough heat; so we installed a wood stove with
air chambers to improve radiation; when the
weather is far below zero we can run the tem-

* Mr. Jeffery has now added a separate bungalow for his boys;
it is a great scheme—but “that is another story.”

241 ! BUILDING

WATER SUPPLY
perature up to 85 degrees indoors. We inclosed
the piazza for the winter with a detachable frame
containing storm door and windows. ‘This space
is handy for the children to play in in extreme
rainy weather.

“All this cost less than $1500 and gives more
majesty than a regular house that cost $3500 to
build. It has already saved us nearly the whole
of its cost.

“We have not seen our family doctor since
we came here. My family consists of six boys
and a girl. One of the boys, six years old, had
never been out of the leech’s care until we came
to the bungalow. And now the doctor sends a
message that if all his patients take to bunga-
low life he will have to go into some other pro-
fession.

“This sounds like a testimonial for some
patent medicine, but there is no patent for fresh
air and life on the ground floor, so I give it a
free ‘ad. We can leave our windows and
doors all open even in smart cool weather and
get more air in a minute than we used to get in
our house in a month. No corridors or halls

A LITTLE LAND 242
AND A LIVING

to obstruct ventilation or to keep clean, no par-
lor or reception hall, one-story kitchen 12 x 14,
cellar underneath to keep coal and supplies, hot
and cold water, range, sink, etc.

“T cut off eight feet of the piazza for a room.
I sleep in it with open windows; temperature
about the same as outdoors and this is the first
winter in thirty-eight years that I have escaped
quinsy and tonsilitis.

“Life in a bungalow means more than simple
living. It means free and easy fresh air;
family not too close together 7 (for our bunga-
low gives more space than a two-family house),
one’s own garden, poultry, dogs, and horse;
fields, flowers, woodland, and stream for the chil-
dren; the robin, blue jay, black bird, and thrush,
for constant companions. Fun is expensive, but
pleasure does not cost a cent.

‘One of the chief advantages of getting into
a new community is that one thus finds his op-
portunity for improving conditions, shaping bet-
ter tax laws, securing good roads, up-to-date
facilities, free schools, lectures, entertainments,
etc., all of which add to the charms of country

243 BUILDING
WATER SUPPLY
life. Our life in a bungalow has been a fine
success. It is at Berkeley Heights, about 500
feet above sea level, in a beautiful country with
woodland and river, yet only 26 miles from
New York. There are plenty of such places.

“T am proud of my bungalow and will be
pleased to show it to anyone, as a type of Ameri-
can house especially suited to the intensive
farmer.”

Except in lumber districts wooden houses are
becoming more expensive annually and are be-
ing superseded by houses built of concrete blocks.
These are fully as cheap now as frame or brick
houses and can more easily be made cold and
vermin proof.

Then there are the portable houses costing
from $300 for four rooms, upward. These are
desirable where land is taken on a short lease or
for experiment, although they can be adapted
for year round use at a moderate additional
cost. These different types of dwellings show
that the cost of building a home need not deter
anyone really anxious to get back to the land for
a living.

A LITTLE LAND 244
AND A LIVING

Of course if there are buildings on your acre,
you may count yourself lucky. No matter how
old or dilapidated the house, it can be made
habitable by the expenditure of a few dollars,
or a good barn may be made into a house at a
low cost. |

Whether one build or alter, one should study
plans so as to get the most for one’s investment.
It is easy to spend a few hundred dollars in
making an attractive house, but if it cost a great
deal to heat, or the sun cannot get into the liv-
ing rooms it will be expensive to maintain. A
fireplace in the outer wall of a house will do
little to warm the interior, no matter how big
the fire in it; while, if the chimney is placed in
the middle walls, half the fuel will keep the
whole house comfortable. Get some woman’s
aid in arranging your house. The house is a
woman’s domain, generally speaking, and she
can give valuable hints to the best architects.

Some advertising architects will guarantee
their estimate of cost—no charge for the plans
if the house costs more than they say; that will
help to keep one out of a financial hole.

~

245 BUILDING
WATER SUPPLY

An important item is the water supply, if
the place chosen is away from town water sys-
tems. If there is a good spring on the acre,
pipes can be laid from it to the house and a
pump in the kitchen sink will do the rest, but
if you can get a fall of ten or twelve feet from
spring to kitchen, no pump will be needed.

If you have to drive a well, the average cost
is about one dollar per foot. A barrel or tank
over the stove where the water can be pumped
gives a good water supply to the kitchen.

Where the water system does not admit of a
bathroom and toilet, the outdoor closet should
be built in a modern way. The contents if
mixed with earth or litter may be used as a gar-
den fertilizer.

Make a shaft, say 2 x 4, down the side or at
the corner of the house to form the toilet room.
Sections of 12-inch vitrified pipe form a recep-
tacle, the end with the collar being uppermost
and touching the underside of the seat. The
lower end is supported by bricks or stone a foot
from the ground. Once a week put a wheel-
barrow load of good earth, rotten sods, or leaf

A LITTLE LAND 246
AND A LIVING

mould into the box, at the sides of the pipe,
where it can be reached by raising the seat. Then
take a barrow load out at the bottom and the
waste is completely absorbed and broken down
by the bacteria. The soil must be full of humus
and friable. Sand or road dust will not do. If
the grade permits, a longer shaft is better, as the
earth will then take longer to pass through; with
one length disintegration and deodorization is
complete in ten days. The vitrified pipe is clean,
non-absorbent and confines the mass to small
limits. It can be washed with hot water. Two
scoopfuls (less than a quart) thrown in when
the closet is used, is sufficient. There will be
no drafts in such a closet.

CHAPTER XIII

CO-OPERATION IN OPERATION

Toil Without Reward—‘ Back to tlie Land ”—How to Get
Land—Co-operation—Man’s Natural Job—Organization
—In Europe—In America—Fellowship Farm—The Ar-
den Colony—Farming a Business—Changes Imminent.

ARD, anxious work, with little to show for

it in the end, is the portion of the average

man. Life is something that was thrust upon him
unasked and must be maintained at any cost. It
seldom occurs to him that there is anything
either beautiful or wonderful in it. He begins
to drudge in youth and for years the daily round
of rising unrefreshed from sleep under condi-
tions that make rest impossible, to spend hours
in a workshop or factory and then return to his
cramped, airless quarters, goes on without hope
of change. How incomprehensible to him the
joyous cry of Browning “Oh, the wild joys of

living!” A man who said this to his fellow work-
247

A LITTLE LAND 248
AND A LIVING

man would likely be thought crazy. But it was
that these wild joys of living might be more
generally known that the “Back to the Land”
movement was started. It has gathered force
so that nothing can now stop it, and the only
thing remaining is to show the eager seeker for
land how he may get it and how to work it to
best advantage. Nothing can give a man such
a feeling of independence as owning the land
on which and from which he lives, and there is
no need of despair because he is unable to buy
what he wants at once. There are ways of mak-
ing small sums count. Co-operation is one of
them.

Co-operation is wealth. Given certain re-
sources, or raw material, human labor on the “ to-
gether” plan produces manifold results which
can never be realized by individual separate ef-
fort. Indeed, the key to our 20th century
economic progress is combination, organization,
co-operation—these three—and the greatest of
these is co-operation.

The basic resource, or raw material, for the
field of human co-operation is the land. Every-

249 CO-OPERATION
IN OPERATION
one instinctively knows that his natural “ job”
is on the land. Those who are engaged in other
occupations than tilling the soil, as Kmerson
says, “are using a makeshift and are only tem-
porarily excused from their real calling.” Land
and labor are wed, whosoever puts them asunder
commits sacrilege; for in their union is health,
wealth, and happiness—in their severance is dis-
ease, glut, and hunger, arrogance and misery.

Therefore, workers, get land.

How can the working class, poor men, get
land? Every acre of available land is held by
owners and costs more money than the average
worker can accumulate; he cannot buy a square
foot at a time, as he does a hod of coal or a
bundle of wood. How can such a hand-to-mouth
wage-worker buy land, even only an acre?

By combining his slender surplus with the lit-
tle savings of others, and together pooling a
monthly sum, hardly more than they spend for
“beer and baccy,” and organizing for the pur-
pose, a group of from twenty to fifty working
men can buy the best farm in their locality.

This is being done extensively in the German

A LITTLE LAND 250
AND A LIVING

Empire, especially in Prussia and Bavaria, as
also in America, particularly in Southern Cali-
fornia—the Dos Palos colony, the El] Capitan
colony, and the British colony, besides the Co-
burn Township in Texas, and New Clairvaux
and Fellowship Farm in Massachusetts being
successful examples. Most of these colonies or-
ganize simply to secure for. individuals one to
twenty acres, the colony making a collective first
payment on the tract of land bought, then car-
rying the interest, taxes, and subsequent pay-
ments of principal until the titles are cleared,
when they dissolve their organizations, each per-
son or family securing its separate holding. But
after disorganization, often the co-operative
plan continues in their buying and selling of com-
modities and products.

The most recent and typical example of co-
operative land buying and land using is on Fel-
lowship Farm, in Westwood, Massachusetts.
Here, in 1906, a group of forty socialists, gath-
ered from different States and two from Scot-
land, organized (after they had raised $1000 to
pay down) and secured a beautiful, $8000 sev-

231° CO-OPERATION

— IN OPERATION
enty-five acre farm, 14 miles from Boston, via
trolley and steam cars. Some put up as much
as $100, and others could only advance a first
payment of $2.50 toward the required $1000
down.

The $7000 on mortgage was arranged so
that it can be discharged with all interest and
taxes paid in ten years—each member of the
group to pay as dues $2.50 per month until he or
she has paid a total of $300,—or collectively
$12,000. For this $300 each is to receive a war-
_ ranty deed to a lot of about an acre on a fifty
foot road, besides a fortieth interest in the col-
lective holding of some twenty-five acres with
buildings, and the benefits and profits of common
enterprises. There is a provision for the indi-
vidual free and clear of the group, and also for
fellowship and corporate effort and life. Since
the organization nearly an extra $1000 has been
raised for improvements on the collective prop-
erty, and besides a large cottage worth about
$1800, several cottages costing from $200 to $300
have been built, showing that for $500 or $600,
accumulated at the rate of $5 or $6 a month, a

A LITTLE LAND 252

AND A LIVING

working man with a small family can secure land,

and a house of his own on it, and a job from

which he cannot be “ fired ””»—can become moder-

ately independent and free—by co-operation.
The motto of the Association should be:

Get three acres and live by it.

Get a spade and try it.

And get out of debt.

Get off the back of the workers.

Get out of the power of the shirkers.
Get up and Get.

Co-operation has made great strides in Great
Britain, although colony life is only in its in-
fancy. HH. D. Lloyd in “ Labor Copartnership ”
says: “The co-operative movement after fifty
years of struggle, has had years of living pros-
perity and a greater prosperity is coming into
view. It has achieved an economic footing of
a hundred millions of property and enlisted at
least one-seventh of the working-classes in its
ranks. It is an established religion; for co-oper-
ation is not a method of business merely, but
an ideal of conduct and a theory of human rela-

253 CO-OPERATION

IN OPERATION
tions. Co-operation has won the right to be
accounted the most important social movement
of our times outside of politics. It is of course
only a half truth, but the world needs half truths
to make up its whole truth.”

There are tracts near all good markets where
communities could be established. 'The value of
co-operation and combination has been learned
partly through the trades unions and partly
through the success of big corporations. As soon
as men learn to look upon farming as a business
to which business principles should be applied,
co-operative farming will spread rapidly.

The earth can be made to yield many times
more abundantly through the application of in-
tensive methods; the same methods applied to
effort will give still more abundant returns. This
is proved by all the experiments in co-operative
farming.

But the people must have room near to one
another to make co-operation natural and easy.

There will be a revolution in our farming plans
and in our farm life just as soon as the people
wake up to the fact that the land about our towns

A LITTLE LAND 254
AND A LIVING

and cities, nearly all of which is now held idle
for speculation, is the land out of which they
should get their living. Nine-tenths of Greater
New York is not in use.

The normal and healthy growth of our com-
munities is strangled by a system which hugely
rewards men, at the expense of the workers and
improvers, for keeping the available land va-
cant. Those lands about every centre of popu-
lation in every civilized country are grossly un-
dervalued for taxation, often at only five per
cent. of what they would sell for.

Bay Shore, Long Island, for instance, but by
no means the worst one, is choked by the Law-
rence Estate of some seven hundred and fifty
acres on the west; the bulk of which is worth
$600 per acre, but assessed at $135,000, includ-
ing improvements; by the South Side Club’s
some eight hundred acres on the east, which could
not be bought at $500 per acre, but is assessed
at only $15,000. And the village is cut in two
by the Dominy lands of some eight acres, worth
upwards of $10,000 per acre, and assessed at
about $18,000 for the plot. Meanwhile, the

255 CO-OPERATION

IN OPERATION
houses of the working people are assessed up to
about 80 per cent. of their real value.

As Shearman shows in his “Natural Taxa-
tion,” taxing things that people make hits the
farmer hard, though he does not know it. Lit-
tle of his property can be concealed from the
assessor, and he pays directly and indirectly
much more than his due share of taxes. But
that is as nothing compared with the indirect
injury he suffers by being forced out by the high
prices of suburban land to a distance from his
customer and from the opportunities and advan-
tages of city life. Isolation and the cost of
hauling are bad enough. But far worse is the
waste of energy and decreased production re-
sulting from the holding out of use of these lots
that are near the markets. The farmer is forced
out to the wilds, and his customers are forced
into the cities, and between the two is this desert
of speculation.

A millionaire consumes but little more food
stuff than a mechanic ought to consume and
would consume if his opportunities of earning
were not cut off by the holding. of land out of

A LITTLE LAND 256
AND A LIVING

use and the consequent crowding of the workers
into slums and tenements. The farmers’ natural
customers, the great plain people, are not able
to buy the things they need. This is mainly
because their rents or the prices they have to
pay for their home sites are so high, and be-
cause those lots where homes and shops and fac-
tories ought to be are kept idle, and mines, coal
lands, clay pits, quarries, and sand banks, that
are now needed to employ the people, are un-
worked, or only partly worked.

The suburbs and the country districts are un-
developed or half developed, because the money
raised by taxation is insufficient to pay laborers
who need the jobs, for making good roads,
bridges, streets, water works, and other neces-
sities of civilized life. So the growth of sec-
tions near the cities is checked till the specula-
tors cut their own throats, and there is a fall in
prices or “ dull times in suburbans.”’

There is neither reason nor justice in allow-
ing owners of valuable lands to hold them al-
most untaxed until the pressure ef population
forces the prices up to fancy figures which

257 CO-OPERATION

IN OPERATION
tempt them to let them go—fancy figures which
must be paid, indirectly and directly too, by
those who make things.*

We most stupidly and unfairly discriminate
in our assessments in favor of those who do
nothing but keep land idle, and against those
who develop and improve it. When the natural
opportunities and resources of the lands which
lie out of the cities are assessed for taxation, as
the law even now requires, up to their real and
full value, we shall have done much to solve the
problem of the congestion of towns and the un-
employed, and we shall have, not for the four
hundred but for the forty millions, an era of
prosperity of which we have not yet dreamed.

* Land in Greater New York averages over $200,000 in value
for each acre.

Sa

CHAPTER XIX

TO START SANITARIUM WORK

Outdoor Life Effective—Dr. Trudeau’s Plan—Bad Condi-
tions—Convalescents Work—The Earth for Men—Loca-
tion Important—The Superintendent’s Value—The
Money Needed—Supplementary Industries—Preserving,
Baking, Selling, ete.—Start Now.

ITTLE has yet been done in providing out-
door employment for tubercular patients,
although the experience of the Vacant Lot Gar-
dens in individual cases has shown it to be most
effective.

Dr. Trudeau’s sanitarium in the Adirondacks,
however, has just initiated an Industrial and
Gardening Association where patients will be
able to employ themselves in the open air, even-
tually to support themselves and to learn a trade
which will keep them outdoors.

To return an arrested case to the bench or desk
is generally to re-pronounce the sentence of

death from which the unfortunate has been re-
259

A LITTLE LAND 260
AND A LIVING
prieved. It is, therefore, to be hoped that there
will be a large and rapid extension of this com-
mon sense principle. :

The plan undertaken will provide occupation,
training and support for those who are convales-
cent from consumption. Little work is to be
expected from those who are ill, but when the
patient is cured, or the disease arrested, the per-
son requires outdoor life and the opportunity of
self-support without returning to indoor labor.

This is no experiment; it has been done on a
charitable basis in more than twenty places in
the United States. That it can be done and
how it is being done by the use of very small
patches of land intensively used, is amply shown
elsewhere. The paralytic, rheumatics, drunkards,
defectives, cripples, women, even children, can
shift for themselves, if they get to mother earth.
Says Lyman Abbot: “For one man who can
find a job there are thousands who can do a job
well when it is found for them.” We must find
it for them, but how?

People will work and work effectively, when
they have the opportunity and intelligent super-

261 TO START

SANITARIUM WORK
vision, and when they see the results and get
the whole proceeds for themselves. Get a piece
of land; ten acres will do, and fifty is not too
much; it should be near a town or an institution
where the product may be sold.

It is better to pay five hundred dollars for an
acre of land close to residences than a hundred
dollars an acre for outlying land, because it is
cheaper to get stable manure to it, and it is more
accessible to the cultivator, besides being easier
to show and closer to the market; and because
the rise in the value of the land is greater and
more certain.

A temporary shelter or house should be put
up for superintendence and storage; tents and

shacks will serve for the cultivators who desire .

to live on the land. But most of them will go to
and fro from their residences.

Everything depends upon the superintendent,
who should be capable of undertaking the whole
affair; finding the land; raising the money; hav-
ing the land plowed and getting stable or other
manure put upon it. Then let the superinten-
dent see all those who might help to buy seeds

A LITTLE LAND 262
AND A LIVING

and plants or get them donated. Explain the
plan to the cultivators and apportion plots to
each, a quarter of an acre or less, up to even ar
acre, in accordance with the probable capacity
of each.

The superintendent, he or she, should have hot-
beds prepared in advance, mark out the plots
and meet the cultivators by appointment at the
ground. Instruct them as to the preparation of
the soil, what they should plant and how; which
way the rows should run, and what must be put
in each; how deep the -seeds should be planted,
and every other detail of culture. The super-
intendent should be constantly on the ground
and know and be patient with the peculiarities
and shortcomings of the cultivators. There will
be stupidities and obstinacy enough to try the
patience of Job, but “the guides should not be
” Any who can-
not or will not work simply forfeit their plots

angry with those who go astray.

for neglect or insubordination.

When all this is done, the enterprise is started.
The money needed will be:—enough to make at
least a partial payment on the land, to put up the

263 TO START

SANITARIUM WORK
shelter and a stable; to get a pair of horses and a
harness for hauling manure; to buy seed, a farm
wagon and some kind of carriage, a plow, har-
row, weeder, sprayer and other tools, for all of
which (exclusive of the land and buildings) five
hundred dollars will be ample.

The superintendent’s salary should not be less
than eighteen hundred dollars a year, as on that
officer’s ability and intelligence the whole thing
depends. Even if a greenhouse be not used (as
it is not essential), and if there be no industrial
features added, the superintendent will find am-
ple work in the winter in making the report, lec-
turing, writing and otherwise extending the
scheme.

Here is an opening for any capable man or
woman anywhere—for there is unbounded room
for such institutions and charitable people will
give freely to them.

To employ those who cannot wait even the
month or six weeks needed for radishes and such
quick-growing crops to mature, there should be
a co-operative plot on which they may be given
-work at such a rate per hour as their labor

A LITTLE LAND 264
AND A LIVING

may be worth, the crop to belong to the Associa-
tion.

For this purpose seven hundred dollars should
be enough—say a thousand. Another fifteen
hundred should be added to all this, to avoid run-
ning short. The building of a house is a later
matter, but it will naturally follow. Even if but
half a dozen should be found to take up individ-
ual plots to begin with, there would be no cause
for discouragement, as the plan here as elsewhere
will be justified by its works, and experience
shows that as the first of the succession crops be-
gins to come up, more applicants for the land are
found than can be accommodated.

Some will be found who can take up detached
bits of land, under the superintendent’s direction
and preparation, and take care of them on their
own account. Many know how to raise chickens,
flowers, fruits, or ‘small animals, and can have a
chance to do so. To care for an acre intelligently
does not take over a month’s work altogether dur-
ing the entire season even of unskilled labor,* and
when the rudiments of agriculture are learned,
employment for spare time can be found in car-

* See Chapter VII.

265 TO START

SANITARIUM WORK
ing for the yards and plots of town residents,
and in selling the products.

Natural supplementary industries will grow
up around the headquarters, as they ought to
grow around any intelligent cultivator’s plot,
such as preserving fruit and fine vegetables, dry-
ing kitchen herbs, like thyme, marjoram and sum-
mer savory; cake baking, candy making, nut
shelling, birch bark and rustic work. Those who
can themselves sell direct at retail, early, fresh,
well selected vegetables or flowers, will of course
get the largest prices.

What is necessary is to make a beginning—
now. To wait for another year is needlessly to
sacrifice not only well-being, but lives.

Halifax, Nova Scotia, owned a large tract of
land in connection with its city prison. It was
wild, rough, rocky land supposed to be incapable
of cultivation. No effort was made to grow any-
thing upon it. In 1880 the city appointed a new
governor, a man city bred, with no experience in
farming, but he had faith in the possibilities of
God’s good earth and prepared to prove it. With
the cheap labor at hand he began at once to clear

A LITTLE LAND 266
AND A LIVING
the land. He used large quantities of dynamite
to blow out rocks and stumps. Where, as in many
places, the soil was too thin to support vegeta- -
tion, he had earth hauled. He fertilized thor-
oughly with stable manure (got free for the haul-
ing from livery stables) , and also with a compost
made from the contents of vaults mixed with
earth sods and stable sweepings, and thoroughly
rotted. Lettuce, onions, carrots, beans, peas,
chives, beets, potatoes, turnips, parsnips, cucum-
bers, cabbage, squash and celery figured in the
crops he raised, to say nothing of the fields of
hay and forage raised for the horses and cattle.
Besides the saving to the city in cost of food
stuffs, the male prisoners who worked in the sun-
shine throve so well that this, with the change in
their diet made possible by the farm products,
entirely banished scurvy and other diseases which
had been prevalent hitherto. The plan of giving
each prisoner a plot to cultivate for his own use
has not been tried, partly because it had not oc-
curred to the governor, and partly because the
prisoners have such short terms that the one who
planted would seldom reap. But the results have

267 TO START

SANITARIUM WORK
once more established the truth that no land is
barren; a little earth, a quantity of fertilizer, con-
siderable intelligence, a study of agricultural
journals, good seeds and timely care, will secure
a crop anywhere.

Philadelphia has recently carried the experi-
ment of farming into hitherto untried fields; it
has set some of its insane charges to work at cul-
tivating the land, and the results have been most
satisfactory. Many of the workers were hope-
lessly insane, but the benefit derived from health-
ful, outdoor work was most marked even in the
worst cases, while many who suffered from
milder forms of dementia were completely cured.
The value of the products on the Byberry farm
was fully $10,000, and larger returns are ex-
pected next year. The workers themselves were
delighted with the change and took much pride
in their work. Healthful exercise in fresh air
led to a natural fatigue so that the insane workers
readily fell asleep at night, and “ Nature’s kind
restorer” helped to heal their troubled minds.
This experiment will doubtless be repeated by
other cities where the problem of properly caring

A LITTLE LAND 268
AND A LIVING

for the demented is being carefully solved. If
the excitement, speculation, fear and depression
of modern city life induce insanity, as they un-
doubtedly do, it is reasonable to expect that a re-
turn to healthful, normal conditions of livng—
getting back to the land upon which man depends
for everything—will do much to effect a cure.*

* There is a general impression that farmer’s wives are es-
pecially subject to insanity. This may sometimes occur from
loneliness and drudgery, but a somewhat superficial investigation
of Massachusetts and Iowa statistics showed that they are less
subject to insanity than factory hands.

CHAPTER XV

THE PROFESSION OF FARMING

Agriculture, Past and Future—The Average Farmer—The
Boy and the Garden—The Trained Farmer—Salaries
Await Him—Fresh Discoveries—Fields for Investigation
—Grown from the Best—The Profit of the Earth—Mo-
nopoly Conditions—The Value of the Farm—How to
Proceed—The Aim of This Book.

GRICULTURE has been neglected as a
profession because of the isolation of the
farmer forced to low priced land at a distance
from those with whom he must trade; the bright
boys will not stay for such a life as that, so they
go to the cities, leaving stagnation behind them.
The future of farming lies with our boys.
Whether it shall become the chosen calling of
specially trained young men with all the added
dignity that such training could bring to it, or
remain what it has hitherto been, concerns them
even more than us.

Although tilling the soil is the oldest occupa-
269

A LITTLE LAND 270
AND A LIVING

tion, it has been the last to feel the necessity and
benefit of special training. For this reason it
has not taken its rightful position. But its pos- _
sibilities have attracted specialists who have
shown that no career is more inviting or more lu-
crative or more dignified than that of the skillful
foster-father of plants.

It is a common saying that “the Southern
farmer spends his life fghoue grass, to raise cot-
ton, to buy hay.”

In just the same way the Northern farmer
worries over “them pesky briers,” blackberries
and raspberries, that grow by his fences, and
roots them out to plant corn that brings him fif-
teen dollars an acre profit: if he would encourage
the briers he might reap five hundred dollars an
acre from them.

Says the President of the Chicago Great
Western R. R. Co.:

“The eccentric and witty Lorenzo Dow was in
the corn-hog belt when he said:

“<«The average Western farmer toils hard,
often depriving himself of needed rest—to raise
corn—for what? To feed hogs—for what? To

271 | THE PROFESSION

OF FARMING
get money with which to buy more land—for
what? To raise more corn—for what? To feed
more hogs—for what? To buy more land. And
why does he want more land? Why, he wishes to
raise more corn, to feed more hogs. And in this
circle he moves until the Almighty stops his hog-
gish proceedings.’

“But in my judgment, working early and late
to raise more corn, to feed more hogs, in order to
buy more land, is not farming, but speculation.
The great fault of American agriculture is too
much land.”

That is passing away and the farmer is learn-
ing that the small farm near the town is the
money maker.

So far as farming is concerned, big-scale pro-
duction is not increasing, but the opposite. For
better transportation, better culivation, and above
all, better education is changing farm life. Now
we must make the land attractive to the boys so
that they shall not go “back to the land,” but
will never leave it.

Children brought up in city tenements tend to
become sickly and vicious, whereas on the farm

A LITTLE LAND 272
AND A LIVING

they have a chance to grow into vigorous, self-
respecting men and women. It is the city that
breeds or attracts most of the pauperism and-
crime. The country has its own healthful life.
To give children a fair start in life it is neces-
sary that they should live close to “the good
brown earth.”

The school gardens, the home gardens and the
individual plots belonging to the boys are the
best means of influencing the children, and there
has been a remarkable growth of these here and
in Europe in the past seven years. The effect is
moral as well as economic. Even in the worst
neighborhoods there has been no stealing, and the
children themselves have been watchful to pre-
vent injury from either carelessness or dishon-
esty.

Through such agencies we shall discover what
children have a natural bent for farming, and
in due course parents will encourage that taste as
they now encourage other tastes and inclinations.
In the past the boy’s experience of farming was
doing hard work at the behest of another, and
getting no direct benefit. Besides, farming was

273 THE PROFESSION

OF FARMING
a blind thing even to the farmer, how much more
to the uninstructed boy?

The one idea many people have with reference
to the child and agriculture is—weeding! Weed-
ing that, with the “total depravity of inanimate
things,” always requires to be done when other
and larger interests are absorbing the child’s
mind.

Now, the fact is, agriculture is one of the most
fascinating of occupations to children.

Hundreds of cities within the last few years
have taken up the “School Gardens” idea, and
they report this year thousands of applicants for
garden plots they have no room for. In Water-
town, Massachusetts, for example, a town of only
1200, they have 150 garden plots and 20 on the
waiting lists, besides 100 “home gardens,” i. e.,
garden plots in the children’s home yards. These
“home gardens” are properly a post-graduate
course, the child needing the instruction received
in the community gardens to fit him to work
alone.

The crux of the matter is, if you want a child
(or an adult) to take an interest in agriculture,

A LITTLE LAND Tk
AND A LIVING

give him entire charge of a plot of ground and
let the product of his labor be his. The culti-
vation of the soil has been proved an effectual -
means of development along wholesome lines
when the members of any institution are al-
lowed to get the most they can out of the soil,
and to have what they get. On the other hand,
it has no more value than the “weeding” when
they are treated simply as hired hands.

When a boy shows an inclination toward gar-
dening he should be given a plot, shown how to
plant it, encouraged to make a study of agricul-
ture, and allowed all the returns. This will make
him regard farming or gardening as a business,
rather than merely as an occupation; that is the
first step toward restoring agriculture to its
proper place.

Take in good agricultural journals, secure re-
liable books and discuss possibilities with him.
Children treated in this way surprise us by their
original and practical ideas. A boy who has
gathered the fruits of his toil, read and studied
good agricultural papers, will want to know more
than these can give him. He should then be given

arb | THE PROFESSION

OF FARMING
a few years at an agricultural college. When
through he will know more of soils and their pos-
sibilities to start with, than his father knew at the
end of a long and laborious life.

Having special training for his calling, it will
take on added dignity in his eyes and eventually
in the eyes of his neighbors. A “farmer” will
not be synonymous with an illiterate boor, but
may take his place with lawyers, doctors, minis-
ters and others who are specially trained for their
life work. Hitherto farmers and mothers have
been the only persons with important work who
have had no scientific training.

Farming under modern methods is as desir-
able a profession for a girl as for a boy, and any
bent in that direction should be as thoroughly
developed in the one as the other. It opens
another healthful, natural business for a girl.

In New Jersey the Baron de Hirsch Trustees
have a farm at Woodbine, and Rutger’s College,
New Brunswick, has courses in agriculture.
Others are following suit.

There is little danger of that profession becom-
ing overcrowded. Millions of acres of land in the

A LITTLE LAND 276
AND A LIVING

country are yet unbroken, and millions more,
under so-called cultivation, can be made to pro-
duce ten-fold by scientific methods. j

Large land owners, Irrigation and Reclama-
tion Companies, are inquiring for graduates of
all such schools. Government experiment sta-
tions and the great railroad systems are on the
lookout for them. At one time railroads were
content to offer good lands to the farmer and let
him make what he would; now they have learned
the importance of helping him to see what could
be made if he followed the best plans. Scientific
men are awaking to the limitless field of science
applied to the land. Every day brings us au-
thentic reports of extraordinary and important
discoveries. For example, Prof. Waugh finds
that soaking seeds in beer promotes vigor and
growth, which is interesting to our prohibition
friends, though it does not appear that beer soak-
ing improves men.

It has been found that the agaves, of which
the century plant is one, furnish food, drink,
soap, clothing, cordage, (sisal) paper, sticks,
light, beams, medicine and ornament. They

277 THE PROFESSION

OF FARMING
grow in Mexico, and there is no doubt that the
increasing price would make it worth while to
find a species that will grow in our deserts.

We know almost nothing of nature’s re-
sources; there are uses for many plants now re-
garded as pests, but no one has yet investigated;
quantities of roots, fruits and herbs not now in
use are valuable edibles. We call them weeds
because we do not yet know their uses.

Someone might write a useful book and gain
reputation and position by summarizing and
popularizing for Americans the vast literature
on Intensive Farming which exists in France,
Germany, Italy, Denmark, Holland and other
countries. The literature of farming is exten-
sive. We have over 400 farm periodicals in the
U.S. The Astor Library in New York has some
ten thousand volumes on agriculture in which one
can lose himself, if not his mind; but there is lit-
tle of the lore of foreign countries accessible at
present in this country; however, there is enough
for newspaper and magazine articles, the recep-
tion of which might encourage the expenditure
of time and money to get these most important

A LITTLE LAND 278
AND A LIVING

and interesting facts, about which we know, at
present, practically nothing.

No soil is worthless or really barren, if we
bring the soil and the right plant together. Fer-
tilization and irrigation will make any soil pro-
ductive for almost anything.

The greatest rival to Holland in bulb growing
is now the Puget Sound country. Mr. George
Gibs established the business there after investi-
gating soil and climate conditions. Despite fail-
ure at first, he persisted in his efforts and is now
growing rich.

Those who do not know and will not learn,
cannot hope to make a living off three acres or
thirty acres. But he who studies, observes, ex-
periments, finds it pays him well to cultivate even
one acre thoroughly.

You are constantly urged to think and study,
but you must do something also and do it now.
Thinking without doing is dreaming. You don’t
want to be like Bobby:

“What was that terrific noise upstairs early
this morning?” inquired Bobby’s father as the
boy appeared at the breakfast table.

279 THE PROFESSION
OF FARMING

“Well,” explained Bobby, “I dremp I was a
duck, an’ when I woke up I had swum off the
bed.”

Seed improvements offers a big field. One
practical man found that potato scab can be
combated by simply exposing the seed tubers to
that great germ destroyer sunlight, and that this
hastens their growth.

A minister inherited a wornout farm of fif-
teen acres with a soil of reddish gravelly clay.
After studying the best and most modern farm-
ing literature he started a dairy farm. He kept
30 head of cattle, raised his own “roughage,”
sold milk, bred cattle, and cleared more than
_ $1000 a year per acre. The cows were kept in
the barn the year round as his land, being near
the city of Philadelphia, was too valuable to be
used as pasturage.

The time is at hand when the principles we
are laying down in this book for specialties will
be applied to the great staples, and we shall be
able to double and redouble our yields... Even
now it is true of corm when farmers give special
attention to it. The i:stanses given in Chapter

A LITTLE LAND 280
AND A LIVING

V of the results of the Agriculturist contest
show what can be done. When corn is grown
for the ears, and not for the stalk, farmers will
plant only such seed as has proved most prolific,
and the stalks will be cut back, that all the plant’s
strength may go into producing more ears.

If you happen to have poor land and you have
brains enough, you can make your neighbors wish
their land was as poor too, as one man, Mr. EK.
MelIver Williamson, of Mont Clare, South Caro-
lina, did. He took advantage of the fact that his
land was very poor to stunt his corn, and put all
the strength of the plant into the ears.

This was the way he went about it. He planted
the corn in the poor subsoil and the best it could
do was to grow to between two and three feet
high, then when the time came for the ears to set
he piled on a rich top soil, in other words, fed the
plant all it could use, and all the strength of the
plant went to the formation of ears; not as in
ordinary cases, mostly to stalk and leaves. The
consequence was he had a much larger yield per
acre than the average, and his envious neighbors
complained that they could not do that because

281 THE PROFESSION

OF FARMING
their soil wasn’t poor. Mr. Williamson has made
a special study of corn growing. Hesays: “No
farmer is so rich that he can afford to till poor
land, nor any land, except in the best manner,
planted in the crop best suited to it.” In 1904
at an expense of $11 per acre for fertilizer, he
averaged 84 bushels yield to the acre, the best
single acre yield being 125 bushels.

Farmers are awaking to the value of selected
and specialized seeds. One hundred and twenty-
five students took the special examination for
corn judging certificates at the Iowa State Agri-
cultural College at Ames last year. In the corn
growers contest there were nearly eight hundred
entries. The corn sale followed, during which
the world’s record was established.

The prize lots brought fine prices, sales of ten
ears at twenty-five, twenty and fifteen dollars
being common. The champion ear of corn last
year, which was exhibited by H. J. Ross, was sold
for eleven dollars. The grand champion ear
grown this year by D. L. Pascal, was offered at
auction. Starting at ten dollars, the bids were
raised successively, five dollars at a time, until

A LITTLE LAND 289
AND A LIVING

the price of one hundred and fifty dollars was
reached, when the ear was secured by the former
owner. It was the Reid Yellow Dent variety, ~
weighing nineteen ounces. Each kernel is valued
at thirteen cents, and the purchase price is at the
rate of eight thousand, eight hundred and fifty
dollars per bushel.

The champion ten ears of corn ten years ago
sold for thirty dollars, which up to that time was
the highest price paid for seen corn.—F arming,
May, 1907.

It is poor economy that keeps the smallest and
poorest potatoes for seed. The breeder of ani-
mals does not keep the weaklings for breeding
purposes. He selects the best. Just so corn
should be planted from seed secured from the
stalks that produced most.

In 1899 six pounds of Swedish select oats were
planted in Wisconsin. In 1905 there were har-
vested 9,000,000 bushels. In localities where it
was unprofitable to raise ordinary wheat because
of slight rainfall, macaroni wheat was planted.
In 1905 the yield was 20,000,000 bushels.

If anyone thinks the profit of the earth will

283 THE PROFESSION

OF FARMING
come to the cultivator without intelligent and
persistent effort, he is a fool. No owner of land,
unless others require it to live upon, can make
money by neglecting it.

There is no scarcity of land to feed the world
even at the old wasteful rate, but it is not acces-
sible under present conditions, being held by spec-
ulators. The cry that there are too many mouths
to be fed by the world’s supply is no more true
than that there is more grown than could be used.
It has been one of the anomalies of life that
while thousands are starving in the cities, grain
is being used for fuel by the farmers. It must
ever be so while natural opportunities are in the
hands of a few. It is a condition created by mo-
nopoly, a monopoly in no danger at present of
indictment for restraint of trade.

But the capacity of the land now under culti-
vation has never been tested. That is why agri-
culture offers a field for the trained farmer to-
day, unexcelled even by the possibilities of inven-
tion. All men cannot be inventors like Edison,
but he who succeeds in multiplying and improv-
ing the ears of wheat which may be grown in a

A LITTLE LAND 284
AND A LIVING

given area will be doing mankind a service that
will not be reckoned lightly.

The new agriculture is only in its infancy and
the demand for farmers who can do what was
once thought impossible is growing daily. The
farmer who is content to go along in the old rut,
adding acre to acre and merely scratching the
surface of each, is as sure to be left behind in the
race as the merchant who prefers sailing vessels
to steamers, and who declines to use the tele-
phone.

That is why farming offers such an opportu-
nity to the trained young man or woman. There
are few plums in the law compared with the
many aspirants; the supply of physicians is al-
ready in excess of the world’s real needs; there
are more ministers living on insufficient incomes
than are enjoying comfortable salaries, the aver-
age being less than $450 per year; there are few
paying professorship for the educationalists:
and even where opportunities in these lines do
exist, they are accompanied by serious drawbacks
such as boards of government, or political in-
trigue. But the farmer is independent. People

285 THE PROFESSION

OF FARMING
must be fed and the demand for the best food
increases daily; there is no limit to the possibil-
ities of his profession.

But what is the farmer to do who has remote,
unsalable, perhaps exhausted land, and little cap-
ital? He thinks he cannot move nearer to the
city; his home, neighbors and associations are all
tied to the land adscriptt glebae; what shall
he do to get out of the rut and into better condi-
tions?

If he is going behind year by year, he might
better move before all is gone. If he is “just
making a living,” he can put the most of the farm
into pasture or into hay, or let it run wild in the
hope of a rise in land value, and specialize on his
orchard, or on berries, or on a few acres of fine
vegetables. He will not make any less than he
makes now, and he will find some hope for him-
self and give some hope to his boys.

The most important thing to teach to-day is
how to make the greatest profit from the least
land. When the farmer has learned that, he will
have no cause to fear the absorption of farms
into large holdings. The value of the farm lies

A LITTLE LAND 286
AND A LIVING

chiefly in the farmer, so that a very small tract
by intensive cultivation will give a good living
and provide for old age. Even two acres will do
this and more than this.

Discoveries in other fields have revolutionized
methods and created fortunes. Agriculture of-
fers unlimited opportunities to the bright boy or
girl who makes a business of scientific farming
or gardening. The world is waiting for the ag-
ricultural discoverer.

With the help now freely given by the Govern-
ment, the agricultural colleges and experiment
stations, you can help the world to great advances.

It is necessary to know something about land
and how to get the best returns from its cultiva-
tion before you take up farming as a life work.
It is therefore wiser to keep your present posi-
tion until you have studied and become familiar
with the valuable and helpful literature on agri-
culture, and saved at least a small swum to meet
emergencies. |

Go slowly at first. If you have no practical
experience, try first to get a garden where you
can give it your spare time without losing your

287 THE PROFESSION

OF FARMING
present position. Then as you get skill and ex-
perience you can give it your whole time and will
not be helpless, if, for any reason, you lose your
job.

To show what has been done and what can be
done on small areas; that the life of the farmer,
now so laborious and unprofitable, offers the
widest opportunities for success under new meth-
ods, is the object of this book. If it help any to
take up the pursuit of agriculture as a business,
if it draw even a few from the crowded, un-
healthful life of the city tenement, to the free,
health-giving life of the fields and gardens, if it
afford a ray of hope to the discouraged toiler, it
will have accomplished its purpose and fully re-
paid its author.

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